Royal Naval Hospital

The list below includes significant Royal Naval Hospitals established in the 18th-20th centuries; in addition numerous smaller facilities (often classed as Sick Quarters) were set up, where and when needed (especially in times of war).

Individual surgeons had been appointed to naval vessels since Tudor times;[5] the Company of Barber-Surgeons was expected to provide them in suitable numbers whenever the fleet was due to set sail.

The following year, commissioners of sick and wounded were appointed to supervise the distribution of funds, the provision of surgeons and medicines, the deployment of patients (and, where possible, their eventual return to service).

An early experiment was the prefabricated hospital set up in Jamaica by Admiral John Benbow in 1701, for which the Sick and Hurt Commissioners provided a salaried surgeon and other staff.

[12] During the War of Jenkins' Ear, however, the system was overwhelmed by large numbers of returning sick and injured (over 15,000 in the 13 months from July 1739 to August 1740).

[10] The following year a proposal was put forward to the Admiralty for the establishment of three hospitals, to be owned, built and run by the Royal Navy, in the vicinity of the principal home ports.

Gibraltar served the needs of the fleet in the Mediterranean at this time (Minorca having been ceded to Spain); while, further afield, Royal Naval Hospitals had been established in various locations including India, North America and the Caribbean.

[14] The main overseas Royal Naval Hospitals at this time were on Malta, Gibraltar, Bermuda, the Cape of Good Hope and Hong Kong.

During the Second World War there was concern about the vulnerability of the older hospitals (which were prominent buildings close to naval dockyards) to aerial bombardment.

[16] Malta was also seen as vulnerable to attack, so an auxiliary hospital was opened in a wing of Victoria College, Alexandria to serve the needs of the Mediterranean Fleet.

[16] Further east, RNH Hong Kong was destroyed by bombing in 1941, leaving auxiliary hospitals in Ceylon, South Africa and Oceania to take up the strain.

These numbers were subsequently scaled down, as efforts were made to reduce overcrowding (e.g. by the end of the 19th century Plymouth had fourteen beds to a ward, rather than twenty).

To counter this, the decision was taken to remove administrative oversight from the medical staff and to vest it in a trio or quartet of serving naval officers, who were given accommodation on site: the Governor (usually a post-captain) and two or three Lieutenants.

The earliest surviving Royal Naval Hospital complex is on the Illa del Rei, Port Mahon , Menorca (built 1711-12, extended 1771–76, restored 2011).
Illa Del Rei, Port Mahon, Menorca: the main range when built had ten separate wards, linked by a verandah.
18th-century engraving of the Royal Naval Hospital at Plymouth.
Naval hospital, Madras : coloured aquatint by James Baily, 1811.
RNH Chatham during the First World War: a naval surgeon, two QARNNS nurses and members of the VAD attend to a wounded sailor.
A ward in the RN Auxiliary Hospital, Cholmondeley Castle (July 1942).
RN Sick Quarters in the Aley District above Beirut (c.1942-1945).
RNH Great Yarmouth, built 1809–11, architect: William Pilkington .
Former Royal Naval Hospital in Deal, Kent.
Royal Naval Hospital buildings of 1821 in Port Royal, Jamaica; Admiral Benbow had established the island's first naval hospital in 1701.
Pink-rendered quadrangle of the old Naval Hospital in Gibraltar (1741).
Former south ward of the pavilion hospital at Esquimalt ( John Teague , 1888).
Former RM Infirmary at Gunwharf Quays , Portsmouth (one time barracks of the Royal Marine Artillery). [ 40 ]
The small former hospital of 1814 at Kingston dockyard now serves as the commandant's residence, Royal Military College of Canada .
The officers' dwellings at RNH Deal (built in 1813 to house the Governor, Physician, Surgeon and Agent). [ 45 ]