{"id":"01KG8AMJGM6BBWE326D5F8TPE0","cid":"bafkreigekywe3s5w5ubo2wnbyu7q7qycylpaozrxbxkhsjvy6wapax72ae","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":11577,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:36.274Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J19NC56FFGBCM2SWEZZY","start_line":11514,"text":"invests the Captain with so much judicial and administrative authority\r\nover him—in most cases entirely discretionary—not one solitary clause\r\nis to be found which in any way provides means for a seaman deeming\r\nhimself aggrieved to obtain redress. Indeed, both the written and\r\nunwritten laws of the American Navy are as destitute of individual\r\nguarantees to the mass of seamen as the Statute Book of the despotic\r\nEmpire of Russia.\r\n\r\nWho put this great gulf between the American Captain and the American\r\nsailor? Or is the Captain a creature of like passions with ourselves?\r\nOr is he an infallible archangel, incapable of the shadow of error? Or\r\nhas a sailor no mark of humanity, no attribute of manhood, that, bound\r\nhand and foot, he is cast into an American frigate shorn of all rights\r\nand defences, while the notorious lawlessness of the Commander has\r\npassed into a proverb, familiar to man-of-war’s-men, _the law was not\r\nmade for the Captain!_ Indeed, he may almost be said to put off the\r\ncitizen when he touches his quarter-deck; and, almost exempt from the\r\nlaw of the land himself, he comes down upon others with a judicial\r\nseverity unknown on the national soil. With the Articles of War in one\r\nhand, and the cat-o’-nine-tails in the other, he stands an undignified\r\nparody upon Mohammed enforcing Moslemism with the sword and the Koran.\r\n\r\nThe concluding sections of the Articles of War treat of the naval\r\ncourts-martial before which officers are tried for serious offences as\r\nwell as the seamen. The oath administered to members of these\r\ncourts—which sometimes sit upon matters of life and death—explicitly\r\nenjoins that the members shall not “at any time divulge the vote or\r\nopinion of any particular member of the court, unless required so to do\r\nbefore a court of justice in due course of law.”\r\n\r\nHere, then, is a Council of Ten and a Star Chamber indeed! Remember,\r\nalso, that though the sailor is sometimes tried for his life before a\r\ntribunal like this, in no case do his fellow-sailors, his peers, form\r\npart of the court. Yet that a man should be tried by his peers is the\r\nfundamental principle of all civilised jurisprudence. And not only\r\ntried by his peers, but his peers must be unanimous to render a\r\nverdict; whereas, in a court-martial, the concurrence of a majority of\r\nconventional and social superiors is all that is requisite.\r\n\r\nIn the English Navy, it is said, they had a law which authorised the\r\nsailor to appeal, if he chose, from the decision of the Captain—even in\r\na comparatively trivial case—to the higher tribunal of a court-martial.\r\nIt was an English seaman who related this to me. When I said that such\r\na law must be a fatal clog to the exercise of the penal power in the\r\nCaptain, he, in substance, told me the following story.\r\n\r\nA top-man guilty of drunkenness being sent to the gratings, and the\r\nscourge about to be inflicted, he turned round and demanded a\r\ncourt-martial. The Captain smiled, and ordered him to be taken down and\r\nput into the “brig,” There he was kept in irons some weeks, when,\r\ndespairing of being liberated, he offered to compromise at two dozen\r\nlashes. “Sick of your bargain, then, are you?” said the Captain. “No,\r\nno! a court-martial you demanded, and a court-martial you shall have!”\r\nBeing at last tried before the bar of quarter-deck officers, he was\r\ncondemned to two hundred lashes. What for? for his having been drunk?\r\nNo! for his having had the insolence to appeal from an authority, in\r\nmaintaining which the men who tried and condemned him had so strong a\r\nsympathetic interest.\r\n\r\nWhether this story be wholly true or not, or whether the particular law\r\ninvolved prevails, or ever did prevail, in the English Navy, the thing,\r\nnevertheless, illustrates the ideas that man-of-war’s-men themselves\r\nhave touching the tribunals in question.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJVA5SMZ8S3QW279SSFPM","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J19NC56FFGBCM2SWEZZY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AMJGB7FCZNTGQGKRQ3TEF","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AMJGMHQM2BW3Q9G8CR49R","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:41.492Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.642Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}