wood; the snug quarters of the medical
staff: for the establishment on board the
Dreadnought is precisely on the footing
of other hospitals, with a superintendent,
surgeons, assistant-surgeon, visiting
physicians, apothecary, chaplain, &c.; and an
open space where the convalescent patients
sleep at night in hammocks. Down
the hatchway to the middle, or deck
devoted to surgical cases, the lower being
given up to medical cases, and the orlop to
special complaints. The orlop opens flush
with the ordinary height of a boat, and
there is an apparatus by which a patient
thus brought alongside can be lifted to the
deck, and even to the bed where he is
to be treated. Sick seamen of every nation,
on presenting themselves alongside, are
immediately received, without any
recommendatory letter, their own condition being
sufficient to insure their admission. This
facility of admission is in itself productive
of great benefit, as the cases are
immediately attended to, and the patients are
effectually relieved in a much shorter
period than would otherwise be practicable.
The only testimony required from
the sailor seeking admission, that he is
what he represents himself to be, is his
letter of discharge from his last ship.

The average number of inmates is from
one hundred and seventy to one hundred
and eighty. The number of patients
admitted last year was of in-patients two
thousand one hundred and thirty-five, and
of out-patients one thousand and fifty.
Since the establishment of the hospital,
forty-eight years ago, upwards of one
hundred thousand seafaring men have received
its benefits. Of these, between seventy-two
and seventy-three thousand were
British; then next in number, as in
behaviour and gratitude, are the Swedes and
Norwegians, the East and West Indians,
and Yankees. There are as many Africans
as French, Russians, and Spaniards, twice
as many South Sea Islanders as Greeks,
nineteen Turks, fifty-three New Zealanders
—who had got over, it is to be hoped, their
cannibalistic tendencies—fifty-five Chinese,
and nearly two hundred persons "born at
sea," and, therefore, supposed to be
accreditable to the parish of Stepney. There
is not much trouble in keeping order and
discipline. The patients are, as a rule,
very well behaved; occasionally the Irish
or American fighting element crops out,
but it is easily reducible. A patient can
leave, at any time he likes, but, if he leave
before the medical officers consider him in
a proper state for removal, it is entered
against him that he insisted upon going,
"contrary to advice." There is, however,
no necessity for patients to quit the ship
immediately upon their cure; they can stop
on board as convalescents, assisting in the
work that must be done, and receiving
diet-rations accordingly. The number of
deaths is about a hundred and twenty a
year. The Dreadnought Hospital is the
only hospital in the kingdom which has
to pay for the burial of its inmates. The
dead from the Dreadnought, whose
"heavy-shotted hammock shroud" one somehow
absurdly fancies would bo hurled
over-board into the Thames, are pauper-coffined
and buried after the usual fashion in the
cemetery of Shooter's Hill.

The decks are, indeed, larger than the
wards of any civil hospital in England,
but are not too well adapted for their
requirements in several ways. For instance,
in the matter of ventilation: the sole
channel for air is the port; when it is
open the draught is excessive, and the
occupant of a bed in its immediate
neighbourhood has the chance of suffering from
that absolute necessity, the admission of
fresh air. The size of the wards is also a
drawback. In the medical ward, for
instance, there are sixty-three beds, and one
noisy fellow suffering from delirium-tremens,
or some such ailment, will keep all
the other patients awake, and thus do some
of them unspeakable harm. Moreover, in
wards of such size, the distance to be
traversed by the nurses is unquestionably too
great. The nursing staff seemed capable
of improvement and increase. At present,
there are six male and six female nurses:—
clearly an insufficient number, as in the
medical ward there are only three nurses,
or one to every twenty-one patients. A
male nurse is scarcely a satisfactory person,
however well-intentioned he may be. Where
pain and sickness wring the brow, it is
woman who is, or should be, the ministering
angel; but there is a difficulty in
obtaining the services of the best class of
nurses, the "sisters" who are attached to
many of the metropolitan hospitals, on
account of the want of proper accommodation
for them on board.

The patients were very quiet; some were
asleep—the happiest, perhaps; some were
reading newspapers; here and there was a
couple playing draughts; some were lying,
looking straight before them, with that
look so frequently seen in illness, that clear
sad look which rests nowhere—nowhere,
at least, within human ken. Above each bed
was the usual little board, inscribed with the