Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
The King's Own, by Captain Marryat.
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Captain Frederick Marryat was born July 10 1792, and died August 8 1848.He retired from the British navy in 1828 in order to devote himself towriting. In the following 20 years he wrote 26 books, many of which areamong the very best of English literature, and some of which are stillin print.
Marryat had an extraordinary gift for the invention of episodes in hisstories. He says somewhere that when he sat down for the day's work, henever knew what he was going to write. He certainly was a literarygenius.
"The King's Own" was published in 1830, the second book to flow fromMarryat's pen. It is almost as though Marryat was born as a talentedand polished writer. The fact is, though, that for these early books hewas still at sea when most of the work was done, and with lots of time,since he was engaged in looking for a non-existent, but reported, islandin mid-Atlantic.
This e-text was transcribed in 1998 by Nick Hodson, and was reformattedin 2003, and again in 2005.
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THE KING'S OWN, BY CAPTAIN FREDERICK MARRYAT.
CHAPTER ONE.
However boldly their warm blood was spilt, Their life was shame, their epitaph was guilt; And this they knew and felt, at least the one, The leader of the hand he had undone-- Who, born for better things, had madly set His life upon a cast, which linger'd yet. BYRON.
There is perhaps no event in the annals of our history which excitedmore alarm at the time of its occurrence, or has since been the subjectof more general interest, than the Mutiny at the Nore, in the year 1797.Forty thousand men, to whom the nation looked for defence from itssurrounding enemies, and in steadfast reliance upon whose bravery it laydown every night in tranquillity,--men who had dared everything fortheir king and country, and in whose breasts patriotism, althoughsuppressed for the time, could never be extinguished,--irritated byungrateful neglect on the one hand, and by seditious advisers on theother, turned the guns which they had so often manned in defence of theEnglish flag against their own countrymen and their own home, and, withall the acrimony of feeling ever attending family quarrels, seemeddetermined to sacrifice the nation and themselves, rather than listen tothe dictates of reason and of conscience.
Doubtless there is a point at which endurance of oppression ceases to bea virtue, and rebellion can no longer be considered as a crime; but itis a dangerous and intricate problem, the solution of which had betternot be attempted. It must, however, be acknowledged, that the seamen,on the occasion of the first mutiny, had just grounds of complaint, andthat they did not proceed to acts of violence until repeated and humbleremonstrance had been made in vain.
Whether we act in a body or individually, such is the infirmity andselfishness of human nature, that we often surrender to importunity thatwhich we refuse to the dictates of gratitude,--yielding for our owncomfort, to the demands of turbulence, while quiet unpretending merit isoverlooked and oppressed, until, roused by neglect, it demands, as aright, what policy alone should have granted as a favour.
Such was the behaviour, on the part of government, which produced themutiny at the Nore.
What mechanism is more complex than the mind of man? And as, in allmachinery, there are wheels and springs of action not apparent withoutclose examination of the interior, so pride, ambition, avarice, love,play alternately or conjointly upon the human mind, which, under theirinfluence, is whirled round like the weathercock in the hurricane, onlypointing for a short time in one direction, but for that timesteadfastly. How difficult, then, to analyse the motives andinducements which actuated the several ringleaders in this dreadfulcrisis!
Let us, therefore, confine ourselves to what we do really know to havebeen the origin of discontent in one of these men, whose unfortunatecareer is intimately connected with this history.
Edward Peters was a man of talent and education. He had entered onboard the --- in a fit of desperation, to obtain the bounty for apresent support, and his pay as a future provision for his wife, and anonly child, the fruit of a hasty and unfortunate marriage. He was soondistinguished as a person of superior attainments; and instead of beingemployed, as a landsman usually is, in the afterguard, or waist, of theship, he was placed under the orders of the purser and captain's clerkas an amanuensis. In this capacity he remained two or three years,approved of and treated with unusual respect by the officers, for hisgentlemanlike appearance and behaviour: but unfortunately a theft hadbeen committed,--a watch, of trifling value, had been purloined from thepurser's cabin; and, as he was the only person, with the exception ofthe servant, who had free ingress and egress, suspicion fell upon him--the more so as, after every search that could be made had provedineffectual, it was supposed that the purloined property had been senton shore to be disposed of by his wife, who, with his child, hadfrequently been permitted to visit him on board.
Summoned on the quarter-deck--cross-examined, and harshly interrogated--called a scoundrel by the captain before conviction,--the proud bloodmantled in the cheeks of one who, at that period, was incapable ofcrime. The blush of virtuous indignation was construed into presumptiveevidence of guilt. The captain,--a superficial, presuming, pompous, yetcowardly creature, whose conduct assisted in no small degree to excitethe mutiny on board of his own ship,--declared himself quite convincedof Peters's guilt, because he blushed at the bare idea of beingsuspected; and punishment ensued, with all the degradation allotted toan offence which is never forgiven on board of a man-of-war.
There is, perhaps, no crime that is attended with such seriousconsequences on board a ship as theft. A succession of theftsundiscovered will disintegrate a ship's company, break up the messes,destroy all confidence and harmony, and occasion those who have been thedearest friends to become the greatest enemies: for whom can a personsuspect, when he has lost his property, in so confined a space, butthose who were acquainted with its being in his possession, and with theplace in which it was deposited?--and who are these but his ownmessmates, or those in whom he most confided? After positiveconviction, no punishment can be too severe for a crime that producessuch mischief; but to degrade a man by corporal punishment, to ruin hischaracter, and render him an object of abhorrence and contempt, in theabsence of even bare presumptive evidence, was an act of cruelty andinjustice, which could excite but one feeling; and, from that day, theman who would have gloried in dying for his country, became adiscontented, gloomy, and dangerous subject.
The above effect would have been produced in any man; but to Peters,whose previous history we have yet to narrate, death itself would havebeen preferable. His heart did not break, but it swelled withcontending passions, till it was burst and riven with wounds never to becicatrised. Suffering under the most painful burthen that can oppress aman who values reputation, writhing with the injustice of accusationwhen innocent, of conviction without proof, and of punishment unmerited,it is not to be wondered at that Peters took the earliest opportunity ofdeserting from the ship.
There is a particular feeling pervading animal nature, from which manhimself is not exempt. Indeed, with all his boasted reason, man stillinherits too many of the propensities of the brute creation. I refer tothat disposition which not only inclines us to feel satisfaction atfinding we have companions in misfortune, but too often stimulates us toincrease the number by our own exertions. From the stupendous elephant,down to the smallest of the feathered tribe, all will act as a decoy totheir own species, when in captivity themselves; and, in all compulsoryservice, which may be considered a species of captivity, man proves thathe is imbued with the same propensity. Seamen that have been p
ressedthemselves into the navy, are invariably the most active in pressingothers; and both soldiers and sailors have a secret pleasure inrecapturing a deserter, even at the very time when they are watching anopportunity to desert themselves.
The bonds of friendship seem destroyed when this powerful and brutalfeeling is called into action; and, as has frequently occurred in theservice, before and since, the man who was selected by Peters as hismost intimate friend, the man with whom he had consulted, and to whom hehad confided his plans for desertion, gave information of the retreat ofhis wife and child, from which place Peters was not likely to be verydistant; and thus, with the assistance of this, his dearest friend, themaster-at-arms and party in quest of him succeeded in his capture.
It so happened, that on the very day on which Peters was brought onboard and put into irons, the purser's servant was discovered to have inhis possession the watch that had been lost. Thus far the character ofPeters was reinstated; and as he had declared, at the time of hiscapture, that the unjust punishment which he had received had been themotive of his desertion, the captain was strongly urged by the officersto overlook an offence which had everything to be offered in itsextenuation. But Captain A--- was fond of courts-martial; he imaginedthat they added to his consequence, which certainly required to beupheld by adventitious aid. Moreover, the feeling, too often pervadinglittle minds, that of a dislike taken to a person because you haveinjured him, and the preferring to accumulate injustice rather than toacknowledge error, had more than due weight with this weak man. Acourt-martial was held, and Peters was sentenced to death; but, inconsideration of circumstances, the sentence was mitigated to that ofbeing "flogged round the fleet."
Mitigated! Strange vanity in men, that they should imagine their ownfeelings to be more sensible and acute than those of others; that theyshould consider that a mitigation in favour of the prisoner, which, hadthey been placed in his situation, they would have declared an_accumulation_ of the punishment. Not a captain who sat upon thatcourt-martial but would have considered, as Peters did, that death wasby far the more lenient sentence of the two. Yet they meant well--theyfelt kindly towards him, and acknowledged his provocations; but theyfell into the too common error of supposing that the finer feelings,which induce a man to prefer death to dishonour, are only to berecognised among the higher classes; and that, because circumstances mayhave placed a man before the mast, he will undergo punishment, howeversevere, however degrading,--in short, every "ill that flesh is heirto,"--in preference to death.
As the reader may not, perhaps, be acquainted with the nature of thepunishment to which Peters was sentenced, and the ceremonies by which itis attended, I shall enter into a short description of it.
A man sentenced to be flogged round the fleet receives an equal part ofthe whole number of lashes awarded, alongside each ship composing thatfleet. For instance, if sentenced to three hundred lashes, in a fleetcomposed of ten sail, he will receive thirty alongside of each ship.
A launch is fitted up with a platform and shears. It is occupied by theunfortunate individual, the provost-marshal, the boatswain, and hismates, with their implements of office, and armed marines stationed atthe bow and stern. When the signal is made for punishment, all theships in the fleet send one or two boats each, with crews cleanlydressed, the officers in full uniform, and marines under arms. Theseboats collect at the side of the ship where the launch is lying, thehands are turned up, and the ship's company are ordered to mount therigging, to witness that portion of the whole punishment which, afterthe sentence has been read, is inflicted upon the prisoner. When he hasreceived the allotted number of lashes, he is, for the time, released,and permitted to sit down, with a blanket over his shoulders, while theboats, which attend the execution of the sentence, make fast to thelaunch, and tow it to the next ship in the fleet, where the same numberof lashes are inflicted with corresponding ceremonies;--and thus he istowed from one ship to another until he has received the whole of hispunishment.
The severity of this punishment consists not only in the number oflashes, but in the peculiar manner in which they are inflicted; as,after the unfortunate wretch has received the first part of his sentencealongside of one ship, the blood is allowed to congeal, and the woundspartially to close, during the interval which takes place previously tohis arrival alongside of the next, when the cat again subjects him torenewed and increased torture. During the latter part of thepunishment, the suffering is dreadful; and a man who has undergone thissentence is generally broken down in constitution, if not in spirits,for the remainder of his life.
Such was the punishment inflicted upon the unfortunate Peters; and itwould be difficult to decide, at the moment when it was completed, andthe blanket thrown over his shoulders, whether the heart or the back ofthe fainting man were the more lacerated of the two.
Time can heal the wounds of the body, over which it holds its empire;but those of the soul, like the soul itself, spurn his transitory sway.
Peters, from that moment, was a desperate man. A short time after hehad undergone his sentence, the news of the mutiny at Spithead wascommunicated; and the vacillation and apprehensions of the Admiralty,and of the nation at large, were not to be concealed. This mutiny wasapparently quelled by conciliation; but conciliation is but a halfmeasure, and ineffectual when offered from superiors to inferiors.
In this world, I know not why, there seems to be but one seal binding inall contracts of magnitude--and that seal is blood. Without referringto the Jewish types, proclaiming that "all things were purified byblood, and without shedding of blood there was no remission,"--withoutreferring to that sublime mystery by which these types have beenfulfilled,--it appears as if, in all ages and all countries, blood hadbeen the only seal of security.
Examine the records of history, the revolution of opinion, the publictumults, the warfare for religious ascendency--it will be found that,without this seal, these were only lulled for the moment, and invariablyrecommenced until _blood_ had made its appearance as witness to "the actand deed."
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