21 
the seven years war. It can accommodate two thousand sick or 
wounded: we found but about seventy persons in the hospital, 
and among these some officers and midshipmen. It appeared to 
me that the plan of having eight separate buildings, each three 
stories high, was a very good one, as the spreading of contagious 
diseases, or of a conflagration, can be so much more easily pre¬ 
vented. Each ward contains sixteen bedsteads, all of iron; the 
bedsteads for the officers are of wood, and furnished with curtains. 
There are also beds in the wards for the nurses, which, in all the 
English marine hospitals, are females, whose attendance is pre¬ 
ferred for its greater gentleness to that of male assistants. The 
sick are brought from the ships to the hospital by water, and go, 
or are carried up a wide stone stair to the receiving office. They 
are then stripped and bathed in the hospital to which they are 
sent, and their clothes are marked, and kept in a particular ma¬ 
gazine. An iron crane is employed to land those who are badly 
wounded. In all the wards, as well as in the different store¬ 
rooms, and the apothecary room, the greatest order and clean¬ 
liness is observable. 
The church does not appear to me to be arranged in corres¬ 
pondence with the rest of the establishment. It is small, and has 
a store-room on the first floor, so that the patients find it occa¬ 
sionally very troublesome to attend upon worship. A covered 
colonnade surrounds the quadrangular court-yard which encloses 
the building, under which the patients, in bad or hot weather, 
can exercise. The middle of the court-yard is a well-kept grass- 
plot. 
For maniac patients there is a proper house, built remote from 
the others. The wash-house stands also aloof. In bad weather, 
the wash is dried by steam. The wash is hung upon frames, 
which fold together, and may be run in and out for the conve¬ 
nience of taking off the dried pieces and adding the wet. Eight 
of such frames may be folded together and occupy a very small 
space. There is also a very appropriately managed bathing-house 
for the use of the patients, in which they may not only have all 
sorts of baths, but with the greatest convenience. The superin¬ 
tendents, physicians, and officers, have their dwellings in front 
of the hospital, in a spacious place planted with trees. The com¬ 
missioner at the head of the institution, is Captain Creyke , a pen¬ 
sioner, eighty years old, who first served at sea in 1759, and ac¬ 
companied Commodore Wallis in his first voyage round the 
world. Before we left the hospital we took a glance at his beau¬ 
tifully situated and tastefully arranged house. We then visited 
the Plymouth Library, established by subscription about twenty 
years ago, which does not yet appear to be very rich. The es¬ 
tablishment consists of three apartments, the book-room, the read- 
