nearly all degrees of
transgression. In offences not cognisable by a court-martial, little,
if any, discrimination is shown. It is of a piece with the penal laws
that prevailed in England some sixty years ago, when one hundred and
sixty different offences were declared by the statute-book to be
capital, and the servant-maid who but pilfered a watch was hung beside
the murderer of a family.

It is one of the most common punishments for very trivial offences in
the Navy, to "stop" a seaman's _grog_ for a day or a week. And as most
seamen so cling to their _grog_, the loss of it is generally deemed by
them a very serious penalty. You will sometimes hear them say, "I would
rather have my wind _stopped_ than _my grog!_"

But there are some sober seamen that would much rather draw the money
for it, instead of the grog itself, as provided by law; but they are
too often deterred from this by the thought of receiving a scourging
for some inconsiderable offence, as a substitute for the stopping of
their spirits. This is a most serious obstacle to the cause of
temperance in the Navy. But, in many cases, even the reluctant drawing
of his grog cannot exempt a prudent seaman from ignominy; for besides
the formal administering of the "_cat_" at the gangway for petty
offences, he is liable to the "colt," or rope's-end, a bit of
_ratlin-stuff_, indiscriminately applied--without stripping the
victim--at any time, and in any part of the ship, at the merest wink
from the Captain. By an express order of that officer, most boatswain's
mates carry the "colt" coiled in their hats, in readiness to be
administered at a minute's warning upon any offender. This was the
custom in the Neversink. And until so recent a period as the
administration of President Polk, when the historian Bancroft,
Secretary of the Navy, officially interposed, it was an almost
universal thing for the officers of the watch, at their own discretion,
to inflict chastisement upon a sailor, and this, too, in the face of
the ordinance restricting the power of flogging solely to Captains and
Courts Martial. Nor was it a thing unknown for a Lieutenant, in a
sudden outburst of passion, perhaps inflamed by brandy, or smarting
under the sense of being disliked or hated by the seamen, to order a
whole watch of two hundred and fifty men, at dead of night, to undergo
the indignity of the "colt."

It is believed that, even at the present day, there are instances of
Commanders still