ABSTRACT
The history of care for British seafarers since 894 is set out in a letter dated 1821 to the Chairman of the Society Committee for Destitute Sailors. Several benevolent funds for the mercantile marine had been launched before the Seamen’s Hospital Society was founded – Lloyds Patriotic fund, and The shipwrecked fishermen and mariners Royal Benevolent Society, with Queen Victoria as the Patron, and Admiral the Right Hon. A letter from H Hobhouse headed Whitehall and written on behalf of Lord Sidmouth30 referred to the use of the Helder and Batavia during the previous winter for the reception of ‘Foreign sick and distressed Seamen’; this move had apparently been ‘fixed by the Admiralty, without the intervention of the Secretary of State’ and Hobhouse suggested that application for the use of the Abundance and the Plover should ‘be ma.
