Navajas of the Galleons

[fernando]

Laval narrates that, contrary to the Dutch and French, who are provided with a cook and every six men eat ready food in one plate, the Portuguese are supplied once per month with raw goods: salted meat, olive oil, vinegar, salt, onions, fish; bread, as much as they can eat, whine and water are given daily. Other raw articles are sold aboard by those who bring them from land; he saw one chicken be sold for 20 reales.
Every one has to cook his own food, resulting that you can often see more than eighty or hundred pans simultaneously on the fire. And when these are cooked, a next lot is put on such fire. For this reason when some men are ill and can not compete with this strugle, are mistreated and sub nourished, eventually dying of such cause.
This to say that, if the men had to prepare and cook their food, they would naturally had to use knives; hardly they would toss entire fishes and hens on the pan, before cuting them in pieces.
But not a single mention of knives appear in the text !
I would however risk to say that such it is implicit.