The Kings Own | Page 3

due weight with this weak man. A
court-martial was held, and Peters was sentenced to death; but, in
consideration of circumstances, the sentence was mitigated to that of
being "flogged round the fleet."

Mitigated! Strange vanity in men, that they should imagine their own
feelings to be more sensible and acute than those of others; that they
should consider that a mitigation in favour of the prisoner, which, had
they been placed in his situation, they would have declared an
accumulation of the punishment. Not a captain who sat upon that
court-martial but would have considered, as Peters did, that death was
by far the more lenient sentence of the two. Yet they meant well--they
felt kindly towards him, and acknowledged his provocations; but they
fell into the too common error of supposing that the finer feelings,
which induce a man to prefer death to dishonour, are only to be
recognised among the higher classes; and that, because circumstances
may have placed a man before the mast, he will undergo punishment,
however severe, however degrading,--in short, every "ill that flesh is
heir to,"--in preference to death.
As the reader may not, perhaps, be acquainted with the nature of the
punishment to which Peters was sentenced, and the ceremonies by
which it is attended, I shall enter into a short description of it.
A man sentenced to be flogged round the fleet receives an equal part of
the whole number of lashes awarded, alongside each ship composing
that fleet. For instance, if sentenced to three hundred lashes, in a fleet
composed of ten sail, he will receive thirty alongside of each ship.
A launch is fitted up with a platform and shears. It is occupied by the
unfortunate individual, the provost-marshal, the boatswain, and his
mates, with their implements of office, and armed marines stationed at
the bow and stern. When the signal is made for punishment, all the
ships in the fleet send one or two boats each, with crews cleanly
dressed, the officers in full uniform, and marines under arms. These
boats collect at the side of the ship where the launch is lying, the hands
are turned up, and the ship's company are ordered to mount the rigging,
to witness that portion of the whole punishment which, after the
sentence has been read, is inflicted upon the prisoner. When he has
received the allotted number of lashes, he is, for the time, released, and
permitted to sit down, with a blanket over his shoulders, while the boats,
which attend the execution of the sentence, make fast to the launch, and

tow it to the next ship in the fleet, where the same number of lashes are
inflicted with corresponding ceremonies;--and thus he is towed from
one ship to another until he has received the whole of his punishment.
The severity of this punishment consists not only in the number of
lashes, but in the peculiar manner in which they are inflicted; as, after
the unfortunate wretch has received the first part of his sentence
alongside of one ship, the blood is allowed to congeal, and the wounds
partially to close, during the interval which takes place previously to
his arrival alongside of the next, when the cat again subjects him to
renewed and increased torture. During the latter part of the punishment,
the suffering is dreadful; and a man who has undergone this sentence is
generally broken down in constitution, if not in spirits, for the
remainder of his life.
Such was the punishment inflicted upon the unfortunate Peters; and it
would be difficult to decide, at the moment when it was completed, and
the blanket thrown over his shoulders, whether the heart or the back of
the fainting man were the more lacerated of the two.
Time can heal the wounds of the body, over which it holds its empire;
but those of the soul, like the soul itself, spurn his transitory sway.
Peters, from that moment, was a desperate man. A short time after he
had undergone his sentence, the news of the mutiny at Spithead was
communicated; and the vacillation and apprehensions of the Admiralty,
and of the nation at large, were not to be concealed. This mutiny was
apparently quelled by conciliation; but conciliation is but a half
measure, and ineffectual when offered from superiors to inferiors.
In this world, I know not why, there seems to be but one seal binding in
all contracts of magnitude--and that seal is blood. Without referring to
the Jewish types, proclaiming that "all things were purified by blood,
and without shedding of blood there was no remission,"--without
referring to that sublime mystery by which these types have been
fulfilled,--it appears as if, in all ages and all countries, blood had been
the only seal of security.

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