Two Years Before the Mast
one another, or too great a deduction is made on account of their being
seamen, their case is without remedy; and the captain, knowing this,
will be strengthened in that disposition to tyrannize which the
possession of absolute power, without the restraints of friends and
public opinion, is too apt to engender.
It is to be considered, also, that the sailor comes into court under
very different circumstances from the master. He is thrown among
landlords, and sharks of all descriptions; is often led to drink
freely; and comes upon the stand unaided, and under a certain cloud of
suspicion as to his character and veracity. The captain, on the other
hand, is backed by the owners and insurers, and has an air of greater
respectability; though, after all, he may have but a little better
education than the sailor, and sometimes, (especially among those
engaged in certain voyages that I could mention) a very hackneyed
conscience.
These are the considerations most commonly brought up on the subject of
seamen's evidence; and I think it cannot but be obvious to every one
that here, positive legislation would be of no manner of use. There
can be no rule of law regulating the weight to be given to seamen's
evidence. It must rest in the mind of the judge and jury; and no
enactment or positive rule of court could vary the result a hair, in
any one case. The effect of a sailor's testimony in deciding a case
must depend altogether upon the reputation of the class to which he
belongs, and upon the impression he himself produces in court by his
deportment, and by those infallible marks of character which always
tell upon a jury.
In fine, after all the well-meant and specious projects that have been
brought forward, we seem driven back to the belief, that the best means
of securing a fair administration of the laws made for the protection
of seamen, and certainly the only means which can create any important
change for the better, is the gradual one of raising the intellectual
and religious character of the sailor, so that as an individual and as
one of a class, he may, in the first instance, command the respect of
his officers, and if any difficulty should happen, may upon the stand
carry that weight which an intelligent and respectable man of the lower
class almost always does with a jury. I know there are many men who,
when a few cases of great hardship occur, and it is evident that there
is an evil somewhere, think that some arrangement must be made, some
law passed, or some society got up, to set all right at once. On this
subject there can be no call for any such movement; on the contrary, I
fully believe that any public and strong action would do harm, and that
we must be satisfied to labor in the less easy and less exciting task
of gradual improvement, and abide the issue of things working slowly
together for good.
Equally injudicious would be any interference with the economy of the
ship. The lodging, food, hours of sleep, etc., are all matters which,
though capable of many changes for the better, must yet be left to
regulate themselves. And I am confident that there will be, and that
there is now a gradual improvement in all such particulars. The
forecastles of most of our ships are small, black, and wet holes, which
few landsmen would believe held a crew of ten or twelve men on a voyage
of months or years; and often, indeed in most cases, the provisions are
not good enough to make a meal anything more than a necessary part of a
day's duty;[1] and on the score of sleep, I fully believe that the
lives of merchant seamen are shortened by the want of it. I do not
refer to those occasions when it is necessarily broken in upon; but,
for months, during fine weather, in many merchantmen, all hands are
kept, throughout the day, and, then, there are eight hours on deck for
one watch each night. Thus it is usually the case that at the end of a
voyage, where there has been the finest weather, and no disaster, the
crew have a wearied and worn-out appearance. They never sleep longer
than four hours at a time, and are seldom called without being really
in need of more rest. There is no one thing that a sailor thinks more
of as a luxury of life on shore, than a whole night's sleep. Still,
all these things must be left to be gradually modified by circumstances.
Whenever hard cases occur, they should be made known, and masters and
owners should be held answerable, and will, no doubt, in time, be
influenced in their arrangements and discipline by the increased
consideration in which sailors are held by the public.
It is perfectly proper that the men should live in a different part of
the vessel from the officers; and if the forecastle is made large and
comfortable, there is no reason why the crew should not live there as
well as in any other part. In fact, sailors prefer the forecastle. It
is their accustomed place, and in it they are out of the sight and
hearing of their officers.
As to their food and sleep, there are laws, with heavy penalties,
requiring a certain amount of stores to be on board, and safely stowed;
and, for depriving the crew unnecessarily of food or sleep, the captain
is liable at common law, as well as under the statute before referred
to. Farther than this, it would not be safe to go.
The captain must be the judge when it is necessary to keep his crew
from their sleep; and sometimes a retrenching, not of the necessaries,
but of some of the little niceties of their meals, as, for instance,
duff on Sunday, may be a mode of punishment, though I think generally
an injudicious one.
I could not do justice to this subject without noticing one part of the
discipline of a ship, which has been very much discussed of late, and
has brought out strong expressions of indignation from many,--I mean
the infliction of corporal punishment. Those who have followed me in
my narrative will remember that I was witness to an act of great
cruelty inflicted upon my own shipmates; and indeed I can sincerely say
that the simple mention of the word flogging, brings up in me feelings
which I can hardly control. Yet, when the proposition is made to
abolish it entirely and at once; to prohibit the captain from ever,
under any circumstances, inflicting corporal punishment; I am obliged
to pause, and, I must say, to doubt exceedingly the expediency of
making any positive enactment which shall have that effect. If the
design of those who are writing on this subject is merely to draw
public attention to it, and to discourage the practice of flogging, and
bring it into disrepute, it is well; and, indeed, whatever may be the
end they have in view, the mere agitation of the question will have
that effect, and, so far, must do good. Yet I should not wish to take
the command of a ship to-morrow, running my chance of a crew, as most
masters must, and know, and have my crew know, that I could not, under
any circumstances, inflict even moderate chastisement. I should trust
that I might never have to resort to it; and, indeed, I scarcely know
what risk I would not run, and to what inconvenience I would not
subject myself, rather than do so. Yet not to have the power of
holding it up in terrorem, and indeed of protecting myself, and all
under my charge, by it, if some extreme case should arise, would be a
situation I should not wish to be placed in myself, or to take the
responsibility of placing another in.
Indeed, the difficulties into which masters and officers are liable to
be thrown, are not sufficiently considered by many whose sympathies are
easily excited by stories, frequent enough, and true enough of
outrageous abuse of this power. It is to be remembered that more than
three-fourths of the seamen in our merchant vessels are foreigners.
They are from all parts of the world. A great many from the north of
Europe, beside Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, men from all
parts of the Mediterranean, together with Lascars, Negroes, and,
perhaps worst of all, the off-casts of British men-of-war, and men from
our own country who have gone to sea because they could not be
permitted to live on land.
As things now are, many masters are obliged to sail without knowing
anything of their crews, until they get out at sea. There may be
pirates or mutineers among them; and one bad man will often infect all
the rest; and it is almost certain that some of them will be ignorant
foreigners, hardly understanding a word of our language, accustomed all
their lives to no influence but force, and perhaps nearly as familiar
with the use of the knife as with that of the marline-spike. No
prudent master, however peaceably inclined, would go to sea without his
pistols and handcuffs. Even with such a crew as I have supposed,
kindness and moderation would be the best policy, and the duty of every
conscientious man; and the administering of corporal punishment might
be dangerous, and of doubtful use. But the question is not, what a
captain ought generally to do, but whether it shall be put out of the
power of every captain, under any circumstances, to make use of, even
moderate, chastisement. As the law now stands, a parent may correct
moderately his child, and the master his apprentice; and the case of
the shipmaster has been placed upon the same principle. The statutes,
and the common law as expounded in the decisions of courts, and in the
books of commentators, are express and unanimous to this point, that
the captain may inflict moderate corporal chastisement, for a
reasonable cause. If the punishment is excessive, or the cause not
sufficient to justify it, he is answerable; and the jury are to
determine, by their verdict in each case, whether, under all the
circumstances, the punishment was moderate, and for a justifiable cause.
This seems to me to be as good a position as the whole subject can be
left in. I mean to say, that no positive enactment, going beyond this,
is needed, or would be a benefit either to masters or men, in the
present state of things. This again would seem to be a case which
should be left to the gradual working of its own cure. As seamen
improve, punishment will become less necessary; and as the character of
officers is raised, they will be less ready to inflict it; and, still
more, the infliction of it upon intelligent and respectable men, will
be an enormity which will not be tolerated by public opinion, and by
juries, who are the pulse of the body politic. No one can have a
greater abhorrence of the infliction of such punishment than I have,
and a stronger conviction that severity is bad policy with a crew; yet
I would ask every reasonable man whether he had not better trust to the
practice becoming unnecessary and disreputable; to the measure of
moderate chastisement and a justifiable cause being better understood,
and thus, the act becoming dangerous, and in course of time to be
regarded as an unheard-of barbarity--than to take the responsibility of
prohibiting it, at once, in all cases, and in what ever degree, by
positive enactment?
There is, however, one point connected with the administration of
justice to seamen, to which I wish seriously to call the attention of
those interested in their behalf, and, if possible, also of some of
those concerned in that administration. This is, the practice which
prevails of making strong appeals to the jury in mitigation of damages,
or to the judge, after a verdict has been rendered against a captain or
officer, for a lenient sentence, on the grounds of their previous good
character, and of their being poor, and having friends and families
depending upon them for support. These appeals have been allowed a
weight which is almost incredible, and which, I think, works a greater