H.M.S. “ISIS,” SEA-GOING TRAINING SHIP.
Photo: Smale & Son, Dartmouth.
There appears to have been a sort of jealousy or inimical feeling about the Britannia which is always cropping up, and finding vent in letters to the Times—the indignant Briton’s great resource—and which does not seem easy to account for. In the bullying affair, before alluded to, the captain was busy detecting culprits and putting it down before anyone wrote to the Press, and yet the busy newspaper correspondents persisted in saddling him, and the whole system, with the blame of it. And similarly, in the case of the epidemic in 1901, everybody and everything was held accountable except the well-known capricious nature of the ailment, which crops up unexpectedly in a household or a community, and as suddenly disappears; no one knows how it got there, and its very name implies a mystery.
“A Father of Cadets” writes: “I have been informed that for about sixteen years—i.e. since the ships have been at Dartmouth—the sewage has been discharged from the vessel into the river, where, though it is mostly washed away by the tide, part must sink into deeper water.”
This is certainly a very ill-informed parent, who should have applied to his sons for some information before taking up his pen. In the first place, the Britannia had, in March, 1901, been, not sixteen but over thirty-seven years in the Dart; and where, in the name of common-sense, did he expect the sewage to be discharged from the ship except into the river? This is obviously a case of “any stick is good enough to beat a dog with.”
A refreshing contrast is presented by the letter of another father of a cadet, Mr. N. C. Dobson, emeritus Professor of Surgery, who says that he has been on board several times, and is quite satisfied that the condition of the ship has had nothing to do with the outbreak.
In this he is confirmed by the official report of Professor Corfield, a hygienic expert, who was requested by the Admiralty to investigate the causes, and who speaks most highly of the sanitary condition of the ship, and says, in effect, that the disease got on board in some manner which it is impossible to detect.
Another writer attempts to put the blame on the food, and sundry allegations are made against Dartmouth itself, which draw forth a reply from the town clerk, who produces official statistics to disprove the statements.