{"id":"01KG6GMK16JQ25PX317GSYX81C","cid":"bafkreifcisffgkbnfwisodlp5yxtkszpxtetxh3ag5ze2w3qkbrnpedkze","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":1084,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:55:03.879Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":1027,"text":"man-of-war crew. And indeed a man of Claggart’s accomplishments, without\r\nprior nautical experience entering the Navy at mature life, as he did,\r\nand necessarily allotted at the start to the lowest grade in it; a man,\r\ntoo, who never made allusion to his previous life ashore; these were\r\ncircumstances which in the dearth of exact knowledge as to his true\r\nantecedents opened to the invidious a vague field for unfavourable\r\nsurmise.\r\n\r\nBut the sailors’ dog-watch gossip concerning him derived a vague\r\nplausibility from the fact that now for some period the British Navy\r\ncould so little afford to be squeamish in the matter of keeping up the\r\nmuster-rolls, that not only were press-gangs notoriously abroad both\r\nafloat and ashore, but there was little or no secret about another\r\nmatter, namely, that the London police were at liberty to capture any\r\nable-bodied suspect, and any questionable fellow at large, and summarily\r\nship him to the dock-yard or fleet. Furthermore, even among voluntary\r\nenlistments, there were instances where the motive thereto partook\r\nneither of patriotic impulse nor yet of a random desire to experience a\r\nbit of sea-life and martial adventure. Insolvent debtors of minor grade,\r\ntogether with the promiscuous lame ducks of morality, found in the Navy\r\na convenient and secure refuge. Secure, because once enlisted aboard a\r\nKing’s ship, they were as much in sanctuary as the transgressor of the\r\nMiddle Ages harbouring himself under the shadow of the altar. Such\r\nsanctioned irregularities, which for obvious reasons the Government\r\nwould hardly think to parade at the time, and which consequently, and as\r\naffecting the least influential class of mankind, have all but dropped\r\ninto oblivion, lends colour to something for the truth whereof I do not\r\nvouch, and hence have some scruple in stating; something I remember\r\nhaving seen in print, though the book I cannot recall; but the same\r\nthing was personally communicated to me now more than forty years ago by\r\nan old pensioner in a cocked hat, with whom I had a most interesting\r\ntalk on the terrace at Greenwich, a Baltimore negro, a Trafalgar man. It\r\nwas to this effect: In the case of a warship short of hands, whose\r\nspeedy sailing was imperative, the deficient quota, in lack of any other\r\nway of making it good, would be eked out by drafts called direct from\r\nthe jails. For reasons previously suggested it would not perhaps be easy\r\nat the present day directly to prove or disprove the allegation. But\r\nallowed as a verity, how significant would it be of England’s straits at\r\nthe time, confronted by these wars which like a flight of harpies rose\r\nshrieking from the din and dust of the fallen Bastille. That era appears\r\nmeasurably clear to us who look back at it, and but read of it. But to\r\nthe grandfathers of us graybeards, the thoughtful of them, the genius of\r\nit presented an aspect like that of Camoens’ ‘Spirit of the Cape,’ an\r\neclipsing menace mysterious and prodigious. Not America was exempt from\r\napprehension. At the height of Napoleon’s unexampled conquests, there\r\nwere Americans who had fought at Bunker Hill who looked forward to the\r\npossibility that the Atlantic might prove no barrier against the\r\nultimate schemes of this portentous upstart from the revolutionary\r\nchaos, who seemed in act of fulfilling judgment prefigured in the\r\nApocalypse.\r\n\r\nBut the less credence was to be given to the gun-deck talk touching\r\nClaggart, seeing that no man holding his office in a man-of-war can ever\r\nhope to be popular with the crew. Besides, in derogatory comments upon\r\none against whom they have a grudge, or for any reason or no reason\r\nmislike, sailors are much like landsmen, they are apt to exaggerate or\r\nromance.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6GK8EF7PXCEV08GK6K2M29","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6GMK19AEW0D2V7B9JP782G","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6GMK190F9M62S2FXGSCF95","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:55:04.614Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:55:13.156Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}