[SunkenCiv]

Quite right. And wildly enough, the oceans are also swimming with food. :^) The good old ancestors who crossed during the Great Migration spent a month or more making the passage (the surname ancestors embarked in February and arrived in March, so the food wouldn't have spoiled anyway), and those boats were stuffed, given their size. No one would but a refugee would travel that way today.

[colorado tanker]

I've read the Aubrey-Maturin novels and other naval books of the period and it's remarkable that the sailors generally preferred their salt beef and pork and peas to fish, unless someone caught something really tasty. Or the provisions were running out.

Of course, the diet of the average lower class Englishmen in the 18th and early 19th Centuies was pretty wretched. A number of sailors joined the Navy because the food was better than that at home.