Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1890 — ROUGH ON SAILORS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ROUGH ON SAILORS.

PUNISHMENTS THAT ARE LAWFUL ' AND THOSE THAT ARE NOT. No Devleo for Inflicting Torture Unlawtai So Long as He la Not Flogged or Marred. If the troubles on board the United States war ship Enterprise, of which Full and graphic reports have been printed, serve to draw public attention to the actual conditions of life which sometimes exist on board American naval vessels, and if the publicity serve to make that life more pleasant, then the crew, officers and men alike (for it

must not be supposed that the Captain has had-any pleasanter time than his men), will not have endured their misery in vain. The punishments which a man may lawfully incur in the navy are severe enough when inflicted at the hands of thoughtless and cruel officers, but when to the lawful penalties others are added the life of the men becomes a very hard one indeed. It may be thought that unlawful punishments could never be inflicted on an American war ship, but as a matter of fact very many such are inflicted.

When the facts are all made plain it appears that the sailors suffer most where there is a lack of discipline in the ship, and that there is a lack of discipline where the Captain is of a fickle or changing disposition. As the old sailors say, some officers are one day roses and pie; the next they are thorns and pepper sauce. These men make life a burden for all beneath them. With an invitation on shore to dinner in his pocket the Captain is in a cheerful mood. He lets the routine of duty slide, and the men smoke and skylark at will. At the dinner the Captain finds his lady love capricious, or he is jilted, or he takes too much wine, and the next morning he is in a state of mind. The men having been allowed undue freedom one day are in no mood for restraint the next, but they get restrained, and very likely put at extra duty or drill without regard to the weather, and there is no end of growling. This commonly leads, to something akin to insolence, and the one thing an irritable officer cannot stand is an appearance of insolence. The offender is disrated at a breath very often, and for an offence which, if fully understood, was no offence at all. He had no thought of being disrespectful. The look which the officer thought insolent was really one of fear or an attempt to be of good heart under adverse circumstances. Disrating is a very serious affair. The poor fellow, in his petty rank, drew $45 a month, maybe S6O. Disrated he gets but $24, and, moreover, has suffered a fall in rank and consideration among the’ crew that hurts his pride terribly. His hopes of further preferment are gone while in that ship, and the stigma of having been disrated will follow him to the next ship.

Worst of all he knows that he has been unjustly treated and he rankles under it, and is ripe, likely enough, for desertion. Bad as is the disrating, the power of the Captain may add to it solitary confinement This is likely to be a favorite method of punishing obstinate seamen on the new war ships. The hulls of these ships are divided into an immense number of small compartments. Borno of these compartments are in out-of-the-way parts of the ship. They are without light, and they depend for ventilation on a pipe leading to a fan. which may or may not be in operation. Borne are near the boiler room and insufferably hot while others are in remote parts of the ship and are cold and damp. They are of odd shapes, and of such sizes and pitch of floor that a man can neither stand erect, nor sit down, nor lie down in comfort. Men can and do remain in utter darkness and solitude for hours, where the minutes drag along like hours, but the lawful punishment is not limited even to solitary confinement for hours. The man may, on the order of his Captain, be confined so for five days, during which bread and water only will be given him for food, while his arms and legs are loaded with irons. There he must lie on an iron plate, growing weaker for want of proper food, tortured by his irons, and haunted by the shapes with which his superstition peoples. the darkness. And yet it is all nceording to law, and there is no redress, even when unjustly confined, as sometimes happens through misapprehension. The extra duties which a man may be called oh to perform may wear the life out of him. Men have been kept on lookout until they have gone to sleep standing up, and so have tumbled over on deck. They arc set to cleaning .the bright work, or worse, the closets, during the hours that should be devotedto sleep. They are slung in a boatswain’s chair on the sunny side of the ship on a hot day and compelled to paint or wash the side while the sun beats down fit to broil them. The unlawful punishments inflicted

oa the men are varied. Get any naval seaman into a talkative mood, aay a Lieutenant over a bottle of wine or a captain of the foretop over a boot-leg of beer, and turn the conversation gently on the subject of punishment—get the man to tell what he has gone through with and seen. One of the first things likely to be told by Jack is the way landsmen are served who spit on the deck. The unfortunate offender against cleanly habits is taken forward and a bit of marline put about his neck, and to this is slung a epit box—a miniature tub a foot across and six inches deep. Then he is compelled to march up and down the port side of the deck for perhaps an hour, while the old salts with devlisb glee, come from all parts of the deck to spit in that kid. Men who are to be punished by extra watch are sometimes sent into the rigging "to keep a bright lookout for the equator." They must climb np on the under side of the shrouds, and when twelve or fifteen feet above the deck hang on until ordered down, unless they drop first from sheer exhaustion, as sometimes happens. Let the reader support his weight on his hands by clasping the top of a door frame,for instance, and see how it feels; then he will be prepared to better appreciate what it is to be triced up. Men are triced up in two ways. In one a line rove through a block lashed aloft somewhere is made fast to the chain or bar uniting the handcuffs on a man’s wrists. Then the man is hoisted up until his toes just touch the deck, and his weight is brought on his wrists. The other way is to lash a man’s thumbs together with stout twine and then hoist him up by his thumbs. No matter what a man’s pluck, he will scream with pain in a moment It is the severest punishment now inflicted in the navy. Men are sometimes lashed to a gun or a stanchion. Cases are known where they have been lashed to the cathead when at sea so that icy spray dashed over them till their teeth chattered. No device for inflicting torture on the mind and body of a seaman is unlawful so long as he is not flogged nor marred, provided the punishment is inflicted after due trial by court martial. It need scarcely be said, however, that sentiments of humanity commonly prevail, and that cruel and unusual punishments are seldom inflicted, even though lawful. Thus it is lawful to shave a man’s head and place him at the head of a procession of seamen with a baud of musicians playing the Rogue’s March to escort him ashore after he has been dishonorably dismissed from the service. It is lawful to make a man do duty wibh a ball and chain to his leg. A man might.even be keelhauled lawfully.

Keelhauling consists in dragging a man under the keel of the ship. It was a good old custom in the British and Dutch navies. Stout blocks were rigged on the ends of the main yard. Then, with lines properly rove off, the man was hoisted up to the one eud of the yard and from there lowered rapidly into the water and hauled through under the ship, to emerge half drowned on the opposite side and be hoisted the other yardarm. He was weighted with caunon balls fastened to his feet to make sure that he sank far enough to escape hitting the keel, for they did not wish to quite kill him. Since a summary court martial may be convened by the Captain of a ship at sea to try seamen for offences under his influence, the officers of the court would be directly under his influence, and would be swayed by fear of offending him. So a mau could readily get thirty days in double irons on short rations and lose three months’ pay for an offence which would be very lightly punished in a ship commanded by a reasouble officer.

Men have had their heads shaved when dismissed from the navy within recent years, aud that is probably the most degrading punishment inflicted. But in the old times desertion was punished both by branding and tattooing. The letter was burned into a man’s flesh when he was recaptured, commonly on the left hip, but sometimes on the hand. One can And even now old sailors whose hips have been tattooed in the most gorgeous designs for the sole purpose of covering the hated mark. The cat-o’-nine-tails with which men

were flogged had a handle made of a short rope, say six inches or so long, and just thick enough for a man to get a good grip on it. I*o this were lashed nine thick cords, say two feet long, with three knots in the end of each. In the hands of a brawny boatswain that sort of a cat had claws unmistakably. Flogging is past, but striking is not. The apprentices in the navy are unquestionably cuffed about unwarrantably, anu, if the truth were known, they are probably paddled unmercifully m the training ships sometimes. The youngi stars are a trying lot for the officers to deal With, and if an pfflo&r hasany wsak

spots In bls character the smart lads find them right away and tease him till he squirms. In revenge the officer knocks them endways when opportunity offers. The boys say that in lieu of flogging, they are sometimes stripped and doused with cold water, and cases of landsmen who had the skin scrubbed off with' sand for coming on board drunk and unclean are often told about. On the whole, it should be said that the men in the American navy are paid, fed, and treated better than in any other navy in the world. The ships where life is a bnrden are the exception. Nevertheless, the life of a seaman, when one considers that he can never have t home, is lucky if he gets leave to go ashore for a few hours once in a month, must work hard, must eat coarse fare,must forever by salutes and manner of speech be acknowledging a sense of his inferiority to some other man—the life of a seaman is not attractive to an American, even when at its best — N. Y. Bun.

THUMB TRICING UP.

ARM AND LEG IRONS.

RIDING THE CAT.

SPREAD EAGLE.