The Crimea in 1854, and 1894 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. While the soldiers were insufficiently supplied with medical necessaries, the sailors were amply provided for in every respect during the cholera epidemic, but they suffered even more acutely perhaps from its ravages by being crowded so closely together, as all crews must be on board ship. One man would scream out in pain on the lower-deck at night, and his cries were generally followed by those of others. Thus the flagship lost 109 men in a few days, and on board some of the French ships the mortality was even greater. During the second week of August, Admiral Bruat, when leaving H.M.S. Queen, after five o'clock tea, said he was thankful he had not a case. Next morning he sent to tell our Captain he had 140 of which 40 had proved fatal. This French ship lost nearly 100 men in twenty-four hours. With us also those who survived an attack were so enfeebled as to be unfit for hard work; off1cers had to hoist out our Admiral's barge, and for many days after we returned to Baljic Bay I was employed, at sunrise and sunset, in taking the .dead of other ships' crews out to sea for burial. Similar debilitating effects were noticed in the Army, and the infantry were unable to carry their knapsacks even for the two short marches of only six miles each back to Varna. So deadly was the climate of the singularly beautiful district in which our men had lived for a few weeks, that the 3000 Guards, the pick of England's manhood, had 600 men on the sick list. When the Admiral returned to Baljic Bay, taking in the most sickly ships for their crews to be landed for change of air, our Captain, acting as Commodore, signalled H.M.S. Diamond to carry in our letters for the English mail, and her Captain, William Peel, came on board for orders. All our of...