ABSTRACT

During the fifteenth century, roads in Britain were almost non-existent; therefore, many communities sprang up in and around ports; only there was it possible to obtain seafood, and trade with other ports. The Seamen’s Hospital Society (SHS) was founded in the latter days of the Georgian era; George IV was on the throne, and his reign was to continue for the first nine years of its existence; therefore, the structure and social conditions in the maritime service was fundamentally Georgian. Trinity House, an elegant listed Georgian building in Trinity Square – overlooking the Tower of London – is the present headquarters of a unique maritime institution. During the nineteenth century, in which the SHS was founded, maritime supremacy was an essential factor in enabling the British to ‘throw their armies into action upon the colonial frontiers, or warn off the predations of rival Powers’.