Among the volumes in this class is a printed copy of a poem of seventeen stanzas celebrating the victory of the Nile, 1798, by Ellis Cornelia Knight (1757-1837); this is bound with two letters from Lord Nelson (q.v.), 1801 and 1805, to the Reverend John Holden (1762-1806) to whom Nelson presented the volume in 1800. Also included is 'The Reminiscences of a Retired Captain', 1847, by Captain George Clarke Hurdis (fl.1783-1849) who was a midshipman at the Glorious First of June, 1794, and a lieutenant at the attack on Santa Cruz, 1797; a volume of poems by George Hewens, a Greenwich Pensioner, written between 1855 and 1864, on various subjects, including many about inmates of the hospital and events taking place there. Examples of Twentieth-century verse can be found in 'Under the ''Red Duster'''; The Merchant Navy in Peace and war', 1924 to 1959, compiled by Edward Carpenter. An example of prose writing is 'Short Yarns or Some Reminiscences of the old ''Wooden Walls''' by William Richards, a seaman in the Royal Navy and Coast Guard Service in the mid-nineteenth century.

Administrative / biographical background
Prose and verse - volumes