ABSTRACT
In the early days of the hospital-ships, the sole illness considered to be contagious and a danger to immediate contacts, was smallpox; the remainder were caused by ‘miasmas’. Later that month a letter to Harley from the Admiralty Office dated 27 September gave the desired information: Sir, Having laid before Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty readers letter of the 20th instant. The Admiralty were to keep the hulk of HMS Dreadnought in good repair during the 16-year period on loan to the Seamen’s Hospital Society, this fact being acknowledged in several Annual Reports. Eighteen fifty-eight was of course the year of ‘the Great Stink’ – when Parliament had to be dissolved due to the unacceptable state of the River Thames at Westminster, which was heavily contaminated with sewage. The high cost of the ‘re-fit’ was largely attributed to the ‘high rate of wages at the time’, the fact that the contribution of Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty was ‘comparatively trifling’.
