Neither ought it to be forgotten, that a man so circumstanced has really stronger claims on our sympathy, and is more entitled to our protection, than if he had never fallen under censure.  He has, in some sort, if not entirely, expiated his offence by the severity of its consequences; and every generous-minded officer must feel that a poor seaman whom he has been compelled, by a sense of duty, to punish at the gangway, instead of being kept down, has need of some extra assistance to place him even on the footing he occupied before he committed any offence.  If this be not granted him, it is a mere mockery to say that he has any fair chance for virtue.

It might, therefore, I think, be very usefully made imperative upon the captain, at some short period after a punishment has taken place (say on the next muster-day), and when the immediate irritation shall have gone off, to call the offender publicly forward, and in the presence of the whole ship’s company give him to understand that, as he had now received the punishment which, according to the rules of the service, his offence merited, both the one and the other were, from that time forward, to be entirely forgotten; and that he was now fully at liberty to begin his course anew.  I can assert, from ample experience, that the beneficial effects of this practice are very great.

FOOTNOTES: 

[7] The recent instructions issued by the Board of Admiralty would have gratified Captain Hall had he lived to read them; harmonizing as they do with the system he so earnestly advocates.

CHAPTER XVI.

BOMBAY.

Early on the morning of the 11th of August, 1812, we first made the coast of Asia; and, on steering towards the shore, discovered, close under the land, a single sail, as white as snow, of a cut quite new to our seamanship, and swelled out with the last faint airs of the land-breeze, which, in the night, had carried us briskly along shore.  As we came nearer, we observed that the boat, with her head directed to the northward, was piled half-mast high with fruits and vegetables, cocoa-nuts, yams, plantains, intended evidently for the market of Bombay.  The water lay as smooth as that of a lake; so we sheered close alongside, and hailed, to ask the distance we still were from our port.  None of the officers of the Volage could speak a word of Hindustanee; and I well remember our feeling of humiliation when a poor scullion, one of the cook’s assistants, belonging to the governor’s suite, was dragged on deck, with all his grease and other imperfections on his head, to act as interpreter.  Sad work he made of it; for, though the fellow had been in the East on some ten or twelve former voyages, the languages of the countries he visited had not formed so important a part of his studies as the quality of the arrack and toddy which they produced.  The word Bombaya, however, struck