324 Notice of Sketches of Naval Life. 
that a “civilian” is not the best judge of such matters, and 
he has contented himself, as most citizens would have done, 
with barely narrating facts, leaving to others the business of 
making deductions or suggesting improvements. Still in the 
complicated machin of a man of war, there are many 
things that belong a science as well as seamanship, and on 
these he has dwelt more at length... We have an instance 
of this in Vol, II. p. 220, where the arrival of the Delaware, 
American line of battle ship, at Port Mahon, is‘mentioned ; 
her crew had been in a sickly Sonitares and several deaths 
had pounired on her passage. ' 
“¢'T'wo causes” says the author “are assigned for it: ie ship 
was fitted out in winter, and the inner coat of paint, it is said, 
was not well dried before the others were put on: another, and 
probably a more powerful cause, is the quantity of salt among 
her timbers. It is thought to preserve the wood ; ‘aigeeed with 
some truth, but in the Delaware, has been laid on in such qua 
tities, as. to stream down her sides, I understand, in ase aie, 
and send up the se noxious exhalations : their passage too has 
been a rough on and the ports could seldom be opened. One 
can hardly iiheigine any thing more horrible than to be shut up 
many hundred miles from shore, in such a vessel: to see the . 
paint darkening around you, and the beams sweating; and all ~ 
rom an atmosphere you are constantly breathing, and fro 
which there is no escape.’ Our ships in the West Indies, phved 
the African coast, and on the Brazil station, are constantly expo- 
on relief was, whether there were any dead to be buried, and 
how many. In the ene sent to the African coast, they tell me, 
it is net uncommon to.see a man carry up his ha mmock in the 
morning hale and stout, a at noon he is sewed up in it and thrown 
overboard. Irefer you to Niles’ Register for Novomber of 
1823, for a distressing pie of sickness in the Macedonian, 
while on the West India re 
“Ships are all m lesa xposed to miasmata. Our own 
hold, although this veatat is kept in remarkably good order, fre- 
og! sends up the most noxious effluvia. I have seen the 
_ water is always Seca ating. e use every me and I 
believe el are seldom found with an atmosphere even as pure 
as that we breathe. Lime is scattered largely through the hold; 
the sublet whitewashed, and wind-sails are let down into it, as 
