168 Suggestions for the better Ventilation of 



gale of wind, with scuttles closed and hatches closely fastened 

 down, and no means provided for fresh air below, but what can 

 find its way by an opening of a few feet square, where the vi- 

 tiated vapours of human exhalations from the healthy, the 

 sick, perhaps the dying, come steaming up the same aperture 

 down which the fresh air struggles to find its scanty way to 

 the miserable inmates. Stormy weather is often prolonged for 

 weeks, during which several hundreds of persons are almost 

 continually confined to the lower dock. This I have myself 

 witnessed, and their situation there can be no difficulty in 

 imagining. The impurity of the atmosphere below is a chief 

 source of the great injury to the general health which arises 

 in long voyages, more especially in tropical climates. If the 

 robust suffer from this impurity, how much more injurious 

 must it be to the invalid or the delicate. In troop or trans- 

 port ships, the constitutions of the men are frequently enfee- 

 bled in place of being strengthened by the preliminary voy- 

 age ; and on board of ship, deficient ventilation always aggra- 

 vates the horrors of sea-sickness— the olfactory nerves seem- 

 ing to increase in acuteness. The smell of bilge- water, or 

 that stagnant corrupt water which lodges in the bottom of 

 tight vessels, and sends forth offensive odours of sulphurous 

 hydrogen and other gases, combined with the closeness of 

 the cabins in sailing vessels, few can endure ; and this is often 

 farther increased in steamers, by the odour of the hot rancid 

 tallow used for greasing the engine. There are few, indeed, 

 who are not fully aware of the annoyances resulting from such 

 causes ; and the close sickly effluvia of the cabin — from that 

 of the large vessel to the common ferry-boat — makes many a 

 one rather submit to the inclemency of the weather on deck, 

 than to be overpowered with nausea below. 



If the evils of imperfect ventilation are so palpably expe- 

 rienced even in the best cabins and sleeping-berths of all 

 ships, and in those more especially where there are no side- 

 ports, what must be the case in the steerage and fore-cabins of 

 passage-boats, and still more in the confined berths which are 

 commonly allotted to seamen in merchant ships when between 

 decks \ The common seamen in general suffer less from ne- 

 glected ventilation than most other classes of persons at sea, 



