The Sun.
London, England, 1849-09-15 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS,

FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
TIMES.—The court-martial which has recently
attracted so much attention has terminated, and the
Navy List is no longer encumbered by the name of
Commander Pitman. That gentleman entered the
service in 1826, and after having enjoyed the autho-
rity of a commander for six years, he a as by due form
of martial law dismissed from the service altogether
On Wednesday last. Whatever his career may have
been elsewhere, the public has at all events acquired
sufficient insight into his sayings and doings on
board the Childers in the period which elapsed be-
tween 1846 and her return to England from a cruise
in the Chinese seas. During the whole of that inter-
val Commander Pitman was lord paramount on board
that unfortunate ship, and ruled her officers and crew
with an iron hand. The first intimation which was
given of the lamentable state of things in the Childers
was the astounding intelligence that two of her offi
cers, Lieutenant Graham and the master, Mr.
Elliott, had deliberately deserted, preferring to incur
the consequences of so serious a step to submitting
themselves any longer to the caprices and cruelty
of their superior officer. This, it must be
admitted, was a fearful plunge. What could
have led these men to take it ? The Mutiny Act
knows no nice distinctions between voluntary and
involuntary desertion. It enters not into any delicate
investigation into matters of justification ; neither
does it inquire into the peculiar connexion which may
exist in some cases between cause and effect.
Lieutenant Graham and Mr. Elliott, therefore, must
have known that in leaving the Childers they were
guilty of desertion—an offence which ranks, profes-
sionally. as high as murder does in the moral and
criminal codes. On conviction the offender may lose
his life ' • and in the cases now before us we find that,
notwithstanding the matters urged in excuse, if not
in defence of their conduct, those officers, who had
pleaded guilty to the charge without any hesitation,
were sentenced to be dismissed the service for ever,
and to be furthermore imprisoned in gaol for certain
periods. Than this, death itself would be more
acceptable to honourable minds; and it is not to be
wondered that these so-called deserters should have
sought to justify themselves in the eyes of their
Queen and their country, their judges, and their per-
sonal and professional friends, by dragging into the
broad glare of a court-martial the circumstances from
which had sprung their own disgrace and ruin. Ac-
cordingly, at their instance a court-martial on Com-
mander Pitman was held at Plymouth on the 28th of
August, 1849, and thirteen following days, when
several witnesses were examined by the prosecutors
in support of their charges, consisting of " general
cruelty and oppression between the 4th of September,
1846, and May, 20, 1849 ;" " false statements in the
log-book of the Childers ;" and " false expenditure of
stores—viz., a hammock-cloth, represented to have
been washed away on or about the 14th of October,
1846, and a maintopsail, represented to have been
lost on or about the 9th of October, 1848." It is not
our intention to enter into any minute examination
of the evidence by which these extraordinary charges
were sustained on the part of the prosecutors. It
would almost suffice to say that the Court, after
due consideration, were of opinion " that the charge
of general cruelty and oppression was in part
proved against the prisoner; that the charge of
false expenditure of stores, and the charge of false
statements in the log-book of her Majesty's ship
Childers, were proved against the prisoner." It is
impossible, however, to avoid remarking on some of
the very awkward disclosures which fully demon-
strated the fact that Commander Pitman was an ill
conditioned man, who hesitated not to call his officers
" liars" in the presence of the crew, and did not con-
sider it beneath his standing in life and rank in the
profession to wring the ears of his personal attendant,
a mere boy, till they bled at one time ; to cut open
his head with a shoe at another; or, on a third occa-
sion, to lay violent hands on him in an ungovernable
impulse of passion, and almost to choke him in his
frenzy. The witness to this latter feat says—
" I remember the boy Cleverdon well. He was ser-
vant to Commander Pitman on our passage home. At
the Cape of Good Hope 40 marines were employed in
puttying the ship's deck. I was puttying in around
where the skylight went on. I looked down, and saw
Commander Pitman strike the boy Cleverdon, and knock
him down, and then take him up, and clasp both his
arms round the boy's neck. I went on the lower deck,
and told the Captain's steward to make an excuse to go
to the cabin, as the boy was singing out very much."
So much for ungovernable impulse. But this wit-
ness himself had been the victim of something far
worse—a cruel punishment had been inflicted on him
by Commander Pitman, continuing de die in diem,
because the poor fellow, being unable through sick-
ness to continue to act as cook, he being shipped as
a marine, and having only volunteered to act as cook,
had, after repeated and ineffectual retnonstrances, at
last refused to do the work for which he was not
originally shipped. 11 hat account does this man give
of the commander?—
" The next day I was called up before Commander
Pitman. I told him I could not go to the coppers. The
commander said I did not come into the ship to do as
I liked. I told him I did not, and that I was there to
do duty as a marine. I wished to do a marine's duty. It
I was not allowed to do a marine's duty, then I could
not help it. The Commander immediately said that I
was to do as he ordered me, and that he would make me
do duty as cook to the coppers, upon which I said I
would not. I was then put on bread and water for seven
days, and I had to walk the deck with my knapsack on
my back from 8 o'clock in the morning until sunset, and
from sunset I was placed in irons until 8 o'clock next
morning. I had my grog stopped for 15 days, and had
to keep 10 days' watch and watch in the forecastle."
With such a harsh and barbarous system of accu-
mulative punishments it is not to be wondered at
that two men shotild actually have committed suicide,
while a third was discharged "insane" at Hobart
Town. Such would be the natural, nay, the inevit
able, consequence to many men in the rank of a ma-
rine or seaman on board ship. Death becomes pre
ferable to life when clogged with punishments
invented with an ingenuity which would do justice
to a North American savage. From Fisher, the
purser, again, we hear of one, Hayter, who was re•
peatedly punished with a cane over the hands and
shoulders ; was at different times put on bread and
water, carried his hammock all day, and forced to
wear a collar made of heavy wood, which was locked
round his neck, while his head was half shaved !
This memorable engine of torture, the notion for
which was doubtless derived from the Commander's
Chinese travels, is described as being " about two
feet in length, and fourteen or fifteen inches in
breadth. It opened in the centre with a large iron
hinge to admit the neck, in order to lock it. It was
about two inches thick." The same witness thus de-
scribes the character of Commander Pitman :—"I
consider he has on several occasions acted in an
unjust, violent, and insulting manner towards
myself very severe." With such a commanding-
officer the question must frequently arise among the
officers and crew, " How long are we to bear this
tyranny ?" And though we would by no means up-
hold the right of inferior officers to sit in judgment
on the acts of their superiors, and to carry out their
disapprobation by desertion, or by any other step than
an appeal to the proper tribunal, it must be allowed
that courts-martial at the instance of inferiors seldom
come to anything, and that there are limits beyond
which human frailty and endurance cannot well be
expected to go. We unhesitatingly affirm that such
a case is now before us. Mr. Elliott may well
say to his commander, when cross-examined by
him, " I feel that you have been my destruction."
It is impossible to read the evidence given in this
case without adopting that conclusion. The facts
proved as clearly lead to it as they did to
the opinion and sentence of the officers com-
posing the court-martial on this and the other
charges brought under their notice; and we cannot
but ask ourselves whether those luckless victims of
this man's tyranny who shunned suicide in deserting
the Childers should be looked upon in the light of
ordinary deserters, or whether there ought not to be
some remission of their sentence. Their case is
almost without a precedent, and can never be itself
converted into one—at least, for the honour of the
service, we trust not. The result of the inquiry
called for by them is their justification—if anything
can justify desertion. They found a despotism too
severe for their moral or physical strength, and they
fled from it—not as cowards fly from death—not as
ill-affected traitors fly from the service of their
country—but they fled from Commander Pitman and
from themselves, fearing, doubtless, lest they might
he goaded by him into the commission of an offence
even more horrible than desertion. " Wrought upon
and perplexed in the extreme," they yielded to an
impulse which, while it cannot be excused, must yet
be admitted to have had its origin in causes most
harassing and vexatious. Whatever may be their
ultimate lot in life, they have at all events been
mainly instrumental in proclaiming to the world that
the naval service of England is to be conducted on a
gentlemanly principle ; that the quarter-deck of a
Queen's ship is not to be converted into a bear-
garden; that gradations of rank, though essential to
the honour of the flag under which all assemble, are
:not to be construed into synonymes for" master" and
"slaves."
CHRONICLE.—" The gentleman," exclaimed
Chatham, on a memorable occasion, "says that Ame-
rica is almost in open revolt. I rejoice that America