3-028-521 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Dreadnought, hospital ship for seamen, at Greenwich, 1870. Warship on the River Thames in London. Originally named H.M.S. Caledonia, '...she was launched in 1808...[and] lent by the Admiralty to the Seamen's Hospital Society in 1856...She is calculated to hold 200 patients, but has often accommodated a larger number. They are placed in the main-gun-deck, the lower, and the orlop decks, the second of these forming the largest medical ward in existence in the United Kingdom...The Society took its origin from the committee appointed to manage the fund subscribed in the winter of 1817-18 for the temporary relief of distressed sailors, who were to be found in great numbers in the streets of London. That committee, having ascertained that many hundred seamen in this port were utterly destitute of medical assistance, determined to establish a permanent floating hospital...But the many difficulties incident to the administration of a floating hospital, and its manifest sanitary deficiencies, induced the committee...to resolve upon the removal of their hospital to a building ashore...Since the Society commenced its charitable labours, forty-nine years ago, it has afforded relief to no less than 74,487 British and 28,376 foreign sailors'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.