The captain's cabin had its steward and there the food and service were undoubtedly better than that provided forward where all slept in canvas hammocks slung from hooks in the deck timbers overhead, or lay upon pallet beds on the deck. Here they served themselves from the ship's galley. The foul odors below deck and the unsanitary conditions are part of the lore of the sea. "Ship feaver" was well known to all physicians practicing in seaport towns. In those days the cooking was done in an open fireplace. So, too, on shipboard there was provided an open "hearth" made of cast iron and weighing from four to eight hundred pounds. This was fastened to the deck and its "chimney" was screened by a "smoke sail." A smaller "hearth" was in the captain's cabin and supplied all the heat below. It must have been bitterly cold on board ship during a winter crossing. The coals in these "hearths" were a menace to safety and required constant attention. A communication printed in the _Boston News-Letter_ describes an escape from fire on board one of these English packets. The writer, a good New England puritan, first declares his suspicion that a certain military gentleman, a fellow passenger from Boston, had brought on board a fair lady who was not his wife. The couple occupied a small cabin, partitioned off from the main cabin, which had a curtained window looking into it. There were other curtains about. As the Boston shopkeeper sat near the "hearth," musing over his suspicions, a sudden lurch of the vessel brought a carelessly placed curtain swinging into the coals on the "hearth" and in an instant it was aflame. The shopkeeper shouted "Fire! Fire!" which brought the major's inamorata to her cabin window and an instant later she rushed into the main cabin with a certain necessary receptacle in her hands. One splash and the worst was over. The charred curtain was soon torn from its fastenings and the fire stamped out on the cabin floor. In 1760, Jacob Bailey, a native of Rowley, Mass., and a graduate of Harvard College, having prepared for the ministry and been licensed to preach, determined to obtain orders in the Church of England and so, through the intervention of friends, took passage from Boston for London in the ship _Hind_, carrying twenty guns, which sailed in company with six other vessels. Mr. Bailey kept a diary of the voyage and his description of the accommodations which the ship supplied, the life on board, and the men with whom he was brought in contact, is a surprisingly vivid picture of strange and uncouth conditions attending passenger service to England in the mid-eighteenth century. The ship lay at anchor in the harbor and Mr. Bailey went out to her in a small boat.