For a country surrounded
by water there is little or no theme in Irishcriminology which
addresses that fact. Seldom does one, therefore, run across a
murder or a mutiny that was played out on the local stage, as it
were. Sea-faring murders and exploits , it seems, belong to a
shadowy history that no one quite remembers past the mention of
Brien Boru and the Danes at Clontarf.
Imagine my surprise, then,
when I discovered this beauty in the National Archives. I felt an
immediate compulsion to see it through, gather what papers there
were available on it, and record it. My only regret was that the
Archives could not produce the original map and sketch which was
presented at the first trial; and no matter how I sought to find
it – for it must be there, somewhere – nothing was forthcoming.Fortunately, as can be
seen from the following extracts, an image of the real Caswell (which occupies pride of place on the book cover)as well as
images of the dramatis personae, were retrievable from all kinds
of unlikely places ,and with the assistance of several of those
herein acknowledged.Out of small references,
therefore, the story led on to two major mutiny trials in Cork in
the mid-1870s – the first into the behaviour of Emmanuel Bombos, a
young Greek, and, the second into the part played by Joseph
Pistoria, a Sicilian. These trials afforded us some rare accounts
of nineteenth century executions, and account of the attitudes of
the public – the people of Cork particularly -- to the fate of the
unfortunate offenders.There is no disguising the
brutality of the mutiny or the ferocity of the counter-mutiny.
Nevertheless, they cannot be dislocated from the prevailing
attitudes of sailors at the time, or the prevailing
attitudes to sailors, especially Greeks and Turkish
sailors. Neither can the personality of Captain George Best be
left out of the equation. In an extended Introduction I have tried
to deal with the historical aspects of these ‘roles’, fully aware
of the fact that words cannot replace actions.What follows here is a
Synopsis, Acknowledgements, and an Introduction to the story of The Riddle of The Caswell Mutiny.
Synopsis
In December 1875 captain George ‘‘Bully’ Best found himself in
Buenos Aires without a crew and without a cargo. His men had for
the most part deserted him. Before making his way to Antofogasta,
where he loaded up with Saltpeter (nitrate), he recruited a‘ mixed
crew’ of Greeks and British.
The British refused to
sail with the Greeks, and rather than allow them onshore to see
the British Consul, captain Best beat them and put them in irons..
Even before the Caswell sailed for Queenstown on January 1 1876,
an Irishman and a German jumped ship and were never heard of
again.Obvious tensions might
lead one to expect a British mutiny. And perhaps this might have
happened had not the Greeks beaten them to it. For some
unexplained reason the Greeks, under the influence of 'Big George'
Peno, mutinied and killed the captain, the first and second mates,
and the black Welsh steward. All four bodies were lashed to an
anchor and thrown overboard.By February two of the
mutineers, the brothers Pistoria, escaped by boat up the river
Plate to Buenos Aires. The remainder drifted under Greek command
until March 11th, when the British counter mutinied and killed two
of their captors. A third mutineer was brought back to Queenstown
to be tried for Murder on the High Seas.Young Christos Emmanuel
Bombos found himself imprisoned with a sixty three year old Fenian
named Thomas Crowe. Both men provided the spectacle of a 'double
hanging' in Cork's male prison. A full eyewitness account is given
of the executions, which happen to be one of the most striking
events in nineteenth century penological literature.Three years later one of
the escaped mutineers was arrested in Monte Video and a second
trial was staged in Cork.Of the sixteen persons who
set out from Buenos Aires:*two jumped ship;*four were murdered in the
mutiny; *two were murdered in the countermutiny;*one was hanged in 1876
and another in 1879;
*and six returned to tell
the tale.
The Riddle Of The Caswell Mutiny
Seamus Breathnach
* Paperback: 268 pages
* Publisher: Universal Publishers; (June 2003)
* ISBN: 1581125771
Amazon.com
http://www.upublish.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581125771
Contents
Acknowledgements |
. |
vi |
Introduction |
. |
viii |
Chapter 1: |
An Old Crew |
1 |
Chapter 2: |
A New Crew |
16 |
Chapter 3: |
Mutiny |
36 |
Chapter 4: |
Counter-Mutiny |
58 |
Chapter 5: |
The Trials of Bombos |
76 |
Chapter 6: |
Letters And Petitions |
97 |
Chapter 7: |
The Case Of Thomas Crowe |
112 |
Chapter 8: |
A Double Execution |
132 |
Chapter 9: |
Hue And Cry The Caswell |
146 |
Chapter 10: |
The Trial Of Joseph Pistoria (Alias Francesco
Moschara) |
168 |
Chapter 11: |
The Execution of Francesco Moschara (Alias Joseph
Pistoria) |
178 |
Chapter 12: |
Aftermath And Epilogue |
193 |
Appendix A |
. |
211 |
Caswell Calendar |
. |
221 |
References |
. |
223 |
Index |
. |
227 |
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSAs might be imagined I
have many debts to pay for kindnesses rendered while compiling
this book.Amongst these creditors is
my friend Padraigh O Snodaigh to whom I am indebted for more years
than I care to remember. The debts extend as much for casual as
for studied contributions over the years. At present I am indebted
to him for reading the script before completion and for making
some suggestions.I wish to thank Niall O
Cearbhaill for reading a further draft, not to mention those O
Snodaigh-inspired discourses at Club an Chonartha.I wish to thank Tom Rice
for his comments and his companionship, the exchanges in the Eire
Og Football Clubhouse, the post-prandial analyses in Teach Dolman
and elsewhere in Carlow.I wish to thank Frank
Taaffe for opening his considerable library to me, his family for
support, and to Brid for making my sojourns and stopovers in Athy
so pleasant and memorable.I also wish to thank Larry
Darcy, Martina Darcy, ‘Pod’ Shaw, Mary Walsh, Betty Byrne,
Monica-Byrne O’Malley, Stephen Fleming, Jacinta Schweppe, and
'Patsy' Hearns for their encouragement, enthusiasm and humour.I owe much to the National
Archives, to the front desk operatives, and to Gregory O’Connor in
particular for his earlier advices and assistance.I wish to pay special
thanks to Cobh Library and to the Belfast, Dunlaoire, and Cobh
Maritime Museums.
My gratitude to Penny
Rudkin (of the Special Collections Library, Southampton City
Council, Civic Centre, Southampton, SO14 7LW) for some useful
hints and, in particular, for informing me of the exhibition,
‘Under sail - Swansea cutters, tall ships and seascapes
1830-1880,’ which was held at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery,
Alexandra Road, Swansea.
INTRODUCTION
Fear of the contingency of
life is part of the human condition. While controlling some things
that govern our lives we acknowledge the existence of other forces
about which we can do little or nothing. In every walk of life
people have to make choices, even when they are not in full
possession of the facts. In this sense each of us enters endless
relations without our will, knowing that we never have full
possession of ‘all the facts.’
This fact of life is no
less true for sailors, who live a life at sea, and in the 1870s
they had their own peculiar concerns with which to cope. For our
purposes -- which is to locate the parameters in which the story
of the Caswell mutiny can best be related -- these concerns
can be reduced to four. There was the possible fear of redundancy
or displacement and/or a diminution of a sailor’s self-esteem
(brought about by the development of steam). There was the
definite fear of death (arising out of the ordinary and every day
hazards of service on the high seas). There was also the constant
apprehension of government on board a ship, which means, possible
cruelty or personal violence from above (captain and mates) or
rebellion from below (able bodied seamen), the one no doubt
arising from the fear of the other. And finally, there was the
sometime fear of racism, violence, or mutiny amongst one’s fellow
crewmembers.
These four concerns apply
exclusively in peacetime and were above and beyond the rigors of
the sailor’s ordinary life at sea. One doubts whether we can
understand a sailor’s lot in the 1870s; but if we look at these
individual loci of possible apprehension, we may the more easily
come to terms with comprehending something of what it must have
been like.
Sail, Steam and the Suez
Canal
With the European
colonization of overseas territories came a dramatic increase in
international trade from the mid-18th century onwards. Trading
ships sailed along recognised trade routes, including the monsoon
and wind corridors of the world. Perhaps the two greatest
inventions, which impacted on imperial commerce, were steam and
the telegraph. First developed in Britain at the end of the 17th
century by Henry Newcomen, steam was further improved by James
Watt in 1769, and was used in ships in the early 1800s. Even if it
initially needed coal stations, steampowered vessels improved
reliability and speed. They were also ingeniously free from the
constraints imposed by winds and tides. The fear of displacement
by steam was probably the most general and the least immediate of
a sailor’s concerns. It is evident to us in the twenty first
century that sail was eventually destined to be replaced by steam
and, eventually, by nuclear power. In retrospect these progressive
signs were unmistakable.
To take but two obvious if
preliminary examples all we need do is to consider the enormous
growth in the military and commercial use of ships or recall the
opening of the Suez Canal.
Steam’s greatest assault
on sail arose -- not surprisingly -- from its military potential.
Throughout history the military demand for innovation persisted
apace with the drive for national and international power. The
sole purpose of ‘a man of war’ was to carry guns. In size, as well
as in science, the deep focus of the State was on a ship’s
military capacity. Henry VII’s most famous ship the ‘Great Happy’
or ‘ Henri grace a Dieu’,
weighed 1,000 tons, carried 349 soldiers, and housed 301 mariners
and 50 gunners. That was in 1514. By adding 85 sea-going vessels
to his fleet, Henry managed to hold the balance of power in
Europe.
The value of sail-power or
sea-power was never to be forgotten by the British. By logical
extension it initially translated into the equation that more
sails invariably meant more guns and better and bigger ships.
Innovations were devoutly to be wished, and in the 1770s, copper
plating was introduced to make the fleet firmer and faster. In the
1830s experiments in steam at Chatham began the eclipse of sail
from a military standpoint, and by 1860 the Warrior, an
iron clad teak warship, virtually made everything else obsolete.
Its single-engine steam capacity only operated when challenged --
otherwise it sailed as a simple deterrent, concealing its
prototypical capacity, at first as a steam-ship, but eventually as
a nuclear submarine or as an Air Carrier. Hardly had the dust
settled on the arguments about where to put paddles and
propellers, when nuclear power found its way into the one-time
coalbunkers.
But while nuclear power
was some distance away in 1876. If we look at the contemporary
ships, we find that most were concerned with size and capacity.
The latest ships -- the HMS Baccanta and Boadicea,
for example, had been newly launched at Portsmouth, while the HMS Euralus was still under construction at Chatham. These
wern’t ironclads of the line, but rather swift unarmored corvettes
used (like the Nelson off the Clyde) for cruising as well
as 'looking after merchant vessels.' The more mature ships ranged
from 3000 tons (the HMS Volage) to 5782 tons (the HMS Inconstant). Between this 3000-5782 ton-range lay others like
HMS Euralus, which, while under construction in 1876, had a
projected weight of 4070 tons; its engines propelling at 5250
indicated horsepower. The Euralus was expected to carry
sixteen guns -- fourteen 4-and- a-half tons, and two 64-pounders,
as well as a range of torpedoes. Its length between perpendiculars
was 280 feet, its extreme breadth 45 ft 6 ins. and its depth in
hold 15 ft 3 ins. It was being built to carry 400 tons of coals
and its complement of officers and men was no less than 350.
Already over threeand- a-half years had been
spent on her construction, her keel having been laid on March 15, 1873. And by October ‘76 she was as
yet litle more than half finished.
However impressive these
military-type ships were, perhaps the best statistic to
demonstrate how far the capacity for British shipbuilding had come
was to be found on the Clyde; for nowhere had the shipbuilding
industry flourished more than on the Clyde, which, in November
1876, employed no less than 40,000 workers. Not only that, but it
was reckoned at that time that the Clyde's shipyards alone could
re-build the whole of the British fleet in no more than two years.
There is no denying that
coincident with steam came the widening of the world's waterways.
Accordingly, in November 1869, the opening of Suez (forever
associated with the Slave’s Chorus in Verdi’s Aida) celebrated the
‘shortcut’ to the East. This meant that steamers, now loading up
with coal at Gibraltar, Port Said, and Aden, enjoyed an enduring
advantage over the sailing ship. However glorious the history of
sail is, in the 1870s it appeared to many that, for the first
time, sail’s lucrative commerce was not just threatened, but was
in time displaceable. Fortunately this did not happen suddenly,
nor was it considered a realistic threat to the clippers of the
'70s.
The worth of a small
vessel like that of the Caswell, with a respective net and
gross weight of 499 and 517 tons, can only be gauged against the
undeniable thrust for bigger, better and more efficient ships. But
just as it would be foolish to deny the State’s military
expectations, so, too, would it be equally foolish to exaggerate
the effects of those expectations. In the civil and commercial
world of the 1870s, far from being threatened by steam, sailing
barques like the Caswell were at the peak of commercial
demand and were prized accordingly.
Before Suez, for example,
sail tonnage reached a high of 4.6 million tons, whereas steam --
by gradual improvements -- shipped only 0. 8 million tons. Even
five years after the Suez Canal opened -- that is three years
before the Caswell mutiny occurred -- sail carried 4.1
million tons to steam’s 1.68 million. Aided by colonial wool, jute
from Calcutta, and grain from San Francisco, sail held its own and
even made a comeback.
As Basil Lubbock has
convincingly argued (in The Last
of the Windjammers (vol. 111,
Glasgow, 1975), it was only in the eighties and nineties that
sail’s great markets finally surrendered to improved steam. In the
nineties the demand for large steel windjammers was undeniable,
but this was twenty years after the Caswell mutiny, and
even then, the four-mast barques could still give the steamers a
run for their money on the open seas.
In the 1870s, therefore,
the eventual if dismal destiny of sail may have been visible but
was not as yet felt except in the most rarified circles. For most
people, steam merely pronounced the value of sail as a commercial
venture, and, under its competitive stimulus , says Lubbock, ‘Sail
came to its perfection’. The clippers of the seventies were
reckoned to be the most beautiful ever launched, the most perfect
being that composite of wood and iron called the Torrens,
an Adelaide passenger ship launched the same year as the Caswell. The Caswell, of course, was no less elegant if
built for cargo, and, if not superior to the American Cape Horners
launched in the eighties, she was perfectly admirable in her time.
That being the case, one
might have expected the captain of the Caswell (and the
owners and the insurers) to pay due attention to the selection of
crewmembers as well as to their treatment and well-being. The
commercial status of the Caswell deserved no less. And
since both of these matters were firmly in the hands of the
captain, much depended on his personality and judgment.
Hazards on the High Seas
So, if the sailor had no
fear of displacement, what other fears did he have?
The second -- and by far
the more significant -- external concern of seamen in the 1870s
arose from the natural hazards attaching to life on the high seas.
These included disease, disasters, and assorted accidents. If we
look at each of these briefly, it will be apparent that most
fatalities increasingly came from accidents. Mutinies, by
contrast, if not infrequent, were numerically minimal when
compared with the other risk factors facing a sailor who chose his
ship at random.In the case of disease,
the story of the discovery of the prophylactic properties of
limejuice is a convenient example. It happened that during the
blockade of Toulon in the summer of 1793, many of the ships’
companies became afflicted with scurvy. It became such a threat
that Lord Hood, then commander in chief in the Mediterranean,
forbade ships carrying scurvy from entering port, and in effect
prohibited them from obtaining even necessary supplies! His
Lordship was provident enough, however, to allow one ship into
port for the express purpose of obtaining lemons for the use of
the fleet.This incident was most
fortuitous, for, in due course, due largely to the consumption of
lemons, it became evident that the incidence of sickness in the
Royal Navy fell from one-in-four to one-in-ten annually. This
welcome discovery progressively relieved the clogged hospital bays
on the ships themselves as well those in dry dock.In time, the general
supply of lemon-juice provided other valuable advantages to the
navy, not least in the ability of ships’ companies to continue at
sea for longer periods than hitherto had been the case. The lemon
subdued scurvy. And with the widespread and gradual improvement in
general hygiene, coupled with the introduction of an ample supply
of beef and vegetables (again by Lord Hood) -- particularly during
their service in blockades -- other longterm advantages were to
follow. This did not mean that
medical mishaps were brought under foreseeable control. Hardly! As
late as 1895, for example, the Trafalgar traveled from
Cardiff to New York and then to Batavia, where to avoid Java
fever, the men were virtually imprisoned. Some sailors escaped and
one was recaptured. Unfortunately, when he was taken on board, he
infected the crew, and. many of those on board the Trafalgar died of Java fever. Later still, in 1907 when the Cape Horn arrived at Falmouth, she docked with beriberi, killing one and
hospitalising others. In short, the fear of contagion on the high
seas was ever present. One need only recall the history of fever,
plague, dysentery, small pox, typhus, cholera, malaria, and other
diseases too numerous to mention, to realise the contribution made
by modern medicine to the longevity of the average sailor. But for our purposes it
must be realised that disease was only one form of possible hazard
-- and a minor one at that! Other hazards, by contrast, included
accident, collision, wreckage, ice, fire and fog, as well as
countless others too numerous to mention.
As the following brief
extract demonstrates, the mortality rate for sailors in the 1870s
had multiple as well as decvastating causes.
“1873, Jan. 22. -- British steamer
Northfleet sunk in collision
off Dungeness, 300 lives lost
1873, Nov. 23. -- White Star liner Atlantic
wrecked off Nova Scotia, 547 lives lost.
1873, Nov. 23. -- French line Ville du
Havre, from New York to Havre, in collision with ship Locharn and
sunk in sixteen minutes, 110 lives lost.
1874, Dec. 24. -- Emigrant vessel Cospatrick
took fire and sank off Auckland, 476 lives lost.
1875, May 7. -- Hamburg Mail steamer
Schiller wrecked in fog on Scilly Islands, 200 lives lost.
1875, Nov. 4. -- American steamer Pacific in
collision thirty miles southwest of Cape Flattery, 236 lives lost.
1878, March 24. -- British training ship
Eurydice, a frigate, foundered near the Isle of Wight, 300 lives
lost.”
The above extract, taken
from the Sinking of the Titanic
and Great Sea Disasters (edited
by Logan Marshall - see also Website at <ftp//ftp.biblio. org>)
acquaints us with the general sea-faring risk in the 1870s from
random causes other than disease. Deaths from mutiny, which brings
us to our third concern, were by contrast quite insignificant
numerically.
Government OnboardPerhaps what fascinates
people about mutiny is not so much the numbers killed as the
social and political relationships that bring it about. Mutiny is
rebellion at close quarters. It is first and foremost about a
captain and his crew, and how that relationship is formed and
fractured. It is about understanding why a crew, against all the
odds, including its own selfinterest, should turn on its captain
with venom and hatred. Unlike disease, the source of mutiny does
not reside in a force outside human control, nor is it ever the
result of accident. Quite obviously, it is the product of human
will, and ought, therefore, to be amenable to reason.In this sense the actions
of the captain and crew of the Caswell should also be
amenable to reason. And even if it is at the turn of the twenty
first century that we reflect upon a matter that occurred in
1875/6 -- when full details and records are hard to come by -- we
can, nevertheless, sketch some aspect of that mutiny, delineate
its contours, and, where possible, fill up the canvas with some
colouring. Towards this end it is necessary to say something of
the government of the sailing ship, particularly through our
historical image of both the sea captain and his crew.Thus far we can see how
the need for benevolent autocracy on board ship was universally
appreciated and constantly justified. Disease and plague always
called forth severe government -- one which all too often imposed
conditions that would quarantine the crew for days and weeks. It
is axiomatic to say that in times of plague the individual
survives by virtue of group action. In the interests of survival
all hands have to act as one. This also meant, of course, that
--whether by way of excuse or genuine concern -- a ship could
within seconds be turned into a floating prison, too often with a
tyrant at the helm.Sea-CaptaincyFor centuries the
ferocious character of the English sea captain was bound up with
the fortunes of the fleet and the rise of the nation state. At
first, in the age of discovery, the captain was seen as a
patriotic explorer, (Columbus, Magellan. Drake and Raleigh), then
as the defender of Faith and Fatherland (Granville, Frobisher,
Gilbert, Howard of Effingham, and Nelson), then as a free-for-all
buccaneer (captains Henry Morgan, and Henry Avery), as an
adventurous pirate (captains Teach, Gow, and Kidd), and latterly
as either an Officer in the Royal Navy, a Gentleman or as a simple
laissez-faire entrepreneur in the Merchant Navy. Little need be
said about the patriotic explorers; for whether we talk about
Europe or the Argentine, the West Indies, Hong Kong, the
Philippines, Mexico, North or South America -- there is hardly a
country outside China in which we will not find a goodly supply of
full-bodied admirals and conquistadores cluttering up every public
square from Trafalgar to Trinidad. And O’Connell’s Street in
Dublin (before the demolition of Nelson’s Pillar by the IRA) was
no exception. To a great extent the sea captains carried
autocratic cruelty across every gangplank, as if it were a
perquisite of government upon the high seas. Whatever their
personal profiles, they were held up in the public mind as
patriots with personas as prominent as their statues.
Until the publication of
Alexander Exquemelin’s De
Americaensche Zee- Rover little
or nothing was realized of the inner autocracy of a ship’s
government. The book appeared in Amsterdam in 1678 and in London
in 1684. Only then did the reading public get a glimpse into the
buccaneering persona. The sacking of Panama in 1671 by captain
Henry Morgan helped to correct the patriotic pomp in which Drake
and the Elizabethan explorers basked. Throughout the first quarter
of the eighteenth century -- perhaps the high point of piracy on
the high seas-- murder, rape, robbery, and pillage became
synonymous with sailing. In his famous account of piracy, Charles
Johnson (another nom de plume of Daniel Defoe?) selected
his captains because of their crimes. Accordingly, in his 'General
History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates' (London, 1724), there is hardly a
sea-pirate, with the exception of Anne Bonny (the Cork lass tried
in Jamaica in November, 1720), who did not die a most violent
death; or whose head, like Blackbeard’s, did not eventually
decorate the end of a Bowsprit.
Yet it is through the
medium of ‘high literature’ that these very violent sea captains
are romanticised. In the person of the sea captain, violence
manifests itself in defence mode, defending the faith, or, later
on, the realm or, later on, in defence of personal honour. It only
becomes social when Defoe’s famous novel entitled, The Life and Strange and Surprising
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was
published in 1719.
Hitherto it was argued
that Crusoe was based upon the experiences of Alexander
Selkirk, who ran away to sea in 1704. Selkirk requested to be left
on an uninhabited island in the Juan Fernandez Islands some
hundreds of miles off the coast of Chile. He reputedly spent over
four years there before being rescued by a crew of mutineers. This
most Christian of anarchists then contrives to cultivate a servant
(a native, ‘Man Friday’), while being, at the same time, beset by
cannibals -- the moral of Crusoe being to demonstrate that
society and hierarchy are two social imperatives which imply a
third, namely, the need for a captain -- preferably one with an
English accent who sits at the governmental helm of things. This
moral is further evident in Crusoe’s two sequels, The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) and The Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe,
(1720). The violence and autocracy of the virtuous sea captain is
unashamedly continued in The Life,
Adventures, and Pyracies of the
famous captain Singleton, (London 1720) and The King of the Pirates, Being an Account of
the Famous Enterprises of captain Avery (1724). Both Singleton and Avery are
depicted as exploitative egoists, violent if needs be, and
rational rather than reasonable.
A century later the
English-speaking sea captain became suitably refined. Even when
Herbert Melville’s Moby Dick connected the New England
Quakers with cannibalism, the quiet dignity of captain George
Pollard was assured. In general, however, the focus began to shift
from the rugged captain to the sea-faring experience itself. In
the 1820s accounts like The Red Rover and The Pilot, A Tale of the Sea, by James Fenimore Cooper (Two Vols. New
York, published by Charles Wiley, 1823) brought home the
excitement of exploits in the Americas. Again patriotism featured
significantly, and the psychotic sea-captain was being refined
considerably.
The Common SailorFrom concern with the
denizens of the quarterdeck to concern for those of the
forecastle, is a long way to travel; for quarterdeck and
forecastle may be only yards away on a ship, they are also as
distant and as dismal as class relations are on land, the
difference being, that on board ship one end of the town cannot at
any time turn its back on the other. And to introduce these
onboard tensions to the world, it soon became apparent that the
common sailor -- not at all unlike the common twentieth century
‘cowboy’ under Hollywood management -- had to be sterilised before
his pedestrian concerns could be brought to bear on public
consciousness.
At first he was
Christianised (even Quakerised) by Thomas Lurting (The
Fighting Sailor Turn’d
Peaceable Christian: HTML at
voicenet.com; London, 1711). And only two centuries later could he
be introduced to the fair sex, when he was romanticised in a
sentimental way by Margaret Marshall Saunders (Her Sailor: A
Love Story: Boston, L.C. Page, 1900). Later still, as sail had
lost its savagery, the sailor became sanctified by age both by S.
T. Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner' and F. C. Woodworth's 'Stories
by Jack Mason, the Old Sailor', (NY. 1851). Woodworth, under the pseudonym, 'Theodore Thinker,'
wrote a series of 'old-man-of-thesea' stories laced with
blueberry-pie morality, recalling the adventures of whaling and
travel. These stories were aimed at a younger generation with a
growing interest in sea-faring adventures.
With the exception of the Mutiny on the Bounty, very few serious works touched upon
the internal dynamism of government on the high seas, and when
they did, they pointed up the exact same moral dilemma. There have
been several movies made of Mutiny on the Bounty, not least
because it harvested a crop of concerns that is common to all of
us, even in our everyday lives. It is this gripping moral dilemma
in which we recognise ourselves immediately. And through it we
identify with the subject matter of the mutiny, which resonates
throughout all cultures. In Act 111, Scene 1, Hamlet shouts it
from world end to English-speaking world end:
“To be or not to be, that is the question:
Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer
the slings and arrows outrageous fortune
or to take arms against a sea of troubles and
by opposing end them?”
This is the question that
Fletcher Christian poses when he can take no more of Captain
Bligh’s cruelty. Everywhere in the river of life we are all called
upon to try and stop the flood, 'to take arms against a sea of
troubles' and somehow end them. How we respond to violence is at
the centre of our identity' it is what rivets us to Hamlet as well
as to the Mutiny on the Bounty.
It is also the question
which, in even graver terms , confronts Martin Luther, the
religious reformer. And he answers: ‘Hier stehe Ich; Ich kann
nichts anders.’ ‘Here I stand; I can do no other.’ And on a less
elevated plane it also constitutes the Riddle of the Caswell
Mutiny.It is by virtue of these
concerns that Richard Henry Dana, Jr's account of his experiences
in the early nineteenth century have become so important. In his Two Years Before the Mast (The Harvard Classics, 1909-14),
this young Harvard student reminded his readers of the less
savoury side of a seaman’s life. When he shipped out of Boston in
August 1834 on the brig Pilgrim, he witnessed many things,
but none had left such an indelible impression on him as the
unnecessary flogging of two colleagues -- Sam, and John the Swede.
Not unlike what happened on the Bounty, Dana demonstrates
how a ship could be transported within minutes into the most
violent abode. What is of particular importance to us, and to our
understanding of the Caswell mutiny, is the group dynamic,
or the effective chain of reactions to the captain’s abuse of
power. Because of this single issue we have dwelt at length --
and, hopefully, profitably -- on Dana’s extraordinary narrative.
The nameless captain had
apparently been picking on people for a few days. He had already
threatened the cook with a flogging for dropping some wood on the
deck. Now he was reproaching Sam, who was 'a good sailor,' even if
he was a little 'slow.' John the Swede and others were standing by
the main hatchway when they heard the captain’s voice ' raised in
violent dispute' down in the hold: -
“You see your condition! You see your
condition! Will you ever give me any more of your jaw?” No answer;
and then came wrestling and heaving, as though the man was trying
to turn him.
“You may as well keep still, for I have got you,” said the
captain. Then came the question, “Will you ever give me any more
of your jaw?”
“I never gave you any, sir,” said Sam; for it was his voice that
we heard, though low and half choked.
“That’s not what I ask you. Will you ever be
impudent to me again?” “I never have been, sir,” said Sam. “Answer my question, or I’ll make a spread
eagle of you! I’ll flog you, by G-d.” “I’m no negro slave,” said Sam.
“Then I’ll make you one,” said the captain;
and he came to the hatchway, and sprang on deck, threw off his
coat, and rolling up his sleeves, called out to the mates --
“Seize that man up, Mr. A__, Seize him up! Make a spread eagle of
him. I’ll teach you all who is master aboard.”
With this the crew and
officers followed the captain up the hatchway, and after repeated
orders the mate laid hold of Sam, who made no resistance. They
then carried him to the gangway. It was at this stage that another
crewmember responded.
“What are you going to flog that man for, Sir?” said John the
Swede, to the captain.”
Upon hearing this, the
captain turned on him and ordered that he be put in irons. John
the Swede went peaceably aft to the quarterdeck, while the captain
attended to Sam. The captain was going to whip Sam personally
while the crew ‘grouped together in the waist’, and Dana began to
feel sick and angry at the sight of a man being ‘fastened up and
flogged like a beast.’ Having lived with Sam for months, Dana said
that he regarded Sam as ‘his brother.’ Describing his mixed
reactions, he reflected:
“The first and almost uncontrollable impulse
was resistance. But what was to be done? The time for it had gone
by. The two best men were fast, and there were only two beside
myself, and a small boy of ten or twelve years of age. And then
there were (beside the captain) three officers, steward, agent and
clerk. But beside the numbers, what is there for sailors to do? If
they resist, it is mutiny; and if they succeed, and take the
vessel, it is piracy. If they ever yield again, their punishment
must come; and if they do not yield, they are pirates for life. If
a sailor resists his commander, he resists the law, and piracy or
submission are his only alternatives. Bad as it was, it must be
borne. It is what a sailor ships for.”
This last sentence is
striking in its ambiguity. When one thinks about it , it is very
difficult to understand what Dana means. He is hardly saying that
sailors should stoically accept even inhuman conditions or
breaches of their human and constitutional rights with impunity!
Or is this what he actually expects from sailors? How much is
endurable short of selfdefence?
Further on in the
episode Dana writes:
“Swinging the rope over
his head, and bending his body so as to give it full force, the
captain brought it down upon the poor fellow’s back. Once, twice
six times. “Will you ever give me any more of your jaw?” The man
writhed with pain, but said not a word. Three times more. This was
too much, and he muttered something, which I could not hear; this
brought as many more as the man could stand; when the captain
ordered him to be cut down, and to go forward”.
With this the captain now
turned his attention to John the Swede. According to Dana, he
stood on the quarterdeck, bareheaded, his eyes flashing with rage,
and his face as red as blood. He was swinging a rope and calling
out to his officers, “Drag him aft! Lay hold of him. I’ll sweeten
him, etc., etc”. Having conceded to a peaceful flogging at first,
the Swede then began to resist, but was subdued by the officers.
And when he was made fast, he turned to the captain, who stood
turning up his sleeves and getting ready for the blow, and asked:
“Have I ever refused my duty, sir? Have you
ever known me to hang back, or to be insolent, or not to know my
work?” “No”, said the captain, “it is not that I flog you for; I flog you for your interference, for asking
questions”.
“Can’t a man ask a question here without
being flogged?”
“No”, shouted the captain; “nobody shall open his mouth aboard
this vessel, but myself”, and began laying the blows upon his
back, swinging half round between each blow, to give it full
effect. As he went on, his passion increased, and he danced about
the deck, calling out as he swung the rope: -- "If you want to
know what I flog you for, I’ll tell you. It’s because I like to do
it! – Because I like to do it. It suits me. That’s what I do it
for”. The man writhed under the pain, until he could endure it no
longer, when he called out, with an exclamation more common among
foreigners than with us-“Oh, Jesus Christ! Oh, Jesus Christ!”
“Don’t call on Jesus Christ,” shouted the
captain; “he can’t help you. Call on Captain T__. He’s the man! He
can help you! Jesus Christ can’t help you now!”
At this juncture Dana
tells us that he could look no longer. His blood ran cold and he
turned away in disgust and horror. He revisited the scene with
thoughts of revenge, but, again, ‘the falling blows and the cries
of the man’ called him back to reality. At length the Swede was
cut down. Every one else stood still at his post, while the
captain, ‘swelling with rage and with the importance of his
achievement’ strutted the quarterdeck, calling out to the crew:
“You see your condition! You see where I’ve
got you all, and you know what to expect! You’ve been mistaken in
me -- you didn’t know what I was! Now you know what I am!"
“I’ll make you toe the mark, every soul of
you, or I’ll flog you all, fore and and aft, from the boy, up”
“You’ve got a driver over you Yes, a slave driver -- a
negro-driver! I'll see who’ll tell me he isn’t a Negro slave!”
Shortly after this John
the Swede’s back was swollen and covered with stripes in every
direction. He asked the steward to ask the captain to let him have
some salve, or balsam, to put upon it. “No,” said the captain, who
heard him from below; “tell him to put his shirt on; that’s the
best thing for him; and pull me ashore in the boat. Nobody is
going to lay-up on board this vessel.”Dana also recalls his fear
that John the Swede, whom he regarded as a violent man and who was
armed with a knife, might mutiny. In fact he didn’t. Dana also
noted that the captain was probably armed. He also pointed out
that the option of resisting for either Sam or John (and Dana?)
meant that they ‘would have had nothing before them but flight and
starvation in the woods of California, or capture by the soldiers
and Indian bloodhounds, whom the offer of twenty dollars would
have set upon them.’
The sleepless nights of
the men groaning in pain settled a gloom over everyone, and made
Dana reflect:
“I thought of our situation, living under a tyranny; of the
character of the country we were in; of the length of the voyage,
and of the uncertainty attending our return to America; and then,
if we should return, of the prospect of obtaining justice and
satisfaction for these poor men; and vowed that if God should ever
give me the means, I would do something to redress the grievances
and relieve the sufferings of that poor class of beings, of whom I
then was one.”
There are many lessons to
be learned from Dana’s account - which is why we have dwelt upon
it so long. First of all, we can see
that what began with the captain’s distemper and his threat to the
cook was soon followed up by his bullying of Sam. This in turn led
to Sam’s public flogging. This public humiliation affected the
crew, particularly John the Swede, who could not suppress his
sense of injustice, so he fled to the side of the oppressed.
Before long the whole crew was upset, but none of the others,
including Dana, said anything. The captain continued his abuse,
revealing even further depths of cruelty and an utter contempt for
those in his charge. In such circumstances considerations of
mutiny are no more than thoughts of self-preservation. Dana and
the crew of the Pilgrim were now caste in the mould of
Hamlet and Fletcher Christian, to rebel or to be bear witness to
enormous injustice?The second lesson we learn
is somewhat more difficult to come to terms with, and when we
compare Fletcher Christian with Richard Dana Jr., both of whom are
faced with Hamlet’s dilemma, then we can appreciate how difficult
the problem is.
Not all men live with the
discipline (or the future prospects) of Richard Dana. Some men are
present-dwellers; they are less apt to defer gratification,
whether that gratification comes from the assurance of future
vengeance or from a sense of delayed justice. Moreover, such men
have a morality of action, rather than one of reaction or
introspection; they demand redress now, concurrent with the
offence, rather than hereafter in retrospection, whether that
retrospection is recounted in a court of law or in a novel.
Richard Dana vowed to redress ‘the sufferings of that poor class
of beings’, of which he was temporarily one. He did not vow to
redress the injustice he saw done to Sam or John the Swede.
Moreover, the redress he envisaged would follow only ‘ if God'
should ever give him the means to do so. Some men of action
(Christian Fletcher and Hamlet, for example) might argue that he
had the means to redress the injustice before his eyes, and that
he did not need God to provide the wherewithal for that redress.
The problem with Dana’s
account is the problem with Dana’s morality. His relation with the
captain (and the cruelties he was inflicting) was no more
constrained that Christian’s was to Captain Bligh or, for that
matter, Hamlet’s relation to his Father-in-law, the King of
Denmark. Unlike Hamlet and Fletcher Christian, however, both of
whom felt constrained to act, Dana, on due consideration, decided
not to. He admitted that he felt compelled to act but decided not
to do so -- hence that problematic phrase “Bad as it was, it must
be borne. It is what a sailor ships for.”Men of action invariably
wish to redress wrong spontaneously, wherever they find it. It may
be quixotic, but not everyone is endowed with the fortitude and
restraint, which Richard Dana exhibited. In point of fact Dana
went on to practice law and politics. And during the operation of
the Fugitive Slave Law, he acted as counsel on behalf of the
fugitives Shadrach, Sims, and Burns. Abraham Lincoln appointed him
United States District Attorney for Massachusetts. But this is
still beside the point. The question is and was: Should Richard
Dana have spoken up like John the Swede, and taken the lash? Or,
alternatively, should the crew have revolted and at least
restrained the captain? Maybe there are some occasions when, under
severe provocation, mutiny is the moral thing to do.It is desirable that we
analyse Dana’s narrative a little further.
There is obviously a great
difference between what one feels when injustice is done to
oneself, and what one feels when it happens to others in our
presence. When we are personally confronted
with unkindness or cruelty, we have a choice. We can resist it or
bear it. It is peculiarly within our individual power to make such
a decision. If we choose to bear it, it is because forbearance is
very much a part of our character, of our individual psyche, of
our peace-loving stoical personality. Proverbs and truisms applaud
and encourage such forbearance as a virtue. Hence we hear that
‘Great minds suffer in silence.” We are content with our own
unique sense of restraint and fortitude. We choose to bear ‘the
whips and scorns of outrageous fortune’ rather than ‘take arms
against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.’ If we are
Christian, we say we ‘turn the other cheek.’ We 'grin and bear
it.’ This we do personally, and for ourselves. We could, of
course, take action -- or at least we say and believe that ‘we
could take action', thereby emphasizing the fact that we have made
a virtuous and stoical decision to bear up to the adversity in
question. If we did actually take action, it would assuredly be by
way of some kind of alternative outcome -- alternative, that is,
to our agreeable self-esteem and, possibly, to our life style as
well. In this way we can see that we are authors of our own
tolerance or martyrdom.
But when strangers are
confronted with unkindness or cruelty in our presence, something
else happens: we are pitted in a different mould. We are summoned
to witness evil, to look on, to be excluded from the action. It is
others who are suffering while we remain silent. We can neither
adopt the pain stoically nor ameliorate it in the person of
others. We are forced to witness cruelty, and the harsh truth is
that we cannot bear to watch others suffer unnecessary pain, even
the pain that we would stoically endure ourselves. Hamlet is
activated out of a love for justice and for the memory of his
murdered father, Luther does it for truth, integrity and the state
of Catholicism under a corrupt Papacy. But Christian Fletcher and
John the Swede are no less high-minded; they sacrifice themselves
for others.What inflames us most,
perhaps, is the wanton cruelty to helpless others. Our most
intimate sense of justice is ravaged. All our most sanctified
senses of civilized living come forward and demand redress. It is
the march of the righteous and, because it cannot be borne by us
personally , it compels us to action. By the same token, those who
in our presence, inflict gratuitous pain and suffering, especially
on innocent or inadequate people -- people who have not got our
privileges, our restraint, our education, our fortitude, our
affection - they soon become the object of our most forceful and
violent feelings. What first gave us character is now in utter
revolt and cannot be subdued or, alternatively, can only be
subdued with enormous difficulty. Even when we see animals badly
treated, we rebel with a violence that is disproportionate to our
ordinary character. Our revolt is intended to edify the wrongdoer,
but only after peace is secured.
That is why ‘teaching
someone a lesson’ has far too often become associated more with
violence and vengeance than with education. That is also why in
some circumstances spontaneous violence is the only lesson in
morality possible. I do not mean premeditated violence or war
carried out in retrospect or, indeed, war that is not defensive in
nature, but action that is designed to ‘teach the enemy a lesson.’
At a personal level, the
problem with humans is not so much that they are diabolical, but
rather, like John the Swede, they are angelic:magnificently
angelic. Sam submitted to a flogging by a cruel captain, John the
Swede voiced his objections and took the whip, and Dana lived to
tell the tale. Had someone taken action, we would have had a
capital trial for mutiny. Wherein lies morality then? In the
captain? In Sam’s submission to unjust and brutal discipline? In
John the Swede’s quixotic if magnanimous gesture? Or in Dana’s
narrative? And if they had resisted, what court could capture the
moment in which they all ineluctably and ineffably took part? For
many people spontaneity has its own morality, it holds its own
court, and who is to say it is not the highest court in every
land!
As the nineteenth century
wore on, the increasing press coverage of mutinies and court
cases, gave rise to a more realistic picture of life at sea. The
image of the English-speaking captain remained somehow unscathed
if not sanctified. Writers like Joseph Conrad and John Masefield
and a myriad of lesser writers, taught us both about idealized
captains like Lord Jim as well as reluctant seamen like Dauber. They also focused our attention on the general
conditions of life then obtaining at sea.But high literature is not
always a good guide to great morality. Lord Jim, to my
mind, is a case in point. It is a story of the redemption of a
British naval officer who is damned initially for his cowardice,
then lionized as a selfless hero. The novel may have been fiction,
but the initial act of cowardice and dishonor was, it is believed,
based on fact. The story (1900), originally intended as a short
story, was enlarged into a novel and opens (as does the film) with
an account in 1880 of the British first mate, A.P.Williams, who,
with other officers, abandoned the steamship Jeddah, after
it sprung a leak. In abandoning the ship they also abandoned the
Muslim pilgrims who were now facing certain death. By sheer good
fortune another captain in another steam ship happened by and
brought the Jeddah to safety. In the film of Lord Jim the Jeddah becomes the Patna, and the story relates how the
guilt-ridden British naval officer seeks redemption for his
initial mistake. He finds it in helping islanders win their
freedom. That Lord Jim sacrifices himself in the process is more logical than real; and
even if it was real, the hero is caste between two simple poles,
one of cowardice and one of bravery, these being the dominant
ethical values of both the writer and the protagonist. Breaking
your word to a boatload of people, who will assuredly die because
you have deliberately misled them, is hardly redeemable,
especially if the tale follows hot on their miraculous survival.
It is rather like pleading guilty to an act of pedophilia and
later claiming, ‘anyone can make a mistake’ by way of defence.
Moreover, to redeem one's soul by self-immolation does not to my
mind excuse the initial wrongdoing. What Conrad has done to redeem
his English-speaking sea captain is -- it appears -- done out of a
debauched celebration of the art of story-telling -- hence the
triumph of egoism over altruism.
The English-speaking
captain survived in the public mind - even to the present day - in
the approximate persona of James Onedin, protagonist in a popular
television serial, The Onedin Line. He is meant to be
understood as the best of a bad lot, the ‘lovable rogue.’ Even in
make-belief the anti-hero is untouched by the slave trade,
questionable contracts, and ‘dodgy’ merchandise. By implication
every scam and questionable enterprise is to be excused by captain
Onedin’s early penury, especially his do-or-die necessity for
success, which we, the viewing public, are meant to understand
implicitly. Hence whatever pathologies are revealed, they are
transcended by our common ambition and acquisitiveness, our shared
indulgence in some common drive to escape some ghetto of European
or American ordinariness. To assist us in thinking well of
Nineteenth Century sea captains, captain Onedin is portrayed as
less aggressive than his contemporaries. Diametrically opposed to
this make-belief background we have the word of Basil Lubbock that
real bullies abounded throughout the period:
“It must be admitted that there was a type
of man found on the quarterdeck in sail who has become almost
extinct in steam. This was the sea bully. One of the most
notorious of these buckos was Captain Bailey of the big full
rigger Dovenby Hall. He was a terrible brute with an
uncontrollable temper, a ready fist and vilely blasphemous tongue.
He was murdered by his coloured steward on the passage home from
San Francisco. At the trial both Bailey’s wife and daughter
testified that they could not live with him, and the steward got
off with a life sentence.” (The Last of the Windjammers,
Vol. 1, Glasgow,1975, p.49)
By the turn of the
twentieth century, what had been romantic and patriotic had now
become comic. As far as the British Isles were concerned the last
of the rapacious pirates survived solely in Penzance where, with
Gilbertian humour, they flirted ferociously, did their indentures
meticulously, and captured the odd Major General, whose daughters
they married.
Even the secrecy
surrounding advancement in the ‘Queen’s Navee’ was fully exposed
by the Chorus of HMS Pinafore:
CHORUS: Now landsmen all, whoever you may be, If you want to rise to the top of the tree, If your soul isn’t fettered to an office
stool, Be careful to be guided by this golden rule: Stick close to your desks and never go to
sea,
And you all may be rulers of the Queen’s
Navee!
However beguiling
television videos and good yarns are, they are the product of the
twenty first century. For our part the belligerence of the English
sea captain prevailed well into the 1870s and after. He was
neither romantic, nor patriotic nor comic, but the remnant of the
high pirate era, when violence at sea was a way of life. How the
twin forces -- of the need for commerce, and of the responsibility
for order on board ship -- are forged in the personality of
captain George Best remains in the realm of conjecture, until,
that is, it is revealed to us through evidence. We can only judge
of these things from the evidence available and presented. The
standards we apply -- either to the need for order on board or the
need for commerce abroad - - derive from the ordinary expectations
that we would exercise ourselves in a location and a time that
bespeaks these dual ideals.Thus far, then, we know
that the competition of steam did not diminish the value of either
the Caswell or her crew. We know that seamen faced very
dangerous hazards at sea, even if mutiny did not itself bulk large
as a major hazard. In this respect the role of the sea captain is
crucial. Upon his persona depended the moral ethos of the ship,
particularly when that ship carried a mixed crew. But how
dangerous and unusual was the 'mixed crew’ in the 1870s?Racism and the Mixed Crew:
It has been said that the Caswell mutiny was primarily due to the mixed crew on
board, as if the mixture of Greek and British sailors was the sole
cause of the mutiny. Mixed crews in the age of sail were
practically as traditional as the art of sailing itself. From
earliest times multi-racial and multi-national crews abounded.
Even at Trafalgar the crews were mixed, the ‘black watch’, it is
said, growing numerous enough to relieve the 'white watch’ on
alternate shifts. Moreover, Lubbock tells us:
“Practically every nationality in the world
has a representative on the lower deck in Nelson’s fleet -- and
with the usual result, the German, the Dane, the Dutchman, the
Dago, the Souwegian and the Finn gradually assumed the ways and
the outlook of the Britisher, often married an English girl and
gave his sons to the Empire.” (Lubbock, Basil, The Last of the
Windjammers, Vol. 1, Glasgow, 1975, p.62)
Even the Nantucket
Quaker-Whalers aboard the famous Essex in 1820 were mixed
of race -- and captain George Pollard lived on to see them eat
each other, not out of hatred, but out of hunger. Twenty years
later R.H. Dana Jr. observed that in his time three quarters of
the crews were mixed. In this connection we might also remember
that the word ‘sailor,’ as opposed to ‘mariner’ or ' oarsman’,
only becomes popular in the era of mercantilism, when unbridled
movements of trans-national and migrant workers, whether captive,
conscripted or recruited, were mobilised by the Nation State. The
oarsmen -- rowing to the beat of a drum or the sound of the lash
-- had served the needs of the Greek city-state, as well as the
Roman and Medieval fleets of southern Europe. As military vessels,
their fearful traffic held sway well into the eighteenth century
but, because of their enhanced size, speed, and firepower, the
sailing ship took over. At least that was the case with the
ocean-going Atlantic vessels. In the coastal waters of the
Mediterranean, things were otherwise designed; the highly
maneuverable galleys were still in use and the galley sentence was
meant to secure a continuing supply of labour.
These two nautical
traditions (with their origins perhaps going as far back as the
Holy Roman Imperial split between Byzantium and Rome) were so
different in fact that over the course of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries they gave birth at either end of Europe to
two quite opposite penal regimes. On the one hand the
Mediterranean States introduced the galley sentence while the
northern countries founded the Workhouse. If we are going to
examine the mutiny on the Caswell, or any other mutinous
ship claiming a mixed pedigree as its source, it behoves us to
look briefly at how the penal and punitive aspects clung to the
sailing ship well into the nineteenth century.
Galleys
Throughout the 16th
century European poverty was increasing apace with an expanding
population. The new crime and the new plague were called
‘vagabondage.’ The feudal order was in a state of collapse, and
private retainers and soldiers were being disbanded and turned out
of the old manorial estates. Enclosure movements shed the land of
its 'structurally unemployed' laborers and yeomen. The influx of
bullion from the New World gave rise to an increase in prices.
Basic necessities rose faster than wages, and the agencies of poor
relief were choked off in the general struggle between Papal power
and the rise of the Nation State. Power was passing from Pope to
Prince, from the Saviour of Souls to the leaders of nations. It
was England versus Spain in the sixteenth century, then England
versus Holland in the seventeenth. Pirates became patriots, and
begging and pillage abounded in the cities and ports of Europe --
the only organizers of discarded labour centered on the urban
factories and the workhouse. In the south, galleys required
hundreds of oarsmen rowing in unison. The triremes of ancient
Greece had used them to great effect. The work was strenuous,
dangerous, and severely disciplined. In times when demand for
oarsmen was not met with an adequate supply, the wages of the
fleet rose abruptly, and where excess demand remained, the fleets
supplemented the labour force with galley slaves. These slaves
came from the ranks of Turks and North Africans who may have been
bought or taken captive in war. When the growing fleets of the
15th and 16th centuries could not satisfy the demand for oarsmen,
the authorities looked to the criminals to augment the ranks of
the fleet. Condemned convicts whom the State wished to kill were
now pressed into the service of the military. From Spain, Italy
and France the Galley Sentence spread north, to the Netherlands in
the 1520s and to Belgium and Austria in the 1550s.
The galley sentence was so
terrible that, according to one authority,
”The wretches condemned to it would
sometimes sever their own arm or hand in order to escape it. The
practice was even so common that a decree of 1677 made it
punishable by death.”
At a time when corporal
punishments were so countless and cruel, capital punishments were
seen as their mere extension. The galley sentence in the North was
to prove short-lived, not least because of climatic conditions.
Climate notwithstanding, under Elizabeth plans were made to create
an English galley fleet. In 1597 a statute authorized the
banishment of vagabonds or, alternatively, their conscription into
the galleys by the courts of quarter sessions. The execution of
felons was stayed. These included robbers, but not murderers,
rapists, burglars or witches. The act aimed at salvaging the
strong and the able bodied. In time it widened, further executions
were stayed, reprieves were granted, and galley sentences were
encouraged.A Commission in 1615
authorized the transportation of felons ‘fit to be employed in
foreign discoveries or other services beyond the seas.’ The
preamble of the 1615 Commission followed the language of the 1602
Commission in that the monarch ordered that some of the ‘lesser
offenders’ condemned to die be redeemed by corrective punishment
and by service profitable 'to the Commonwealth in parts
abroad.’
Notwithstanding a congery
of purposes -- namely, to avoid the severity of the medieval blood
sanctions, to correct the offender, and to exploit his labor --
they all had the punitive instinct in common, and it was this that
motivated the workhouse, the prison, and, to a lesser extent, the
nineteenth century sailing ship. Imperial expansion also moulded
the policies of banishment and transportation. Generally speaking,
however, the galley sentence was short lived in the North, and
increasingly gave way to the bridewell or workhouse, which
mirrored in the north what the galley sentence did in the south.
In the 1550s a bridewell, the former Royal Palace in London, was
converted into a workhouse or ‘house of correction.’ A bridewell
in Norwich soon followed (1565), then a workhouse movement, begun
in London and Norwich, soon spread to Amsterdam, Antwerp, Paris
and the cities of the German Hansa.
The bridewells filled up
with young vagabonds, ‘sturdy beggars’ and ‘disorderly’ persons, all of whom were compelled to work to
sustain themselves. Just like the ship or later on, the prison,
the workhouse was designed to introduce the inmate to the regimen
of honest labor. It would train him in a working skill, and it
would reform his character through discipline and moral
instruction. The close trade connections between the Netherlands
and England inspired the Dutch to exploit their labour in a
similar manner. Religious instruction, penal reform, and the
exploitation of labour, became the rasion d’etre of
the Tuchthuis (Amsterdam, 1590s), the Zuchthaus (Bremen, 1615) as
well as the Belgian Workhouses. In time a model workhouse was set
up throughout Europe’s major cities (e.g. Lubeck, Hamburg, Danzig,
Breslau, Vienna, Leipzig, and Frankfurt), including Belgium (e.g.
Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent). Such was the supportive connection
between the use of the criminal law and the forced exploitation of
labour, that its worst aspects were never reformed until the
middle of the eighteenth century. This reform was reflected in
Cesare Beccaria’s slim Treatise on Crimes and Punishments,
which became the focal point of reform throughout Europe. The
Italian criminologist was by no means the originator of growing
European resistance to the blood sanctions. On the contrary, talk
of reform had begun long before Beccaria -- but his was the
decisive blow against the old monotonous and religious theatrical
cruelties of the ancien regime. The ship, whether propelled
by oarsmen or by sail, played an important part in the
displacement of these medieval blood sanctions. In so doing it
helped as an intermediary in giving birth to the modern prison
system. ‘Hulks’ and ‘convict ships’ were used as floating prisons
on the Thames, the Liffey, and occasionally on the Lee. The ship
was also used as a means of transporting convicts to the new
plantations in the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand.
Transportation, or the
wholescale removal of thousands of convicted criminals from one
country to another became a European policy. It managed to divide
the world in two, such that people quite sensibly spoke of two
worlds, the 'old' and the 'new' world. To talk disparagingly about
'mixed crews' or to conceive of them as odd or undesirable is hard
to take seriously. Whatever objections the British had to a 'mixed
crew' such objections would have to be more specific and would
have to arise out of some more specified political or personal
circumstances.
Generally speaking,
however, the penal disciplines, the tensions of former times,
survived in the work ethic of the nineteenth century sailing ship.
In some ways the sailing ship was worse than the workhouse for
here the Introduction gender gap was
complete and absolute; and whatever considerations might be
afforded to regimens that included women, none attached to a
sailing ship. Seamen picked oakum and had as grueling a regimen as
obtained in any northern workhouse. Sailors were expected to work
and never to slouch or relax.
It will soon become
apparent that the crew of the Caswell came from two
different sailing traditions, the one from the Mediterranean and
the other from the Atlantic. It was as if the Caswell had
inherited an overarching history of which her captain and her crew
were perfectly unaware.
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5a.) The
Riddle of the Caswell Mutiny (1875) 
