FLOGGING THROUGH THE FLEET.
The flogging of an old man like Ushant, most landsmen will probably
regard with abhorrence. But though, from peculiar circumstances, his
case occasioned a good deal of indignation among the people of the
Neversink, yet, upon its own proper grounds, they did not denounce it.
Man-of-war’s-men are so habituated to what landsmen would deem
excessive cruelties, that they are almost reconciled to inferior
severities.
And here, though the subject of punishment in the Navy has been
canvassed in previous chapters, and though the thing is every way a
most unpleasant and grievous one to enlarge upon, and though I
painfully nerve myself to it while I write, a feeling of duty compels
me to enter upon a branch of the subject till now undiscussed. I would
not be like the man, who, seeing an outcast perishing by the roadside,
turned about to his friend, saying, “Let us cross the way; my soul so
sickens at this sight, that I cannot endure it.”
There are certain enormities in this man-of-war world that often secure
impunity by their very excessiveness. Some ignorant people will refrain
from permanently removing the cause of a deadly malaria, for fear of
the temporary spread of its offensiveness. Let us not be of such. The
more repugnant and repelling, the greater the evil. Leaving our women
and children behind, let us freely enter this Golgotha.
Years ago there was a punishment inflicted in the English, and I
believe in the American Navy, called _keel-hauling_—a phrase still
employed by man-of-war’s-men when they would express some signal
vengeance upon a personal foe. The practice still remains in the French
national marine, though it is by no means resorted to so frequently as
in times past. It consists of attaching tackles to the two extremities
of the main-yard, and passing the rope under the ship’s bottom. To one
end of this rope the culprit is secured; his own shipmates are then
made to run him up and down, first on this side, then on that—now
scraping the ship’s hull under water—anon, hoisted, stunned and
breathless, into the air.
But though this barbarity is now abolished from the English and
American navies, there still remains another practice which, if
anything, is even worse than _keel-hauling_. This remnant of the Middle
Ages is known in the Navy as “_flogging through the fleet_.” It is
never inflicted except by authority of a court-martial upon some
trespasser deemed guilty of a flagrant offence. Never, that I know of,
has it been inflicted by an American man-of-war on the home station.
The reason, probably, is, that the officers well know that such a
spectacle would raise a mob in any American seaport.
By XLI. of the Articles of War, a court-martial shall not “for any one
offence not capital,” inflict a punishment beyond one hundred lashes.
In cases “not capital” this law may be, and has been, quoted in
judicial justification of the infliction of more than one hundred
lashes. Indeed, it would cover a thousand. Thus: One act of a sailor
may be construed into the commission of ten different transgressions,
for each of which he may be legally condemned to a hundred lashes, to
be inflicted without intermission. It will be perceived, that in any
case deemed “capital,” a sailor under the above Article, may legally be
flogged to the death.
But neither by the Articles of War, nor by any other enactment of
Congress, is there any direct warrant for the extraordinary cruelty of
the mode in which punishment is inflicted, in cases of flogging through
the fleet. But as in numerous other instances, the incidental
aggravations of this penalty are indirectly covered by other clauses in
the Articles of War: one of which authorises the authorities of a
ship—in certain indefinite cases—to correct the guilty “_according to
the usages of the sea-service_.”
One of these “usages” is the following:
All hands being called “to witness punishment” in the ship to which the
culprit belongs, the sentence of the court-martial condemning him is
read, when, with the usual solemnities, a portion of the punishment is
inflicted. In order that it shall not lose in severity by the slightest
exhaustion in the arm of the executioner, a fresh boatswain’s mate is
called out at every dozen.
As the leading idea is to strike terror into the beholders, the
greatest number of lashes is inflicted on board the culprit’s own ship,
in order to render him the more shocking spectacle to the crews of the
other vessels.
The first infliction being concluded, the culprit’s shirt is thrown
over him; he is put into a boat—the Rogue’s March being played
meanwhile—and rowed to the next ship of the squadron. All hands of that
ship are then called to man the rigging, and another portion of the
punishment is inflicted by the boatswain’s mates of that ship. The
bloody shirt is again thrown over the seaman; and thus he is carried
through the fleet or squadron till the whole sentence is inflicted.
In other cases, the launch—the largest of the boats—is rigged with a
platform (like a headsman’s scaffold), upon which halberds, something
like those used in the English army, are erected. They consist of two
stout poles, planted upright. Upon the platform stand a Lieutenant, a
Surgeon a Master-at-arms, and the executioners with their “cats.” They
are rowed through the fleet, stopping at each ship, till the whole
sentence is inflicted, as before.
In some cases, the attending surgeon has professionally interfered
before the last lash has been given, alleging that immediate death must
ensue if the remainder should be administered without a respite. But
instead of humanely remitting the remaining lashes, in a case like
this, the man is generally consigned to his cot for ten or twelve days;
and when the surgeon officially reports him capable of undergoing the
rest of the sentence, it is forthwith inflicted. Shylock must have his
pound of flesh.
To say, that after being flogged through the fleet, the prisoner’s back
is sometimes puffed up like a pillow; or to say that in other cases it
looks as if burned black before a roasting fire; or to say that you may
track him through the squadron by the blood on the bulwarks of every
ship, would only be saying what many seamen have seen.
Several weeks, sometimes whole months, elapse before the sailor is
sufficiently recovered to resume his duties. During the greater part of
that interval he lies in the sick-bay, groaning out his days and
nights; and unless he has the hide and constitution of a rhinoceros, he
never is the man he was before, but, broken and shattered to the marrow
of his bones, sinks into death before his time. Instances have occurred
where he has expired the day after the punishment. No wonder that the
Englishman, Dr. Granville—himself once a surgeon in the Navy—declares,
in his work on Russia, that the barbarian “knout” itself is not a
greater torture to undergo than the Navy cat-o’-nine-tails.
Some years ago a fire broke out near the powder magazine in an American
national ship, one of the squadron at anchor in the Bay of Naples. The
utmost alarm prevailed. A cry went fore and aft that the ship was about
to blow up. One of the seamen sprang overboard in affright. At length
the fire was got under, and the man was picked up. He was tried before
a court-martial, found guilty of cowardice, and condemned to be flogged
through the fleet, In due time the squadron made sail for Algiers, and
in that harbour, once haunted by pirates, the punishment was
inflicted—the Bay of Naples, though washing the shores of an absolute
king, not being deemed a fit place for such an exhibition of American
naval law.
While the Neversink was in the Pacific, an American sailor, who had
deposited a vote for General Harrison for President of the United
States, was flogged through the fleet.