The Lieutenant and Commander Part 13

The ship's company take their dinner and grog at mid-day, and the officers dine soon after. To those who have witnessed in old times the investigation and punishment of offences immediately after the cabin dinner, the importance of this regulation will require no further argument. At any other period of the day, except that above specified, the irritation caused by fatigue, hunger, or repletion, is so apt to interfere with the temper, and consequently with the judgment, that it should never be chosen for so delicate an affair as an inquiry into details which may be followed by so dreadful a consequence as corporal punishment.

It is undoubtedly true, that the essential characteristics of naval discipline are, and ought to be, prompt.i.tude of action, and that vigorous kind of decision which leads to certainty of purpose at all times, and under all circ.u.mstances. But these very qualities are valueless, unless they are regulated by justice. Without this, a man-of-war would very soon become worse than useless to the country, besides being what a "slack ship" has been emphatically termed, "a perfect h.e.l.l afloat!"

Independently of every other consideration, it is a.s.suredly most desirable to establish throughout the fleet the conviction, that, although the punishment of flogging, which has prevailed for so long a time, cannot possibly be discontinued, it shall be exercised with a due regard to the offence, and without any added severity on personal grounds. It is difficult to estimate how essentially this conviction, if once fixed in the minds of the seamen, and guaranteed, as I think it might be, in a great measure, by a very simple Admiralty regulation, would contribute to extend the popularity of the naval service throughout the country.

There are some minor details, in addition to the above suggestions, which it may be useful to consider in connection with them. All punishments should take place between the hours of nine in the morning and noon, for the reasons hinted at above. If possible, also, not more than one day should be allowed to elapse after the inquiry; for, although there is always something like pa.s.sion in a punishment which is too prompt, there may, on the other hand, frequently appear something akin to vindictiveness in one which has been delayed until the details of the offence are well-nigh forgotten. The captain should avoid p.r.o.nouncing, either during or immediately after the investigation of an offence, any opinion on the case; much of its influence would be destroyed if the captain were to commit himself by threats made in the moment of greatest irritation; he might be apt to follow up, when cool, a threat made in anger, to show his consistency.

I could relate many instances of injustice arising from precipitancy in awarding punishment; but the following anecdotes, for the accuracy of which I can vouch, seem sufficient to arrest the attention to good purpose.

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 at 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 this the officer of the watch sent up the captain of the maintop, an experienced and quick-sighted seaman, who, having for some minutes looked in vain in every direction, a.s.serted 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 circ.u.mstances 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!

I must give the conclusion of this painful story in the words of my informant, the officer of the deck:--"I reported all this to the captain of the ship, and watched the effect. He seemed on the point of acknowledging that his heart smote him; but pride prevailed, and it was barely an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n that escaped. So much for angry feelings getting the better of judgment!"

The following anecdote will help to relieve the disagreeable impression caused by the incident just related, without obliterating the salutary reflections which it seems calculated to trace on the mind of every well-disposed officer.

Three sailors, belonging to the watering-party of a man-of-war on a foreign station, were discovered by their officer to have strayed from the well at which the casks had been filled. These men, it appears, instead of a.s.sisting in rolling the heavy b.u.t.ts and puncheons across the sand, preferred indulging themselves in a gla.s.s of a most insidious tipple, called Mistela in Spanish, but very naturally "transmogrified" by the Jacks into Miss Taylor. The offenders being dragged out of the pulperia, were consigned, without inquiry, to the launch, though they had been absent only a few minutes, and were still fit enough for work. The officer of the boat, however, happening to be an iron-hearted disciplinarian, who overlooked nothing, and forgave no one, would not permit the men to rejoin the working party, or to touch a single cask; but when the boat returned to the ship, had the three offenders put in irons.

When these circ.u.mstances were reported to the captain in the course of the day, so much acrimony was imparted to his account by the officer, that the captain merely said, "I shall be glad if you will defer stating this matter more fully till to-morrow morning, after breakfast; take the night to think of it." Tomorrow came, and the particulars being again detailed, even more strongly and pointedly, by the officer, the captain likewise became irritated, and under the influence of feelings highly excited had almost ordered the men up for immediate punishment. Acting, however, upon a rule which he had for sometime laid down, never to chastise any one against whom he felt particularly displeased without at least twenty-four hours' delay, he desired the matter to stand over till the following morning.

In the meantime, the men in confinement, knowing that their offence was a very slight one, laid their heads together, and contrived, by the aid of the purser's steward, to pen a supplicatory epistle to the captain. This doc.u.ment was conveyed to its destination by his servant, a judicious fellow. Though it proved no easy matter to decipher the hieroglyphics, it appeared evident that there were extenuating circ.u.mstances which had not been brought forward. The only remark, however, which the captain made was, that the letter ought not to have been brought to him; and that his servant was quite out of order, in being accessory to any proceeding so irregular.

The steward took the hint, and recommended the prisoners to appeal to the complaining officer. Accordingly, next day, when the captain went on deck, that person came up and said,--

"I have received a strange letter, sir, from these three fellows whom I complained of yesterday; but what they say does not alter my opinion in the least."

"It does mine, however," observed the captain, after he had spelled through it, as if for the first time.

"Indeed, sir!" exclaimed the other; adding, "I hope you won't let them off."

"I tell you what it is," quietly remarked the captain, "I would much rather you let them off than that I should; for it strikes me, that all the useful ends of discipline will be much better served, and your hands, as well as mine, essentially strengthened, by your taking the initiative in this business instead of me. My advice to you, therefore, is, that when I go below you send for the men, and say to them you have read their statement, and that, although it does by no means excuse, it certainly explains, and so far extenuates, their offence, that you feel disposed to try what your influence with the captain can do to get them off altogether."

"I do not see the force of your reasoning," answered the offended officer; "nor can I conscientiously trifle with the service in the manner proposed. I thought at first, and I still think, that these men ought to be punished; and, as far as I am concerned, they certainly shall not escape."

"Well, well," cried the captain, "you will not, I hope, deny that I am the best judge of what is right and fitting to be done on board this ship; and I tell you again, that I consider the discipline will be better served by your being the mover in this case, than by my taking the affair, as you wish me to do, entirely out of your hands. Will you do as I suggest?"

"I beg your pardon, sir, but really I cannot, consistently with my sense of duty, adopt the course you propose. I think it right to insist, as far as I can with propriety, on these men being punished."

"Turn the hands up for punishment, then!" said the captain to the first lieutenant, who had been walking on the other side of the deck during this colloquy; "and let the three prisoners be brought on deck."

The gratings were soon rigged under the mizen-stay--the quarter-masters placed with their seizings on either side--the boatswain and his mates (with the terrible weapons of naval law barely concealed under their jackets) arranged themselves in a group round the mast--while the marines, with fixed bayonets and shoulder arms, formed across the quarter-deck; and the ship's company, standing in two double rows, lined the sides of the deck. Not the slightest sound could be heard; and a person coming on deck blindfolded might have thought the ship lay in dock, without a soul on board.

In the middle of the open s.p.a.ce before the hatchway stood the three culprits, with their hats off, and their eyes cast down in hopeless despair; but, to all outward appearance, firm and unmoved.

When all was declared ready, the first lieutenant descended to the cabin, but returned again almost immediately, followed closely by the captain, in his c.o.c.ked hat and sword, grasping in one hand the well-known roll of paper containing the articles of war, and in the other the master-at-arms' report of prisoners. Every head was uncovered at his appearance; and as he lifted his hat in answer to this salute, he laid it on the capstan, against which he leaned while reading the article under which the delinquents had fallen.

"Now," said he, addressing the three prisoners, "you have been found guilty of an offence against the good order and discipline of this ship, which cannot be permitted, and which must positively be put a stop to. Heretofore it has not occurred, and I trust this will be the last case. Do you admit that you deserve punishment?"

No answer.

"Have you anything to advance why you should not be punished?"

The fellows nodged one another, sc.r.a.ped the deck with their feet, fumbled with their hats and waist-bands, and muttered something about "a letter they had written to the officer what reported them."

"Letter!" exclaimed the captain; "let me see it."

The epistle being handed to the captain, he read it aloud to the a.s.sembled ship's company, who listened with all their ears. At the conclusion, he folded it up, and, turning to the officer, asked,--

"What have you to say to this?"

"Nothing, sir--nothing," was the obdurate reply.

"Well now, my lads," observed the captain to the crew, after a pause of several minutes, "I shall give you a chance. These fellows appear, by their own confession, to have done what they knew to be wrong; and accordingly, as you perceive, they have brought themselves close aboard of the gangway. It would serve them all perfectly right to give each of them a good sound punishment. But I am willing to hope, that if I forgive them on your account--that is to say, if I let them off in consideration of the good conduct of the ship's company, and in confidence of your all behaving well in future--they will be quite as much disposed to exert themselves to recover their characters, as if they had tasted the bitterness of the gangway: at all events, I'll try them and you for once. Pipe down!"

It is only necessary to state further, that for nearly a year afterwards there occurred no instance of drunkenness or neglect at the watering parties.

There is one other point of importance in this discussion, and as it seems to possess a considerable a.n.a.logy in its bearing to the suggestions already thrown out, it may possibly have greater weight in conjunction with them than if it were brought forward alone. In every system of penal jurisprudence it seems to be of the first importance to let it be felt that the true degradation lies more in the crime itself, than in the expiatory punishment by which it is followed.

Whenever this principle is not duly understood, punishments lose half their value, while they are often virtually augmented in severity. The object of all punishments is evidently to prevent the recurrence of offences, either by others or by the offender himself. But it is not, by any means, intended that he should not have a full and fair chance allowed him for a return to virtue. The very instant punishment is over, he should be allowed to start afresh for his character. If a man is never to have his offence or his chastis.e.m.e.nt forgotten, he can hardly be expected to set seriously about the re-establishment of his damaged reputation.

Neither ought it to be forgotten, that a man so circ.u.mstanced has really stronger claims on our sympathy, and is more ent.i.tled to our protection, than if he had never fallen under censure. He has, in some sort, if not entirely, expiated his offence by the severity of its consequences; and every generous-minded officer must feel that a poor seaman whom he has been compelled, by a sense of duty, to punish at the gangway, instead of being kept down, has need of some extra a.s.sistance to place him even on the footing he occupied before he committed any offence. If this be not granted him, it is a mere mockery to say that he has any fair chance for virtue.

It might, therefore, I think, be very usefully made imperative upon the captain, at some short period after a punishment has taken place (say on the next muster-day), and when the immediate irritation shall have gone off, to call the offender publicly forward, and in the presence of the whole ship's company give him to understand that, as he had now received the punishment which, according to the rules of the service, his offence merited, both the one and the other were, from that time forward, to be entirely forgotten; and that he was now fully at liberty to begin his course anew. I can a.s.sert, from ample experience, that the beneficial effects of this practice are very great.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] The recent instructions issued by the Board of Admiralty would have gratified Captain Hall had he lived to read them; harmonizing as they do with the system he so earnestly advocates.

CHAPTER XVI.

BOMBAY.

Early on the morning of the 11th of August, 1812, we first made the coast of Asia; and, on steering towards the sh.o.r.e, discovered, close under the land, a single sail, as white as snow, of a cut quite new to our seamanship, and swelled out with the last faint airs of the land-breeze, which, in the night, had carried us briskly along sh.o.r.e.

As we came nearer, we observed that the boat, with her head directed to the northward, was piled half-mast high with fruits and vegetables, cocoa-nuts, yams, plantains, intended evidently for the market of Bombay. The water lay as smooth as that of a lake; so we sheered close alongside, and hailed, to ask the distance we still were from our port. None of the officers of the Volage could speak a word of Hindustanee; and I well remember our feeling of humiliation when a poor scullion, one of the cook's a.s.sistants, belonging to the governor's suite, was dragged on deck, with all his grease and other imperfections on his head, to act as interpreter. Sad work he made of it; for, though the fellow had been in the East on some ten or twelve former voyages, the languages of the countries he visited had not formed so important a part of his studies as the quality of the arrack and toddy which they produced. The word Bombaya, however, struck the ear of the native boatmen, who pointed in the direction which they themselves were steering, and called out "Mombay! Mombay!" This word, I am told by an oriental scholar, is a corruption of Moomba-devy, or the G.o.ddess of Moomba, from an idol to which a temple is still dedicated on the island. Others, less fanciful in their etymology, say that the Portuguese gave it the name of Bom-Bahia, on account of the excellence of its Port. That nation held possession of Bombay from the year 1530 to 1661, when it was ceded by the crown of Portugal in full sovereignty to Charles II.

It was not long before we came in sight of several headlands. When the next day broke, and the sun rose upon us over the flat topped Gauts or mountains of the Mahratta country, I remember feeling almost at a loss whether I had been sleeping and dreaming during the night. But the actual sight of the coast gave reality to pictures which, for many a long year before, I had busied my fancy with painting, in colours drawn partly from the Arabian Nights and Persian Tales, and partly, if not chiefly, from those brilliant cl.u.s.ters of oriental images which crowd and adorn the pages of Scripture.

Captain Cook a.s.serts somewhere, speaking of the delights of voyaging and travelling, that to such rovers as he and his companions nothing came amiss; and I can safely venture to boast, that, as far as this goes, I may claim a corner of my great brother officer's mantle. At all events, in sailing over the Indian seas, or travelling in those countries by land, I hardly ever met anything which did not so much exceed in interest what I had looked for, that the grand perplexity became, how to record what I felt, or in any adequate terms to describe even the simplest facts which struck the eye at every turn in that "wide realm of wild reality."

Of all places in the n.o.ble range of countries so happily called the Eastern world, from the pitch of the Cape to the islands of j.a.pan, from Bengal to Batavia, there are few which can compare with Bombay.

If, indeed, I were consulted by any one who wished as expeditiously and economically as possible to see all that was essentially characteristic of the Oriental world, I would say, without hesitation, "Take a run to Bombay; remain there a week or two; and having also visited the scenes in the immediate neighbourhood, Eliphanta, Carli, and Poonah, you will have examined good specimens of most things that are curious or interesting in the East."