However boldly their warm blood was spilt,
Their life was shame, their epitaph was guilt;
And this they knew and felt, at least the one,
The leader of the hand he had undone--
Who, born for better things, had madly set
His life upon a cast, which linger'd yet.
BYRON.
There is perhaps no event in the annals of our history which excited
more alarm at the time of its occurrence, or has since been the subject
of more general interest, than the Mutiny at the Nore, in the year 1797.
Forty thousand men, to whom the nation looked for defence from its
surrounding enemies, and in steadfast reliance upon whose bravery it lay
down every night in tranquillity,--men who had dared everything for
their king and country, and in whose breasts patriotism, although
suppressed for the time, could never be extinguished,--irritated by
ungrateful neglect on the one hand, and by seditious advisers on the
other, turned the guns which they had so often manned in defence of the
English flag against their own countrymen and their own home, and, with
all the acrimony of feeling ever attending family quarrels, seemed
determined to sacrifice the nation and themselves, rather than listen to
the dictates of reason and of conscience.
Doubtless there is a point at which endurance of oppression ceases to be
a virtue, and rebellion can no longer be considered as a crime; but it
is a dangerous and intricate problem, the solution of which had better
not be attempted. It must, however, be acknowledged, that the seamen,
on the occasion of the first mutiny, had just grounds of complaint, and
that they did not proceed to acts of violence until repeated and humble
remonstrance had been made in vain.
Whether we act in a body or individually, such is the infirmity and
selfishness of human nature, that we often surrender to importunity that
which we refuse to the dictates of gratitude,--yielding for our own
comfort, to the demands of turbulence, while quiet unpretending merit is
overlooked and oppressed, until, roused by neglect, it demands, as a
right, what policy alone should have granted as a favour.
Such was the behaviour, on the part of government, which produced the
mutiny at the Nore.
What mechanism is more complex than the mind of man? And as, in all
machinery, there are wheels and springs of action not apparent without
close examination of the interior, so pride, ambition, avarice, love,
play alternately or conjointly upon the human mind, which, under their
influence, is whirled round like the weathercock in the hurricane, only
pointing for a short time in one direction, but for that time
steadfastly. How difficult, then, to analyse the motives and
inducements which actuated the several ringleaders in this dreadful
crisis!
Let us, therefore, confine ourselves to what we do really know to have
been the origin of discontent in one of these men, whose unfortunate
career is intimately connected with this history.
Edward Peters was a man of talent and education. He had entered on
board the --- in a fit of desperation, to obtain the bounty for a
present support, and his pay as a future provision for his wife, and an
only child, the fruit of a hasty and unfortunate marriage. He was soon
distinguished as a person of superior attainments; and instead of being
employed, as a landsman usually is, in the afterguard, or waist, of the
ship, he was placed under the orders of the purser and captain's clerk
as an amanuensis. In this capacity he remained two or three years,
approved of and treated with unusual respect by the officers, for his
gentlemanlike appearance and behaviour: but unfortunately a theft had
been committed,--a watch, of trifling value, had been purloined from the
purser's cabin; and, as he was the only person, with the exception of
the servant, who had free ingress and egress, suspicion fell upon him--
the more so as, after every search that could be made had proved
ineffectual, it was supposed that the purloined property had been sent
on shore to be disposed of by his wife, who, with his child, had
frequently been permitted to visit him on board.
Summoned on the quarter-deck--cross-examined, and harshly interrogated--
called a scoundrel by the captain before conviction,--the proud blood
mantled in the cheeks of one who, at that period, was incapable of
crime. The blush of virtuous indignation was construed into presumptive
evidence of guilt. The captain,--a superficial, presuming, pompous, yet
cowardly creature, whose conduct assisted in no small degree to excite
the mutiny on board of his own ship,--declared himself quite convinced
of Peters's guilt, because he blushed at the bare idea of being
suspected; and punishment ensued, with all the degradation allotted to
an offence which is never forgiven on board of a man-of-war.
There is, perhaps, no crime that is attended with such serious
consequences on board a ship as theft. A succession of thefts
undiscovered will disintegrate a ship's company, break up the messes,
destroy all confidence and harmony, and occasion those who have been the
dearest friends to become the greatest enemies: for whom can a person
suspect, when he has lost his property, in so confined a space, but
those who were acquainted with its being in his possession, and with the
place in which it was deposited?--and who are these but his own
messmates, or those in whom he most confided? After positive
conviction, no punishment can be too severe for a crime that produces
such mischief; but to degrade a man by corporal punishment, to ruin his
character, and render him an object of abhorrence and contempt, in the
absence of even bare presumptive evidence, was an act of cruelty and
injustice, which could excite but one feeling; and, from that day, the
man who would have gloried in dying for his country, became a
discontented, gloomy, and dangerous subject.
The above effect would have been produced in any man; but to Peters,
whose previous history we have yet to narrate, death itself would have
been preferable. His heart did not break, but it swelled with
contending passions, till it was burst and riven with wounds never to be
cicatrised. Suffering under the most painful burthen that can oppress a
man who values reputation, writhing with the injustice of accusation
when innocent, of conviction without proof, and of punishment unmerited,
it is not to be wondered at that Peters took the earliest opportunity of
deserting from the ship.
There is a particular feeling pervading animal nature, from which man
himself is not exempt. Indeed, with all his boasted reason, man still
inherits too many of the propensities of the brute creation. I refer to
that disposition which not only inclines us to feel satisfaction at
finding we have companions in misfortune, but too often stimulates us to
increase the number by our own exertions. From the stupendous elephant,
down to the smallest of the feathered tribe, all will act as a decoy to
their own species, when in captivity themselves; and, in all compulsory
service, which may be considered a species of captivity, man proves that
he is imbued with the same propensity. Seamen that have been pressed
themselves into the navy, are invariably the most active in pressing
others; and both soldiers and sailors have a secret pleasure in
recapturing a deserter, even at the very time when they are watching an
opportunity to desert themselves.
The bonds of friendship seem destroyed when this powerful and brutal
feeling is called into action; and, as has frequently occurred in the
service, before and since, the man who was selected by Peters as his
most intimate friend, the man with whom he had consulted, and to whom he
had confided his plans for desertion, gave information of the retreat of
his wife and child, from which place Peters was not likely to be very
distant; and thus, with the assistance of this, his dearest friend, the
master-at-arms and party in quest of him succeeded in his capture.
It so happened, that on the very day on which Peters was brought on
board and put into irons, the purser's servant was discovered to have in
his possession the watch that had been lost. Thus far the character of
Peters was reinstated; and as he had declared, at the time of his
capture, that the unjust punishment which he had received had been the
motive of his desertion, the captain was strongly urged by the officers
to overlook an offence which had everything to be offered in its
extenuation. But Captain A--- was fond of courts-martial; he imagined
that they added to his consequence, which certainly required to be
upheld by adventitious aid. Moreover, the feeling, too often pervading
little minds, that of a dislike taken to a person because you have
injured him, and the preferring to accumulate injustice rather than to
acknowledge error, had more than due weight with this weak man. A
court-martial was held, and Peters was sentenced to death; but, in
consideration of circumstances, the sentence was mitigated to that of
being "flogged round the fleet."
Mitigated! Strange vanity in men, that they should imagine their own
feelings to be more sensible and acute than those of others; that they
should consider that a mitigation in favour of the prisoner, which, had
they been placed in his situation, they would have declared an
_accumulation_ of the punishment. Not a captain who sat upon that
court-martial but would have considered, as Peters did, that death was
by far the more lenient sentence of the two. Yet they meant well--they
felt kindly towards him, and acknowledged his provocations; but they
fell into the too common error of supposing that the finer feelings,
which induce a man to prefer death to dishonour, are only to be
recognised among the higher classes; and that, because circumstances may
have placed a man before the mast, he will undergo punishment, however
severe, however degrading,--in short, every "ill that flesh is heir
to,"--in preference to death.
As the reader may not, perhaps, be acquainted with the nature of the
punishment to which Peters was sentenced, and the ceremonies by which it
is attended, I shall enter into a short description of it.
A man sentenced to be flogged round the fleet receives an equal part of
the whole number of lashes awarded, alongside each ship composing that
fleet. For instance, if sentenced to three hundred lashes, in a fleet
composed of ten sail, he will receive thirty alongside of each ship.
A launch is fitted up with a platform and shears. It is occupied by the
unfortunate individual, the provost-marshal, the boatswain, and his
mates, with their implements of office, and armed marines stationed at
the bow and stern. When the signal is made for punishment, all the
ships in the fleet send one or two boats each, with crews cleanly
dressed, the officers in full uniform, and marines under arms. These
boats collect at the side of the ship where the launch is lying, the
hands are turned up, and the ship's company are ordered to mount the
rigging, to witness that portion of the whole punishment which, after
the sentence has been read, is inflicted upon the prisoner. When he has
received the allotted number of lashes, he is, for the time, released,
and permitted to sit down, with a blanket over his shoulders, while the
boats, which attend the execution of the sentence, make fast to the
launch, and tow it to the next ship in the fleet, where the same number
of lashes are inflicted with corresponding ceremonies;--and thus he is
towed from one ship to another until he has received the whole of his
punishment.
The severity of this punishment consists not only in the number of
lashes, but in the peculiar manner in which they are inflicted; as,
after the unfortunate wretch has received the first part of his sentence
alongside of one ship, the blood is allowed to congeal, and the wounds
partially to close, during the interval which takes place previously to
his arrival alongside of the next, when the cat again subjects him to
renewed and increased torture. During the latter part of the
punishment, the suffering is dreadful; and a man who has undergone this
sentence is generally broken down in constitution, if not in spirits,
for the remainder of his life.
Such was the punishment inflicted upon the unfortunate Peters; and it
would be difficult to decide, at the moment when it was completed, and
the blanket thrown over his shoulders, whether the heart or the back of
the fainting man were the more lacerated of the two.
Time can heal the wounds of the body, over which it holds its empire;
but those of the soul, like the soul itself, spurn his transitory sway.
Peters, from that moment, was a desperate man. A short time after he
had undergone his sentence, the news of the mutiny at Spithead was
communicated; and the vacillation and apprehensions of the Admiralty,
and of the nation at large, were not to be concealed. This mutiny was
apparently quelled by conciliation; but conciliation is but a half
measure, and ineffectual when offered from superiors to inferiors.
In this world, I know not why, there seems to be but one seal binding in
all contracts of magnitude--and that seal is blood. Without referring
to the Jewish types, proclaiming that "all things were purified by
blood, and without shedding of blood there was no remission,"--without
referring to that sublime mystery by which these types have been
fulfilled,--it appears as if, in all ages and all countries, blood had
been the only seal of security.
Examine the records of history, the revolution of opinion, the public
tumults, the warfare for religious ascendency--it will be found that,
without this seal, these were only lulled for the moment, and invariably
recommenced until _blood_ had made its appearance as witness to "the act
and deed."