![]() ![]() Intense that people once believed laziness was a cause of theĭisease-is debilitating. None of the potential fates awaiting sailors was pleasant, but scurvyĮxacted a particularly gruesome death. Scurvy was responsible for more deaths at sea than storms, shipwrecks, combat, and all other diseases combined. Illustration by Gustave Doré from a book-length edition of Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In fact, scurvy was so devastating that the search for a cure became what Bown describes as “a vital factor determining the destiny of nations.” According to historian Stephen Bown scurvy was responsible for more deaths at sea than storms, shipwrecks, combat, and all other diseases combined. ![]() The problem was so common that shipowners and governments assumed a 50% death rate from scurvy for their sailors on any major voyage. Scurvy killed more than two million sailors between the time of Columbus’s transatlantic voyage and the rise of steam engines in the mid-19th century. But of all the horrors faced by sailors at the time, one of the greatest threats had nothing to do with pirates or wars or weather. By the time he returned home-if he returned home-he would have endured storms, battles, fevers, and years away from family and friends. If the gang that attacked Urquhart had succeeded, he likely would have awoken trapped on a ship and with nearly no hope of escape. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London During times of war and other crises, mobs deputized by the Royal Navy would roam the docks and wharves of Great Britain and her colonies in search of potential seafarers to man military ships. “Manning the Navy,” a satirical depiction of a British press gang from 1790. Whether English, Irish, American, or Canadian, any subject of the British Empire with seafaring experience was vulnerable to abduction. ![]() In the 18th and early 19th centuries fishermen and merchant seamen like Urquhart lived in fear of “press gangs,” groups of ruffians who roamed the nighttime streets, searching for victims to “impress” into the British navy. But unfortunately Urquhart’s experience was far from unique. “tore my coat from my back, and afterwards me by the neck forįifty yards, until life was nearly exhausted,” wrote Urquhart in aįortunately for Urquhart passersby intervened, and the attackers fled. Him, smacked him on the head, and dragged him along the street. To know by what right the man questioned him, three or four men seized Wife and sister-in-law, sailor Thomas Urquhart was accosted by a One summer evening in 1808, while on a stroll through London with his Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection ![]()
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