Benoît Pouget (ed.), Navy, sailors and collective illnesses (18th-20th centuries), Review of maritime history, No. 35, 19 September 2025. ISBN: 9791023107845

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Presentation of the issue :

The sea, the theatre of adventure and discovery, is also the theatre of health trials. Throughout the centuries, diseases have left their mark on maritime history: scourges that travel clandestinely in ships« holds, epidemics that decimate entire crews, and pathologies linked to the harsh living conditions on board. In this issue of the Revue d'histoire maritime entitled »Marines, marins et maladies collectives, XVIIIe - XXe siècle", Benoît Pouget and his colleagues explore the complex links between health, the maritime environment and social change.

The contributions highlight some fascinating stories: the impact of disease on war fleets, as in 1794 when the French squadron was paralysed by epidemics; the advances in naval hygiene initiated in the French colonies in the 18th century; and the gradual eradication of scurvy, marking a key stage in the improvement of living conditions at sea.

But the health of passengers is not forgotten. From convoys of convicts to French Guiana to the fight against rats in seaports, the articles reveal health issues that were often unsuspected. This issue also explores the role of doctors, from those on merchant ships, veritable isolated pioneers, to the famous figures of naval medicine, analysed from an innovative sociological perspective.

Current research is not left out: from the reforms of the French navy under the Fifth Republic to the enlightened correspondence of the eighteenth century, this issue bears witness to the wealth of current research on maritime history.

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Contents :

DOSSIER

Navy, sailors and collective illnesses, 18th-20th century.

A long history

Benoît Pouget (dir.)

«The nature of the place where seafarers live». The maritime environment, naval hygiene and intertropical navigation in the 18th century. Guillaume Linte

Ugly, dirty... and sick? The French naval campaign in the spring of 1794 through the prism of hygiene and health. Olivier Aranda

From scurvy, or how the navy gradually eradicated the «plague of the seas Jean-Christophe Fichou From debilitated body to regenerated man? The first convoy of convicts to French Guiana (1852) - in French only Samuel Tracol

European transit port centres for migrants, sanitary airlocks for transatlantic shipping companies at the beginning of the 20th century. Jean-Baptiste Schneider

Building and standardising an international consensus: the war on rats in maritime space between science, politics and economics (1894-1946) - Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva

The on-board doctors of the messageries maritimes (1870-1940): free electrons in a constrained environment - François Drémeaux

Studies on the character and personality in French naval and tropical medicine. Michael A. Osborne

VARIA

Antoine de Conflans: New considerations on the career and work of an early sixteenth-century French sailor. Michel Bochaca

The Enlightenment and the sea. The royal navy as a patriotic instrument in the aftermath of American Independence through the exchanges between the Duc de La Rochefoucauld and the consul Saint John de Crèvecœur. Jean-Charles Daumy

Command training: the reform of the curriculum at the Naval Academy between 1959 and 1965 - Jean-Marie Kowalski & Denis Lemaître

The French Navy and the April 1961 decrees - Patrick Boureille

CHRONICLE

The Republic's navy in Brest and the Atlantic, 1792-1799: political direction, strategy, operations - Olivier Aranda

NECROLOGY

Sylviane Llinares (1958-2023)

Tribute to Professor Sylviane Linares - Gérard Le Bouëdec

MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS

Alain Cabantous, with the participation of Gilbert Buti, The Mutineers of the Sea. Maritime and port rebellions in Western Europe. 17th-18th centuries centuries, Paris, Éditions du Cerf, 2022, 402 pages.

Étienne Bernet, Sting the whale! Whaling in Le Havre in the 19th century century,Nolléval, L'écho des vagues, 2022, 135 p.