Dr. W. D. Stone has forwarded to the Times a
report on the sanitary condition of the British Mercantile Navy. He finds on visiting the Docks that the ships employed in the East India trade are large and well found, but the water washes through the hawse-holes till the men have to wade to their bunks. In the West India trade the ventilation of the ships is usually defective. In the timber trade the men live and sleep in a "small, close, ill ventilated hole," and live on salt meat and biscuit ; and in the coal trade the forecastles are so low the men cannot stand upright in them. The men in these last ships complain that they have not enough to eat, and only salted meat, with bad biscuits, and no medical comforts. Dr. Stone suggests that the Legislature shall remedy all these evils, but unfortunately most of them arise from the build of the ships themselves, which cannot be thrown away at a month's notice, or rebuilt.
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