Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Glossary of nautical terms used
- Introduction
- 1 Health at sea before 1860
- 2 Unseaworthy seamen
- 3 The health of merchant seamen in the nineteenth century
- 4 Injury and disease at sea in the nineteenth century
- 5 The seaman ashore: victim, threat or patient?
- 6 Bad food and donkey's breakfasts
- 7 Fit for lookout duties
- 8 The long-term health of seamen
- 9 War, manpower and fitness for service
- 10 Seamen's health in the welfare state
- 11 Retrospect and prospect
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Unseaworthy seamen
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Glossary of nautical terms used
- Introduction
- 1 Health at sea before 1860
- 2 Unseaworthy seamen
- 3 The health of merchant seamen in the nineteenth century
- 4 Injury and disease at sea in the nineteenth century
- 5 The seaman ashore: victim, threat or patient?
- 6 Bad food and donkey's breakfasts
- 7 Fit for lookout duties
- 8 The long-term health of seamen
- 9 War, manpower and fitness for service
- 10 Seamen's health in the welfare state
- 11 Retrospect and prospect
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Campaigning for statutes on health
An anonymous article appeared in the British Medical Journal on 12 January 1867 titled ‘Report on the hygienic condition of the merchantile marine and on the preventable diseases of merchant seamen’. It was the first of four such articles and the tone was set by the first paragraph:
The unsatisfactory condition of that very important section of our community who man the merchant fleets of Great Britain, has now for some months occupied general as well as special attention, and has formed the subject of many leading articles in the principle daily journals. The scarcity of competent sailors, and the consequent rise in wages, threaten to injure seriously the vast commercial interests of this country; and the subject has lately roused to speaking action those who are financially interested in this question.
This summarises a debate that was raging at the time about what was wrong with merchant shipping, both in terms of its economics and its safety. Public concern had repeatedly been directed at the loss of life at sea and at the conditions suffered by seamen both when at sea and when in the sailortowns of the major ports. Activists, some motivated by concerns about the appalling record of shipwrecks and some about the conditions of labour and the lack of religious underpinning for moral and sober behaviour in the laboring classes, had been campaigning for most of the early part of the nineteenth century, and this had led to parliamentary inquiries, notably on loss of life at sea and on the conditions for emigrants aboard passenger ships.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Merchant Seamen's Health, 1860–1960Medicine, Technology, Shipowners and the State in Britain, pp. 23 - 36Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014