The Sun.
London, England, 1857-03-31 00:00:00

CRUFLTIES.ON BOARD AMERICAN

StrIPS.

. .
We must at last.believe that there are tyrants on
the sea as well as tyrants on the shore—tyrants on
the quarter-deck of our packet-ships, whose awful
inhumanity outshathes everything in the histories of
the Spanish Inquisition, and whose despotic cruelty
has stripped our forecastles of every vestige of that
manliness and nobility for which the sailor's profes-
sion was once proverbial. The stories recorded of
the crimping and kidnapping which are practised, in
New York to:ebtaira crews for our Liverpool packet=
ships, and of thelortures to which those crews are
subjected by their officers at sea, are horrid enough
ta.m-ike the coarsest heart shudder, and are suet
disgrace-to civilised nature as to appear incredible
to any one who has not the evidence of their truth
before him. Our attention has been called to this
matter -by the Society of Friends of Foreigners in
Distress at Liverpool, whose managing committee
has sent us -a special report upon this subject rei-
cently adopted by the society. - This report states
that hundreds of . seamen are annually turned
ashore at Liverpool in an ,utterly wretchedcondition;
and ruined in health, • •frorn• the treatment they
have received on board the American ships in which
they sailed. During the past year the society per-
s'onally.examined :the cases of 79 of these seamen;
and in the month of January last the cases of 27
others. • Of all these men only 37 had shipped for
the voyage of their own accord ; the remaining 69
had all been kidnapped and carried to sea against
their will. Some of there bad left parents, wives,
and children in this country ; and all of them, save
two, complaimed that they had been repeatedly and
grossly assaulted. -and tortured during the voyage.
The fact that 82 of them bad to be sent to the hos-
pital, or to receive other medical attendance ou
their arrival at Liverpool, corroborates the story
of their.sufferings.. But the,cruelties practised on
these seamen on • board their ships would be in-
credible had.the facts not been confirmed by pro-
ceedings in the Liverpool police-court. In spite
of the romantic aiPiratiOh. " for a life on the ocean
wave, and a home on. the rolling deep," which
delicate young ladies and gentlemen are wont, of a
summer's evening, to chant to the breakers at
Nahant or Newport, the proverb stands true, that
a sailor's life is a- dog's life. Yet facts lead us to
believe that a dog's life is every way preferable to
aAlife in the forecastle -of many of our European
packet ships. The repOrt of this Liverpool Society,
and the records of the United Statt:s' ( ommissiOner's
Court•in this city, show that htvnanity is the ex-
eePtion and inhumanity the rule of discipline in
11, 1"' ;if tl:eee shiPS. Sailors' have been beaten by
brutal mates until they are maimed for life; they
by sltingshot,
have been set upon by bulldogs, have been stunned
have been -deg' raded, persec
racked, tortured, and and compelled to jump into the
sea to. escape a lioleUt and. horrible death from
,
the brutal bullies of the deck ! All this has oc-
curred on b6ard ships owned by the Christian Citi-
zens of New York :—Neu) York nnese

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