AT SEA: ON PASSAGE 123 



was accompanied by a diet of bread and water or worse. Both 

 flogging and the use of the "run" as a prison were widely 

 prevalent practices during the first half of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury^ but later they fell more and more into disfavor, and pub- 

 lic opinion gradually forced their discontinuance. 



Added to these orthodox forms of chastisement were many 

 novel ones developed by ingenious captains. In one instance, 

 when two men were reported for fighting, they were compelled 

 to engage in a real fistic encounter, with the understanding that 

 the one who was beaten would receive a flogging in addition. 

 Because he chose to believe that the men were striking too 

 lightly, the captain finally ordered them to strip to the waist 

 and gave each eighteen heavy blows with a whip of tarred 

 cords. The master of another vessel, in dealing with a sim- 

 ilar offense, tied the left wrists of the combatants together and 

 forced them to strike each other on the back with pieces of 

 rope held in their right hands. This was continued for thirty 

 minutes J and thereafter one of the men was sent to sit astride 

 the flying jib-boom and the other to occupy a similar position 

 on the spanker boom (the extreme forward and after points 

 of a vessel, which were both uncomfortable and precarious 

 seats). At times these novel punishments were pointedly 

 facetious, as when a cook was ordered to consume single- 

 handed the whole of a poorly-prepared mess of beans and was 

 allowed no other food whatever during the several days re- 

 quired to complete the feast. But for the most part they 

 were grim, bitter, and cruel affairs. 



However much the punishment might vary in conception 

 or execution, there was one element which was seldom absent. 

 This was a generous use of profanity and vituperation. It 

 would seem to have been the firm belief of many officers that 

 a choice assortment of the vilest oaths and the foulest epithets 

 was as necessary in handling a crew as a ready fist. Though 

 the habit of addressing the foremast hands in profane terms 

 was not literally universal, it was so common that a sailor 

 simply expected it. Most reprimands and many routine or- 

 ders were accompanied by minor and commonplace oaths; 

 while a beating or a flogging called forth a storm of studied 

 curses and imprecations. Although it was supposed that such 



