That Mariners in the King's Ships have frequently put their 24 hours’ allowance of salt provisions into their tobacco-boxes. That seamen in the King's Ships have made buttons for their Jacketts and Trowses [sic] with the cheese they were served with, having preferred it, by reason of its tough and durable quality, to buttons made of common metal; and that Carpenters in the Navy-Service have made Trucks to their Ships’ flagstaffs with whole Cheeses, which have stood the weather equally with any timber. That the Flour in the King's Ships has been devoured by weevils, and become so intolerably musty, and cemented into such hard rocks, that the men have been obliged to use instruments, with all their feeble power, to break and pulverise it before they could make use of it, as though, in a comparative degree, they had been stubbing to pieces the ruins of an old fortification.

That their bread has been so full of large black-headed maggots and that they have so nauseated the thoughts of it, as to be obliged to shut their eyes to confine that sense from being offended before they could bring their minds to a resolution of consuming it.

That their beer has stunk as abominably as the foul stagnant water which is pumped out of many cellars in London at midnight hour; and that they were under a necessity of shutting their eyes, and stopping their breath by holding of their noses before they could conquer their aversion, so as to prevail upon themselves in their extreme necessities to drink it.