although I hate to spoil the fun this probably is not as it looks.
Maybe they only used 10,000 gallons of water (that's about 0.1gallon/man/day)
BUT
I think that
the Rum and Wine were unloaded, sold or used for some other purposes then solely drinking fun of the crew.
I think so simply because drinking that much rum in that time is impossible.
If we're claiming that the crew of the Constitution drunk
79,400 gallons of rum
68,300 gallons of rum
64,300 gallons of wine
40,000 gallons of Scotch
and some rum from the English merchantmen
we get a per-day/per capita use of
more than 1.5 gallon rum
about 0.65 gallon wine
and 0.40 gallon Scotch
Now please note the facts that
a.) 1 liter of booze (40% alcohol) gives most grown men severe alcohol poisoning
b.) as rum and scotch hold about 40% alcohol and wine has about 10% the men would have consumed 0.6+0.065+0.16= 0.825 gallons = more than 3 litres of pure alcohol each day!!!
Shall I continue 
The density of alcohol makes that about 2.5kg
Now the deadly dose for adults is 2-4g/kg bodyweight. So to survive this a sailor would have to weigh 625kg/1250lbs.
I can still go on 
So for all men to survive that the crew of the Constitution would have had a summarized weight of at least 295 tons.
And to finally prove my point -> That is about the wieght of a loaded 747 Jumbo [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]
So apparently the Constitution was a
really huge ship with a really huge crew who was nevertheless dead drunk all the time.
[ 09-06-2003, 07:59 PM: Message edited by: Faceman ]