{"id":"01KG8AMFEW7S9KP9XVMBMQ4DKD","cid":"bafkreifdwk3zxsd6h7sl4q4rw26omige4wrkfnbny7ki3cjnin53wsbk7m","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":8381,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:36.274Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J19NC56FFGBCM2SWEZZY","start_line":8316,"text":"CHAPTER LII.\r\nSOMETHING CONCERNING MIDSHIPMEN.\r\n\r\n\r\nIt was the next morning after matchless Jack’s interview with the\r\nCommodore and Captain, that a little incident occurred, soon forgotten\r\nby the crew at large, but long remembered by the few seamen who were in\r\nthe habit of closely scrutinising every-day proceedings. Upon the face\r\nof it, it was but a common event—at least in a man-of-war—the flogging\r\nof a man at the gangway. But the under-current of circumstances in the\r\ncase were of a nature that magnified this particular flogging into a\r\nmatter of no small importance. The story itself cannot here be related;\r\nit would not well bear recital: enough that the person flogged was a\r\nmiddle-aged man of the Waist—a forlorn, broken-down, miserable object,\r\ntruly; one of those wretched landsmen sometimes driven into the Navy by\r\ntheir unfitness for all things else, even as others are driven into the\r\nworkhouse. He was flogged at the complaint of a midshipman; and hereby\r\nhangs the drift of the thing. For though this waister was so ignoble a\r\nmortal, yet his being scourged on this one occasion indirectly\r\nproceeded from the mere wanton spite and unscrupulousness of the\r\nmidshipman in question—a youth, who was apt to indulge at times in\r\nundignified familiarities with some of the men, who, sooner or later,\r\nalmost always suffered from his capricious preferences.\r\n\r\nBut the leading principle that was involved in this affair is far too\r\nmischievous to be lightly dismissed.\r\n\r\nIn most cases, it would seem to be a cardinal principle with a Navy\r\nCaptain that his subordinates are disintegrated parts of himself,\r\ndetached from the main body on special service, and that the order of\r\nthe minutest midshipman must be as deferentially obeyed by the seamen\r\nas if proceeding from the Commodore on the poop. This principle was\r\nonce emphasised in a remarkable manner by the valiant and handsome Sir\r\nPeter Parker, upon whose death, on a national arson expedition on the\r\nshores of Chesapeake Bay, in 1812 or 1813, Lord Byron wrote his\r\nwell-known stanzas. “By the god of war!” said Sir Peter to his sailors,\r\n“I’ll make you touch your hat to a midshipman’s coat, if it’s only hung\r\non a broomstick to dry!”\r\n\r\nThat the king, in the eye of the law, can do no wrong, is the\r\nwell-known fiction of despotic states; but it has remained for the\r\nnavies of Constitutional Monarchies and Republics to magnify this\r\nfiction, by indirectly extending it to all the quarter-deck\r\nsubordinates of an armed ship’s chief magistrate. And though judicially\r\nunrecognised, and unacknowledged by the officers themselves, yet this\r\nis the principle that pervades the fleet; this is the principle that is\r\nevery hour acted upon, and to sustain which, thousands of seamen have\r\nbeen flogged at the gangway.\r\n\r\nHowever childish, ignorant, stupid, or idiotic a midshipman, if he but\r\norders a sailor to perform even the most absurd action, that man is not\r\nonly bound to render instant and unanswering obedience, but he would\r\nrefuse at his peril. And if, having obeyed, he should then complain to\r\nthe Captain, and the Captain, in his own mind, should be thoroughly\r\nconvinced of the impropriety, perhaps of the illegality of the order,\r\nyet, in nine cases out of ten, he would not publicly reprimand the\r\nmidshipman, nor by the slightest token admit before the complainant\r\nthat, in this particular thing, the midshipman had done otherwise than\r\nperfectly right.\r\n\r\nUpon a midshipman’s complaining of a seaman to Lord Collingwood, when\r\nCaptain of a line-of-battle ship, he ordered the man for punishment;\r\nand, in the interval, calling the midshipman aside, said to him, “In\r\nall probability, now, the fault is yours—you know; therefore, when the\r\nman is brought to the mast, you had better ask for his pardon.”\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJSTQ2QAVRMYHGQ0ES9NA","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J19NC56FFGBCM2SWEZZY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AMFEWJRX4Y93EKX2895FA","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:38.364Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:49.660Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}