The Kings Own | Page 2

his child, had
frequently been permitted to visit him on board.
Summoned on the quarter-deck--cross-examined, and harshly
interrogated-- called a scoundrel by the captain before conviction,--the
proud blood mantled in the cheeks of one who, at that period, was
incapable of crime. The blush of virtuous indignation was construed
into presumptive evidence of guilt. The captain,--a superficial,
presuming, pompous, yet cowardly creature, whose conduct assisted in

no small degree to excite the mutiny on board of his own
ship,--declared himself quite convinced of Peters's guilt, because he
blushed at the bare idea of being suspected; and punishment ensued,
with all the degradation allotted to an offence which is never forgiven
on board of a man-of-war.
There is, perhaps, no crime that is attended with such serious
consequences on board a ship as theft. A succession of thefts
undiscovered will disintegrate a ship's company, break up the messes,
destroy all confidence and harmony, and occasion those who have been
the dearest friends to become the greatest enemies: for whom can a
person suspect, when he has lost his property, in so confined a space,
but those who were acquainted with its being in his possession, and
with the place in which it was deposited?--and who are these but his
own messmates, or those in whom he most confided? After positive
conviction, no punishment can be too severe for a crime that produces
such mischief; but to degrade a man by corporal punishment, to ruin his
character, and render him an object of abhorrence and contempt, in the
absence of even bare presumptive evidence, was an act of cruelty and
injustice, which could excite but one feeling; and, from that day, the
man who would have gloried in dying for his country, became a
discontented, gloomy, and dangerous subject.
The above effect would have been produced in any man; but to Peters,
whose previous history we have yet to narrate, death itself would have
been preferable. His heart did not break, but it swelled with contending
passions, till it was burst and riven with wounds never to be cicatrised.
Suffering under the most painful burthen that can oppress a man who
values reputation, writhing with the injustice of accusation when
innocent, of conviction without proof, and of punishment unmerited, it
is not to be wondered at that Peters took the earliest opportunity of
deserting from the ship.
There is a particular feeling pervading animal nature, from which man
himself is not exempt. Indeed, with all his boasted reason, man still
inherits too many of the propensities of the brute creation. I refer to that
disposition which not only inclines us to feel satisfaction at finding we

have companions in misfortune, but too often stimulates us to increase
the number by our own exertions. From the stupendous elephant, down
to the smallest of the feathered tribe, all will act as a decoy to their own
species, when in captivity themselves; and, in all compulsory service,
which may be considered a species of captivity, man proves that he is
imbued with the same propensity. Seamen that have been pressed
themselves into the navy, are invariably the most active in pressing
others; and both soldiers and sailors have a secret pleasure in
recapturing a deserter, even at the very time when they are watching an
opportunity to desert themselves.
The bonds of friendship seem destroyed when this powerful and brutal
feeling is called into action; and, as has frequently occurred in the
service, before and since, the man who was selected by Peters as his
most intimate friend, the man with whom he had consulted, and to
whom he had confided his plans for desertion, gave information of the
retreat of his wife and child, from which place Peters was not likely to
be very distant; and thus, with the assistance of this, his dearest friend,
the master-at-arms and party in quest of him succeeded in his capture.
It so happened, that on the very day on which Peters was brought on
board and put into irons, the purser's servant was discovered to have in
his possession the watch that had been lost. Thus far the character of
Peters was reinstated; and as he had declared, at the time of his capture,
that the unjust punishment which he had received had been the motive
of his desertion, the captain was strongly urged by the officers to
overlook an offence which had everything to be offered in its
extenuation. But Captain A--- was fond of courts-martial; he imagined
that they added to his consequence, which certainly required to be
upheld by adventitious aid. Moreover, the feeling, too often pervading
little minds, that of a dislike taken to a person because you have injured
him, and the preferring to accumulate injustice rather than to
acknowledge error, had more than