SEA-BISKUIT is a sort of bread much dried by passing the oven twice, to make it keep for sea-service. For long voyages they bake it four times, and prepare it six months before the embarkation. It will keep good a whole year.
To preserve sea-biskuit from insects, Mr Hales advises to make the fumus of burning brimstone pass through the casks full of bread. Biskuit may be likewise preserved a long time, by keeping it in casks well calked, and lined with tin.
The ancients had their biskuit prepared after the like manner, and for the like use, as the moderns. The Greeks called it αἴθες δίπυρος, q. d. bread put twice to the fire. The Romans give it the name of panis nauticus, or capta. Pliny denominates it vetus aut nauticus panis tufus atque iterum coctus. By which it appears, that after the first baking, they ground or pounded it down again for a second. In some middle-age writers, it is called paximas, paximus, and panis paximatus. Among the Romans we also meet with
a kind of land-biskuit for the camp service, called buccellatum, sometimes expeditionalis annona, which was baked much; but to make it lighter for carriage, and less liable to corrupt, the coction was continued till the bread was reduced one-fourth of its former weight.