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ALL AT SEA NOVEMBER 2020
VICTORIAN VANITY Florence Nightingale fought tirelessly for better welfare for wounded soldiers, only for her campaign to get side-tracked by politics and professional vanities.
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n terms of our history, the Crimean War gets little in the way of a mention, not just because it was nearly 170 years ago, but because it has been masked by the two great conflicts of the World Wars. What memories that have existed through into modern times are probably centred on the Charge of the Light Brigade, that futile gallop on horseback into the heavily defended ‘valley of death’. The other great memory of the campaign still in our consciousness would be that of the ‘lady with the lamp’, Florence Nightingale, who dedicated her life to the dire need to improve the treatment of wounded soldiers. Her concerns were well founded, as the expansion of the British Empire would see our troops fighting in small, regional conflicts around the globe, often with a disastrous toll in terms of deaths and serious injuries. Warfare was becoming more mechanised, yet the treatment of the wounded had advanced little since the days of Waterloo, 35 years earlier. The figures for the Crimean conflict were far from unusual, with only 2,755 men killed in action, but a further 17,580 lost to disease. The conditions for those injured were primitive, but through her efforts Florence Nightingale was able to mobilise popular support, forcing action from the UK government. Nightingale’s populist support became so engrained into our collective psyche that today, in yet another time of crisis, the hospitals focused on
the treatment of Covid are designated as ‘Nightingale’ hospitals.
You could run out of superlatives. A quarter of a mile long, the world’s largest brick built building, but could you add ‘the world’s biggest white elephant’? Image: RVCP Netley
VANITY PROJECT
Stung by the criticisms, the government committed to the building of a new military hospital, with two locations being considered at Haslar, at Gosport, just across from the harbour from Portsmouth and at Netley, a pleasing open location on the shores of Southampton Water. Like so many ‘mega-projects’ the hospital would be late in delivery, over budget and would drive Nightingale to despair, for the lessons of treating large numbers of wounded men had clearly not been learnt. Bungling and incompetence would be rife, such as the well intentioned plan to build a pier that would jut out into Southampton Water, so that hospital ships could unload the wounded straight into the hospital. However, at only 170m, the pierhead never reached the deep water channel, so that even at high tide there was insufficient depth to allow ocean going ships to come alongside. Instead, the hospital ships would have to head to Southampton Docks and unload their cargo of wounded men there, which left them facing a bumpy ride back along the coast to Netley. When they finally reached the hospital, they must have been amazed at the sight that would greet them, for the main building was huge and grandiose, looking more like a palace than a functional hospital. Queen Victoria had laid the foundation
The beautifully restored Chapel, all that remains of the main hospital. It is now a well presented museum that is well worthy of a visit
All images: Andrew Wiseman
