We occasionally have cause to comment here on the doubtful age of RN seamen during the 19th Century, and even later, so thought the following comment by a naval surgeon in 1840 apropos discussing the health of seamen in the 1830s, which not only confirms our suspicions, but gives a few reasons why this might be the case....he is discussing the age of seamen and the relevance to health.....and as you see, he thinks that collecting statistics at that date would be a waste of time : "They often serve long in the mercantile, before they enter the royal navy; there are no accounts of their ages but those given by themselves, which are frequently erroneous, sometimes from ignorance or carelessness, sometimes from design. Lads who enter the service, and whose ages are ascertained, are discharged from it at the end of three or four years; many of them then go into merchant ships, to return to the service, if at all, after the lapse of years, when they give their respective ages at any number of years they please. The medical officers of the navy know how common it is for a sailor to grow older by ten or twelve years in as many' months, according to his statements. He is aware that after a specified age he will not be admitted into the royal navy. It is his object to enter it, perhaps to get out of a merchant ship, which he dislikes, because he prefers the public service after.a trial of the other, or that he wants to complete a period of time. to entitle him to a pension; and in either case, if above the regulation age, he states himself to be under it. But in a year or two he has completed the time he wanted for a pension, or tires of the order, and discipline of a ship of war, and wishes to return to the comparative license of a merchant ship. He is then anxious to be invalided, and therefore often feigns disease, if he has none, and to aid his design, overstates, as he had formerly understated, his age; and he will affirm that, though he was only 39 some eighteen months ago, he is now 60 years of age. It would be highly satisfactory in an inquiry like this, to get rid of such sources of uncertainly, and error in the age of seamen, but it is felt, till they are removed, that any calculation of its power on health, during short periods could not make any thing like a near approach to accuracy; it is therefore better not to enter on an inquiry which could lead only to vague, or to false conclusions." Source : Sickness, Mortality, and Invalding in the Royal Navy and Army 1830-36 - Published by the House of Lords 1840 - Accounts and Papers - Vol XVII - which appears in an item in Google Books entitled sickness, mortality, & invaliding.pdf Nice to know it isn't our imagination, although I think we usually have similar problems with boy seamen rather than the able variety :-) Paul