12/22/03

Ho! For the diamond fields! The trap. Punishment at the mast. The cat o'nine tails.

We arrived at Simon’s Bay, Cape of Good Hope, in the middle watch. In the glory of a full moon one night in the fall of 1870. The “Glasgow” entered the harbor under steam power, having lowered her propeller and taken in and furled her sails the day before. “H.M.S. Rattlesnake,” which had the record of having captured some of the most bloody pirates of the age, was calmly lying at anchor near the wharves. As the “Glasgow” steamed into the harbor in the moonlight, we poked our jib boom over the waist of the “Rattlesnake” and her crew was given the fright of their lives. Only a miracle saved this crack corvette. A timely reversal of our engines prevented a catastrophe, as we backed away to a more comfortable berth with no injury save the loss of our dolphin striker, dropped our anchor, and called it a day.

After such a prolonged voyage it was customary to grant the crew a three days’ general leave. The privilege included both officers and men, and the following afternoon the men began trickling to the shore. The three midshipmen, Lord George Hay, the Hon. Augustus Brown, and myself, aged fourteen and thereabouts, held a consultation which resulted in pooling our finances, consisting of a penny and a postage stamp from his lordship, three shillings and sixpence from Brown, and eighteen pence from myself – total, five shillings, two pence, and the stamp. This was thought ample to take us to Capetown, thirty-five miles away, and from thence to the diamond diggers some four hundred short miles inland, after which we need not bother ourselves any longer, as we would then all be millionaires! It was all very simple.

We hastily hid about our persons what food we could pilfer from the captain’s gallery, passed the scrutiny of the officer of the watch, entered one of our boats, and reached shore. Knowing the signalman on the poop would be following our movements with his glass, we disported ourselves on the silvery sands of the beach by playing leapfrog until the opportune moment arrived to disappear from the view of the ship. Slipping through the town, we located the highway and began our hike to the capital city of South Africa. The road led through a country seemingly fertile with here and there a farmhouse. Whenever we thought we had about reached the jumping-off-place, a village would heave in sight. Here we would straighten up and march through as if we were carrying a commission of major importance.

We had come about eight miles from Simonstown, and the unusual strain put upon our sea legs had left us tired but with undiminished enthusiasm. Daylight was departing and it was with a feeling of gladness that we espied a farmhouse in the distance. The farmer was a dour and sullen Dutchman who would have us be gone, but his wife, seeing three middies in uniform appealing for shelter and having in mind a boy of her own, thrust the man aside, took me by the arm, led us into the house, and gave us supper and a bed for the night. Although I was the youngest of the three, my battle with the world had already taught me the fallacy of trusting a man with a face like that of our host, and I whispered my suspicions under the blanket to my companions. They had more faith in human nature than I, and were convinced that my fears were groundless. Soon we were lost in dreaming of the wonderful Kohinoors that awaited us at the diggings. Had we been more observant, however, we would have seen a horseman leave the farm about daylight and quietly move in the direction of Simon’s Bay.

The farmer’s wife aroused us early, gave us a hearty breakfast for which she would accept no pay, and presented each of us with an apple for lunch. We started the morning by running the first mile. The rest of the day was uneventful. We met with no further hospitality and had to draw on our capital for bread, with a bed on top of a haystack.

Next day a man passed us on horseback and took what we thought was more notice of us then the situation justified, but we put it down to be mere curiosity. It was on the third afternoon of our journey that we saw the spires of Capetown among the trees ahead, and putting a spur to our movements we were approaching the town limits when a cart met us and a constable jumped down, read our names from a paper, and ordered us to get into the cart. Realizing now that we were the victims of a trap set by the farmer at our first night’s stopping place, we saw our hope of diamonds and mythical millions vanish, as back we went. The horse was whipped into a smart trot, and on the morning of the following day we were delivered to the ship. The constable got his five pounds reward, and all three of us were placed under arrest for the heinous offense of breaking our leave.

The day following this debacle, the hands were called to “Up anchor,” and the ship moved slowly out of the harbor amid a salve of cheers from the “Rattlesnake,” which had mannered her yards to bid us farewell. As the mere matter of putting the ship to sea was simply routine business, being handled by the commander and the navigating officer, the captain was free to attend to the truants, and he lost no time in informing us as to what was coming to us. “Captain Jones,” said Lord Hay, “I will have you know that I have a title!” “Oh yes,” returned our skipper, “so you have my lord! Go to the foretopmast head an stay there till I tell you to come down!” Hon. Augustus Brown was sent to the mizzenmast, while I was selected to adorn the head of the main topmast.  “And you will stay there until I tell each of you to come down,” he added in a particularly malevolent tone of voice.

We were under topsails and courses as we left the bay and the ship pointed out to sea. A gale was coming from the southwest, which expended its force on the starboard quarter. We climbed to our perches on the topsail yards between the tie blocks, and reeved an arm around each tie. Presently the ship wore away from the wind and the gale was dead astern. Running like a wild thing over the tremendous swells, the frigate, with double lashed guns and lifelines strung along the upper deck, was rolling her yard-arms under and shipping seas over her taffrail. With the tops of the masts describing an arc of eighty degrees, we youngsters had to hang on for dear life as we were “rocked in the cradle of the deep” to such an extent that nothing short of a cast-iron stomach would stand such treatment. To soil the deck with the contents of my innards was unthinkable, as it would have brought additional punishment. To avoid that, I climbed up to the crosstrees above me and abstracted a handful of rope yarns that had been secreted between the head of the topmast and the heel of the to’gallantmast. With this I returned to my nest on the topsail yard and picked the yarns into oakum as my nausea became more acute. My stomach was then relieved and the package was tossed overboard, but the swing of the mast all through that night of terror made an impression on my youthful mind that will be fresh to my dying day. That a man possessing such a small trace of milk of human kindness could be so callous as to send boys, hardly in their teens, to such a perilous punishment, keeping them in a state of terror for eighteen hours, is almost unbelievable, but such was the character of the discipline exercised in the British Navy of sixty years ago.

The gale subsided as daylight broke, and with a shifting of the wind to the beam the ship held on an even keel. At seven bells we were ordered down from aloft, piped to breakfast, and were again on duty.

On mixing again with my fellowmen I soon learned that we were not the only ones who played truant at the Cape. Three seamen, who had transgressed the law of the ship and the articles of war, were then in the brig under sentence of four dozen with the cat for breaking their leave and coming on board in a state of inebriation. At four bells in the morning watch I heard, for the second time in my naval career, with a sickening feeling in my heart, the pipe of the boatswain’s mate: 

“All hands witness punishment!”

There was the usual rush from below as the men fell in line on the quarterdeck. Every man was in his place according to his number, the even numbers on the port side and the odd on the starboard, so that the crew formed the regulation hollow square, the officers gathered about the capstan, with the captain in the open. A space had been left in front of the main rigging on the starboard side, where two capstan bars stood upright, three feet apart, with their upper ends lashed to the shrouds. Across there were laid the wooden gratings taken from a hatchway and securely fastened. Four quartermasters, each armed with a cat o’nine tails stood in line near the gratins. The prisoners in irons and under a guard of marines faced the mainmast, while the master-at-arms with his “Doomsday Book” held it as the captain read the sentence, at the end of which the usual word was given to “Seize him up!”

At this order the first victim was stripped to the waist and a band canvas was strapped around his body to take care of the lashes that were too low. He was then spread-eagled against the gratings and fastened by his wrists and ankles. A leaden bullet had been slipped to him by a friend to grind his teeth upon and help to alleviate the pain. A quartermaster then toyed with the cat, straightened out the tails, and came down upon the wretched man’s back with all his force. The blow would land on the right lobe of his back muscles, but the real sting was inflicted around and under the armpit where the catgut whipping on the end of each tail would cut into the flesh so that the ribs resembled a layer of chopped meat. Before the last dozen were given the man fainted, but was revived by the ship’s surgeon, and after testing his pulse the flogging was resumed. This man when released had to be carried to the sick bay, and he stayed there until his wounds were healed.

The other tow culprits received the same treatment, a different quartermaster for each dozen strokes, but these last two men were of stouter constitution and nerve. They cursed the Navy, the ship and the captain, and promised to kill him at the first opportunity, but to no purpose. At the finish of the brutal exhibition the deck around the gratings presented a gory sight, the tails of the cats having flicked the blood in every direction.