An officer of distinguished rank, another of Captain Cook’s experienced friends, mentioned to me a common and just observation in the fleet, which was, that all the old twenty-gun ships were remarkably less sickly than those of the same size of a modern construction.  This, he said, was a circumstance he could not otherwise account for, than, by the former having their galley* in the fore-part of the orlop**, the chimney vented so ill, that it was sure to fill every part with smoke whenever the wind was a-stern.  This was a nuisance for the time, but, as he thought, abundantly compensated by the extraordinary good health of the several crews.  Possibly those fire-places were also beneficial, by drying and ventilating the lower decks, more when they were below, than they can do now that they are placed under the fore-castle upon the upper deck.

[* Their fire-place or kitchen.]

[** The deck immediately above the hold.]

But the most obvious use of the portable fires was their drying up the moisture, and especially in those places where there was the least circulation of air.  This humidity, composed of the perspirable matter of a multitude of men, and often of animals (kept for a live-flock) and of the steams of the bilge water from the well, where the corruption is the greatest; this putrid moisture, I say, being one of the main sources of the scurvy, was therefore more particularly attended to, in order to its removal.  The fires were the powerful instrument for that purpose, and whilst they burned, some men were employed in rubbing hard, with canvass or oakum, every part of the inside of the ship that was damp and accessible.  But the advantage of fire appears no where so manifest as in cleansing the well; for this being in the lowest part of the hold, the whole leakage runs into it, whether of the ship itself, or of the casks of spoilt meats or corrupted water.  The mephitic vapours, from this sink alone, have often been the cause of instantaneous death to those who have unwarily approached to clean it; and not to one only, but to several successively, when they have gone down to succour their unfortunate companions:  yet this very place has not only been rendered safe but sweet, by means of an iron pot filled with fire and let down to burn in it.

When, from the circumstances of the weather, this salutary operation could not take place, the ship was fumigated with gun-powder, as described in the Paper; though that smoke could have no effect in drying, but only in remedying the corruption of the air, by means of the acid spirits from the sulphur and nitre, aided perhaps by some species of an aerial fluid, then disengaged from the fuel, to counteract putrefaction.  But as these purifications by gun-powder, as well as by burning tar and other resinous substances, are sufficiently known, I shall not insist longer on them here.