Diesel smoked meat - A Sea Story

There was this one time when we were delivering an old destroyer(we were selling it to Turkey) from New York to Mayport, Florida. On Saturday afternoon the ship decided to have a cookout for the crew - grilled steaks and burgers cooked on the fantail on a grill. Now a day out of New York is just off Cape Hatteras and it wasn't really smooth sailing - not a hurricane but that old ship was moving bit.

Twenty plus years and I'd never been seasick - so it seemed like no big deal. I had chow - the steak was typically Navy tough and it had been marinated in something, but I'd had a lot worse. About an hour later, my stomach started to churn and in about another half hour - it rebelled. Between that piece of meat and the rolling, pitching and yawing - I paid a penance for making fun of seasickness for those twenty-plus years.

But - it turned out the ship had an epidemic of the same thing - Old Salts and Landlubbers alike. After a bit of investigation, the culprit turned up. Nobody had any charcoal lighter to start the grill and someone had the bright idea to use Navy Distillate Fuel as charcoal starter. That stuff doesn't burn off (it's close to JP-5) and the "marinade" taste was unburned fuel greasing up the meat.

I agree with GMWillys - I'll pass on the petroleum marinade....