Royal Naval Hospital


A Royal Naval Hospital was a hospital operated by the British Royal Navy for the care and treatment of sick and injured naval personnel. A network of these establishments were situated across the globe to suit British interests. They were part of the Royal Naval Medical Service. The British Army equivalent was a Military Hospital, and in the 20th century a number of RAF Hospitals were also established.
The list below includes significant Royal Naval Hospitals established in the 18th-20th centuries; in addition numerous smaller facilities were set up, where and when needed.
In 1996 the UK's last remaining Royal Naval Hospital was redesignated as a Joint Services establishment; it finally closed just over a decade later. No Royal Naval Hospitals survive in operation, although some have become civilian hospitals.

Historical overview

Individual surgeons had been appointed to naval vessels since Tudor times; the Company of Barber-Surgeons was expected to provide them in suitable numbers whenever the fleet was due to set sail. Once the fleet returned, responsibility for the care of any sick or injured seamen reverted to their home parishes. This arrangement came under significant pressure during the Anglo-Dutch Wars: in 1652 the Admiralty Committee resolved to provide the mayors and magistrates of seaport towns with financial support to provide accommodation for the care and treatment of sick and wounded seamen. A house was hired in Deal to serve as a hospital; and elsewhere civilian hospitals were part-requisitioned for naval use. 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. Later, temporary hospitals were provided in locations such as Ipswich, Harwich and Rochester; while in Plymouth a hospital was established on a more permanent footing in 1689. All these, however, were 'contract' hospitals: privately owned and staffed by civilians, who were treating naval personnel under contract.
Further afield in the seventeenth century, crews began to be exposed to unfamiliar illnesses on increasingly long sea-voyages. One response, first proposed in 1664, was the provision of hospital ships to accompany the fleet on more distant expeditions; but by the beginning of the 18th century permanent onshore hospital provision was being contemplated for overseas bases. 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. This was followed by the provision of staffed hospitals in Lisbon in 1705 and Minorca in 1709; those at Jamaica and Lisbon closed in 1712, but the naval hospital at Port Mahon, Minorca was retained on a more permanent footing.
At home, however, the navy continued to rely on contract hospitals, such as the Fortune Hospital in Gosport. When additional capacity was required inns were often hired and converted into sick quarters, or beds set aside in the large London hospitals.
During the War of Jenkins' Ear, however, the system was overwhelmed by large numbers of returning sick and injured. 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. In 1744, with France having declared war on Britain, the decision was finally taken to establish Royal Naval Hospitals on a permanent footing in Gosport and Stonehouse ; however a proposed third hospital was not then built, as Chatham by that time had ceased to function as a front-line base.
In the decades that followed more Royal Naval Hospitals were established, both at home and abroad. During the Napoleonic Wars there were five naval hospitals operating in England: in addition to Haslar and Plymouth, hospitals were established at Paignton, Great Yarmouth and Deal. At the same time hospital ships were provided at Woolwich, Sheerness and Chatham. Gibraltar served the needs of the fleet in the Mediterranean at this time ; while, further afield, Royal Naval Hospitals had been established in various locations including India, North America and the Caribbean.
At the start of the First World War, the three principal naval hospitals in the UK were Haslar, Plymouth and the new RNH Chatham. Yarmouth was also retained, as a psychiatric hospital. Smaller hospitals at Portland, South Queensferry, Pembroke Dock and Haulbowline served nearby naval dockyards; while Scotland, where the Grand Fleet was based, saw two hospitals commandeered for use by the Admiralty: Leith Public Health Hospital became Royal Hospital Granton in 1917, and the Stirling District Asylum briefly became RNH Larbert in 1918. The main overseas Royal Naval Hospitals at this time were on Malta, Gibraltar, Bermuda, the Cape of Good Hope and Hong Kong.
In the 1920s a degree of rationalisation took place: Chatham Military Hospital and Gibraltar's Royal Naval Hospital were both closed. Not long afterwards military hospitals near Portsmouth and Plymouth were also closed on the understanding that soldiers could be treated at the nearby naval hospitals.
During the Second World War there was concern about the vulnerability of the older hospitals to aerial bombardment. Auxiliary hospitals were opened in safer locations around Britain. 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. 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.
In addition, numerous Royal Naval Sick Quarters were established during the Second World War to meet the needs of the moment: by 1945 there were over a hundred such facilities operating at home and several dozen abroad.
A number of naval hospitals were closed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the 1990s, the total number of remaining Naval, Military and RAF Hospitals in the UK was progressively cut from seven, to three, to one: the naval hospital at Haslar ; by the end of the decade, its closure too had been announced.

List of Royal Naval Hospitals

United Kingdom

Overseas

Hospitals were established close to several of the overseas Naval Yards and anchorages, including:
Other naval hospitals were established in other overseas locations, usually in the vicinity of other small naval establishments including on Long Island, New York, Newfoundland, St Lucia, Kingston, Ontario, Barbados, Fernando Po, Mauritius and Wei-Hai-Wei.

Royal Naval Auxiliary Hospitals

During the Second World War around thirty 'R.N. Auxiliary Hospitals' were established in various locations, at home and abroad, on a temporary basis.

United Kingdom

Overseas

Royal Marine Infirmaries

In addition to the RN Hospitals, the Admiralty established Royal Marine Infirmaries near the divisional headquarters in Chatham, Deal, Plymouth, Portsmouth and Woolwich, along with a separate Royal Marine Artillery Infirmary at Gun Wharf Barracks, Portsmouth.

The Royal Hospital at Greenwich

Greenwich Hospital, which predated all the above institutions, was established on somewhat different grounds, as it cared for retired seamen rather than those on active service. Also called the Royal Hospital for Seamen in Greenwich, it was a home for Greenwich pensioners, established in 1692, and although closed at Greenwich in 1869 still exists as a charity. Its buildings housed the Royal Naval College, Greenwich between 1873 and 1998 and are now open to the public as the Old Royal Naval College.

Capacity

The size and capacity of the naval hospitals varied over time, as well as from place to place. The hospital at Port Mahon had opened with 356 beds in 1711; its capacity was later increased to 550, and then more than doubled to 1,200. Meanwhile, RNH Gibraltar was designed to accommodate up to a thousand patients when it opened in 1746.
Haslar was always the largest of the naval hospitals: when fully opened in 1762 it had beds for 1,800 patients, by 1778 it could accommodate 2,100; while RNH Plymouth opened in 1762 with 1,200 beds. These numbers were subsequently scaled down, as efforts were made to reduce overcrowding. In times of war, on the other hand, hospital capacities were often significantly increased.
By the end of the 19th century Haslar had accommodation for just under 1,300 patients, but on average fewer than 500 beds were occupied at any one time. At the other end of the scale, the naval hospital on Ascension Island, had 65 beds, and RNH Esquimalt had accommodation for 40. Several of the hospitals had their capacities increased during the First and Second World Wars; the following table shows the peace time capacity of the principal home and overseas Royal Naval Hospitals during the inter-war period.
RN HospitalTotal number of beds
Haslar1,151
Plymouth860
Chatham599
Portland117
South Queensferrry100
Malta365
Hong Kong125
Bermuda78
Cape of Good Hope48
Wei-Hai-Wei38

Command and oversight

In the early decades of their existence, the hospitals at Haslar and Plymouth were each overseen by a 'Physician and Council'. The Council was made up of a small number of Surgeons and two other hospital officers who had administrative and logistical responsibilities.
In 1795, following an enquiry into the situation at Haslar, it was judged that the two naval hospitals were suffering from 'a want of proper discipline and subordination'. 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 and two or three Lieutenants. This situation pertained until 1820, when the Governor was replaced by a Resident Commissioner of the Victualling Service, who had oversight of the local victualling yard as well as of the hospital. In 1840 the title of this 'dual-hatted' officer was changed to Captain-superintendent.
In 1869 an enquiry took place into the condition and organisation of the naval hospitals; the report was presented to Parliament and the following year saw the Captains-superintendent and Lieutenants of naval hospitals abolished. Afterwards, oversight reverted to the Medical Officer in Charge.