ABSTRACT
The 1915 Annual Report commented: ‘The trumpet call to action has been sounding throughout the Empire for the past year, and its message has been just that upon which the Voluntary Hospitals of this country have for so long depended – willing sacrifice’. The closer association in time of war between the Royal Navy (RN) and the Mercantile Marine (MM) is outlined in the 1918 Report: One of the results of the War has been that a very large proportion of the men of the MM were drafted into the RN. Caring for ‘landsmen’, women and children had always been a highly contentious issue; the 1930 Report contained the following: The Board have taken the important step of approving the provision of a ward of twenty-five beds for the treatment of women, and twenty beds for children, in the Dreadnought Hospital, Greenwich.
