section first. An Account of some of the Naval Laws and Customs, and of the Coercion used on board Ship to establish Order.

Out of this imagined necessity, of pressing, there has grown up in the navy a set of laws and customs sufficiently repugnant to the feelings of an Englishman, to his ideas of justice and liberty, to make him forget the principle of resistance so common in human nature, neglect the gratification of fame, and risk every disaster, even to starving, rather than voluntarily serve his country.

These laws and customs, like pressing, are defended on the score of inevitable necessity, arising from the bad character of the seamen. As they are also acknowledgedly unjust, it becomes their supporters clearly to show the existing necessity, distinctly to prove this bad character of the seamen, or amend the execution of these laws; but I think I can satisfactorily prove, that this necessity does not exist; that the frequent crimes and bad character they are made the vehicles of punishing they themselves occasion.

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When, from a thorough conviction of its absurdities, I am about to condemn what is called naval discipline, or the means used on board ship to establish order, it is necessary I should assert, that no man is more a friend of order than myself; no person has a stronger conviction than I have of the necessity there is for a quiet and ready obedience, for the utmost attention to cleanliness and health, for the greatest alacrity in every minutia of duty, and for prompt and stimultaneous efforts in every class of men of war to produce victory. The facts that will follow are not well authenticated ones, borrowed from others, but what I have myself seen; and the reasoning is the result of my own experience. In detailing these facts, I beg to be distinctly understood as making no reflections on any individuals; they are the genuine offspring of a dreadful system of laws, which corrupts the officers and debases the men; which, by tolerating and praising, encourages oppression; which furnishes principles of action directly opposite to the religious instructions of our youth; and which perverts those feelings of the heart that, under the guidance of these instructions, give birth to every virtue.

The men who have legislated for the navy appear to have been ignorant of the characters of, and of the crimes likely to be committed by seamen; they have not only been ignorant, but they Edition: current; Page: [29] have been negligent in enquiry, or they might have ascertained what are the chief crimes, what is their cause, and what is their proper remedy. From this ignorance and this negligence, no moderate punishment is affixed to the thousand little deviations which sailors may commit, and which, from their confined situation, must be known to their superiors. These trifles are all left to the captains to punish; and he punishes whatever he thinks errors, and in nearly whatever way he thinks proper. He is sanctioned in doing it by the following article, which concludes those articles of war by which the navy is governed. It says, “All other crimes, not capital, committed by any person or persons in the fleet, which are not mentioned in this act, for which no punishment is hereby directed to be inflicted, shall be punished according to the laws and customs, in such cases, used at sea.”

Dr. Paley has asserted, in his Moral Philosophy, vol. I. page 5, “That it is tyranny in the legislature leaving to magistrates the power of defining what the laws intended to punish;” but our legislature has left to the captains the power of punishing according to custom; has left them the power of making customs equal to laws; has made them, when they form courts martial, the only judges of these customs, and they have the power of condemning to punishment: in short, they are legislators, Edition: current; Page: [30] they are judges, they are juries, and they are very often parties and executioners. This is, according to the dictionary, despotic power, and therefore these expressions are strictly true, and no apology, I should think, can be expected for using them in other parts of this essay. The entrusting arbitrary power to any governor or governors is not less destructive of his or their happiness than it may be of all the men governed; that this unhappiness to both is the fruit of arbitrary power being in the possession of any men, experience must show to all; that its fruits are the same in the navy, I am convinced from experience; it is as pernicious to the happiness of officers, through making them distrustful and jealous, instead of their having confidence and attachment, as it is to the seamen’s happiness, through the cruelty that is exercised upon them. If it is so destructive of this happiness, what reason can be found for continuing it, since the happiness derived can be the only test of the utility of any law?

In consequence of entrusting such a power to captains, complaints are frequently made, and with too much occasion, that justice cannot be obtained at courts martial. Whenever the culprit is a junior officer, or a common seaman; whenever he may have violated any of the laws; whenever he may have offended the feelings of antipathy of an admiral or a captain, it is as rational to Edition: current; Page: [31] expect justice from a court martial as from a Turkish Cadhi; both possess the same power, and both are subject to the influence of that power through their passions upon their judgment.

To the mind accustomed to reflect, that ideas of right and wrong are, like all other ideas, not engraved upon our minds by the hand of our Maker, but are acquired from education (in the most enlarged sense of the term), what a sanction does this possession of power, this article of war, give to a captain for the persevering in any cruelties he may ever have seen inflicted or adopted as customs, by any of his superiors, in his progress through the subordinate stations of the service! Unfortunately, the infliction of severity of punishment comes recommended to the young officer with all the fascinating charms of success; it has often produced, and will again produce, great simultaneous, but temporary exertions. Its future consequences, in corrupting the mind of the sailor and of the community, in producing a still greater degree of hatred, which must, eventually, end in destruction, can never be attended to by men whose limited education prevents them knowing these future consequences.

It is this before-mentioned article of war which reconciles to every captain’s conscience the infliction of severity of punishment, that neither the immorality, the unhappiness accruing, nor the importance Edition: current; Page: [32] of the crime ever call for; it is this which convinces him that he acts perfectly just; and when the approbation of courts martial (the highest naval tribunal) has been bestowed upon bad customs—when, from beneficial but temporary effects, these bad customs have excited the applause of men, supposed to be excellent judges, whose lives have been spent in the service, whose years of experience entitle their opinions to much respect, but who have never known human nature, and possessed little knowledge beyond their ships; this article has then had additional force in perverting the ideas of right and wrong, which naval officers might acquire from their communications with other parts of society. Such customs have been sanctioned which deserve condemnation; such applause has been bestowed upon actions for the support, as it would be called, of discipline, from which the unsophisticated and enlarged mind of an Englishman recoils, as horrid and atrocious.

The opinion, that this article of war really perverts people’s ideas of right and wrong, is not the fancied speculations of a man covered with the dust of a library, but the result of experience. I served a considerable time with a captain deservedly celebrated, whose whole mind was occupied with a desire of being distinguished, and who has performed several actions that have justly acquired him much reputation. He had, unfortunately, Edition: current; Page: [33] served all the early part of his life with officers denominated “smart;” he had seen men whom he had early been taught to fear and respect adopt many bad customs, with temporary success, in producing alacrity, but never having enlarged his mind with much reading, or much communication with society, nothing told him that following these customs was improper. This captain was a religious man, and a man, whom I believe, most firmly thought himself conscientiously just, and that, in committing numberless cruelties, he was promoting the good of the service, by keeping in order a set of men whom he was accustomed to consider as notorious rascals. My situation permitted me, and I took particular pains to find out his motives for the severity of his discipline, and I am fully convinced they all centered in benefitting his majesty’s service, and in acquiring for himself, what has been much an object of naval society’s praise, the reputation of a “smart officer.” I have seen this captain flog, I think, twenty-six men, part of them by candle-light, at both gangways, because their hammocks were not properly cleaned∗. The only time the men were allowed Edition: current; Page: [34] for scrubbing was one hour and a half during the night; in this time they had their hammocks, half a week’s dirty clothes, and, perhaps, a bag to scrub. It was not because they had not been scrubbed at all, but because they did not look well: I should say, it was flogging men for impossibilities. It was in a warm climate, and, in a warm climate before, this captain had seen such things done; he would allow of no relaxation whatever, justly observing, if he began to relax, he knew not where to stop. The observation is extremely good, but the application most wretched; for there exists a wide difference between relaxation from order and relaxation from the cruel means used to accomplish it. Part of the men so punished were some of the best men in the ship; but old or young, good or bad, they had disobeyed orders in not having their hammocks perfectly clean; they had merited punishment, and they were punished.

This incident forms a part of the customs used at sea, and what is more, this formed a part of a system of discipline, which system had received not only the sanction of a court martial, but its praise; it was said to be honourable and praiseworthy to the captain. I almost fear, from the known humanity of the English nation, that I hazard my credit with them in stating this fact, but it is nevertheless true.

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A consequence of entrusting to captains this power of punishing what they think proper is, that instead of one system pervading every ship, the discipline of each ship depends upon what is called the captain’s natural disposition; so that both officers and men, at changing their ships or their captains, are often obliged to change every mode to which they have been accustomed. From being allowed to live in all kinds of indolence, they are suddenly required to assume a large portion of activity, and very often the want of this activity, encouraged by the indolence of a former captain, is imputed to them as a crime, and endeavoured to be conquered by flogging. From discipline depending on a captain’s natural disposition, a naval life becomes a series of different educations; knowledge not established upon principles, is vague and useless, and the time that might be employed in improvements is devoted to the changing of modes. Surely this is miscalled a system, it is a collection of as many systems as there are different individuals; what is tolerated in one ship is in another a crime; what is in one applauded is in another punished; it is only a general system as it entrusts a power to men who have notoriously abused it.

Now it unfortunately happens, that the captains who feel the greatest predeliction for ships, and are, consequently, best acquainted with them, despise other knowledge, and therefore know little Edition: current; Page: [36] else but of their ships. These are the men most likely to be employed where merit is alone the question; these are the men most likely to have the education of our young men of interest, who are sure of promotion; and these are the men most certain to perpetuate all the errors and all the cruelties of custom.

The power entrusted to captains over the men was without any sort of controul until April, 1811, when punishment had then caused such frequent complaints from the seamen, and it had been proved they had borne with patience, and complained with justice, that the admiralty found it necessary to interfere; and they issued an order, that quarterly returns should be made to them of the number of men flogged in each ship; their crimes, age, time they were confined, quantity of punishments, &c. &c. but still leaving to the captain the power of inflicting punishment. Now it must be obvious to every man, that the same interest which can, in violation of every principle of justice, and of every incitement to officers for exertion, make a captain of a man, comparatively just come to sea, while thousands are toiling, and have been for years destitute of hope, must be sufficient to soften and completely obviate every censure the admiralty might be inclined to bestow on a captain - who should inflict, under the name of good for the service, unmerited or cruel punishment. Edition: current; Page: [37] As these returns are known only to the admiralty themselves, they are, therefore, responsible to nothing but their consciences for their conduct* and every man knows how easily conscience is influenced by interest. It is also rendered perfectly useless by the captains employing other means of punishment; therefore this order, though evincing the necessity there is for some check, is wholly ineffectual.

It is not my intention to point out and comment upon the effects of every one of the articles of war, or every one of the customs of the navy. Many of them are a perfect dead letter: I wish not to wake them from their dread repose, but just to direct the public attention to the most prominent figures in the picture of naval discipline, I believe they will find all its characters, all its shades, of the same dark hue, unenlightened by knowledge, untinged with mercy or benevolence, and reflecting the heaviest gloom over the character of man. Yet there are some articles of war which deserve notice, as likely to moderate the cruelty of customs, and stop tyranny and oppression. It is enacted, by the thirty-third of these articles, “that if any officer shall be convicted before a court martial of behaving in a scandalous, infamous, cruel, oppressive, Edition: current; Page: [38] or fraudulent manner, unbecoming the character of an officer, he shall be dismissed his majesty’s service.”

This might be supposed to ameliorate or prevent cruelty; but as all cruelty is relative, and as a captain is tried by captains, who all, like himself, have witnessed cruelties existing as customs, and since they have all occasionally practised them, they are all ready, from similar feelings, to make every allowance for a man who states, and probably believes, he was only promoting the good of the service when he trespassed on humanity. Experience shews, that there is no punishment for a captain who does this, that nine hundred and ninety-nine instances out of a thousand escape; besides, a prosecution is not a simple business, few are the seamen that have knowledge sufficient to conduct it, for every effort is employed to keep them in ignorance; fewer still dare oppose an authority which they are habituated to reverence from terror, and when they do still fewer succeed.

The first article of war might also be supposed to produce good, since it recalls men’s minds to the Deity; but it is so little observed, and so frequently violated, that I fear its tendency is the direct reverse. It is ordered by it “That all commanders, captains, and officers, in or belonging to any of his majesty’s ships or vessels of war, shall cause the public worship of Almighty Edition: current; Page: [39] God, according to the liturgy of the church of England, established by law, to be solemnly, orderly, and reverently performed in their respective ships, and shall take care that prayers and preaching, by the chaplains in holy orders of the respective ships, be performed diligently, and the Lord’s day be observed according to law.” But so far is Sunday from being observed as a religious day, that it is generally devoted to some particular employments without the slightest necessity. I have seen forges set to work, rigging set up, ships painted, and all manner of work performed, from no other motive but that paramount one on board ship,—the captain’s pleasure.

I am not so determined a bigot as to condemn working on Sundays as a crime when the country’s service calls for it; but I think a whole code of laws are likely to be much more respected by the body of the people if they see no open violations of any part of them by men, their superiors, whom they are accustomed to obey and respect. This law stands first in the naval code; it is solemnly and impressively worded, and it is one that the lowest class of the people are accustomed to regard with attention; for the respect due to Sunday is enforced in millions of penny pamphlets in our country, and it ministers to their pleasure and their ease; therefore its total violation, which frequently takes place on board ship, must serve to Edition: current; Page: [40] bring the whole body of the laws into contempt, exclusive of its bad effects in destroying, by the ill example of their superiors, all attention to religion in the minds of the men; thus perverting the only source of morality, and thus assisting to produce the bad character attributed to the seamen.

There is another law which has also the effect of bringing the whole code into contempt; it is the first part of the 27th article, which enacts, “That no person shall sleep upon his watch, upon pain of death or otherwise, as a court martial shall think fit.” But times have so altered since this was made, or it was made with so little knowledge of the seaman’s situation, that he is now permitted and encouraged to go to sleep. An obsolete or a contradictory law is of no consequence on shore, where people never hear of it, but on board ship this law is read, with the others, probably, once a month, with equal solemnity, and has equal force with others, to which the most rigid obedience is exacted.

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