Genre:

Essay

Subjects:

Education, Medical Practitioners, Engineers, Status, Professionalization, Steamships

    Advises sailors to spend more of their 'spare hours [...] in studying', remarking that 'For science, we see what a naval experience can do by helping to form Darwin, Edward Forbes, and Huxley; and, in fact, it is in science that the navy is strong, when strong'. (180) Notes that aboard ship the 'surgeon and his assistant-surgeons—(these last were only promoted into the ward-room after much agitation, not many years ago)—have, of course, been educated for their profession, in just the same manner as their brother doctors in town and country. Their "sick list", presented to the captain every morning, has nothing distinctively naval about it'. Also observes, 'Yon shrewd, grave, rather stiff-looking man—probably Scotch—is the chief engineer. This is an officer added to the ward-room in quite recent times, by the universal adoption of steam in the navy; and at present, perhaps, a little out of his element. The subordinate officers of his branch, unlike those of others, have a mess to themselves, instead of passing through the gun-room,—an arrangement which must surely isolate them, and keep them from acquiring the tone of the profession'. (181)