Englishmen at Sea: Labor and the Nation at the Dawn of Empire, 1570-1630 by Eleanor Hubbard

Author:Eleanor Hubbard [Hubbard, Eleanor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, Europe, Great Britain, Tudor & Elizabethan Era (1485-1603), Stuart Era (1603-1714), Maritime History & Piracy
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2021-11-15T21:00:00+00:00

ducked for stealing a cheese. On the Thomas, two seamen were whipped at

the mast for pumping out wine in the hold in 1613.45

For outcasts who were simultaneously ostracized by their peers and pun-

ished by their superiors, life on board could be unbearable. The Hector’s

gunner’s mate, George King, was driven to suicide in 1607, for example.

King had been suspected of “committing fi lthiness with a bitch,” a sort of

“inhuman vileness” that threatened to call down “fearful judgments” on

the fl eet. King denied the charge and was acquitted: the evidence was

“very ominous . . . yet not suffi cient to induce the consciences of the said

jury to allot him death.” 46 But he was not forgiven. Whipped and transferred to the Dragon, King remained deeply unpopular. When he was ac-

cused of stealing shirts some months later, he tried to escape in the ship’s

pinnace onto the shore at Sierra Leone. Someone saw him, and the sailors

pursued him in the longboat. Though King “cast himself into the sea,” he

was hauled up and bound. The following day, when King persisted in

denying the theft, the captain ordered him to be tortured, and the sailor

“confessed the stealing of the shirts, and one platter, and that he had hid

them ashore.” A search revealed nothing, however. In any case, innocent

or guilty, King could stand no more. On his way back to the bilboes, he

“desired that he might go to the beak head to ease himself,” and under

the pretense of relieving himself, “not having the fear of God before his

eyes, did cast himself away and was never seen after.” 47

The fact that ships were so terribly vulnerable to providential punish-

ment could lead to harsh remedies when grave sins were suspected; there is

little evidence that illicit sex on board was tolerated. As the Ascension made

its tedious way up the coast of East Africa, frustrated by contrary currents,

a ship’s boy named William Acton revealed that he had been sodomized by

the coxswain, Nicholas White, and that Nicholas Cober had abused him to

a lesser degree. A trial was swiftly held, and a jury of seamen found all

three to be guilty of sodomy. Acton was not punished because of his youth,

180

SAILORS AND THE COMPANY-STATE

but the steward was whipped and White was hanged. Robert Coverte, the

ship’s steward, later marveled, “It was a wonder . . . that our ship had not

sunk in the ocean” because of the sinful acts.48

Juries of seamen also convicted sailors of serious offenses against au-

thority. A few months after White’s execution, the Ascension was reunited

with its pinnace, the Good Hope, at Aden. When the general Alexander

Sharpeigh asked to see the pinnace’s master, its seamen “told him very

merrily that he was dead,” for “they had slain him.” At fi rst the pinnace’s

crew kept a united front, asserting that they were all equally guilty and

that they had killed John Lufkin because he refused to seek refreshing on

land, for “it was better for one to die than all.” Under closer questioning,

however, it appeared that the men who took control of the pinnace after

the murder had also coveted Lufkin’s private store of aqua vitae.

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