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- 11459
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- CHAPTER LXXII.
“HEREIN ARE THE GOOD ORDINANCES OF THE SEA, WHICH WISE MEN, WHO VOYAGED
ROUND THE WORLD, GAVE TO OUR ANCESTORS, AND WHICH CONSTITUTE THE BOOKS
OF THE SCIENCE OF GOOD CUSTOMS.”—_The Consulate of the Sea_.
The present usages of the American Navy are such that, though there is
no government enactment to that effect, yet, in many respect, its
Commanders seem virtually invested with the power to observe or
violate, as seems to them fit, several of the Articles of War.
According to Article XV., “_No person in the Navy shall quarrel with
any other person in the Navy, nor use provoking or reproachful words,
gestures, or menaces, on pain of such punishment as a court-martial
shall adjudge_.”
“_Provoking or reproachful words!_” Officers of the Navy, answer me!
Have you not, many of you, a thousand times violated this law, and
addressed to men, whose tongues were tied by this very Article,
language which no landsman would ever hearken to without flying at the
throat of his insulter? I know that worse words than _you_ ever used
are to be heard addressed by a merchant-captain to his crew; but the
merchant-captain does not live under this XVth Article of War.
Not to make an example of him, nor to gratify any personal feeling, but
to furnish one certain illustration of what is here asserted, I
honestly declare that Captain Claret, of the Neversink, repeatedly
violated this law in his own proper person.
According to Article III., no officer, or other person in the Navy,
shall be guilty of “oppression, fraud, profane swearing, drunkenness,
or any other scandalous conduct.”
Again let me ask you, officers of the Navy, whether many of you have
not repeatedly, and in more than one particular, violated this law? And
here, again, as a certain illustration, I must once more cite Captain
Claret as an offender, especially in the matter of profane swearing. I
must also cite four of the lieutenants, some eight of the midshipmen,
and nearly all the seamen.
Additional Articles might be quoted that are habitually violated by the
officers, while nearly all those _exclusively_ referring to the sailors
are unscrupulously enforced. Yet those Articles, by which the sailor is
scourged at the gangway, are not one whit more laws than those _other_
Articles, binding upon the officers, that have become obsolete from
immemorial disuse; while still other Articles, to which the sailors
alone are obnoxious, are observed or violated at the caprice of the
Captain. Now, if it be not so much the severity as the certainty of
punishment that deters from transgression, how fatal to all proper
reverence for the enactments of Congress must be this disregard of its
statutes.
Still more. This violation of the law, on the part of the officers, in
many cases involves oppression to the sailor. But throughout the whole
naval code, which so hems in the mariner by law upon law, and which
invests the Captain with so much judicial and administrative authority
over him—in most cases entirely discretionary—not one solitary clause
is to be found which in any way provides means for a seaman deeming
himself aggrieved to obtain redress. Indeed, both the written and
unwritten laws of the American Navy are as destitute of individual
guarantees to the mass of seamen as the Statute Book of the despotic
Empire of Russia.
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