The American Fruit That Came From Scurvy

One of the most iconic fruits in America was never actually American.

Key limes only made it here because sailors needed vitamin C to fight scurvy. Scurvy killed more than 2 million sailors between the 16th and 18th centuries.¹ On lengthy voyages, losing half the crew was common.² In 1744, Commodore George Anson returned from a four-year circumnavigation with only 188 of the 1,854 men he departed with, most losses from scurvy.³

In 1747, Scottish physician James Lind conducted one of the first controlled medical experiments in history, testing various remedies on sailors suffering from scurvy aboard HMS Salisbury.⁴ He discovered that citrus fruits, particularly lemons and oranges, could prevent and cure the disease.⁵ In 1795, the Royal Navy began issuing lemon juice to sailors.⁶ For a time, scurvy ceased to be a problem.⁷

Then eighty years later, they switched to limes.⁸ Spain’s alliance with France against Britain during the Napoleonic Wars made the supply of Mediterranean lemons problematic.⁹ Limes were more easily obtained from Britain’s Caribbean colonies like Dominica and Jamaica and were believed to be more effective because they were more acidic.¹⁰ This is how British sailors became known as “limeys.”¹¹