Bad pay, badly given, did not sum up the wrongs of the sailors. The constant infliction of the lash was, as far as we can see, not felt as more of a grievance by sailors than by schoolboys. But the bad food they did resent, and there can be no doubt that the rations supplied were frequently inferior, while the practice of putting six men on the allowance of four, in long voyages, caused the amount supplied to be insufficient. It may be that the men did not realise how much the want of ventilation and the prevalence of dirt was against their interests. But they suffered from them none the less. It must be repeated that the administration did not sin from want of knowledge. There was a standing order to keep the ships properly aired. But a writer of the time, Henry Maydman in his _Sea Politics_, has explained why this regulation was not applied. Captains frequently took the steerage, the space of the main-deck in front of their cabins, for themselves, forcing the officers, who ought to have had it, further forward, so that the after-hatchway was shut to the men. Thus only the fore-hatchway was left to the crew, or for the purpose of establishing a draught. When the ship was at sea, and the ports closed, the air below grew foul, and turned food and drink bad. It is to this we have to look for the explanation of the frightful ravages of fevers during the cruises of the time. A few weeks at sea even in European waters commonly made the ships sickly. At the close of the century a long cruise at sea was relied on to make them healthy. In the interval a great internal revolution had been wrought in the navy, dating from about the end of the War of the Austrian Succession, and carried on partly by Captain Cook, partly by Dr. Gilbert Blane, who accompanied Rodney to the West Indies in 1782, but caused originally by the influence on the naval officers of the great revival of intelligent humanity in the country. CHAPTER IV THE TWO COLONIAL WARS AUTHORITIES.—Beatson, _Military Memoirs_; Campbell’s _Lives of the Admirals_; Schomberg’s _Naval Chronology_; Burrows’ _Life of Hawke_.