Sailors in the Good Old Days.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue III, 5 December 1891, Page 3

Sailors in the Good Old Days.

The Elizabethan warship was a **■■ Very cranky vessel indeed. It was kept (mm capsizing by a gravel ballast, of which the paper says : — It x?as seldom changed, and, becoming soaked with bilge water, drain- * ing from beer casks, and the general . waste of a ship, was a source of injury to the vessel and of danger to the health of the men, The " cookroom," a solid structure of brick and mortar, was built in the hold on this ballast, and in that position, besides / making the ship hoc and spoiling the stores, was a frequent cause of fire. The chief danger which the < sailors frad to face was not the :at©n».a, but the scurvy and other "diseases caused by bad food and "worse sanitation. In the expedition of 1559 two thirds of the men em ployed perished for want of food ; old oil and fish casks were used for the storage of beer. Elizabeth pinched the Navy and in 1588 she made Howard and Drake pay out of their own pockets for the wine and arrowroot supplied to the dying seamen at Plymouth, but her own bill for Gascony wine alone in the proceeding year was some £12,000. Such was the English side and the. Spanish fared no better. After ihe Armada was driven back by head winds, the Duke in command, reported that he could make no way at all, and, far worse than that, the entire ships' companies were on the way to be poisoned. Each provision cask which was opened was found worse than the last. The biscuit was mouldy, the meat- and fish stinking, the water foul and breeding dysentery ; the crews and companies were loud in complaint)., When the Armada made another start it carried 180 priests and friars but not more than 85 surgeon? and doctors to the whole fleet.