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Patterns of Discipline and Punishment in the Royal Navy, 1783-1815

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Patterns of Discipline and Punishment in the Royal Navy, 1783-1815 THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL ‘Wanton and Torturing Punishments’: Patterns of Discipline and Punishment in the Royal Navy, 1783-1815 being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Hull by John H Dacam, BA, MA September 2009 1 Abstract The Royal Navy during the period between the end of the American Revolutionary War and the defeat of Napoleon had a record of success that was second to none, but it has long been held that this reputation was secured at the expense of its crews, who were forced to endure atrocious conditions and brutal punishments. In recent years this accusation has been challenged, and it has been argued, instead, that the punishment regime, in particular, was consonant with the criminal justice system ashore. This thesis is a contribution to the debate, specifically addressing the question of whether or not the infliction of summary punishment was administered as a measured response to misbehaviour on board or was, as has been charged, random and harsh. The research behind it included an examination of the captains’ and masters’ logs from a sample of warships of the period in order to extract the data contained within them concerning summary punishment. The literature covering the debate is examined, leading to an explanation of the objectives of the research and the methodology employed. The data from the logs is placed in context with a discussion of the nature of the punishments concerned, and the men involved in the process. Finally, the results of the analysis of the data, and especially any patterns that shed light on the nature of the response, are presented. 2 Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 4 Chapter 2: A Myth of Cruelty? 16 Chapter 3: Methodology 37 Chapter 4: Punishments: Flogging and the Alternatives 84 Chapter 5: Drink 111 Chapter 6: Crimes 137 Chapter 7: Patterns of Punishment: The Men 163 Chapter 8: Patterns: Time and Place 207 Chapter 9: Conclusion 245 Bibliography 253 3 Chapter 1: Introduction The British Navy of the time of the Napoleonic Wars acquired a fearsome reputation, not only for its success but also, in the eyes of many historians, for the cruelty with which it recruited and treated its men. It is not simply that the forms of punishment, including hanging, flogging and gagging were, to the modern eye, barbaric and unacceptable. The scale of the punishment, the constant day-to-day infliction of humiliation and pain and the ever-present fear of falling foul of the system have been seen as disproportionate and resulting in a form of harsh imprisonment, from which there was little chance of escape; and that this was the cause of the difficulty in manning the Navy, resulting in the need for the press gang. That these forms of punishment were used is well documented. But it is possible that our view of the extent of their use is, partially, a fabrication. This dissertation, based on an extensive study of log books from the period 1783 to 1815, examines these claims. Specifically, it assesses whether the discipline at this stage in the history of the Royal Navy was a measured response to the challenges posed by a sailing navy, or could be categorized as ‘wanton and torturing punishments’. Change The period around the French Wars was one of change, and it is important that attitudes towards punishment in the navy are considered against that background. The American War, which ended at the same time as the records used in this study started, dented British confidence, and losing the colony has been seen as somehow precipitating the end of slavery, Parliamentary reform and religious liberalization.1 The change that it set in motion continued through the wars with France until after the 1830s when, it is said, it 1 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (Newhaven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 352. 4 seems to have run out of steam as Britain ran out of wars.2 This change took a number of forms, but they were all interlinked. To start with, there was the development of working class consciousness, which Eric Hobsbawm considered ‘came into existence … around 1830’.3 It was unlikely to have been that sudden, and other writers have given it a more leisurely incubation. E.P. Thompson saw it as developing ‘over a considerable historical period’, which he measured as from 1780 to 1832, although it has also been suggested that there was an ‘unprecedented’ involvement of the working class in national affairs after 1776, or about the time the American war started.4 It was also seen by some as having played a part in the naval mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in 1797, something that would not, and could not, have been a factor had they occurred earlier in the century.5 The ‘plebeian soldiers’ on whom the nation depended had to be re-cast as heroes.6 And as the navy brought home a string of victories it, too, enjoyed a rise in popularity, as well as status; an unusual situation for a group of people whom writers such as Melville could characterise as always being at the bottom of society, like the wheels on a wagon.7 There was a ‘mass propaganda effort’ through pamphlets and broadsides, against the French, and describing the dangers of invasion to high and low alike, so that everyone had some measure of ownership in the wars.8 Yet the navy came in for considerable criticism after the wars and the fighting men themselves, from all services, became bitter when they 2 Ibid, p. 371. 3 E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848 (London: Cardinal, 1991), p. 255. 4 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), p. 12; Colley, Britons, p. 7. 5 Margarette Lincoln, Representing the Royal Navy: British Sea Power, 1750-1815 (London: Ashgate/NMM, 2002), p. 25. 6 Colley, Britons, p. 284. 7 Christopher Lloyd, The British Seaman 1200-1860: A Social Survey (London: Paladin, 1970), p. 225; Herman Melville, Redburn: His First Voyage (New York: Doubleday, 1957), p. 133. Although Melville wrote from an American perspective, his comment resonated across the Atlantic. 8 Stuart Semmel, ‘War of Words’, BBC History, Vol. 5, No. 12 (Dec. 2004), pp. 18-19. 5 were demobbed into the slump and unemployment that followed.9 In Georgian society, the authorities bought the acquiescence of the people by holding out hope of improvement, both spiritual and worldly; but behind the façade ‘hunger [was] stalking in the midst of the smarmy self-congratulators who mouthed pieties and doled out philanthropic halfpennies’.10 The American War had also prompted opposition to the ‘tyranny’ shown by government in starting it, and incompetence in losing it, which continued as the French Wars progressed.11 By the time peace came, Radicals like William Cobbett and Lord Cochrane saw Reform as the vehicle for removing an oppressive government and solving the country’s ills.12 Radicals and reformers ‘adopted the mantle of true patriots’, and the symbolism of the navy was adopted as a political platform.13 The other side of the Reform coin was the danger of revolution. By 1833, Ralph Waldo Emerson, in England on his return from a European trip, thought that the power of the press would push Britain towards republicanism.14 As early as 1831 Victor Hugo claimed to hear ‘the dull sound of revolution, still deep down in the earth, pushing out under every kingdom in Europe its subterranean galleries from the central shaft of the mine that is Paris’.15 In the event Britain avoided the upheavals of the following decade. Reform in 1832, however, proved disappointing: ‘after a short interval of toleration and zeal, the liberals tended to moderate their enthusiasm for further reform and to suppress 9 Andrew Lambert, in Phil Eggington, ‘Nelson and His Navy - What is the Source of the Myths about Nelson’s Navy?’ (The Historical Maritime Society, 2002), http://www.hms.ork.uk/nelsonsnavymyths.htm, viewed 20.2.06; Colley, Britons, p. 321. 10 Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (London: Penguin, 1991), pp. 344, 346. 11 Ibid., p. 345. 12 David Cordingly, Cochrane the Dauntless: The Life and Adventures of Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 1775-1860 (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), p. 261. 13 Andrew August, The British Working Class 1832-1940 (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2007), p. 10; Timothy Jenks, Naval Engagements: Patriotism, Cultural Politics, and the Royal Navy 1793-1815 (Oxford: OUP, 2006), p. 4. 14 Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits (London: The Waverly Book Company, nd.), p. 248. 15 Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, p. 371. 6 the radical left’.16 Two years later the treatment of the ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’ marked the ‘offensive against the working-class movement in Britain’.17 In retrospect the 1830s would be seen as an important decade in the development of social legislation, with reform ‘discussed and investigated at the “unofficial” and the “official” level as never before’, but it may not have seemed so to those living through it.18 At the same time there was a tendency to reform the system of justice and punishment on shore. Instead of the ‘Bloody Code’, under which some 200 offences could be punished by the death penalty, an increasing amount of consideration was being given to reforming the criminal, rather than just punishing him.19 The emphasis was moving away from exacting penalties on the body to altering the offender’s mind; but this was not because of consideration for the individual but, rather, ‘to punish better’.20 Between 1808 and 1832 the death penalty was repealed for numbers of offences ranging from pocket-picking and vagrancy to horse-stealing and counterfeiting, including some 100 in 1823 alone.21 This reforming zeal spread from the criminal justice system to improving the moral standing of the public at large, and the first English temperance society was formed in 1830.22 It is, of course, important that we look at naval punishment in the context of punishment ashore, and it may seem to us that ‘society at this time was rough and brutal, with almost all crimes being punishable by some form of physical chastisement’, so that there was nothing remarkable about 16 Ibid., p.
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