What a delightful morning for a keel-hauling!

This ingenious process, which, however, like many other good old customs, has fallen into disuse, must be explained to the non-nautical reader.  It is nothing more nor less than sending a poor navigator on a voyage of discovery under the bottom of the vessel, lowering him[2] down over the bows, and with ropes detaining him exactly in his position under the kelson, while he is drawn aft by a hauling line until he makes his appearance at the rudder-chains, generally speaking quite out of breath, not at the rapidity of his motion, but because, when so long under the water, he has expended all the breath in his body, and is induced to take in salt water en lieu. There is much merit in this invention; people are very apt to be content with walking the deck of a man-of-war, and complain of it as a hardship, but when once they have learnt, by experience, the difference between being comfortable above board, and the number of deprivations which they have to submit to when under board and overboard at the same time, they find that there are worse situations than being on the deck of a vessel—­we say privations when under board, for they really are very important:—­you are deprived of the air to breathe, which is not borne with patience even by a philosopher, and you are obliged to drink salt water instead of fresh.  In the days of keel-hauling, the bottoms of vessels were not coppered, and in consequence were well studded with a species of shell-fish which attached themselves, called barnacles, and as these shells were all open-mouthed and with sharp cutting points, those who underwent this punishment (for they were made by the ropes at each side, fastened to their arms, to hug the kelson of the vessel) were cut and scored all over their body, as if with so many lancets, generally coming up bleeding in every part, and with their faces, especially their noses, as if they had been gnawed by the rats; but this was considered rather advantageous than otherwise, as the loss of blood restored the patient if he was not quite drowned, and the consequence was, that one out of three, it is said, have been known to recover after their submarine excursion.  The Dutch have the credit, and we will not attempt to take from them their undoubted right, of having invented this very agreeable description of punishment.  They are considered a heavy, phlegmatic sort of people, but on every point in which the art of ingeniously tormenting is in request, it must be admitted that they have taken the lead of much more vivacious and otherwise more inventive nations.

[Footnote 2:  The author has here explained keel-hauling as practised in those times in small fore and aft vessels.  In large and square-rigged vessels, the man was hauled up to one main-yard arm, and dropped into the sea, and hauled under the bottom of the vessel to the other; but this in small fore and aft vessels was not so easily effected, nor was it considered sufficient punishment.]