“Just one more specimen of the good, true, and brave men we sacrifice by our most cruel and manslaughtering neglect. This time I went and called upon an old man I knew, and, after apologising for intruding upon his grief, I asked him to tell me if he had any objection to tell me if his son had had any misgiving about the ship before he went. He said, ‘Yes, I went to see the ship myself, and was horrified to see the way in which she was loaded. I tried all I could to persuade him not to go, but he’d been doing nothing for a long time, and he didn’t like being a burden on me. He’d a fine sperret, he had, my son,’ said the poor old man. “Here a young woman I had not observed (she was in a corner with her face to the wall) broke out into loud sobs and said, ‘He was the best of us all, sir—the best of the whole family. He was as fair as a flower, and vah-y canny-looking.’” But it is not merely rotten hulks which may become coffin-ships: many superior vessels are woefully deficient in accommodation for the sailor’s comfort. He may, and often does, wade to his bunk through water, and the forecastle is too often a miserable hole, full of dirt and filth, where the men are packed like herrings. The food provided is principally “salt horse” and “hard bread,” _i.e._, sailor’s biscuit of the most inferior description; and when scurvy ensues, as a natural consequence of exposure to damp and cold, with poor living superadded, the very lime-juice, which is nearly worthless if not pure, is found to be a miserable imitation or grossly adulterated with citric acid, which, strange as it may appear, has no anti-scorbutic properties. In the Russian and French mercantile marines there is little or no scurvy, in consequence of the pretty general use of common sour wine, which in some degree makes up for the lack of fresh vegetables. And in French mercantile ships the sailor may at any time demand the same rations as those served out in the navy of the Republic. Owing to the carefully prepared dietary of our Royal Navy, scurvy has entirely disappeared, except in extreme cases of exposure and lack of precaution, as in the late Arctic Expedition.(36)