“The men are, as you say, punished when they do wrong. I wish that punishments could be safely done away in the army and navy, but when we consider that the men are principally drawn from the lowest and most ignorant classes, it would be too much to expect them to be kept in order if insubordination were not punished. Punishment, though it may not make a culprit a better man, may prevent him from repeating the offence, and deter others from committing it; still justice should be tempered with mercy, and I have known cases wherein clemency has had the happiest effect.”
“How are officers and men generally punished?”
“You may remember that the Articles of War point out what punishment is due to a crime, though oftentimes it is not inflicted. Officers who have offended are occasionally put under arrest, and naval officers are entered at the bottom of the list of their own rank. Soldiers are imprisoned, and sometimes flogged, and Poor Jack, instead of having a rope’s end, is, now and then, sent up to the main-top, and kept there in a blow till he is almost hungry enough to gnaw the rigging like a rat.”
“Why, poor fellow! he would find nothing else there to gnaw.”
“On the subject of naval punishments Captain Hall’s opinion is, ‘that if every captain were obliged by positive regulation to adopt the following course, a great diminution in the number of punishments would ensue, that those which were inflicted would be less severe, and that the discipline of the fleet would be essentially improved. His plan is, to make it imperative on officers in command to defer specifying what the amount of any punishment is to be until twenty-four hours have elapsed after the offence has been inquired into. He also considers that great practical advantages would arise from investigating all offences between the hours of nine in the morning and noon, a period when all parties are likely to be free from those exciting causes, which need not be particularly alluded to, but which do often interfere with the course of justice when the inquiry takes place after the men have had their grog, the officers their dinner, or the captain his claret. The present regulations of the navy require that twelve hours should elapse between the inquiry and the punishment, but this is scarcely enough. The most salutary check on intemperance of any kind is a night’s rest, and surely, when so serious an affair as corporal punishment is in question, it is not requiring too much of all captains to defer passing sentence till they have consulted their pillow at least once.’”
“Captain Hall is very much in the right to say what he does.”
“Many instances of injustice in hastily awarding punishment in the navy might be given; the following is a striking example of the kind.
“Two men-of-war happened to be cruising in company; one of them, a line-of-battle ship, bearing an admiral’s flag; the other, a small frigate. One day, when they were sailing quite close to each other, the signal was made from the large to the small ship to chase in a particular direction, implying that a strange sail was seen in that quarter. The look-out man at the maintop-mast-head of the frigate was instantly called down by the captain, and severely punished on the spot, for not having discovered and reported the stranger before the flag-ship had made the signal to chase. The unhappy sufferer, who was a very young hand, unaccustomed to be aloft, had merely taken his turn at the mast-head with the rest of the ship’s company, and could give no explanation of his apparent neglect. Before it was too late, however, the officer of the watch ventured to suggest to the captain, that possibly the difference of height between the masts of the two ships might have enabled the look-out man on board the Admiral to discover the stranger, when it was physically impossible, owing to the curvature of the earth, that she could have been seen on board the frigate. No attention, however, was paid to this remark, and a punishment due only to crime, or to a manifest breach of discipline, was inflicted.
“The very next day the same officer whose remonstrance had proved so ineffectual, saw the look-out man at the flag-ship’s mast-head again, pointing out a strange sail. The frigate chanced to be placed nearly in the direction indicated; consequently she must have been somewhat nearer to the stranger than the line-of-battle ship was. But the man stationed at the frigate’s mast-head declared he could distinguish nothing of any stranger. Upon which the officer of the watch sent up the captain of the main-top, an experienced and quick-sighted seaman, who, having for some minutes looked in vain in every direction, asserted positively that there was nothing in sight from that elevation. It was thus rendered certain, or, at all events, highly probable, that the precipitate sentence of the day before had been unjust; for, under circumstances precisely similar, or even less favourable, it appeared that the poor fellow could not by possibility have seen the stranger, for not first detecting which he was punished!”
“That hasty captain ought to have been ashamed of himself. If he had only considered the matter, the man would not have been punished.”