Chapter 52 - Page 2

have been flogged
at the gangway.

However childish, ignorant, stupid, or idiotic a midshipman, if he but
orders a sailor to perform even the most absurd action, that man is not
only bound to render instant and unanswering obedience, but he would
refuse at his peril. And if, having obeyed, he should then complain to
the Captain, and the Captain, in his own mind, should be thoroughly
convinced of the impropriety, perhaps of the illegality of the order,
yet, in nine cases out of ten, he would not publicly reprimand the
midshipman, nor by the slightest token admit before the complainant
that, in this particular thing, the midshipman had done otherwise
than perfectly right.

Upon a midshipman's complaining of a seaman to Lord Collingwood,
when Captain of a line-of-battle ship, he ordered the man for
punishment; and, in the interval, calling the midshipman aside,
said to him, "In all probability, now, the fault is yours--you
know; therefore, when the man is brought to the mast, you had
better ask for his pardon."

Accordingly, upon the lad's public intercession, Collingwood,
turning to the culprit, said, "This young gentleman has pleaded
so humanely for you, that, in hope you feel a due gratitude to
him for his benevolence, I will, for this time, overlook your
offence." This story is related by the editor of the Admiral's
"Correspondence," to show the Admiral's kindheartedness.

Now Collingood was, in reality, one of the most just, humane, and
benevolent admirals that ever hoisted a flag. For a sea-officer,
Collingwood was a man in a million. But if a man like him, swayed by
old usages, could thus violate the commonest principle of justice--
with however good motives at bottom--what must be expected from other
Captains not so eminently gifted with noble traits as Collingwood?

And if the corps of American midshipmen is mostly replenished
from the nursery, the counter, and the lap of unrestrained
indulgence at home: and if most of them at least, by their
impotency as officers, in all important functions at sea, by
their boyish and overweening conceit of their gold lace, by their
overbearing manner toward the seamen, and by their peculiar
aptitude to construe the merest trivialities of manner into set
affronts against their dignity; if by all this they sometimes
contract the ill-will of the seamen; and if, in a thousand ways,
the seamen cannot but betray it--how easy for any of these
midshipmen, who may happen to be unrestrained by moral principle,
to resort to spiteful practices in procuring vengeance upon the
offenders, in many instances to the extremity of the lash; since,
as we have seen, the tacit principle in the Navy seems to be
that, in