286 THE SEA. 



was ever drowned during the half century that she and her predecessors were moored off 

 Greenwich. The late Dr. Rooke, one of the ablest and kindest of the Dreadnought's officers, 

 nobly earned the Humane Society's medal by saving a boy who fell off a barge close at 

 hand ; three patients jumped overboard at different times, in a state of delirium, but all 

 were rescued and recovered. There were convivial gatherings now and again in the snug recess 

 of the admiral's cabin, used as a mess room by the medical staff. The Dreadnought suffered 

 many blows from without, and was run into seriously on several occasions. But the old 

 ship stood it all, and was missed by the bargemen, who made a cushion of her wherewith 

 to cannon off to the opposite shore. There can be no doubt that the managing committee 

 of the Seamen's Hospital Society acted wisely in removing their clients to a home on 

 shore, so that we need not say altogether regretfully, although truly, " Take her all in 

 all, we shall not look upon her like again." 



Of all the hospitals there is none so interesting as a sailor's, and that at Greenwich, 

 which represents the old Dreadnought floating hospital, is particularly so. It is here Jack 

 ashore is seen at his best, and his best is very good indeed as a general thing, especially 

 when all the good qualities are developed as they are when he settles down to enjoy the 

 autumn calm of his life, which generally begins in the hospital. Not only are there seamen 

 from eveiy clime, and every creed, too, here, but one ward is occupied by a few old naval 

 pensioners. In this ward the first thing that attracts the eye, and is placed prominently 

 over the fire-place, is Dibdin's simple legend of the " Sweet little cherub that sits up aloft." 

 Every inmate of this ward could tell his interesting yarn of personal experiences of the Battle 

 and the Breeze. One old fellow is both blind and deaf, and still happy and contented under 

 the sympathetic care of an ancient cherub, who has sailed through three-quarters of a century 

 of life's uncertain tide. Why the blind tar should be called "the nightingale" has not been 

 clearly r stated, though the fact remains the same, and may possibly refer to great vocal powers. 

 His messmate has been through enough battles to fill a volume; while another, an octogenarian 

 marine, speaks with pride of the part he took in the Chesapeake affair, which was beaten and 

 captured thirteen minutes after the first gun was fired by the weather-beaten Shannon. 



" You see," he is wont to say, as he straightens himself, " by my military cut that I'm 

 not a regular tar, though I've been in as many cutting-out parties as any a' most, and had 

 the grape and canister pelting round me like hailstones, pretty nigh as often as I remembers 

 feeling real hailstones. But I remembers best when the king God bless him ! sent out 

 thirty barrels of porter, that me and the rest of us might drink his majesty's health in ; 

 that was in the time of the war with Ameriky, and good times they was too," a little bit 

 of individual opinion that no one would dream of controverting here. Next come we to 

 another pensioner, who sits over the fire hugging his feeble knees, and who is just in the 

 last year of his ninth decade. He tells you of the part he took in 1805, in the capture 

 of two French frigates, and some of the latent fire returns as he speaks of it ; for it was 

 a fight that lasted three days and nights before victory was fairly ours. 



Take the wards en masse, and we see peering out of the medley the delicate sallow 

 skin and long black hair of the Greek, who is estimated by every British commander at 

 seventy-five per cent, below the English tar in hauling power and endurance, while the South 

 Sea Islander, the Scandinavian, the dusky Turk, Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians, Spaniards, 



