Connecting Medical and Maritime History: Mia Vrijens awarded Warnsinck fellowship at Het Scheepvaartmuseum

In early 2025 Mia Vrijens was awarded the Prof J.C.M. Warnsinck Fellowship at Het Scheepvaartmuseum for her project Health at Sea: Merchant Marine Nursing, second half 20th century. The project brings together the worlds of both medical history and maritime history.

The Warnsinck Fellowship programme offers the opportunity to research an object of the museum collection of the Dutch maritime museum Het Scheepvaartmuseum. Mia Vrijens’ project Health at Sea: Merchant Marine Nursing, second half 20th century focuses on a particular book as the research object. This publication was crucial for medical and nursing assistance at sea: ‘Medical assistance on board of seagoing vessels of less than 500 registered tons gross tonnage and sea fishing vessels’ (Geneeskundige hulp aan boord van zeeschepen van minder dan 500 registertonnen bruto inhoud en van zeevissersvaartuigen). The book was written by dr Boonacker, who was familiarly known among seamen as ‘the Boonacker’. 

It was used as standard guidance, and was a part of the mandatory medical equipment of the merchant marine vessels and fishing boats. The book describes how to manage disease and illness at sea when there was no doctor or other official medical assistance around. Taking the various editions from the book between 1937 and 1977 as a basis, the Fellowship project investigates the professionalisation of on-board nursing in the second half of the twentieth century. The (oral history) research explores the extent to which trained and untrained crew members were responsible for medical and nursing care on board, the types of training they received and situations they managed, and how this care was integrated into broader notions of health and safety at sea.