The crew of the square-rigged ship Hecla brought charges in 1894 that they had been variously struck with belaying pins, hammers, and marlinespikes. The mates were arrested, but their case was dismissed for lack of evidence. A similar fate awaited a Searsport, Maine, captain, E. D. P. Nickels of the May Flint, who reportedly kicked one man in the testicles, causing a permanent rupture, and "laid bare with a holystone" the face of another. While most of the cases of brutality involved the use of belaying pins, knuckle dusters (brass knuckles), or bare fists, the seco nd mate on the ship Tam O'Shanter was more imaginative. R. Crocker, who stood 6'3 " tall and weighed 260 pounds, was charged on arrival in San Francisco with assaulting several seamen. "One in partirnlar, Harry Hill, bore nine wo unds, By 191 7 the steamship was we!! on its way toward replacing the outmoded sailing ship, and five of them still unhealed," when the young men looking to pursue a seagoing career were looking unfavorably on the arduous life Tam O'Shanter came into port in July under sail This wide-angle view of Cape Town's docks, circa 1920, which shows the Table 1893. Acco rdi ng to the "Red Record: " Bay anchorage in the distance, is witness to that transition. "A piece was bitten out of his left palm, a aloft, knocked him down, jumped on his breast and inflicted mouthful of flesh was bitten out of his left arm, and his left noswounds from which he died the next day." The body was placed tril [had been] torn away as far as the bridge of his nose." Crocker in an after hatch. Four days later "the corpse was so black that had also kicked the seaman our of "pure devilment." While this the bruise could not be distinguished," and the claim was made case was waiting to be tried, Crocker was held on $500 bail. Even that the seaman had died of consumption. The assailant Bed to with the seaman's wounds still visible, Crocker was acquitted. Despite the dissemination of the infamous "Red Record" and England, where he laid low until the ship was about to put to sea, thus avoiding a trial for murder. During that same voyage, the other best efforrs by the seamen's unions, Maguire's bill fai led. Captain Sewall beat up two men for talking while they worked. In December 1898, Congress gave seamen a small token in the The first mate joined in, breaking the nose of one of the men. form of a watered-down piece of legislation called the White Act. When Solitaire arrived in Philadelphia more than a year later, in Instead of addressing new areas of concern, however, it merely April 1889, warrants were issued for the arrest of Captain Sewall clarified, tightened, or strengthened existing regulations. Section and both of his mates on new charges of murder and attempted 22 of the bill, for example, broadened the terms of the 1850 act, murder. The mates managed to flee undetected, and Sewall also which had abolished Bogging by also prohibiting "all other forms disappeared for a time, but not before he had "healed the wounds of corporal punishment," and adding a new provision: violators would be guilty of a misdemeanor and subj ect to imprisonment of all complainants w ith $440 in cash." Edward Sewall's cousin Joseph also shows up in the "Red of up to two years, but it fell to the master to surrender the guilty Record," having arrived in April 1893 at San Francisco aboard the ship's officer to the authorities, ignoring the clear reality that the four-masted barque Susquehanna. Before sailing from New York, master often was the perpetrator of the crime. he allegedly made the remark that he wo uld "knock down and Seamen's leaders were rightly rankled that the White Act had kick sailors whenever he felt like it, and moreover that he wo uld left open this large loophole. The program for seamen's relief, use a belaying pin upon their heads and bodies to save hurting which the unions under Furuseth had begun formu lating in the his knuckles when he felt disposed to punish one of the crew." late 1800s, was again honed, and this time Senator Robert M. When a crewman charged chat he had been viciously assaulted by Lafollette agreed to be the congressional messenger for the cause the first mate while underway, Sewall feigned ignorance. Without of American seam en. LaFollette's bill passed through the House and Senate, but witnesses and evidence, no case could be made. When Joseph Sewall arrived in San Francisco in November 1895 , he and his President William Howard Taft vetoed it at the last moment. Almates were charged again with ill-treatment. An arrest warrant though there was probably no connection, Taft was soundly dewas put out for first mate Ross. Sewall threatened that if Ross was feated in his next bid for reelection, receiving only eight electoral arrested, he would lay charges of mutiny against the crew. The votes against Woodrow Wilson's 435 and Theodore Roosevelt's case was dismissed. eighty-eight. 12
SEA HISTORY 121 , WINTER 2007-08