n London to indiscriminate
license, discover the greatest regret at the restraint of their passions
in the grossest oaths, and in the grossest language. The females, who
rather resemble the brutes than rational creatures in their excesses,
answer their reproaches, and rage with equal effrontery, and unbounded
impudence. It is a scene like Pandemonium--a second hell, but upon the
ocean. Sitting in groups, they sing, they shout, they converse in the
grossest terms, corrupting, and corrupted. The concubine knits, or sews
for her sailor, near his berth: the rest wash the clothes of the male
convicts; exercise and cleanliness, conducive to their health and to the
comforts of the ship. Many are remarkably neat: all are clad in
different dresses--some have been enabled to purchase caps, more have
not. The males are clothed in simple uniformity, in blue trousers and a
jacket. All the convicts are compelled to wash once in the day their
heads, their feet, and their faces; the men under the superintendence of
a soldier, the women apart under the eye of a matron. The males are
marched in a body of six across the deck to the pump: the sailors draw
up the water, and they are artfully compelled to labor for health at the
pump, and to rinse away the dirt. By this prudent precaution, in every
variety of weather, they obtain fresh air and avoid the scurvy, or
cutaneous diseases. A surgeon daily inspects this _human cargo_, and
reports its _state_. They are paid per head, a sum for those who survive
the voyage; hence it is the surgeon's interest to preserve these
diseased wretches. To inure this assembly, disgorged from brothels, and
cellars, and gaols, to the _appearance_, or to the idea of decorum, the
men wash their bodies above decks, and the women between them. The sexes
are forbid to mingle, even at their meals. So rigorous a discipline is
only supported by severity of punishments. Chains, tied round the body
and fettered round the ankles, confine and distress each male convict,
by the clanking sound, and by annoying the feet. This image of slavery
is copied from the irons used in the slave-ships in Guinea: as in these,
bolts and locks are at hand, in the sides and ribs of each _transport_
(for the vessels _on this service_, with _peculiar_ propriety are so
named), to prevent the escape, or preclude the movements of a convict.
If he attempt to pass the sentry, he is liable to be stabbed: for the
attempt, a convict was lately shot, an