A fundamental principle of man-o'-war routine was that the sailor formed no part of it for hospital purposes. Hence sickness was not encouraged. If the sailor-patient did not recover within a reasonable time, he was "put on shore sick," sometimes to the great terror of the populace, who, were he supposed to be afflicted with an infectious disease, fled from him "as if he had the plague." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 24 June 1740.] On shore he was treated for thirty days at his country's charges. If incurable, or permanently disabled, he was then turned adrift and left to shift for himself. A clean record and a sufficiently serious wound entitled him to a small pension or admission to Greenwich Hospital, an institution which had religiously docked his small pay of sixpence a month throughout his entire service. Failing these, there remained for him only the streets and the beggar's rôle. His pay was far from princely. From 3d. a day in the reign of King John it rose by grudging increments to 20s. a month in 1626, and 24s. in 1797. Years sometimes elapsed before he touched a penny of his earnings, except in the form of "slop" clothing and tobacco. Amongst the instances of deferred wages in which the Admiralty records abound, there may be cited the case of the _Dreadnought_, whose men in 1711 had four years' pay due; and of the _Dunkirk_, to whose company, in the year following, six and a half years' was owing. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1470--Capt. Bennett, 8 March 1710-11. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt. Butler, 19 March, 1711-12,] And at the time of the Nore Mutiny it was authoritatively stated that there were ships then in the fleet which had not been paid off for eight, ten, twelve and in one instance even fifteen years. "Keep the pay, keep the man," was the policy of the century--a sadly mistaken policy, as we shall presently see.