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 keelhauling running the gauntlet




From: allin1@schools.minedu.govt.nz (Steve Caskey)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Keelhauling the gauntlet
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 94 22:48:25 +1200

A couple of threads in recent months concerned the nature of "keelhauling" and the etymology of "running the gauntlet". _Life in Nelson's Navy_ (ISBN 0-87021-346-6) by naval historian and novelist Dudley Pope, wearing the former hat, offers interesting light on both of these questions.

On keelhauling:

Keelhauling was never ordered by a Royal Navy court martial, though it was resorted to by captains in the Navy and merchant service until some time after the Civil War, and it was still used in the Dutch Navy in 1813. A line was passed from one end of the main yard under the ship and up to the other end, and the victim was secured to one end with a deep sea lead tied to his feet, dropped and hauled under the ship and up the other side. The weight of the lead kept him clear of the hull - otherwise the barnacles would tear him to pieces, apart from the possibility of being stuck against the keel.

This contradicts my original belief (along with many other contributors to that thread) that the barnacles were the whole point of the exercise, which is not to say that individual cases might not have employed that method. A "standard" keelhauling, however, does not appear to have been intended to endanger the offender but merely punish them by the ordeal.

On running the gauntlet:

One of the worst crimes in a ship is theft: in a ship of the line with 800 or so men on board, the presence of a thief on board could make everyone's life a misery, poisoning the air with suspicion, particularly because most men could not lock up their valued possessions. For minor offences a thief was made to run the gantlet (probably from the Dutch gantlope: _gant_, all; _loopen_, run). For this men were given rope yarns which they plaited into knittles, with a half hitch in the end. They then stood in two rows, facing each other and leaving a corridor between them. The thief then had to strip off his shirt and was made to pass along the corridor, the master-at-arms walking slowly backwards in front of him and holding a cutlass at his chest and a ship's corporal following with another cutlass. The men then thrashed him with the knittles as he passed - as he slowly walked, not ran, the gantlet.

In other words, "gauntlet" is a misconstruction.

Major theft was punished by flogging, and the seriousness with which it was treated on board a Royal Navy ship is shown by the fact that _only_ for theft was the cat of nine tails knotted: three knots at three-inch intervals were put in each tail. (For all other offences, including desertion and mutiny, the tails were not altered.)

Finally, the chapter on Navy expressions that have passed into common use (and in some cases out again), _Garbling the Cargo_, mentions many common phrases that would surprise those unacquainted with the subject, such as "the bitter end", "taken aback", "at loggerheads", "cut a fine feather", "no great shakes", "press into service", "touch and go", and "garbling" itself. Totally absent from this chapter is any reference to monkeys, brass or otherwise.

Finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

Steve "Mutiny, Mr Christian? Worse, sir, you stole my pen!" Caskey


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