Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
mander on his own authority. A court martial could and frequently
did impose stiffer sentences but three hundred lashes seems to have
been the normal limit and that was for serious crime, such as deser-
tion. It was common practice on a man-of-war to involve the crew in
the punishment of minor offenders. It was felt to be fitting that, if a
man had offended against his comrades, they should have a hand in
exacting retribution. The normal penalty for petty theft was running
(or, more accurately, 'walking') the gauntlet. The culprit made his
way between two lines of seamen, who belaboured him with knot-
ted ropes, while two marines walked with drawn swords, one be-
fore and one behind, to prevent him running or ducking his punish-
ment. The treatment of the thief aboard the
Cygnet
, thus, seems to
have combined the most extreme elements of contemporary prac-
tice. This and the bland way in which Dampier records it shows just
how brutish life was among these piratical riff-raff. Many seamen
who went 'on the account' did so partly in the hope of getting rich
quick and partly to escape what they regarded as the cruel, class-
based tyranny prevalent on naval and even merchant vessels. What
they frequently discovered was that life among the 'brotherhood'
was even more violent.
Stories of keel-hauling, flogging with the 'cat' and hanging from
the yardarm inevitably sicken the twenty-first century reader. Yet it
is important to reflect on how difficult it must have been to main-
tain order on a sailing ship. The conditions were just about the
worst imaginable for good discipline: a hundred or more men (most
of them rough-and-ready, if not actually criminal), confined in a
cramped and smelly space, with no opportunity to escape from each
other for weeks on end is a state of affairs which breeds tensions.
Most officers could maintain authority only by brutality and fear.
That was why naval and merchant captains had extensive powers.
When those powers were surrendered or made subject to common
consent, as was the case on buccaneering and privateering voyages,
