And Arguments about the Rigging,
‘This Mast how taut!’ ‘That sail how square’
All Study had been fruitless there.”
Thus Jack Mitford from his gravel pit in Battersea.
CHAPTER IV
The civilian and warrant or standing officers—The surgeon—The surgeon’s assistants—The chaplain—The boatswain—The purser—The gunner—The carpenter—Mates and yeomen—The sailmaker—The ship’s police—The ship’s cook
The surgeon, who messed with the ward-room officer, and slept in a cabin near the ward-room, had to pass an examination at the Transport Board, in addition to that imposed by Surgeons’ Hall, before he could receive his warrant. He was “generally the most independent officer in the ship,” as his duties were essentially different to those of the executive. He had charge of the sick and hurt seamen, of the medicines and medical comforts, and of the ship’s hygiene generally. On coming aboard a ship commissioning he had to examine the doctor’s stores, and to see them duly stowed away in the medicine-chests or sea-dispensary below-decks. When the newly raised or pressed men were brought aboard he had to sound them and examine them, not only for their fitness for the service, but for any trace of infectious or contagious disease. When the “quota men,” or my Lord Mayor’s men, came before him he caused hot water to be prepared, so that the men could have their heads shaved, and their bodies scrubbed “from clue to earring,” and their clothes very jealously boiled before they mixed with the crew. At sea he had charge of the sick-berth, or sick-bay, a small sea-hospital shut away from the rest of the ship by wooden screens covered with canvas. As a rule this sick-bay was in the forecastle, on the starboard side, but sometimes circumstances made it necessary to pitch it on the orlop-deck, out of the way of the enemy’s shot. Any sailor who felt sick reported himself to the surgeon, or his assistants, in the forenoon. If he was found to be ill he was removed from duty, and sent into the sick-bay, where a certain number of the “waisters,” or least necessary of the crew, acted as nurses to him. These sick-bay attendants kept the place scrupulously clean, well fumigated, and sprinkled with vinegar.
A surgeon’s most common duty at sea was the dressing of ulcers, to which the seamen were very subject. In Smollett’s time the assistant-surgeon had to repair daily, in the forenoon, to the space about the fore-mast, where his loblolly-boy, or dresser, banged a mortar with a pestle, as a signal to the men to repair on deck to have their sores dressed. In ships newly commissioned, typhus, gaol, or ship fever was very common. The surgeons, as we have seen, did all they could to prevent it, by disinfecting the quota men, and by boiling or burning all “cloathes” brought from “Newgate, or other suspected Prisons.” In spite of all they could do the gaol fever destroyed large numbers of sailors every year. At sea the most dreaded complaint was the scurvy. Surgeons had standing orders to examine all those seamen who appeared in the least dejected or sickly. The sailors disliked the sick-berth, and always hesitated to report themselves when ill, because those in the sick-bay had to go without their grog and tobacco. The lieutenants sometimes helped the surgeons to pick out a sickly man before his ailment had fully declared itself. By these means the epidemical complaints were kept under. If a surgeon detected the least trace of scurvy in a man he had to see that the fellow received a daily dosing with lime-juice, a drink then newly instituted as an anti-scorbutic. Some ships which had no lime juice used essence of malt, or molasses, or raw potatoes, for this purpose.
A surgeon was expected to have a number of dressings always prepared, in case the ship should “be suddenly brought to action.” He was also expected to instruct the crew in the use of the tourniquet, so that men with shattered stumps might have some chance of living until the surgeon could take up their arteries. He was to visit sick and wounded men twice daily, to see that the sick-bay stove, of “clear-burning cinders,” was kept alight, and to make a careful record not only of the sick men treated, but of the means taken to prevent infection. A wooden ship, built of wood improperly seasoned, was always damp and foul, “tending to produce disease and generate infection.” The ballast was often dirty; the water in the bilges was always putrid; the hold and orlop were badly ventilated; and the gun-deck was packed like a sardine tin with several hundreds of men, not all of whom were even tolerably cleanly in their habits. It was a surgeon’s duty to ask the captain to fix a general washing-day once in each week, whenever there was plenty of rain water, so that the men’s clothes might be washed and then dried in the sun. At intervals he was to ask that all the hammocks should be aired on the forecastle, the lashings taken off, the blankets shaken, and the mattresses hung in the sun. Now and then he had to fumigate the ship. The most common means of doing this was by burning a preparation of gunpowder, soaked in vinegar, in iron pans about the decks. The powder sputtered for a long time, sending out a quantity of acrid smoke, which was reckoned a powerful disinfectant. Burning flowers of sulphur gave good results, and many found fires of fir wood satisfactory. In dock, when a ship was very badly infected, they seem to have used tobacco, burning it in great pans about the gun-decks, with the ports and hatches closed, and the men standing at their quarters “as long as they can bear it.” Sometimes the seamen’s kit bags were hung up over “pots of burning brimstone.” Sometimes pots of burning brimstone were placed between the guns and sprinkled with vinegar. A very wholesome practice was the immersion of red-hot irons, called loggerheads, into buckets of tar. This last method was generally used to disinfect the sick-berth, when there were many sick. A surgeon was expected to ask the captain from time to time to cause iron fire buckets, containing burning charcoal, to be lowered into the hold. The red embers were sprinkled with vinegar and brimstone as soon as the buckets were in position. The well, the bilges, and the recesses of the hold, were thus both dried and disinfected at the same time. Another way of fumigation was by pouring sulphuric acid and the powder of nitre upon heated sand. After Nelson’s death this was the plan generally adopted.
In spite of all the fumigations the ships were never free from unpleasant smells: the dank fusty smell of dry-rot, the acrid and awful smell of bilge water, and the smells of decaying stores and long defunct rats. Windsails and canvas ventilators were always fitted, in fine weather, to drive pure air into the recesses; but fine weather is the exception, not the rule, to the north of the fortieth parallel. The ships were sometimes battened down for days together, till every inch of timber dripped with salt water and the condensation of the breaths of many men. One who knew these old ships has testified that “there was always more or less stench” aboard the best regulated ship, but that the stench was less penetrating, and the danger of infection always slighter, in those ships which were frequently dried by portable fires. A diligent surgeon, if he had the fortune to sail with a sensible captain, could do much to better the condition of the entire ship’s company.