88. CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
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 road-side, turned about
to his friend, saying, “Let us cross the way; my soul so sickens
at this sight, that I can not 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 any thing, 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 sea-port.
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 authorizes 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 a 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 harbor, 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.
