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Ships and People by Dr J. C. H. Beaumont.
A book of reminiscences by a White Star Line surgeon, including mention of Titanic’s Dr William O’Loughlin. The often humorous autobiography includes a lengthy description of the doctor’s ultimately unsuccessful efforts to cure seasickness among transatlantic travellers.
Description
Review
Dr Beaumont, one of the principal medical officers of the White Star Line, has for thirty years roved the seas as a ship’ s surgeon. His eminently readable and entertaining autobiography tells how he was born in India, but got his education, his drill in “Readin’ , Ritin’, and ‘Rithmactic, also Porridge, punctuality, and Piety,” at St Andrews, Dumfries, and Edinburgh. Yet he does not seera to have cared for terra firma; and his book, after making its acknowledgements briefly, gets afloat as soon as possible and quickly shows him in the vicinity of China, facing a typhoon and a partial mutiny of the Chinese crew aboard his ship. Then he goes sailing from London to New Zealand, there helping to convey the whole of Barnum & Bailey’s show from France to New York. After that he took service with the White Star, and settled down (as he calls it) at Liverpool. He came across many celebrities in his further voyages, and his observations on the manners of the passengers aboard ship and the differences between pre-war and post-war customs are always pointed and enlightening, as, indeed, are those on his experiences during the war. On the inevitable question of sea-sickness his book has a specially interesting chapter, which gives an address delivered by him on this baffling mystery to a society of New York medical men. — The Scotsman, 11 November 1926
About the Author
Dr John Beaumont served with White Star Line as a surgeon for 31 years. Prior to that, he was with the Atlantic Transport Line and in the Australian, China and Indian steamship services.
Dr Beaumont reputedly crossed the Atlantic 1002 times and served aboard troopships and hospital ships in WWI, including the Baltic, Britannic, and the Olympic at Gallipoli. Read Dr Beaumont’s World War One memoir as published in the New York Times, 5 January 1919.
He was aboard RMS ‘Olympic during the HMS Audacious incident of 1914 and was nicknamed ‘Audacious Beaumont’ until the end of the war’.
He was also a singer, musician and composer. In 1908 he composed and published the sheet music for the White Star Line Waltz and in 1912 Lyrics from a Liner.
At the time of writing his autobiography, Ships and People, Dr Beaumont was a surgeon on RMS Majestic.
Additional information
| Author | |
|---|---|
| Publication date | |
| Publisher | Frederick A. Stokes, New York City, Geoffrey Bles, London |
| Hardcover | 298 pages |
| Language |
