Archive Results For: Health at Sea
Review:- ‘The Social History of English Seamen, 1650–1815’ by C. A. Fury (ed.)
This book is the second of two volumes on the social history of English seamen edited by Cheryl Fury; the first, published in 2012, covered the preceding period 1485–1650. As Fury explains in her introduction to this second volume, the two books together aim to show how scholars are ‘charting a reliable course into the […] Read More
Filed under: Early Modern | Eighteenth Century | Nineteenth Century | Health at Sea
Subjects include: Manpower & Life at Sea
Book Review-‘Quarantine: Local and global histories’ ed. by A. Bashford
Alison Bashford has for many years been among the world’s foremost authorities on the history of quarantine. Quarantine: Local and global histories represents a return to a long-standing interest in the topic, one marked by previous works like Contagion: Historical and cultural Studies (2001), edited with Claire Hooker, and Imperial Hygiene: A critical history of […] Read More
Filed under: Health at Sea
Subjects include: Administration | Manpower & Life at Sea
Book Review-‘Tropic Suns: Seadogs aboard an English galleon’ by J. S. Dean
Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh and their ilk continue to stir the imaginations of academic and popular historians alike, despite the often scant evidence on which their voyages can be reconstructed. Here Professor James Seay Dean attempts to convey the realities of life during Tudor and Jacobean expeditions to the West Indies, emphasizing that spoiled provisions, scurvy […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Tudors | Francis Drake | Health at Sea | Caribbean
Subjects include: Manpower & Life at Sea | Science & Exploration | Ship Handling & Seamanship
Book Review-‘Merchant Seamen’s Health 1860−1960: Medicine, technology, shipowners and the state in Britain’ by T. Carter
While many historians have focused on matters relating to health in the Royal Navy, less attention has been paid to the equally important subject of the history of medical care for merchant seamen. This reflects the comparative lack of interest in merchant seamen compared with the iconic status accorded to the Royal Navy since Trafalgar […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Twentieth C) | Other (Nineteenth C) | Health at Sea
Subjects include: Merchant Marines
Some Adventures of a Seafaring Accountant: William Crickmay and the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, 1853–1858
William Crickmay was the purser of five Royal Mail Steam Packet Company ships from 1854 to 1858. These ships provided mail services from Southampton to St Thomas and Rio de Janeiro, and thence to local ports of call. His third ship, the Orinoco, chartered for war service, voyaged to and from Portsmouth to the Crimean war […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Crimean War | Health at Sea
Subjects include: Biography | Manpower & Life at Sea
‘Your Dutiful Nephew’: Thomas Denman Ledward (1766–1789/90), acting surgeon of the Bounty
The surviving family letters of, and relating to, Thomas Denman Ledward, acting surgeon in HM armed vessel Bounty, have never been fully researched before. They are used here as the basis for constructing his brief biography. It provides a case study of the chances that could launch an eighteenth-century naval medical career (and tragically terminate it), […] Read More
Filed under: Mutiny & Discipline | Eighteenth Century | Health at Sea
Subjects include: Biography | Manpower & Life at Sea
Diseases Spread by Sea: Health Services and the Ports of the Canary Islands in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
In the Canary Islands the sea was as a defence against disease. There was a constant fear of epidemics arriving by sea, not only because of the potentially high death toll, but because it could have a seriously detrimental effect on trade. As well as the local impact of disease, health control was important because […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Popular Topics | Other (Nineteenth C) | Other (Eighteenth C) | Health at Sea
Subjects include: Miscellaneous
Coaling Warships with Naval Labour, 1870-1914: ‘I wish I could get hold of that man who first found coal.’
The expansion of a steam-powered Royal Navy in the period 1870−1914 made vessels utterly dependent on coal. Getting this coal aboard warships was dirty, exhausting, and dangerous work. Even in 1914, it was still largely done by hand and, increasingly, it was the job of the ships’ crews to perform this task. Thus coaling was […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Twentieth C) | Other (Nineteenth C) | Health at Sea | Other (location)
Subjects include: Manpower & Life at Sea | Navies
Naval and Civilian Influences on Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Medical Practice
This posthumously published essay by the former Surgeon Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy considers how naval and civilian medical discoveries, attitudes and practices influenced each other during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Topics considered include the role of citrus juice in combatting scurvy, quinine and malaria, bloodletting, water purity and cholera, timing of amputations […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Nineteenth C) | Other (Eighteenth C) | Health at Sea | Other (location)
Subjects include: Miscellaneous
Typhus and American Prisoners in the War of Independence
This article reconsiders and re-examines typhus, the prominent pathological killer in the eighteenth century. It primarily concentrates on the causes, nature and effects of the disease in question in relation to the Atlantic world of the late eighteenth century. The case study on which the article is focused is that of the American prisoners during […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | American Revolution | Health at Sea
Subjects include: Manpower & Life at Sea | Navies | Pirates, Corsairs & Privateers