Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction Health, Medicine and the Maritime World: A History of Two Centuries
- 1 ‘The Intention is Certain Noble’: The Western Squadron, Medical Trials, and the Sick and Hurt Board during the Seven Years War (1756–63)
- 2 Royal Navy Surgeons, 1793–1815: A Collective Biography
- 3 Surgery in the Royal Navy during the Republican and Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815)
- 4 The Sick and Hurt Board: Fit for Purpose?
- 5 An ‘Important and Truly National Subject’: The West Africa Service and the Health of the Royal Navy in the Mid Nineteenth Century
- 6 Mortality and Migration: A Survey 128
- 7 Slave Purchasing Strategies and Shipboard Mortality: Day-to-Day Evidence from the Dutch African Trade, 1751–1797
- 8 Ships, Families and Surgeons: Migrant Voyages to Australia in the Age of Sail
- 9 Medical Encounters on the Kala Pani: Regulation and Resistance in the Passages of Indentured Indian Migrants, 1834–1900
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - An ‘Important and Truly National Subject’: The West Africa Service and the Health of the Royal Navy in the Mid Nineteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction Health, Medicine and the Maritime World: A History of Two Centuries
- 1 ‘The Intention is Certain Noble’: The Western Squadron, Medical Trials, and the Sick and Hurt Board during the Seven Years War (1756–63)
- 2 Royal Navy Surgeons, 1793–1815: A Collective Biography
- 3 Surgery in the Royal Navy during the Republican and Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815)
- 4 The Sick and Hurt Board: Fit for Purpose?
- 5 An ‘Important and Truly National Subject’: The West Africa Service and the Health of the Royal Navy in the Mid Nineteenth Century
- 6 Mortality and Migration: A Survey 128
- 7 Slave Purchasing Strategies and Shipboard Mortality: Day-to-Day Evidence from the Dutch African Trade, 1751–1797
- 8 Ships, Families and Surgeons: Migrant Voyages to Australia in the Age of Sail
- 9 Medical Encounters on the Kala Pani: Regulation and Resistance in the Passages of Indentured Indian Migrants, 1834–1900
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
At the end of the Napoleonic Wars the health of the Royal Navy was a matter for celebration. Two decades of reform in hygiene and victualling had conferred great advantages on the British during the recent wars with France. As head of the Naval Medical Board, the physician Gilbert Blane presided over most of these initiatives. Yet, in his view, there remained much to be done: a sentiment echoed by the vast majority of naval surgeons. At the conclusion of the wars, the most pressing issue in the medical realm was the health of impressed men. Some former naval officers saw the system of impressment as an evil on a par with slavery, and they drew attention to the poor health and morale of sailors who had been forcibly recruited. But the broader issue of naval health attracted little interest until the 1830s and 1840s, when it began to be highlighted by naval medical officers and their supporters in the medical press. Backed by the crusading editor of The Lancet, Thomas Wakley, naval surgeons began to demand better pay and conditions while demonstrating their role in maintaining the health and efficiency of their service. Although their claims were disputed and even bitterly opposed by conservative interests within the Navy and the royal colleges, they were ultimately successful, and their efforts contributed materially to improvements in health from the 1850s.
This chapter examines this campaign for professional and hygienic reform in the light of mounting concern over the health of sailors in the Navy's West Africa Squadron. During the 1840s several well-publicised incidents drew attention to the appalling mortality of crews involved in anti-slavery operations along the West African coast. The first of these was the ill-fated Niger Expedition of 1841–2; the second involved the steam-sloop, the Éclair, which returned to Britain from West Africa in 1845 via the Cape Verde Islands, apparently infecting one of them with yellow fever. The heavy mortality suffered during the Niger Expedition and the plight of the Éclair and the Cape Verde islanders focused public attention on the health of the Navy and, in particular, the conditions endured by seamen in the hot and ill-ventilated conditions of steam vessels.
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- Health and Medicine at Sea, 1700-1900 , pp. 108 - 127Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009