Types of Naval Officers eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 437 pages of information about Types of Naval Officers.

Types of Naval Officers eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 437 pages of information about Types of Naval Officers.

“At half-past seven, the hands throughout the fleet having been turned up to witness punishment, the eyes of all bent upon a powerfully armed boat as it quitted the flag-ship; every one knowing that there went the provost-marshal conducting his prisoner to the Marlborough for execution.  The crisis was come; now was to be seen whether the Marlborough’s crew would hang one of their own men.

“The ship being in the centre between the two lines of the fleet, the boat was soon alongside, and the man was speedily placed on the cathead and haltered.  A few awful minutes of universal silence followed, which was at last broken by the watch bells of the fleet striking eight o’clock.  Instantly the flag-ship’s gun fired, and at the sound the man was lifted well off; but then, and visibly to all, he dropped back again; and the sensation throughout the fleet was intense.  For, at this dreadful moment, when the eyes of every man in every ship was straining upon this execution, as the decisive struggle between authority and mutiny, as if it were destined that the whole fleet should see the hesitating unwillingness of the Marlborough’s crew to hang their rebel, and the efficacy of the means taken to enforce obedience, by an accident on board the ship the men at the yard-rope unintentionally let it slip, and the turn of the balance seemed calamitously lost; but then they hauled him up to the yard arm with a run.  The law was satisfied, and, said Lord St. Vincent at the moment, perhaps one of the greatest of his life, ‘Discipline is preserved, sir!’”

Again a year later, in May, 1799, when twenty-five French ships-of-the-line broke through the wretchedly inefficient guard at that time kept before Brest, and entered the Mediterranean, a reinforcement of over a dozen was sent from the Channel to Lord St. Vincent, who was found then in Port Mahon, Minorca.  Sir Edward Pellew, captain of one of the new-comers, asked a Court-Martial upon a mutiny that had occurred just before leaving the home port.  St. Vincent at first demurred, startled, according to Pellew’s biographer, by the extent of the plot then revealed, and thinking it politic to suppress the facts; but it is alleged with equal probability that he was indignant at being continually called upon to remedy evils due to the general indiscipline of the Channel Fleet.  “What do they mean by invariably sending the mutinous ships to me?  Do they think that I will be hangman to the fleet?” Both versions are likely enough to be correct.  There is a limit to all human endurance, and the earl was now broken in health; he was sixty-four, had borne his load for three years, and was on the point of resigning his command to Lord Keith.  The Court, however, was ordered, and three men were sentenced to be hanged.  Pellew then interceded for one, on the ground of previous good character.  “No,” replied St. Vincent.  “Those who have suffered hitherto have been so worthless before that their fate was of little use as an example.  I shall now convince the seamen that no character, however good, shall save a man who is guilty of mutiny.”

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Types of Naval Officers from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.