[tgsovlerkhgsel]

The 1.5 million beer bottles sounded like a gross exaggeration, but with 14 ships, over 8 years, that's about 34 bottles per day per ship, which makes it seem potentially plausible for a bunch of very bored sailors, depending on how big the skeleton crews were.

I like that apparently some form of agreement was reached to keep them well supplied.

[uoaei]

I would imagine a surrogate market has been made using beer as a form of payment or currency.

[NoNotTheDuo]

Reminds me of a few years ago. We did a fishing trip on vacation in Costa Rica. Just myself and my wife, and two crew members on the fishing boat.

We came across a giant trawling boat and the captain of our fishing boat asked if we wanted to change what we were fishing for. We said yes, and our guys gathered a bunch of random stuff from the galley and put it into a plastic sack: open bags of chips, beer, soda, other snacks, etc.

We pulled up next to the trawler and the captain negotiated a trade: our food and drinks for a giant basket of their bait.

Both boats ended up happy and we had a great time using their bait!