Since Andrew Gordon's influential examination of command in the Royal Navy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there has been little attempt to extend this analysis beyond the operation of fleets to look at the level of the ship, where command shades into management. Following Churchill's famous list of the traditions of the Royal Navy as being rum, sodomy and the lash, the widespread view of naval discipline in the nineteenth century has continued to be centred on corporal punishment. In fairness, corporal punishment was a key topic of debate for contemporaries in the second half of the nineteenth century, as reformers endeavoured to push through the abolition, or at least moderation, of such physical penalties. Yet the lash itself was of much diminished importance, for it was in this period that the Admiralty, under Parliamentary pressure, first limited, and ultimately ended the imposition of flogging as a disciplinary sanction; in 1871 it was effectively suspended for peace time, and more generally in 1879. Historians, too, have been attracted to the story of the end of corporal punishment, and it forms a prominent element in the little research there has been on discipline in this period.

Three observations can be made about this focus upon flogging. Firstly, corporal punishment was only one of various penalties that could be imposed upon wrongdoers; the imposition of unpleasant cleaning tasks, loss of free time or restrictions upon the rum ration, for instance, were less contentious and brutal but could be effective disciplinary tools.