Wars and ConflictsΒ permalink
Keel-Hauling: was it widely practiced?
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Message 1.Β
Posted by Herewordless (U14549396) on Monday, 29th August 2011
After a couple of mentions of this awful Royal Naval punishment in popular culture (A Bond film and 1962's Mutiny on the Bounty), I tried to find records of it having occurred, but could find none?
It was the dragging of a defaulting sailor (dissent? Striking an Officer? Theft? Drunkenness?) underneath the length/width of a ship, which would have resulted in the drowning of the man, or at least being severely mulitated on the barnacles etc on the ship's hull?
The stories about Captain Bligh being so ruthless with his punishments are myth- written years after the events by some of his former crew who had a grievance, and drawn up by a lawyer.
But was the awful punishment, supposedly outlawed in the mid-late 1700's, actually used at all? -
Message 2
Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Tuesday, 30th August 2011
I have vague memories of visiting the 'Golden Hind' when she was in Jersey, and one of the crew talking about it, which would suggest it was in use in the 16th century. Whether it would have still existed in the 18th century is another matter. I'm sure the RN was not above such brutality, mind you (see 'flogging round the fleet', for example), but it sounds like something which may technically have been on the statute book but was very rarely, if ever, actually used.
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Message 3
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 30th August 2011
I am not sure that such a calculated and "refined" punishment would not have come originally from people like the Barbary Pirates or even earlier the Saracens, who were as interested in creating a terrifying image as their contemporary Vikings. John Knox, for example, had received part of his formative education as a galley slave in the Mediterranean.
As for whether or not it would prove fatal would depend a great deal on the speed. It was almost certainly intended not to kill but to put on a show of exemplary justice.
People used to be tough in those days. I must have told the tale before of Stephen Conning who was whipped with a cat-o-nine tails till there was no skin on his back.. And he made a point of being at work the next day... Don't let the *** grind you down.
I really have no idea whether the Royal Navy used it widely, but what about the British merchant fleet that was supposed to be the training ground for the Navy.
I mentioned on another thread earlier that the Liverpool slave ships were often manned with pauper apprentices. A tough childhood followed by a very tough working environment with savage punishment for "passengers" and crew.. It may well have produced some sadistically minded people.
Cass -
Message 4
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Thursday, 1st September 2011
I am not sure that such a calculated and "refined" punishment would not have come originally from people like the Barbary Pirates or even earlier the Saracens,Β
That assumption may be too reflective of racial or cultural prejudices, however. The term is of Dutch origin, "kielhalen", which of course is true for many naval terms in English. They may very well have invented it, and it appears to have been an officially approved form of punishment on Dutch ships. I have seen nothing that suggests that it was ever approved by the RN, although individual captains may of course have used it. -
Message 5
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 1st September 2011
Mutatis
Cultural prejuduces? Well I was thinking of the ancient regions where people died the death of a thousand cuts or were flayed alive with a special knife.. Such refinements seem to have been part of cultures or civilizations much more skilled and knowledgeable about human anatomy and capable of a greater degree of sophiscation along the borders of life and death than rather backward Europeans.
T.E. Lawrence explains how a Turkish commander during the First World War when he got fed up with interrogating some suspect would have him thrown alive into a furnace. He would then make sure everyone was silent until he heard a faint plop. Then he would smile. "It always does that. It is the skull exploding".
Of course if you tell me that this particular practice takes its name from the old Spanish Netherlands then it may suggest a direct connection to those superior , better informed and sophicated Muslim societies that the Spanish had to fight such long wars of liberation against -learning along a learning curve about such methods. One might refer to the Spanish garroting during the genocides against Jews and Muslims once a united Spanish Kingdom had been achieved and the less formal practices of garroting from Turkey right across to some of the regions of India. Was not garroting part of the technique of the Thuggees.
Where did the Dutch interest in anatomy, as reflected in "The Anatomy Lesson", come from?
Cass -
Message 6
Posted by Sixtus Beckmesser (U9635927) on Friday, 2nd September 2011
"Keel-Hauling: was it widely practiced?"
Not in the RN, particularly by the late-C18th and certainly not by Bligh - the Howard/Brando 'Mutiny on the Bounty'. like the Lawton/Gable version takes considerable liberties with the facts in order to have a clear good -v- evil melodramatic plot.
Sixtus -
Message 7
Posted by Herewordless (U14549396) on Tuesday, 6th September 2011
The Hopkins/Gibson version does no better, great though the former was in the role.
Christian's syphillitic and questionable Naval character image even today comes up as rosy? -
Message 8
Posted by OUNUPA (U2078829) on Tuesday, 6th September 2011
Keel-hauling apparently never having been given as sentence by a court martial.Some historians say that it been in use in the Dutch Navy and to have been borrowed by some of the British captains for a short period after the Revolution of 1688. The French Navy is on record as having keel-hauled a sailor in the early XIXth century.
But the other punishment ( Marooning ) gave the world the biggest best-sellers in the British literary history- The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner ( 1719 ) -
Message 9
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Tuesday, 6th September 2011
Well, it's arguable whether Selkirk was marooned - after all, he ASKED to be put ashore as he was sure the ship he was serving in was so rotten that she wouldn't reach port. True, he changed his mind as she weighed anchor, and asked to be taken off, which the captain (Stradling?) refused to do.
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Message 10
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 6th September 2011
OUNUPA
Your reference to Seventeenth Century France is interesting.. In the French army that was the age of the great disciplinarian Martinet - who has given his name both to a leather (I think) whip that was commonly used to beat the troops, as well as to anyone who is an obsessive and rigid disciplinarian.
Perhaps the French fleet was infected with a similar spirit.
Cass -
Message 11
Posted by OUNUPA (U2078829) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
Well, it's arguable whether Selkirk was marooned - after all, he ASKED to be put ashore as he was sure the ship he was serving in was so rotten that she wouldn't reach port. True, he changed his mind as she weighed anchor, and asked to be taken off, which the captain (Stradling?) refused to do.Β In 1704 Alexander Selrick was put ashore on Juan Fernandes AFTER A QUARREL with his captain, Thomas Stradling. Selrick was not rescued till 1709, by which time he had become so fleet of foot that he could catch the wild goats. The man who took him off was A PRIVATEER CAPTAIN, Woodes Rogers, who introduced him to a writer named Richard Steel ( 1672-1729 ), Steel gave an account of Selrick's adventures in a publication called THE ENGLISHMAN ( 1713 ). The story caught the attention of the journalist Daniel Defoe, who turned it into 'The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner'.
As for keel-hauling a writer in 1805 described the process thus :
'It is executed by plunging the delinquent repeatedly under the ship's bottom on one side, and hoisting him up on the other after having passed under the keel. The blocks or pullies by which he is suspended are fastened to the opposite extremities of the main yard, and a weight of lead or iron is hung upon his legs to sink him to a competent depth. By this apparatus he is drawn close up to the yard-arm, and thence let fall suddenly into the sea, where, passing under the ship's bottom, he is hoisted up on the opposite side of the ship. And this, after sufficient intervals of breathing, is repeated two or three times'. -
Message 12
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
OUNUPA
Yes.
As I understood it the whole point was NOT to kill the guilty party.. And -in the light of Mr Clark's recent remarks about the number of the recent rioters who had already got criminal records hence indicating a certain inadequacy in our punishment system- it is interesting to note that this kind of punishment, while savage and terrible to desk bound people reading their newspapers at home, was very similar to the kind of "rights of passage" rituals that people were expected to go through in societies where the quality of the individual might be crucial.
Amerindian societies almost invariably had these kind of events where people proved themselves as "braves"- though apparently not all men were required to be braves and could opt to be squaws
( One of the brothers of England's latest rugby recruits has made this choice in Samoa where his roots are)
The whole question of the PR aspect of punishment is interesting.. Crowds used to attend executions and one can imagine that at times people found the spectacle of corporal punishment quite a break from the monotony of daily life. As for the "victim" being able to "take your punishment like a man" meant that the cost of pain might well be offset by enhanced prestige and mutual respect.
Many years ago a teenage girl in a TV feature noted of her institutionalised childhood that no-one had ever cared enough about her to slap her when she was bad. No doubt they just lectured her and warned her of the dire consequences if she did not change her ways.. Then they presumably would feel entitled to abandon her marooned and having to cope. Some years later a film "Gail is Dead" followed up the story when her dead body had been found in a squat where she had dies of a drug overdose.
Debates about "tough love" are current.
Cass -
Message 13
Posted by caissier (U14073060) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
I was thinking about the theatre aspect of punishments on long periods at sea as well Cass.
I've read that keel-hauling allowed for fine tuning of the punishment - it could be done quickly or slowly. In that respect it resembles the pillory, which colud be a muild experience or a death sentence. The condition of the hull came into it as well. If it was covered in barnacles etc. the effects could be more seriious. If a number of the crew were involved there could have been an element of group punishment ...... an execution scene in the film The Handmaiden's Tale comes to mind.
As something that could be ingeniously done to a victim (only) on a ship at sea I can well imagine it goes back to very ancient times -
Message 14
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
caissier
One of the things that strikes me in this age's attitudes to corporal punishment is that people no longer expect to be tough in the ways that sailors used to have to be.. It was often a matter of life and death when all hands on deck were struggling with the immense power of a Cruel Sea- and men often endured worse in the normal course of events when pain and injury had to be ignored and mastered.
And theatre... In the professional era we expect sportsmen like Rugby Players to show those old qualities and remind us of fundamental human values... Not to mention tennis players - Andy Murray's comments today.
Cass -
Message 15
Posted by caissier (U14073060) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
Toughness ...... yes, going aloft in a storm at night, No health and safety in those days .... ha!
..... and punishment generally was by infliction of some nastiness. Imprisonment was for detention prior to trial and waiting for the sentence to be carried out.
The building of Hadrian's Wall has been said to have been very arduous physical work .... then there are the other engineering feats of the Romans, those motte and bailey castles didn't build themselves, Stonehenge!, and the canal navigators. What health implications can all that have had for those who had to do it ..... all the injuries suffered in the course of the Industrial Revolution.. Lots of bad backs and early deaths presumably, but also presumably not questioned - until the Enlightenment perhaps?
..... and accepting death in military service. Was religious belief a factor in the willingness of troops to go 'over the top' in WW1 (and in previous conflicts), and it's decline a factor in strategy in the Second? -
Message 16
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
caissier
One can well imagine that for "tough cookies" like sailors perhaps the worst thing was "long hot summers" of easy sailing when being stuck with a load of shipmates with only just so many sea-shanties you can sing to pass the time may well have often proved an incentive to make things happen..
I remember pupils in our girls comp in Lambeth saying what rubbish our school was compared to a neighbouring school because there had been no fights and incidents..
One can well imagine a few devillish dares being made which resulted in Captains having to take disciplinary action- and I have no doubt that the crowds enjoyed the spectacle much as my pupils would always crowd round a good fight.. And there was no pain without the possible sense of gain in those days..
My 95/6 year old friend and prize gardener often reminds me of the incident in his Oxfordshire schooldays when a dimunitive boy stood up to the school bully and had a proper fight. Obviously he got beaten but -shades of our mutual roots in Flora Thompson -he told everyone that "I didna flinch. I stuck up to him".. He gained respect and the bully lost it.
Cass
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