The OED gives the exact definition, which may help. One of the cites also shows that it was sometimes done more than once in succession.
Remember, though - the question here isn’t whether the punishment could be fatal. I doubt anyone is arguing that. Simply that it’s wasn’t always automatically fatal, and listing some of the reasons for which that might be the case.
My CO threatened to keel-haul several of us shortly after we left port on my first cruise. Not a pretty prospect, even on a [relatively] dinky DDH: a beam of 42’, and a draught of 24’.
I dimly recall from an early class that there were a variety of gruesome Royal Naval punishments, but that keel-hauling was deemed relatively minor in comparison to most of them.
“Hanging from the yardarm” is a literary convention, and probably happened rarely in actual practice owing to the significant hazard of having an object the mass of an adult male swinging about. The only way it would be feasible would be to tie down the legs while hanging (as done when moving topsails or mainstails up the mast) so as to prevent the body from flinging about, which will occur even in light seas. I suspect that most deaths in naval service due to punishment occured due to blood loss and shock from flogging or dehydration from water deprivation. What hangings occured were typically done at anchor or on land. Even C.S. Forester tends to avoid this cliche in the Hornblower stories, indicating (correctly) than hanging is reserved only for the most extreme offenses and only after deliberation (although other forms of excessive corporal punishment are common).
Stranger
That would be almost impossible to do - there’s equipment and rigging attached to the gunwale at various points along its length - you can’t just trot down the full length of the boat holding a rope attached to something that is overboard - it would always get hung up on something.
I can’t remember where I heard it (may have been from a tour guide at HMS Victory - and we know tour guides are always right on the facts, don’t we?) - but someone told me that adding chains to the victim when keel-hauling was an act of mercy, because it would result in him sinking and passing under the keel more easily.
I thought, for some reason, that they just dumped these huge chains ontop of the poor sod afterwards, when he was on deck.
“Arrrr, matey, try and get up from under these!”
:o
While we’re on the subject, how common was making someone walk the plank? Wouldn’t it be easier to grab the miscreant and throw him overboard where there’s nothing for him to grab on the way down? And how would such an unlucky sod die: In shock from broken bones and internal hemorrhaging, by drowning, or from dehydration?
I’m afraid that I can’t leave this statement alone, Stranger. I know you’ve said that in reality “hanging from the yardarms” was probably a rare event, and I agree with that, but the tone of the rest of your answer leaves the impression that you also are throwing out a sea anchor just to cover your butt, and that you can’t recall any incidents of it actually happening.
If that’s the case I’d like to offer up the Somers Affair, where a USN captain hanged three men at sea, for their part in a planned mutiny. It’s not a minor incident, either - the event was one of the major pressures that lead to the formation of the US Naval Academy. None of the accounts I can find quickly online use the actually expression “hanging from the yardarms,” except as a caption to a drawing, so I won’t swear that the men hanged aboard the Somers were hanged from the yardarm - however, I find it hard to imagine a more likely place to hang the three mutineers.
Stranger said:
This gives the impression that there’s no hanging in the Hornblower books, which isn’t really true. In Hornblower and the Atropos, Hornblower tells the French prize crew that he’s going to hang one of them from the yardarm, and actually gets the machinery in motion. It’s all a ruse, of course, and Hornblower has no intention of actually doing it, but neither the French nor, in fact, Hornblower’s own crew knows that, yet nobody acts as if this is something grotesque and unusual – their objection is that Hornblower is acting precipitously and on his own as judge, jury, and executioner, not that the action of hanging on board a ship is unusual…
I also got the impression that Barry McCool was hanged on Board after his trial, in the short story “Hornblower’s Temptation”, in the collection Hornblower During the Crisis.
I note that in both cases the ships are still and at anchjor, not underway. Under those circumstances, I can’t see Stranger’s objections about the body getting in the way coming into play.
…and when or if you do, it’s your turn in the barrel…Arrrrr
I can’t say how common “hanging from the yardarm” was but it definitely happened. Richard Parker - one of the leaders of the RN Nore mutiny of 1797 - was hanged in this way:
Stranger refers to the problem of the body swinging around amongst the rigging but this hanging, and I guess any others ordered by a Courts-Martial, would take place while the ship was anchored in port.
So, to summarise, there is broad agreement with Stranger’s proposal that if you’re going to hang someone aboard a ship it’s most likely to get done while the ship is at anchor? Most likely in a fleet anchorage where there were enough other captains about to form a court-martial?
My understanding (admittedly from reading historical fiction) was that any seaman worthy of the name would have been able to work their way along the side of the ship, stepping outboard of the chainplates or shrouds or whatever they are called when necessary. Not the kind of thing to attempt in bad weather or while trying anything too complex, but holding a rope it shouldn’t be too hard. Particularly if there was some prep time to rig a handrope to hold on to for the tricky bit. Compared with the challenge of trying to work sails up a mast in bad weather, it would probably be fairly trivial.
Whether it was feasible doesn’t have much bearing on whether it actually ever happened - the vast majority of references to the term keelhauling certainly indicate it was done side-to-side.
Frustratingly this google link to a Blackwell Publication does not complete, although it does come up with the summary text:
so if someone has access to this publication they might be able to dig out a bit more detail.
Probably just me, then. It shows a pirate school, and one of the gags is a sentence diagrammed on the chalkboard: “I will keel-haul him.”
Both are true, but again, they’re presented as the exception, not the general rule. For captured prisoners, crew were generally pressed into service and officers treated as prisoners of war; pirates and privateers were most likely shot, tossed overboard shackled to a cannon ball, or otherwise dispensed with in convenient fashion. Hanging–portrayed in some fiction as a common and favorite punishment meted out by sadistic skippers–was a fairly rare event (unlike floggings, dragging, starvation and dehydration, masting, et cetera) for the purposes of internal discipline and was unlikely to occur at seas, owing again to the difficulty of performing the mechanics of the job without fouling rigging or interfering with the operation of a ship making weigh.
Stranger
Totally trivial. I’ve done harder things at sea on smaller vessels in bad weather, and I’m no saltie. You just walk along the deck passing the end around stays and whatnot. No problem.
Hey Scylla are you around? We’ve got something else for you to try…
Actually it wouldn’t be a bad one for Mythbusters. You could see how it works while still doing it quite safely: you just do it with breathing gear on, but don’t use it unless you have to. Plus just hold on to a loop in the rope rather than be tied to it, so you can let go any time. Plus do it on a ship without barnacles (and/or while wearing a protective suit) so that the laceration aspect isn’t a problem.
You should go on their web site and suggest it. I tried to suggest the Tom Cruise motor cycle leap in MI one and never heard back from them.
-XT