WHILE LOOKING OVER Some old pamphlets in the library of the Essex Institute at Salem, Massachusetts, a few years ago I came across a small paper covered booklet written about 1811 by Joshua Davis of Boston, an American seaman. Davis, in his old age, had fallen on evil times. Crippled with rheumatism he was unable to work and had written this short history of his personal experiences in an effort to improve his impoverished condition. During the early years of the Revolution he had served as an enlisted man on several American privateers and had been a “top man” with Captain John Manly. He was pressed on board H.M.S. Surprise at St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1779, served on several English men-of-war, finally deserted at Plymouth, England, and was smuggled back to his native land by the ship Nonparel of Boston. On the flyleaf of the booklet a short foreword attesting the truth of the narrative appears over the signature of Wm. S. Shaw, “Clerk of the District of Massachusetts.” Perhaps the most striking portion of Davis’ story is the following description of punishments in the English Navy which is quoted exactly.
If you fight and strike one of your own class, you are put in irons one night and the next day are brought on deck: tied up at the gangway, and the Boatswain’s Mate gives you a dozen lashes. If you strike a Midshipman you are put in irons one night and receive four dozen the next day. If you strike an Admiral, Commodore, Captain, or Lieutenant, you are tried by a Court Martial and sentenced to be hung up at the yardarm, or be flogged through the fleet. You have the right to speak in your own behalf, and chuse whether you will be hung or flogged. On the morning of your execution, a yellow flag is hoisted at the foretopmast head, a bow gun is fired, as a signal to the fleet, who lowers their colors to half mast.
Banging at the yardarm.—If you prefer being hung, a day is appointed for your execution—the Master-at-arms comes down and knocks off your irons, and takes you up on the quarter-deck and thence to the fore-castle, where you stand until the Captain of the Forecastle goes on the end of the fore-yard, and reves a rope through a block prepared for the purpose. One end of the rope is sent down in order to put around your neck; the other end is run in under the fore-yard, and reved through a block under the fore-top, and let down by the foremast to the forecastle, and from thence to the ship’s waist. The Boatswain calls all hands on deck. The Master-at-arms says to you, “Go up on the cathead,” and the end of the rope is made fast round your neck. The Master-at-arms says to the people, “Set tort men,” when every man and boy on board takes hold of the fall. The Chaplain then comes up and makes a short prayer—after which the Master-at-arms turns to you and says, “you are to be hung by the neck under that yard, until you are dead, dead, dead; and may the Lord have mercy on your soul”; then he orders the people to run you up, and you are run up until your head touches the yard, when he takes the rope and belays it, and there you hang about half an hour. The boats are all hoisted out in order to take you to your grave. The longboat is brought alongside with your coffin in it; when the Master-at-arms takes off the lid and you are lowered into it; he then cuts the rope, leaving the knot on your neck, your clothes are all kept on, and your hat put on your face when the lid is nailed down. The boats are all made fast to each other in a range, the Captain’s barge ahead, then the Lieutenant’s pinnace, the black cutter, the blue cutter, the yellow cutter, the red cutter follow, which are made fast to the long boat which has your body. These all go to low water, where four men jump out into the mud, and dig a hole three feet deep in which you are deposited, for the next tide to roll over.
Flogging through the fleet.—If you chuse to be flogged through the fleet, the day is appointed, when you go into the longboat with the Master-at-arms, where you are tied up by your hands to a machine made for the purpose. The Boatswain’s Mate comes down and gives you fifty lashes with a cat-o-nine-tails. The boats are ordered to be ranged as before by the Lieutenant, to tow you to the next ship, the Boatswains Mate of which comes down and gives you fifty lashes more. In this manner you are carried from ship to ship, until you get the number of lashes imposed upon you (during this time the Drummer beats the dead march and the bell strikes half minute strokes). If you live through it, you are taken to your own ship, your back washed with brine and cured as soon as possible—but if you die before you receive the complement, you are taken to every ship, and get every lash the Court Martial ordered. Finally you are put into your coffin, carried to low-water mark and there deposited.
On the 28th of December 1784, while we were laying in Plymouth Sound, in company with a number of other ships, waiting orders, a man belonging to the Queen, of 98 guns, struck his Lieutenant on the nose with his fist, which occasioned two black eyes. The man was tried by a Court Martial and sentenced to receive 800 lashes. The day he was punished, after he had been flogged alongside thirteen ships, he was brought to ours. The blanket was taken off his shoulders by our Master-at-arms, when I observed his head to hang back. Our Captain ordered the Doctor to feel his pulse, and found that the man was dead. Our Boatswains Mate was told to give him fifty lashes; “But,” says the Captain, “lay them lightly on his back.” He might as well have said to lay them lightly on his bones, for I could not see any flesh on him from his neck to his waist. After this he was carried to two other ships; and received fifty lashes at each; and then carried to low water mark and there buried in the mud.
Running the gauntlet.—If you are caught in the act of stealing, you are put into irons, and there kept, to wait the pleasure of your officers. They generally sentence you to run the gauntlet, which is done as follows: You are brought upon deck, the Boatswain pipes all hands and orders his yeoman to bring up a quantity of tarred rope yarns, of which every man is ordered to make a nettle by twisting three yarns to-gether and making three knots in one end. The men are ordered to stand in two ranks round the deck at five feet distance and face each other. You are told to strip to your trousers and get in between the ranks. The Master-at-arms walks before you with a sword under his arm with the point towards you, to prevent you from running forward—and two Corporals walk behind with swords in their hands to keep you from running back. The Boatswains Mate starts you with a stroke on the back with his cat-o-nine-tails then every man strikes you as hard and as fast as he can. You have to go around the deck in this manner three times, in common time. When you reach the break of the forecastle the Boatswains First Mate gives you a cut with his cat-o-nine-tails, the Second another, and the Third another, when you get around to the Boatswain again he gives you another, and so on until you have been around the deck three times. It is in vain for you to cry, scream, jump, roll, for you must grin and bear it, no one will pity you. Finally, you look like a piece of raw beef from your neck to the waist of your trowsers. You are taken down to the cockpit, and there have salt brine rubbed onto your back, by the Doctor’s Mate. If you should be so fortunate to get over this you must go to work again.
While the foregoing is a description of punishments in the British naval service a century and a half ago it probably is exactly as true a picture of conditions as they existed in other naval services, not only at that time, but also for a considerable number of years later. For example, I have heard an officer of the U. S. Naval Reserve repeat this description of flogging in the Danish Navy as it was told him, by his father who had been a lieutenant in that service some sixty or seventy years ago.
The culprit, stripped to the waist, was tied up by the wrists in the gangway before the assembled ships company. The Boatswains mate, holding the cat handle in his right hand and stretching the lashes across his thighs with his left, took his position with well braced feet at a slight angle to, and a convenient distance from the prisoner. The Boatswain gave the orders in one, two time as Lash! at which the cat was raised, Two! at which it was brought down on the prisoner’s back and the lashes caught in the Boatswain’s mate’s left hand on the carry through of the stroke and stretched in the first position ready for the next stroke. If I remember correctly not more than fifteen strokes were given at one time and no blood was drawn.
How times have changed in 150 years. No navy man living today can imagine the brutal degradation of a public flogging. Perhaps the old-timers in their wooden ships were men of iron and we are limber saplings in floating fortresses of steel. Be that as it may, when need has risen I fancy the endurance and fortitude of the modern man-of-war’s man would not suffer in comparison with that of those who have gone before him while his behavior certainly does not warrant such rigorous methods of correction.