{"id":"01KG6G84A53KPD57SDCZ39RG3P","cid":"bafkreieq57wx7z7mq4piiqgnob7u5cqyiqrqx4urhc7vcoot4tmmhrcuam","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":677,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.150Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":622,"text":"                                  III\r\n\r\n\r\nAt the time of Billy Budd’s arbitrary enlistment into the _Indomitable_\r\nthat ship was on her way to join the Mediterranean fleet. No long time\r\nelapsed before the junction was effected. As one of that fleet the\r\nseventy-four participated in its movements, though at times on account\r\nof her superior sailing qualities, in the absence of frigates,\r\ndispatched on separate duty as a scout, and at times on less temporary\r\nservice. But with all this the story has little concernment, restricted\r\nas it is to the inner life of one particular ship and the career of an\r\nindividual sailor.\r\n\r\nIt was the summer of 1797. In the April of that year had occurred the\r\ncommotion at Spithead, followed in May by a second and yet more serious\r\noutbreak in the fleet at the Nore. The latter is known, and without\r\nexaggeration in the epithet, as the Great Mutiny. It was indeed a\r\ndemonstration more menacing to England than the contemporary manifestos\r\nand conquering and proselytising armies of the French Directory.\r\n\r\nTo the Empire, the Nore Mutiny was what a strike in the fire-brigade\r\nwould be to London threatened by general arson. In a crisis when the\r\nKingdom might well have anticipated the famous signal that some years\r\nlater published along the naval line of battle what it was that upon\r\noccasion England expected of Englishmen; _that_ was the time when at the\r\nmast-heads of the three-deckers and seventy-fours moored in her own\r\nroadstead--a fleet, the right arm of a Power then all but the sole free\r\nconservative one of the Old World, the blue-jackets, to be numbered by\r\nthousands, ran up with hurrahs the British colours with the union and\r\ncross wiped out; by that cancellation transmuting the flag of founded\r\nlaw and freedom defined, into the enemy’s red meteor of unbridled and\r\nunbounded revolt. Reasonable discontent growing out of practical\r\ngrievances in the fleet had been ignited into irrational combustion as\r\nby live cinders blown across the Channel from France in flames.\r\n\r\nThe event converted into irony for a time those spirited strains of\r\nDibdin--as a song-writer no mean auxiliary to the English Government--at\r\nthis European conjuncture, strains celebrating, among other things, the\r\npatriotic devotion of the British tar--\r\n\r\n                 ‘And as for my life, ’tis the King’s!’\r\n\r\nSuch an episode in the Island’s grand naval story her naval historians\r\nnaturally abridge; one of them (G. P. R. James) candidly acknowledging\r\nthat fain would he pass it over did not ‘impartiality forbid\r\nfastidiousness.’ And yet his mention is less a narration than a\r\nreference, having to do hardly at all with details. Nor are these\r\nreadily to be found in the libraries. Like some other events in every\r\nage befalling states everywhere, including America, the Great Mutiny was\r\nof such character that national pride along with views of policy would\r\nfain shade it off into the historical background. Such events cannot be\r\nignored, but there is a considerate way of historically treating them.\r\nIf a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or\r\ncalamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without\r\nreproach be equally discreet.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6G6NC3C7ZFAA52H7QXHDYV","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6G84A98XYGZQZ99XM2X88X","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.325Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:48:23.750Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}