The abundant fiction surrounding the British navy in the time of Nelson abounds with descriptions of the brutal punishments by which discipline was maintained but, in fiction and also in fact, there were vast differences in the ways different commanders enforced control. The French navy had a rather different history, because discipline virtually disappeared in the revolutionary navy and, although it was restored to some extent under Napoleon, many captains worked by consensus rather than threat; one of those was Louis de Freycinet. In his diary Joseph-Paul Gaimard made no mention of having to repair damage to any member of the crew caused by caning or flogging and punishment, when inflicted, was often remarkably mild. Rose de Freycinet, writing just as the Uranie was approaching the east coast of Australia, recorded just how flexible her husband could be in a letter to her mother. She told her that what she wanted …
… to talk to you about is a very original experiment that seems, against, I admit, all my expectations, to have been completely successful. One of our sailors has been punished time and again for theft: just last month he received I don’t know how many lashes on this account. Finally the dear Commander, more tired of inflicting punishments than the miserable man seemed to be of receiving them, thought of making this obstinate thief wear a hat with the ears of a donkey. Would you believe that this punishment, used on the children in our primary schools, reformed the wretch more than the beatings? Would you have expected shame to affect such a person more powerfully than pain? I really can’t believe it.
This does show the lash was sometimes used, but not very effectively. Duplomb, the editor of Rose’s journal, may have found such an approach less than acceptable, because he omitted the story from the version he published in 1927.
On other occasions, justice seems to have been a communal affair. After leaving Tenerife, Gaimard wrote that:
On the 23rd a court was convened to judge two gunners accused of theft; one of them, Juvanon, was condemned to run the gauntlet twice between twenty men; the second, Cayrade, was acquitted after having sworn on the gospel in front of the chaplain that he was innocent. On the 27th the court examined the case of the gunner Juvanon again and acquitted him. [Gaimard: p144]
Evidently it was left to the crew to decide just how hard they should hit the miscreant when the gauntlet was being run. There may have been doubts in some minds as to whether the acquittals were deserved, and the reprieved men might not have had an easy life thereafter on the lower deck, because they both deserted when the expedition reached Rio de Janeiro.
Being marooned in the Falklands would have placed extra strains on discipline, and Louis waxed philosophical.
“To maintain the yoke of discipline without making it heavy, tempering it with consistency and lightening it by applying it to everyone equally; rarely resorting to punishment, more often seeking penitence, and not forfeiting authority by excessive leniency or respect by excess of severity: such, according to d’Aguesseau, should be the highest function of the arbiters and enforcers of discipline.” That too should be my conduct with my crew, and that is what I strove to establish….
More than once, however, I admit, I thought I had to close my eyes so as not to see certain offenses which did not seem to me to be of consequence; but for serious and conspicuous cases I was inexorable, especially when it was a customary bad habit that was at fault, and I found several of this kind among our convict defectors from Port-Jackson. However, I had barely to punish in this way more than one or two thefts of our daily supplies. The bulk of the crew felt much as I did the need to maintain the strictest order in this regard, because it was in the interest of all. [Historique V/VI : p1240]
Remarkably, the crew’s restraint extended even to the liquor stores, which were protected by just a single guard, which suggests considerable respect on the part of the crew for their captain, who was ill and incapacitated for much of the time on the Falklands. It was a respect that would have been no way diminished by one decision he took.
According to the regulations of the navy then in existence, sailors whose ship was wrecked no longer received pay, and were therefore no longer subject to military discipline. The objective of the special mission when I was entrusted was too important and our common interest was too clear for me to allow disorder to become established amongst us. I therefore informed the crew that, owing to the extraordinary nature of our voyage, during which we had been excused from most of the general regulations governing the navy, their status would not be interrupted by the accident of our shipwreck, and at the same time made it known that, I would maintain discipline ashore with as much rigour as at sea [Historique V/VI : p1240]
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this paragraph is that the ‘no pay after shipwreck’ rule ever existed. To inform sailors at the very time when common purpose was most necessary that they were no longer part of a community seems a recipe for disaster, and so it proved to be, on several occasions. It was a rule that must surely have been devised by some governmental accountant who had never been to sea in his life.
Le radeau de la Méduse (The raft of the Medusa), a painting by Théodore Géricault. The French frigate Méduse ran aground off the African coast on 2 July 1816, just a year before the Uranie sailed from Toulon. Three days after the grounding, in the absence of sufficient boats for all on board,150 of the crew were consigned to a hurriedly constructed raft. Just fifteen survived to be rescued thirteen days later. One of the factors in the death toll was the complete breakdown in discipline.