p. 15, on belowdecks life for British seamen: There was no leisure, no leave, no books, to qualify their miserable existence:* there was nothing to make a man feel himself a human being. [Footnote*: In 1812 a shocked Admiralty provided libraries, and the seaman’s life was rendered gayer by the availability of such books as the Old Chaplain’s Farewell Letter, The Whole Duty of Man, andAdvice after Sickness. (Hutchinson, 43.)
David H. Stam's Anthologies of the Reading Experience