Chapter 36

FLOGGING NOT NECESSARY.

But White-Jacket is ready to come down from the lofty mast-head of an
eternal principle, and fight you--Commodores and Captains of the navy
--on your own quarter-deck, with your own weapons, at your own paces.

Exempt yourselves from the lash, you take Bible oaths to it that
it is indispensable for others; you swear that, without the lash,
no armed ship can be kept in suitable discipline. Be it proved to
you, officers, and stamped upon your foreheads, that herein you
are utterly wrong.

"Send them to Collingwood," said Lord Nelson, "and _he_ will
bring them to order." This was the language of that renowned
Admiral, when his officers reported to him certain seamen of the
fleet as wholly ungovernable. "Send them to Collingwood." And who
was Collingwood, that, after these navy rebels had been
imprisoned and scourged without being brought to order,
Collingwood could convert them to docility?

Who Admiral Colllngwood was, as an historical hero, history
herself will tell you; nor, in whatever triumphal hall they may
be hanging, will the captured flags of Trafalgar fail to rustle
at the mention of that name. But what Collingwood was as a
disciplinarian on board the ships he commanded perhaps needs to
be said. He was an officer, then, who held in abhorrence all
corporal punishment; who, though seeing more active service than
any sea-officer of his time, yet, for years together, governed
his men without inflicting the lash.

But these seaman of his must have been most exemplary saints to
have proved docile under so lenient a sway. Were they saints?
Answer, ye jails and alms-houses throughout the length and
breadth of Great Britain, which, in Collingwood's time, were
swept clean of the last lingering villain and pauper to man his
majesty's fleets.

Still more, _that_ was a period when the uttermost resources of
England were taxed to the quick; when the masts of her multiplied
fleets almost transplanted her forests, all standing to the sea;
when British press-gangs not only boarded foreign ships on the
high seas, and boarded foreign pier-heads, but boarded their own
merchantmen at the mouth of the Thames, and boarded the very
fire-sides along its banks; when Englishmen were knocked down and
dragged into the navy, like cattle into the slaughter-house, with
every mortal provocation to a mad desperation against the service
that thus ran their unwilling heads into the muzzles of the
enemy's cannon. _This_ was the time, and _these_ the men that
Collingwood governed without the lash.

I know it has been said that Lord Collingwood began by inflicting
severe punishments, and afterward ruling his sailors by the mere