[5] I was informed by Captain Caldwell, that when he commanded the Hannibal, of 50 guns, his crew was so much afflicted with the scurvy, in a passage of nine weeks from St. Helena to Crookhaven, in Ireland, that ninety-two men were confined to their hammocks in the last stage of that disease, though they had been supplied with sugar at St. Helena, and served with it on the passage. They remained three weeks at Crookhaven; at the end of which time every man was fit for duty: and though they had fresh provision, they had no fresh vegetables, so that their cure is to be ascribed to the use of lemons and oranges, which the Captain very humanely ordered to be purchased for them from on board of a foreign ship that happened to put into the same harbour. [6] See Appendix to Part II. [7] They were the Formidable and Namur, of 90 guns; the Arrogant, Conqueror, Marlborough, Hercules, and Fame, of 74 guns; the Yarmouth, Repulse, Prothée, Anson, and Nonsuch, of 64 guns. [8] These were the Prince George, of 90; the Bedford, Canada, and Royal Oak, of 74; the America and Prudent, of 64 guns. [9] This is a term in use for the different articles of seamen’s cloathing, particularly shirts and trowsers. [10] The mortification in the shoulder, mentioned above, was somewhat singular. It happened to a man in the Yarmouth, who, after being for a week ill of a fever and flux, was one day, early in the morning, seized with a pain in the upper part of the right arm, which immediately began to mortify. He soon after became convulsed, and died the same day about two o’clock. [11] Earthquakes are frequent in the West Indies, and perhaps proceed from a weaker operation of the same cause that originally produced the islands themselves, which seem all to have been raised from the sea by subterraneous fire. There are evident vestiges of volcanoes in them all, except Barbadoes; but there are other unequivocal marks of this island having been raised from the bottom of the sea; for it is entirely formed of coral, and other sub-marine productions, of which the strata are broken, and the parts set at angles to each other, as might be expected from such a cause. There is, perhaps, at all times in the caverns of the earth, elastic vapour struggling to vent itself, and when near the surface, it may sometimes overcome the incumbent masses of matter, and produce certain convulsions of nature. In the account of the hurricane which I wrote to Dr. Hunter, I gave reasons for believing, from the testimony of the inhabitants, that hurricanes are attended with earthquakes; and if a conjecture might be advanced concerning the cause of this, it might be said, that as the atmosphere is lighter at that time, by several inches of the barometer, the elastic vapour, confined by the weight of the incumbent earth and atmosphere, being less compressed, may exert some sensible effects, producing a sort of explosion.