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 machinery of a man of war, there are many 

 things that belong to 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 hne of battle ship, at Port Mahon, is mentioned : 

 her crew had been in a sickly condition, and several deaths 

 had occurred on her passage. 



" Two causes" saj-^s the autlior " are assigned for it : the 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 ; probably with 

 some truth, but in the Delaware, has been laid on in such quan- 

 tities, as to stream down her sides, I understand, in every part, 

 and send up the most noxious exhalations : their passage too has 

 been a rough one, and the ports could seldom be opened. One 

 can hardly imagine 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 this 

 from an atmosphere you are constantly breathing, and from 

 which there is no escape. Our ships in the West Indies, along 

 the African coast, and on the Brazil station, are constantly expo- 

 sed to similar evils. I have heard of cases where, for many days 

 in succession, the question regularly put by the officer coming 

 on relief was, whether there were any dead to be buried, and 

 how many. In the vessels sent to the African coast, they tell me, 

 it is not uncommon to see a man carry up his hammock in the 

 morning hale and stout, and at noon he is sewed up in it and thrown 

 overboard. I refer you to Niles' Register for Novombor of 

 1823, for a distressing account of sickness in the Macedonian, 

 while on the West India station. 



" Ships are all more or less exposed to miasmata. Our own 

 hold, although this vessel is kept in remarkably good order, fre- 

 quently sends up the most noxious effluvia. I have seen the 

 paint, in our cock-pit, turned from white to brown, simply from 

 the removal of some casks in the spirit hold below. The bilge 

 water is alwaj^s nauseating. We use every precaution, and I 

 believe ships are seldom found with an atmosphere even as pure 

 as that we breathe. Lime is scattered largely through the hold; 

 the casks are whitewashed, and wind-sails are let down into it, as 



