Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Preface
- About the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction, Analysis and Interpretation
- 1 Spithead Mutiny: Introduction
- 2 The Delegates: A Radical Tradition
- 3 What Really Happened On Board HMS London?
- 4 The Spirit of Kempenfeldt
- 5 Voices from the Lower Deck: Petitions on the Conduct of Naval Officers during the 1797 Mutinies
- 6 Crew Management and Mutiny: The Case of Minerve, 1796–1802
- 7 The 1797 Mutinies in the Channel Fleet: A Foreign–Inspired Revolutionary Movement?
- 8 The Nore Mutiny: Introduction
- 9 The East Coast Mutinies: May–June 1797
- 10 Reporting the Mutinies in the Provincial Press
- 11 A Floating Republic? Conspiracy Theory and the Nore Mutiny of 1797
- 12 Lower Deck Life in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
- 13 ‘Launched into Eternity’ Admiralty Retribution or the Restoration of Discipline?
- 14 Discipline, Desertion and Death: HMS Trent 1796–1803
- 15 ‘We went out with Admiral Duncan, we came back without him’: Mutiny and the North Sea Squadron
- 16 The Influence of 1797 upon the Nereide Mutiny of 1809
- Select Bibliography
- Index
14 - Discipline, Desertion and Death: HMS Trent 1796–1803
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Preface
- About the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction, Analysis and Interpretation
- 1 Spithead Mutiny: Introduction
- 2 The Delegates: A Radical Tradition
- 3 What Really Happened On Board HMS London?
- 4 The Spirit of Kempenfeldt
- 5 Voices from the Lower Deck: Petitions on the Conduct of Naval Officers during the 1797 Mutinies
- 6 Crew Management and Mutiny: The Case of Minerve, 1796–1802
- 7 The 1797 Mutinies in the Channel Fleet: A Foreign–Inspired Revolutionary Movement?
- 8 The Nore Mutiny: Introduction
- 9 The East Coast Mutinies: May–June 1797
- 10 Reporting the Mutinies in the Provincial Press
- 11 A Floating Republic? Conspiracy Theory and the Nore Mutiny of 1797
- 12 Lower Deck Life in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
- 13 ‘Launched into Eternity’ Admiralty Retribution or the Restoration of Discipline?
- 14 Discipline, Desertion and Death: HMS Trent 1796–1803
- 15 ‘We went out with Admiral Duncan, we came back without him’: Mutiny and the North Sea Squadron
- 16 The Influence of 1797 upon the Nereide Mutiny of 1809
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Perhaps the most prevalent public image of the Royal Navy of the French Wars is of the shipboard flogging of sailors. Naval discipline and in particular the practice of flogging is subject to much historical controversy. Views on the subject of flogging range from the use of the lash as a brutal and brutalising imposition of authority over oppressed and impressed sailors to flogging as a minor imposition on men who would prefer to receive instant retribution for their offences rather than suffer trial and incarceration at some future date.
Works by J. D. Byrn Jr, Crime and Punishment in the Royal Navy and Naval Court Martials 1793–1815, look at Royal Navy discipline in the social context of the times, as well as applying a systematic approach to the subject. Byrn's thesis is that naval discipline conformed in most respects to how law and order was conducted on land in contemporary society:
Simply stated, the methods used to maintain harmony in the king's fleet were similar to those of the eighteenth-century English system of criminal justice … In short, the precepts of the unreformed system of criminal justice were applied at sea wherever feasible.
In his analysis Byrn examined all the extant court-martial records for the period and station in question, as well as other contemporary naval records including ship's muster books. This chapter attempts to take Byrn's work forward by concentrating on how discipline was used to manage a ship's company on a day-to-day basis.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Naval Mutinies of 1797Unity and Perseverance, pp. 226 - 242Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011