Seafaring Women by David Cordingly

Author:David Cordingly [Cordingly, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49059-9
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

9

Men Without Women

ON JULY 2, 1761, A COURT-MARTIAL WAS HELD ON BOARD THE PRINCESS Royal, an aging 90-gun warship lying at the Nore, near the mouth of the Thames. On trial were George Newton, a seaman belonging to HMS Ocean, and Thomas Finley, a boy belonging to the same ship. They were charged with committing “the unnatural and detestable sin of sodomy.”1 The president of the court was Admiral William Boys, commander in chief of the ships and vessels in the Thames and Medway. Alongside the admiral in the great cabin of the warship were four naval captains whose task it was to assist him in his deliberations and to determine whether the two prisoners were innocent or guilty of the crime punishable by the 29th Article of War.

When the prisoners had been brought into the court by the provost marshal, a letter from their commander, Captain Langdon, was read aloud. The court then proceeded to question the witnesses for the prosecution. The first witness was a black seaman named Charles Ferrett. George Newton immediately objected to Ferrett's giving evidence, because he said that a black man should not swear against a Christian. When Ferrett was asked whether he had been christened, he said that he had been baptized at Portsmouth when he was a member of the crew of the Maidstone. He could not remember who was present at the time but recalled that Commodore Keppel was one of his godfathers. Under further questioning he confessed that he could not read or write, but he said that he was a free man and received his own pay. He was then admitted as a witness and was sworn in. The admiral asked him to tell the court about the crime of sodomy of which the two prisoners were accused. This is what Ferrett had to say:

The prisoner George Newton, when he came on board the Ocean, he had no bedding; I took compassion on him and let him lay with me, having spread my bed clothes upon the deck to serve us both. One night I was asleep, and hearing somebody blowing and puffing alongside of me, close to my knee and shaking me which waked me; I never stirred him but put my left hand up, and got hold of both his stones fast; the other part was in the body of the boy; I asked him what he had got there, he said, cunt. Then I said you are worse than any beast walking in the field.

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