Craving a fruity rum drink this summer? If you’re sipping some sassy rum punch, you might be surprised to learn that some of these tropical concoctions have their roots in 18^th century sailing expeditions.

Rum was named on the island of Barbados where molasses, a byproduct of the sugar manufacturing process, was fermented, distilled, and turned into a tasty spirit that was cheap to produce and wickedly strong. Instantly popular, rum became a second income stream for the owners of the vast sugar cane fields that covered islands throughout the Caribbean. “Today, Barbados still produces some of the best rums in the world,” says Wilson Oswald, a certified sommelier who is also the director of beverage for Sizzling Steak Concepts, a family-owned restaurant group which includes Ruth’s Chris Steak House – Columbia in its portfolio.

But it was scurvy, a debilitating and deadly disease caused by a lack of vitamin C, that ended up creating the link between rum and summer’s fruit-forward cocktails.

During the Age of Exploration, when Colonists spent months aboard ships and had no access to fresh fruit, scurvy was a true risk. For instance, an estimated half of passengers aboard the Mayflower perished from scurvy as the ship made its way across the Atlantic.

Luckily, by the early 1700s, consuming citrus fruits was found to both prevent and treat scurvy. Although the problem was fairly easily alleviated among the general public, it continued to be a problem for sailors, whose citrus fruit consumption was generally limited to lemons, which were less perishable than oranges. Enter rum, which was not only provided to the British Royal Navy as part of their daily rations but offered enough sweetness to offset the sourness of the lemons. Unlike ale and wine, it wouldn’t spoil, even after months in a hot ship’s hold. Before long, orange juice, sugar, and spice were added to the brew, which was so delicious that it migrated from ship to shore and became the base for tropical cocktails.

During the early 18^th century, nearly all the rum exported from West Indian rum-producing islands such as Antigua, Jamaica, and Barbados went to Colonists in North America, who each consumed an estimated four gallons of rum per year. To meet that nearly insatiable need, Colonists made their own rum as well, particularly in New England.

That all changed in the 19^th century, when American distillers found that transforming abundant rye, wheat, and corn into whiskey was cheaper than making rum, which required imported — and heavily taxed — molasses.

Rum didn’t surge in popularity again until the 1930s when Ernest Gantt, better known as Donn Beach, opened a restaurant in Hollywood that came to be known as Don the Beachcomber. A charming wanderer who had spent time in the Caribbean, French Polynesia, and other tropical locales before moving to California and picking up work as a set designer, Gantt put his skills to use at his new establishment, creating a South Pacific paradise where customers could temporarily forget the post-Depression world. Since rum was the cheapest spirit available at the time, Gantt mixed up a menu of fruit-based novelty drinks, gave them exotic names, and soon had a following that included Howard Hughes, Charlie Chaplin, and Marlene Dietrich. The concept took Hollywood by storm, spurring a host of imitators such as Trader Vic’s, which Victor Bergeron opened four years after Don the Beachcomber had made its debut. The two establishments kicked off a tiki-bar trend that lasted until the 1970s, when prepackaged drink mixes transformed the surprisingly nuanced fruity delights, whose recipes were top-secret, into artificially flavored, one-dimensional vehicles for cheap rum.