There was very near being a serious breach of discipline on board the frigate during our passage.  A sailor refused to obey, and threatened one of the midshipmen—­a serious act of insubordination, which, according to the laws then in force, entailed corporal punishment on its perpetrator.  I immediately called a court-martial, which, having heard witnesses and defendant, according to regulations, sentenced the man to a certain number of strokes with the rope’s end.  The hour for carrying out the sentence came, the crew was mustered, the officers in their places and under arms.  I was in my cabin, just buckling on my sword, when my second in command came in like a whirlwind.  “They are going to ask for mercy,” he cried; “it’s your own fault.  The men know your hatred of corporal punishment.  They are going to presume on it.  I beg you’ll give me leave to run the first man that opens his mouth through with my sword.”  Up till that time I had avoided the use of corporal punishment, a matter which had been made all the easier for me by the good feeling and quiet behaviour of the crew I had had under my command.  But this time the scandal had been notorious, the punishment must be exemplary, and the law applied without mercy.  What would become of the authority of an isolated handful of officers, on the high seas, among hundreds of seamen, if they had no possible recourse to force, to punishment drill, or to long terms of imprisonment?  What, again, would become of that purely moral influence, which is indispensable on board a ship which is practically always at sea, if the maintenance of discipline was ever liable to the slightest failure?  Filled as I was with even more than the ordinary sense of the imperious claims of duty on the officer in command, I reassured my subordinate.  “Make your mind easy,” I told him.  “I would be brayed in a mortar sooner than tolerate one moment’s hesitation in carrying out the sentence.  I shall stand at the head of the crew, and have the punishment carried out in front of me.  The men will read my countenance and nobody will stir, I’ll answer for it!” And so it was.  I took my place, all eyes turned on me, and everything passed off according to rule—­To say the scene was not a painful one to me would be to tell a lie.  But duty has to come first.

As my second in command had said, I had a horror of corporal punishment as laid down by the Convention, a relic of another age, when navy crews were recruited amongst a set of vagabonds picked up in all quarters.  I thought it degrading.  Often, among my brother officers, I had blamed the unmeasured use I had seen made of it on board ships I did not command.  And glad indeed I was when it was done away with.  A commanding officer invested, and justly so, with unlimited authority on board his own ship, is sure by intelligence, firmness, and sense of duty, to find other means than the lash of making the saving law of absolute obedience to superiors respected, without going such lengths as the captain of an American warship, who, on his own responsibility, hanged one of his midshipmen, nearly related to the Minister for Naval Affairs, who had been guilty of attempted mutiny, from the yardarm.