Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Map 1 The West Indies Station, 1812–15
- Map 2 The North American Station, 1812-15
- Introduction
- Part I Authority’s Tools for Creating Order
- Part II Creating ‘Disorder’
- Part III The Responses to ‘Disorder’
- Conclusions
- Appendix A The Ships in the Sample, the Expected Complements, Their Officers and the Time Period the Officers Were in Command, within the Study
- Appendix B Tables
- Works Cited
- Index
5 - Illegitimate Activity: Theft, Profiteering and Embezzlement, and Sex
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Map 1 The West Indies Station, 1812–15
- Map 2 The North American Station, 1812-15
- Introduction
- Part I Authority’s Tools for Creating Order
- Part II Creating ‘Disorder’
- Part III The Responses to ‘Disorder’
- Conclusions
- Appendix A The Ships in the Sample, the Expected Complements, Their Officers and the Time Period the Officers Were in Command, within the Study
- Appendix B Tables
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
This chapter focuses on individuals who undermined the order of the navy by increasing their personal finances, reputations, or satisfying personal needs, and thus directly violated the Regulations and Instructions, the Articles of War, and/or specific orders and directions from superior officers. Where the last chapter dealt with behaviour which directly threatened the control of those in authority, the people engaged in the above activities were not trying to escape the navy, were not seeking a confrontation with authority, but wished to stay in the navy and continue their self-interested activity. Erving Goffman's concept of secondary adjustments applies to this type of behaviour. Goffman stated that people within institutions, either inmate or keeper, actively “employ unauthorized means, or obtain unauthorized ends, or both, thus getting around the organization's assumptions as to what he [or she] should do.” Charles Glass, in his recent work on deserters in World War II, describes the thick web of the black market in army supplies in which “thousands” of Allied soldiers immersed themselves during the European campaigns. Glass does not evoke Goffman's phrase but the soldiers were part of the military system, did not want to leave it, but did engage in activity by which they profited at the expense of the organization's goals. In this study, such activities included theft, embezzlement, profiteering, as well as rape and sodomy. In some cases, the actions to be discussed threatened or hampered the navy's war effort against America, as it took valuable time and energy to find, remove and punish the offenders.
Theft
The evidence available indicates that theft took one of two variations: one form involved stealing from the dockyard in order to return one's ship to active duty quickly. This type of theft involved commissioned and warrant officers. The other form of theft was exclusively about personal gain, either monetary or simply possessing a desired object. At the beginning of the war with America, theft occurred from the Halifax dockyard as officers stole goods to ready their ships for sea. Theft secured necessary supplies immediately, avoiding the delay encountered when placing a proper request. Stealing an item removed the need to record the expenditure in the ship's account book. It circumvented being denied the requested item, or receiving only part of the necessary supplies. Such theft provided for a ship's earlier return to sea, in order to press the war effort, and possibly capture prizes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Order and Disorder in the British Navy, 1793-1815Control, Resistance, Flogging and Hanging, pp. 145 - 164Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2016