Victorian Shipboard punishments?

[theMasterBaiter]

Any historical torture buffs? I'm writing a Victorian Steampunk(ish) erotic novel and want to model a period accurate punishment, on a ship, that is kinky and possibly a turn on to masochists. I've been reading about the sorts of things done to punish people back in the day (victorian mostly) and most of it seems pretty violent and over far too quickly. The stocks and all that went out in the prior age (1700s) as the pace of life apparently increased? So in Victorian times, whippings, floggings, and flayings, but typically very very violent and over in an hour. Were there any slow, long, agonizing punishments which didn't kill you that you can think of?

Here is what I have right now, for your reading pleasure:
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As he arose in rank and reputation, he was eventually granted his own ship. And his crew quickly found him a strong, able, and generous man… except for cases of negligence, dereliction, or fighting… and in those cases, the cruelty of his punishments became legendary for their slow agony.

Instead of a quick and very violent punishment such as keelhauling or flaying, as was the standard of the day, the Captain would administer a painful, but non-damaging punishment over an extended period. Most often, the unfortunate would be stripped naked and strung up Strappado in the line above the deck, such that the genitals were in easy reach, and then the Captain or other officers would fall into the habit of whipping or caning the victim just once between the legs with their crop or the flat blade of their sword each time they walked under them. This would go on for days if not weeks.

Eventually, any crew member who failed in their assigned task would voluntarily whip or flog themselves, or asked shipmates to do the same before the error could be discovered. They would then present themselves stripped and showing the marks of their self inflicted punishment in hopes that it would be taken as enough. It came to be known that the Captain would often accept this, after adding a few marks of his own.

 

[moncrief_the_advocate]

From what I can find, it looks like most of the more brutal punishments went out of fashion by the 19th century. I found this link on punishments from that time period that you could maybe draw some inspiration from.

https://www.corpun.com/counukn.htm

I steampunk, good luck on your story.

 

[jomar]

Back in my salty days wave-whipping was a favorite.

The offending sailor was made to strip naked on deck so the other sailors could comment upon his wares, if exceptional, with the boldest encouraged to slap the bait and tackle a bit for the amusement of the crew.

Then, the offending sailor was hung by his feet on a spar, and lowered overboard until his head was a bit above the water but continuously slapped and dragged though the waves as the ship dipped and rose and dipped and rose and dipped and rose and sailed close to point.

I must say, the wavy motion allowed for the most hypnotizing wobble and flip of any sailors bits. Amusing to this old captain how quickly the crew bored of the sight and, with furtive looks and nods, quietly returned to their berths in twos and threes.

Ahh, how I miss those days.

So yes, wave-whipping. And your hero rose through the ranks, not arose...though...

 

[sr71plt]

Presume in your research you found this:

http://www.thedearsurprise.com/an-introduction-to-punishment-in-aubreys-royal-navy/

 

[ChloeTzang]

And this.....

Corporal punishment in the Royal Navy

https://www.corpun.com/ppimages/humanitarianxm.jpg

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Discipline was accepted as the price of keeping order. A masochistic captain would have faced mutiny and possibly a swim home.

I'm having trouble seeing sailors openly getting into torturing male genitalia. Anyone a little too interested in such things would be perceived to be gay on top of sadistic. That generally wouldn't have ended well. I mean it's clear where you want to go, just leave accuracy behind when you go there.

If you want to rip someone up pretty good, keelhauling can do the trick. The bottom of ships was often encrusted with barnacles, which could tear you up pretty good. The keel trip itself wasn't long, true, but the healing process afterwards was neither short nor fun. It can easily be fatal. It's not clear how much the practice was ever used, which means you can get creative with it in stories.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm having trouble seeing sailors openly getting into torturing male genitalia. Anyone a little too interested in such things would be perceived to be gay on top of sadistic. That generally wouldn't have ended well.

In Victorian England? Methinks you're a bit out of your depth in perceptions on this topic.

 

[Blind_Justice]

Steampunk itself is riddled with anachronisms, most of the "bringing future inventions earlier" kind. There's always the option of keeping time-tested methods of punishment around if you need to. Tying sailors to a mast and having them bake in the sun ALWAYS worked in lieu of stocks.

 

[SamScribble]

I gather that some of the really sadistic Victorian naval captains made recalcitrant crew members eat the food.

 

[Weird Harold]

Discipline was accepted as the price of keeping order. A masochistic captain would have faced mutiny and possibly a swim home.

I don't think they'd have much trouble with a Masochist, but a Sadist, like Captain Bligh would get command of a lifeboat and anyone who supported him would crew it. Come to think of it, that's exactly what happened on HMS Bounty.

Since the OP is looking for suggestion about what an abnormal Captain would use as punishments, all of the suggested examples of what could be normally found aboard a Victorian ship only serve as what would NOT be the case on his particular ship. Pretty much anything the OP can think up is possible because his character is abnormal

 

[sr71plt]

It most likely would be variations of practices that already existed.

 

[ishtat]

N.A.M. Rodger is by some distance the foremost historian of the British Navy. He has written chapters on the problems captains had in gaining and retaining crews, particularly during and after the French/Napoleonic wars 1794 -1815. Captains would frequently not pay crews after a tour of duty (to make sure they returned for the next tour) and often resorted to bribes to 'pinch' crew from other captains. In this environment punishments decreased substantially and this was backed up by revised regulations in 1806 which limited the severity of punishment.

The discipline was pretty rugged in the 17th/18th centuries but a substantial part of his crew stuck by William Bligh after the mutiny on the Bounty despite his brutality, because they judged correctly that his genius as a navigator would get them home, whereas the incompetence of the mutineers would get them into strife. Their loyalty was well judged.

Interestingly, whilst brutality in the Victorian Royal Navy is largely a myth, Rodger noted that the early US navy continued to hand out savage punishments because they had not had the wartime crewing problems. However, after a surprisingly brutal start, the new US Navy learned very quickly that excessive punishments were counter productive.

So Naval brutality during the Victorian era (1819- 1901) is a grossly exaggerated myth. Sorry if that spoils the story.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I don't think they'd have much trouble with a Masochist, but a Sadist, like Captain Bligh would get command of a lifeboat and anyone who supported him would crew it. Come to think of it, that's exactly what happened on HMS Bounty.

Was it, though? Fiction often portrays Bligh as a tyrant, but it's not clear that the evidence supports that.

"Bligh was certainly extremely hot-tempered; he swore well and vigorously and was infuriated by any incompetence shown by his subordinates; but the evidence suggests that his rages were short-lived, that in general he was not a harsh commander and that the mutiny was his misfortune, not his fault. This was certainly the view of the Admiralty, which promoted him captain..." - http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bligh-william-1797

(At the time of the mutiny he was only a commanding lieutenant - the Bounty wasn't big enough to rate a captain.)

My understanding is that the punishments recorded in his logs are mild by the standards of the time, although I don't have a solid source for that one.

 

[oggbashan]

Was it, though? Fiction often portrays Bligh as a tyrant, but it's not clear that the evidence supports that.

"Bligh was certainly extremely hot-tempered; he swore well and vigorously and was infuriated by any incompetence shown by his subordinates; but the evidence suggests that his rages were short-lived, that in general he was not a harsh commander and that the mutiny was his misfortune, not his fault. This was certainly the view of the Admiralty, which promoted him captain..." - http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bligh-william-1797

(At the time of the mutiny he was only a commanding lieutenant - the Bounty wasn't big enough to rate a captain.)

My understanding is that the punishments recorded in his logs are mild by the standards of the time, although I don't have a solid source for that one.

"Breadfruit" Bligh actually had TWO mutinies against him - the famous one on HMS Bounty, and another one when he was Governor of New South Wales in Australia. The Bounty mutiny has been explored in depth and it is doubtful that Bligh should take more than a small proportion of the blame.

The second one in New South Wales was more serious but the fault really lies with those who appointed him as Governor. New South Wales at the time was plagued with corruption and bribery. Bligh was sent to sort it out but without the terms of employment and resources to do what he was ordered to do. He tried, and failed, because he didn't have the support of the major players in New South Wales.

I started this post by calling him "Breadfruit" Bligh. He was a skilled botanist and popularised the cultivation of Breadfruit in the West Indies. During the mutiny on HMS Bounty and his subsequent boat voyage he and his crew saved the majority of the botanical collection that had been acquired during HMS Bounty's voyage.

His tomb is in the churchyard of a church that is now The Garden Museum in London, just outside the Archbishop of Canterbury's Lambeth Palace. The tomb is adorned with carved breadfruit and there is no mention of the mutinies. It is next to the tomb of John Tradescant, another famous botanist.

http://www.gardenmuseum.org.uk/uploads/Daniel_June_2011b_010.jpg

http://www.gardenmuseum.org.uk/

Bligh deserves to be remembered and honoured for his contributions to botany and forgiven for failing after being placed in impossible situations by his superiors.

 

[ElectricBlue]

New South Wales at the time was plagued with corruption and bribery.

Not much changed then...

 

[Handley_Page]

It might be worth looking at the books by Alexander Kent (Bolitho), or CS Forrester (Hornblower) both of whose characters and the service are well researched.
Both authors quote their various sources, which may be worth closer examination.

 

[colddiesel]

Chloe's article quotes as many as 30% of Naval cadets (boys 13 to 17) being caned. I was born in 1937 and can assure you that in my Scottish school 100% of the boys were strapped regularly and often unfairly, and probably 15% of the girls. It was just accepted as the normal state of affairs.

The worst beaters were the Presbyterian ministers who came in to teach scripture. They beat the Christianity out of me anyway, and my behavior was pretty good most of the time. On one occasion the whole class was beaten because the Minister said one of us had stolen something. He then discovered the particular item at the bottom of his briefcase and thought it was a great joke.

It was a point of honour for the boys to show complete indifference to a beating which sometimes earned a couple of extra strokes for 'dumb insolence.'

The most upsetting thing for both boys and girls in the class was when one of the girls was beaten - which as usual, was in front of the class. I once saw a fourteen year old girl strapped by the minister. She was intellectually a simpleton, and was so terrified she wet herself during the punishment. The Minister then mocked her condition afterwards. There were, however, repercussions; I never saw another girl beaten and that particular Minister did not teach the next term. More than 60 years later I still feel slightly guilty when remembering the episode - guilty that we said and did nothing.

But having said all that, these were different times with different standards. We cannot judge the past with today's standards.

The Tawse (strap or belt) was banned from use in Scottish state schools in 1987 but had been very rarely used for years before that.

 

[Green_Knight]

Was it, though? Fiction often portrays Bligh as a tyrant, but it's not clear that the evidence supports that.

"Bligh was certainly extremely hot-tempered; he swore well and vigorously and was infuriated by any incompetence shown by his subordinates; but the evidence suggests that his rages were short-lived, that in general he was not a harsh commander and that the mutiny was his misfortune, not his fault. This was certainly the view of the Admiralty, which promoted him captain..." - http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bligh-william-1797

(At the time of the mutiny he was only a commanding lieutenant - the Bounty wasn't big enough to rate a captain.)

My understanding is that the punishments recorded in his logs are mild by the standards of the time, although I don't have a solid source for that one.

"Breadfruit" Bligh actually had TWO mutinies against him - the famous one on HMS Bounty, and another one when he was Governor of New South Wales in Australia. The Bounty mutiny has been explored in depth and it is doubtful that Bligh should take more than a small proportion of the blame.

The second one in New South Wales was more serious but the fault really lies with those who appointed him as Governor. New South Wales at the time was plagued with corruption and bribery. Bligh was sent to sort it out but without the terms of employment and resources to do what he was ordered to do. He tried, and failed, because he didn't have the support of the major players in New South Wales.

I started this post by calling him "Breadfruit" Bligh. He was a skilled botanist and popularised the cultivation of Breadfruit in the West Indies. During the mutiny on HMS Bounty and his subsequent boat voyage he and his crew saved the majority of the botanical collection that had been acquired during HMS Bounty's voyage.

His tomb is in the churchyard of a church that is now The Garden Museum in London, just outside the Archbishop of Canterbury's Lambeth Palace. The tomb is adorned with carved breadfruit and there is no mention of the mutinies. It is next to the tomb of John Tradescant, another famous botanist.

http://www.gardenmuseum.org.uk/uploads/Daniel_June_2011b_010.jpg

http://www.gardenmuseum.org.uk/

Bligh deserves to be remembered and honoured for his contributions to botany and forgiven for failing after being placed in impossible situations by his superiors.

Naval discipline in the 19th century was at least as fair as it was on shore. A severe flogging on the back was generally the most extreme on-board ship punishment. The Royal Navy had been developed into a formidable fighting force by the beginning of the 19th century, able, for example, to fire two broadsides in the time it took the French or Spanish to fire one. Put simply, you don't get that sort of performance out of men who you've just been torturing or brutalising.

The affair of the Bounty was a peculiar and untypical one from which not too much should be read about naval discipline. Bounty was a Yorkshire-built collier bought by the navy to transport breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies – to grow as a cheap source of food for the slaves. The expedition was promoted by the Royal Society and organised by its president Sir Joseph Banks. The voyage, therefore, had nothing to do with the defence of the realm and more to do with boosting the profits of plantation owners - although Bligh's sailing orders did include a requirement to navigate and survey the little-known and dangerous Endeavour Straits after leaving Tahiti. This is, of itself, rather odd, because by that time Bounty was laden with breadfruit plants that needed to be got to their destination as quickly as possible.

The likely explanation is that this 'naval purpose' was added to the sailing orders to avoid accusations of a Royal Navy vessel being used for private profit. Banks himself, though, was clear that the purpose of the voyage was to transport breadfruit and nothing else mattered. The crew was reduced in size as much as possible. An astronomer asked to join the ship to observe an expected comet but was refused because there was no room for him.

Bounty was a small ship - the navy classed her as a mere cutter - and her merchant origins were plain. Much of the ship's limited accommodation, including the captain's cabin, was converted to carry the breadfruit, the supplies of freshwater needed to keep them alive, and fuel for the stoves that were to keep them warm in cold weather. The crew, including Bligh, had to make do with quarters than were even more cramped than usual on a voyage that was expected to be long and dangerous. It was hardly a good start.

[Added: Bligh was picked to command the ship because he had served under Captain Cook and knew the Pacific and its islands, not because of any botanical skills.] He was the only commissioned officer on board, so he had no-one to support him, and there were no marines on board as would normally have been the case. The Earl of Selkirk, whose son had signed up for Bounty's crew, visited the ship and wrote to the Admirality complaining about the unsuitability of the ship for the voyage and its lack of a proper establishment of officers, crew, and marines.

The ship's doctor turned out to be a drunken sot and one sailor died as a result of his inadequacies. He falsely blamed scurvy, which led Bligh to take uncessary meansures, including making the crew eat unpopular sauerkraut. The doctor died some six weeks after arriving in Tahiti.

In addition, because of the reductions in the crew, Bligh also had to perform the unpopular role of purser, a role which carried a strong incentive to stint on provisions. If Bligh, as purser, cut the crew's provisions, the crew had no-one to appeal to – except Bligh. An added difficulty was that Bligh's orders were delayed – the impending war with Holland was seen as much more important than a voyage to collect plants – by which time the favourable weather had ended and it took the Bounty over three weeks to get out of the English Channel. There must be a strong possibility that some of the crew regarded the voyage with as little seriousness as their lords and masters at the Admiralty did. No doubt some regarded him as a toy captain of a toy ship carrying out a toy task.

Despite all these problems, all went relatively well during the year it took the ship to reach Tahiti. Only two floggings had to be administered on the outward voyage. Bounty remained in Tahiti for five months in almost idyllic circumstances. The men's duties were relatively light and life was more than comfortable. Bligh tolerated the men's associations with the native women even though he remained chaste himself but, as had happened on Cook's voyages, the natives proved to be, by European standards, light-fingered and Bligh castigated the crew for losing equipment to them and the number of floggings increased. The mix between this increasing discipline and the freedom the men were experiencing on the island must have caused problems.

Similarly, when the time came to leave Tahiti, the free conditions on the island – most of the men had acquired regular partners from the native women – must have contrasted bleakly with the cramped, uncomfortable conditions on board the ship. Bligh was always going to have a very difficult job.

Trouble built up over the first three weeks of the return voyage. Bligh is accused of paranoid outbursts but it is equally likely that he was finding it hard to reimpose discipline on a crew that had little to look forward to on the long, dangerous and unpleasant voyage home. Matters were worsened by the fact that Bligh had, on the one hand, to castigate the crew while on the other he had to mix with them, having no-one of his own status on board. A catalogue of problems arose. For example, encountering some less than friendly natives on Tonga, Bligh told a working party to take arms with them but to leave them in the boat, having learned from Captain Cook's fatal experience what a single trigger-happy sailor could do. The crew, of course, saw this as Bligh leaving them defenceless.

It is probably no coincidence that the mutiny occurred just as the Bounty was approaching the perilous passage of the narrow, shallow Endeavour Straits. There is little doubt that Bligh would have taken very seriously his instructions from the Admiralty to carry out a proper survey and for many of the crew this must have been the final straw.

 

[Voboy]

Not to be a curmudgeon, but a great many of you are not differentiating between "Victorian" and "Georgian." I know, I know... it's only steampunk, but still. Bligh wasn't Victorian, not by a long way.

Bligh's guys didn't get into the boat with him because they trusted his navigation, though he was an extremely good navigator. They got in because they knew the Admiralty had an extreme hard-on for pursuing and hanging mutineers.

 

[theMasterBaiter]

The offending sailor was made to strip naked on deck so the other sailors could comment upon his wares, if exceptional, with the boldest encouraged to slap the bait and tackle a bit for the amusement of the crew.

Then, the offending sailor was hung by his feet on a spar, and lowered overboard until his head was a bit above the water but continuously slapped and dragged though the waves as the ship dipped and rose and dipped and rose and dipped and rose and sailed close to point.

I must say, the wavy motion allowed for the most hypnotizing wobble and flip of any sailors bits.

Ha! Just excellent is this, this is! Thank you so much. And for the typo.

 

[Green_Knight]

Not to be a curmudgeon, but a great many of you are not differentiating between "Victorian" and "Georgian." I know, I know... it's only steampunk, but still. Bligh wasn't Victorian, not by a long way.

Bligh's guys didn't get into the boat with him because they trusted his navigation, though he was an extremely good navigator. They got in because they knew the Admiralty had an extreme hard-on for pursuing and hanging mutineers.

Given that, as we are repeatedly told by some here, this is an American site, the term 'Victorian' is irrelevant. And given that things didn't change abruptly on either 1 January 1800 or on 20 June 1837, the more generic term 19th century is perhaps more appropriate. The Bligh period, while slightly out of that century, is a particularly well documented example of the punishment regime that went on through the first half of the 19th century.

Also worth remembering that shipboard discipline and punishment was no more extreme than civilian punishment of the same period and possibly less so. Some of the more fanciful ideas expressed here seem to owe more to 'Pirates of the Caribbean - Erotic Adventures' than naval history. 'Sci-Fi & Fantasy', with the emphasis on the latter, seems to be the best category for it, or maybe even 'Humor & Satire'.

And, to be pedantic myself, the navy may have had a thing about hanging mutineers but that punishment was awarded by a shore-based court-martial. Although the hanging may have taken place from a yardarm, it was not a shipboard punishment in the true sense.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

"The compass doesn't point north. But we're not trying to find north, are we."

Some of the more fanciful ideas expressed here seem to owe more to 'Pirates of the Caribbean - Erotic Adventures'

It all comes down to what you want. If I want to be fanciful, I put my stories in the future, since that way they are not wrong, at least not for a while. If I really wrote for a previous historical period, I'd want accuracy. I generally don't do that because it's more work (My nearest approach on this site was 'Chosen', which borrowed a lot from medieval Spain - and I mixed in some myth.)

Steampunk is a wide ranging diffuse category which is often speculative fiction. Usually very speculative. It's the only genre I know of that seems to have a minor fetish for hot boobilicious female nazi airship captains, for one thing, despite the hundred year difference, and the improbability of female captains, or airship combat in the 1840s. (I like steampunk and even I don't know what's up with that, except it does make for interesting costumes.) I mean in today's steampunk settings women wear corsets over their clothing; someone doing that in the Victorian era would have been assumed insane. Bottom line, if it's steampunk, you can have gay sailors whacking each other's bits in public if you want to. I wouldn't read it, but assuredly someone will.

 

[Green_Knight]

It all comes down to what you want. If I want to be fanciful, I put my stories in the future, since that way they are not wrong, at least not for a while. If I really wrote for a previous historical period, I'd want accuracy...

I agree. It would be better if the OP did not try to introduce any veneer of historical accuracy but simply labelled the whole thing as fanciful.

Massive floggings – often a hundred or more with the cat o' nine tails – were the standard shipboard punishment until the mid-19th century. The rest of the crew had to assemble to witness it as a deterrent, not to give them a bit of sexual excitement. Adult floggings were on the back. Boy sailors received it on the buttocks, not for any sexual reasons but because their backs were insufficiently well-developed to take it.

Keelhauling was once used as a naval punishment – it was, in effect, a form of execution which offered a faint chance of survival, although drowning or decapitation was a common result – but it had died out by the 19th century, not least because by the start of that century most British warships were copper-sheathed to prevent barnacle growth. The Dutch stopped using it in 1853. In any case, killing or maiming members of crew – all of whom had a job to do to make the ship function (and who were hard to come by and to replace) – didn't make a lot of sense except in the most extreme circumstances.

Walking the plank is strictly part of pirate folklore.

 

[ishtat]

I agree. It would be better if the OP did not try to introduce any veneer of historical accuracy but simply labelled the whole thing as fanciful.

Massive floggings – often a hundred or more with the cat o' nine tails – were the standard shipboard punishment until the mid-19th century. .

I agree entirely with your first point, substantially because your second point is almost entirely wrong.

Massive punishments with the 'Cat' were not standard at all, they were very very rare indeed. NAM Rodger had hundreds of ships logs examined and found that the majority of captains never used physical punishment at all, and when it was used, it was applied without the gross excess of the eighteenth century.

Where corporal punishment was used regularly was in the caning of boy sailors, particularly on the port based training ships. These boys generally aged 13 to 17 were regularly beaten but no more often than ordinary boys at normal English secondary schools. Beating boys was accepted as a perfectly reasonable and essential part of education until the 1950's/1960's.

But the myths persist.

 

[Green_Knight]

I agree entirely with your first point, substantially because your second point is almost entirely wrong.

Massive punishments with the 'Cat' were not standard at all, they were very very rare indeed. NAM Rodger had hundreds of ships logs examined and found that the majority of captains never used physical punishment at all, and when it was used, it was applied without the gross excess of the eighteenth century.

...

But the myths persist.

There's a difference between 'standard' and 'routine'. Standard simply means that of all the potential punishments, this was the one most used. It does not mean that it was used regularly or routinely.

As I pointed out elsewhere, members of ships' crews all had vital roles to carry out on board so it made no sense to maim or cripple someone to the extent that they couldn't work except in the most extreme circumstances or when the deterrent needed to be demonstrated. It is instructive that warrant officers and other key members of the ship's company were not allowed to be flogged.