S01.E04: Punished, as a Boy

[SimoneS]

5 hours ago, proserpina65 said:

Having issues with the editing feature today but wanted to add that had Hickey done like the two other guys, kept his mouth shut and accepted his punishment, he wouldn't have suffered nearly as badly.

Exactly. As much as I hate the whipping, Hickey earned it fair and square. The other two sailors stopped when Cozier told them to and handed out their punishment, but Hickey kept going with his ridiculous lies and attempting to justify of his insubordination.

[Captanne]

This sort of punishment, also, MUST be public, ritualized, and severe.  Taking someone to a tiny closet in private and giving them a splinter is in no possible way a deterrent.  

 

ETA:  As for counter-productive -- I think it depends in this situation almost entirely on the specific circumstances.  These folks are scared, in horrifyingly close quarters, and not-necessarily the pillars of society.  Did Bligh flog Fletcher Christian for going native in tropical, seductive Tahiti?  (Christian was a charismatic officer, IIRC.)  That is quite different from the situation on Terror and Erebus.  Hickey has been a consistent twat and not one soul can escape from these ships.  They are tied together with figurative rope -- just to survive.  The situation on the Bounty was a "polar" opposite.  (Sorry for the pun.  Really.)  

 

ETA:  To clarify -- what I'm getting at is that these men are desperate and in no mood to see a fool and a twat jeopardize what few chances they have of survival.  A stiff upper lip from the officers will only go so far - they know they are in treacherous territory.  To see this considerable jerk take risks he was specifically ordered not to needed a swift and authoritative reaction from the Captain.  Something grave, something lasting, and something everyone sees delivered.  Now is not the time for anyone to lose faith in the leaders who brought them to the arctic.  The leaders need to show they are willing to maintain strict order and discipline or none of them will ever get home.  (I'd venture to say if Crozier hadn't flogged Hickey, he would have been found murdered by the men in the lower decks.  He's become a liability they can't afford.  Men were lost out on that ice and they need able hands.  Not to mention they are ALL scared of dying.  They don't want to see anyone gone of foolishness or insubordination.  That behaviour is dangerous to everyone.)

BLIGH and Christian, on the other hand, were in tropical Tahiti with food and pretty people abounding.  They were not desperate for their lives -- they were just seduced by the tropics and wanted to be released from their commissions.  So they deserted -- or tried to.  And got flogged for it.  That makes it much easier for the crew to be sympathetic to the mutineer with whom they want to go in the first place.  Breadfruit, native women, and the tropics are far more enticing than pudding, boiled pork, and the wife back home in Merrie Olde.

Edited April 13, 2018 by Captanne

[pasdetrois]

I missed the first several episodes, started to watch epi 4 on my DVR, and liked it enough to pay to watch epis 1 - 3. I'm always on the hunt for unusual story settings, and I loved "Master and Commander." The actors are fantastic, which allows me to overlook the fake scenery, and the writing's good too. Epi 4 felt a bit rushed and murky, what with the garbled dialogue, dark lighting, and snow. I had trouble following the story.

Jared Harris is killin' this. His sitting motionless in the dark, brooding, seems to hint at a bit of madness coming on. Will he rise to the occasion or succumb to the pressures they are all facing?

The suspense is effective. Imagine trudging alone across the frozen dark and then arriving into the light and warmth of a ship. Right now we feel somewhat safe inside the cabins, but I'm sure that's gonna change. The men will become the monsters as the winter goes on. That's the really scary part - at what point does flogging fail as a means of controlling an unruly mutinous crew.

My take on the monster is that there is a relationship between it and the native people, with them controlling it with offerings of food and perhaps sacrifices. Think King Kong.

Is the ship dog a Newfie? He appears to be a big ol' black fur ball.

Edited April 13, 2018 by pasdetrois

[slothgirl]

In the short extras that are available with the On Demand listing of episodes, there is a good one for this ep, where the actor playing Hickey talks about how things in this episode (including, but not just the flogging) change the character. Check it out if you have On Demand.

There are also nice clips witht actors about some of the other episodes, including one with the actress playing Lady Silence

[LittleIggy]

On 4/10/2018 at 8:25 PM, Lithogirl said:

I keep wondering when Crozier is going to run out of liquor. He seems to drink it pretty liberally and they’ve been there awhile so if it were me, I might be starting to count bottles, you know? But I have no idea how many they brought, of course.

That’s the one thing that adds a bit of humor to this series for me. I’m like “Slow down, dude! You need to ration your booze!”

[MaryMatts]

This sort of punishment, also, MUST be public, ritualized, and severe.  Taking someone to a tiny closet in private and giving them a splinter is in no possible way a deterrent.

 

This sort of punishment is never justified in my opinion.  Are you saying you condone this barbarity? And even though it was commonplace in other centuries, any decent minded person would have objected to it in principle.

[proserpina65]

10 hours ago, MaryMatts said:

This sort of punishment, also, MUST be public, ritualized, and severe.  Taking someone to a tiny closet in private and giving them a splinter is in no possible way a deterrent.

 

This sort of punishment is never justified in my opinion.  Are you saying you condone this barbarity? And even though it was commonplace in other centuries, any decent minded person would have objected to it in principle.

I don't think anyone here is condoning it, merely pointing out the reasons why it was considered perfectly acceptable in that time period.  Even to most decent minded people.

[MaryMatts]

17 hours ago, proserpina65 said:

don't think anyone here is condoning it, merely pointing out the reasons why it was considered perfectly acceptable in that time period.  Even to most decent minded people.

Maybe not but this is torture, pure and simple, in my book.  

[Anela]

On 4/9/2018 at 10:26 PM, SimoneS said:

Gawd, that flogging scene, the brutality... I had to change channel. I couldn't watch. Honestly, he was another one who annoyed me limiting my sympathy. What did someone leave on the bunk for him? He smiled so it must have been something good. Then the exposed brain, ugh.

I like Cozier despite everything. He is the most emotionally balanced and pragmatic of the lot. If he had been in charge from the start instead of John, they would have a better chance of surviving. Poor Evans. Just a scared kid. I concede it is a magical bear of some sort.

Poor Inuit woman. These English men are just harassing her and causing their own demise with their stupidity.

It does seem like we have seen the last of Ciarán Hinds. I thought we would see him in flashbacks.

I didn't watch the flogging scenes, I was just barely watching in the first place. I was trying to catch up, but also doing something else. I like the man in charge, too - calling the young woman a witch, blaming her for everything. I saw the guy's sentence rising, because it was so obvious that they thought blaming a woman for everything would work. Although I don't know what happened to get them the flogging, because I was distracted. 

On 4/10/2018 at 1:32 AM, Cotypubby said:

I thought the guy with the wet band on his head had meant he was flogged for drunkenness. I figured his headache was a hangover. 

Was the guy with his brain showing dead or not? They kept saying how he “was hanging on,” but he certainly looked dead to me, with his eyes open and not moving, and then with pouring hot wax on his eyes. And you know, with the whole brain pouring out of his head thing. Don’t know what pudding or cathedral meant either. Why would a brain look like pudding or a cathedral? ?

Yuck! Glad I didn't watch, after seeing them bring the one guy in, as they let the other one down. They poured hot wax on his eyes??? WTF?

On 4/20/2018 at 5:31 AM, MaryMatts said:

This sort of punishment, also, MUST be public, ritualized, and severe.  Taking someone to a tiny closet in private and giving them a splinter is in no possible way a deterrent.

 

This sort of punishment is never justified in my opinion.  Are you saying you condone this barbarity? And even though it was commonplace in other centuries, any decent minded person would have objected to it in principle.

I don't see anyone condoning it, but they had to know what kind of punishments were handed out for things in those days. Hell, this sort of thing has happened "in real life" in my lifetime - not to me (but we were spanked). I heard something recently, about kids getting paddled in a school, after walking out in protest of something? They weren't almost beaten to death, but crap - that's still happening! And too many people seem to think that kind of thing should still be allowed all over the country. 

[Tabasco Cat]

On 4/20/2018 at 5:31 AM, MaryMatts said:

This sort of punishment, also, MUST be public, ritualized, and severe.  Taking someone to a tiny closet in private and giving them a splinter is in no possible way a deterrent.

This sort of punishment is never justified in my opinion.  Are you saying you condone this barbarity? And even though it was commonplace in other centuries, any decent minded person would have objected to it in principle.

I would have condoned it back in the 1840s. There were reasons for it, especially in the Navy when there were no radios or GPS on dangerous voyages. Mutiny and insubordination would mean everyone dies so the punishment had to be severe to also serve as a deterrent to others.

[MaryMatts]

12 hours ago, Tabasco Cat said:

would have condoned it back in the 1840s. There were reasons for it, especially in the Navy when there were no radios or GPS on dangerous voyages. Mutiny and insubordination would mean everyone dies so the punishment had to be severe to also serve as a deterrent to others.

Hmm, so it was necessary back in the 1840’s but not today?   Why?  What's changed?  There are no mutinies or insubordination is today’s navy or armed forces?  Why was it necessary for brutal punishments to maintain discipline but today you can do without them? Just wondering....

[proserpina65]

On ‎04‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 9:41 AM, MaryMatts said:

Maybe not but this is torture, pure and simple, in my book.  

I agree, but it was not considered such at the time, and the men on the Terror would not have thought it torture, simply punishment.  Yes, it's a difficult mindset to understand, but it was the mindset of the time.

6 hours ago, MaryMatts said:

Hmm, so it was necessary back in the 1840’s but not today?   Why?  What's changed?  There are no mutinies or insubordination is today’s navy or armed forces?  Why was it necessary for brutal punishments to maintain discipline but today you can do without them? Just wondering....

My suggestion is to read up on military/naval history if you want information about the evolution of common practices over the last 170 years; it's a pretty complicated subject to cover on a discussion board.

[Osmigo]

On 4/10/2018 at 10:11 AM, Ohwell said:

Without closed captioning, I have to come here to find out about half of what's going on. 

I watch it streaming on AMC via a Roku and it's captioned.

On 4/10/2018 at 6:54 PM, peridot said:

The whipping scene was brutal.  Since Tobias Menzies was in Outlander, it unfortunately reminded me of the awful beating scene from the first season.
I'm really surprised Hickey was able to walk off afterwards.

Same here. I winced when the doctor said "let's get you salted down...." 

[MaryMatts]

4 hours ago, Osmigo said:

Same here. I winced when the doctor said "let's get you salted down...." 

Yeah, me too.  Adding salt to open wounds must be agonizing.  It was done, of course, to fend off infection.  It was about all they knew at the time to keep infections from spreading.  It still makes no sense to punish people this way and then worry about healing their wounds.  But then, military men have never been  know for their high intelligence or logic, lol!

[raven]

4 hours ago, MaryMatts said:

It still makes no sense to punish people this way and then worry about healing their wounds.

They want them back to work.  They don't want them infected or dead. 

[proserpina65]

On ‎04‎/‎24‎/‎2018 at 3:40 PM, MaryMatts said:

It still makes no sense to punish people this way and then worry about healing their wounds.  But then, military men have never been  know for their high intelligence or logic, lol!

It had nothing to do with lack of intelligence or sense.  It was about wanting the wounds to heal as cleanly as possible so that the men could get back to their duties sooner.

[nodorothyparker]

Well, on the plus side this show's version of flogging is still less brutal than that of the last show starring Tobias Menzies it was a plot point on. 

Poor Hickey.  He's obviously one of those guys who's used to being able to talk his way into or out of anything and completely missed the cutoff signs of when he should have stopped digging that hole he was making himself.  You could see his reasoning for why they essentially abandoned their posts RIGHT NOW to go kidnap Lady Silence instead of waiting until morning when they would have just been obeying orders, but he just could not. stop. talking.   Or smirking.  The fact that they've been stuck in the ice in the cold and dark for what has to be going on two freaking years is a testament to the discipline of the British Navy (regardless of what we may think of it), but Crozier clearly already realizes that's going to get harder and harder to maintain that as food and supplies start to run out and they have to concede defeat.  Seriously, how does James still not get this this far in?  The flashbacks provided some clues that Crozier hasn't had a sterling career full of successes, the issues of him being Irish in the British Navy aside, and now he sees that if even if they somehow miraculously don't die horribly the voyage and his attachment to it as captain are going to be seen as failures.  And so he snaps when pushed.

Loved the opening of Lady Jane basically selling her unbeknownst-to-her dead husband as not the smartest or greatest of men in a bit of reverse psychology to try to convince the Navy to send out someone looking for the ships.  I know that this was years before any expedient forms of communication and voyages of discovery did often wander off unheard from for years, but could you guys show any less sense of urgency?  Well, if it's 1847 now, we'll get around to it three years from now.  That sounds good.   Even figuring that the ships had five years of provisions of reduced rations at absolute best, that's still going to be too late.  But I guess that's the point, that we know that it already is now.

Goodsir is such a gentle soul that I keep hoping against hope that nothing truly awful is going to happen to him.  Yet his earnestly attempting to explain the British Empire and its commercial needs to the side-eyeing Inuit woman still made me laugh.

Hickey found tobacco in his bed.  It was largely regarded as medicinal as much as anything in the 1800s.

[vlacocabios]

On 10/04/2018 at 2:49 AM, MaryMatts said:

So Jesus that was an very intense episode.   I guess the "bear" is not a bear but some kind of monster/supernatural being?  It can climb ropes up to the sails?  Hmm....

 

Having said that, the most awful part of this episode was the brutal flogging scene.  Ugh just ugh!  What absolute barbarians these people were.  I was beginning to have a certain sympathy for Crozier but now I can't stand the bastard and hope he has a long, drawn-out painful death at the bear's claws.   He was totally vindictive and vicious.  Also, I'm having problems with hearing some of the dialogue like others have mentioned and I just don't understand why the men were sentenced to being flogged?  What did they do that merited such a punishment?  I get the Irish guy's sentence was augmented because he kept arguing with Crozier but what did they do that was so bad in the first place?

If you think that punishment was barbaric, you should see what other cultures employed as punishment under similar circumstances. This is not the 21st century, it’s the 1800s, floggimg was considered standard punishment for infractions like that. As to what they did... the Captain laid the charges out very clearly I believe. Abandoning their posts, disobeying direct orders, assault, and dereliction of duty, in what actually amount to wartime conditions, could get everyone on the ship killed. A full court martial could have resulted in harsher punishment. 

Edited September 8, 2018 by vlacocabios

[Kel Varnsen]

On 4/30/2018 at 4:57 PM, nodorothyparker said:

Loved the opening of Lady Jane basically selling her unbeknownst-to-her dead husband as not the smartest or greatest of men in a bit of reverse psychology to try to convince the Navy to send out someone looking for the ships.  I know that this was years before any expedient forms of communication and voyages of discovery did often wander off unheard from for years, but could you guys show any less sense of urgency?  Well, if it's 1847 now, we'll get around to it three years from now.  That sounds good.   Even figuring that the ships had five years of provisions of reduced rations at absolute best, that's still going to be too late.  But I guess that's the point, that we know that it already is now.

Goodsir is such a gentle soul that I keep hoping against hope that nothing truly awful is going to happen to him.  Yet his earnestly attempting to explain the British Empire and its commercial needs to the side-eyeing Inuit woman still made me laugh.

The scene with Lady Franklin and the Admiralty was really good. She seems like the most competent person we have seen on the show so far. Although I don't really get the Navy's position that if they are not back by 1850 we will start looking. If they left England in 1845 and you start looking 5 years later assume it takes a year to even get where they are (assuming you know there position) then they ran out of supplies.

It was also interesting hearing Goodsir's explanation of why the empire needs the north west passage. Although I am thinking if the route you found is one where you need special saws to cut through the ice, it probably won't be economically viable. Hell last weekend I spent a couple of hours trying to chip away a the ice on my street that was a few inches thick to open up the storm drains and it was a huge pain in the ass. Can't imagine trying t break through Arctic ice sheets.

[Captanne]

On 3/1/2019 at 11:36 PM, Kel Varnsen said:

The scene with Lady Franklin and the Admiralty was really good. She seems like the most competent person we have seen on the show so far. 

She was in real life, too.  

[megan2478]

The men in the 1800s were no more barbarians than we are. They had different expectations, punishments, values, etc. But that doesn't make them barbarians. To look at them so narrowly is naive...Just as it would be for future generations to look at us as barbarians because we do not do things as they do.

Edited November 25, 2019 by megan2478
Duplicate posting

[megan2478]

On 4/12/2018 at 11:00 AM, proserpina65 said:

Scurvy.  Which ships' crews dreaded more than anything, except possibly supernatural bear monsters.  There was no treatment and the end result was death.  The prevention was citric acid, and Royal Navy ships carried a supply of lime juice for just this purpose, but time, cold, and preservation methods lessened its strength.  Plus, being stuck for as long as they have been, it's probably running low.

They were suffering from lead poisoning on top of the scurvy. There was lead in the cans... Which they had been ingesting for years. It wouldn't have been so much of a problem if they had been on the mission for a year or so...because they would back to eating non-canned food. But unfortunately they were stuck for several years, so it was a constant ingestion. Awful really.

On 4/10/2018 at 1:22 PM, MaryMatts said:

I totally agree - it was brutal, extra humiliating and completely over the top.  It made it much worse when I realised what "punished, as a boy" meant.  Jesus, they used to flog children like that? Barbarians indeed.   

"Boys" were the lowest rank on ships - they were "green"...the higher you went in rank, the different your punishment was. Has Hickey not be insubordinate, he would have been lashed on the back, as the other two were. But he was insubordinate, so he received punishment fit for someone lower than his station. 

Edited November 25, 2019 by megan2478
Duplicate posting

[paramitch]

Another fantastic episode. I've been bingewatching this over the holiday week, and it's been mesmerizing.

On 4/9/2018 at 7:53 PM, Crone said:

I think the flogging was because they left the ship without orders. Didn’t Crozier say he wasn’t going to send the men out in a squall and they could wait till morning to get the girl? The flogging was horrific, but military discipline has always been extreme (IMO) and is probably even more stringent in situations like theirs. I mean, can you imagine YEARS out on the ice, in the dark, freezing and starving? 

This. There was already a plan to question Silence. What Hickey and the others did was a multiple of serious indictable infractions, from dereliction of duty, abandoning their posts, disobeying orders, to kidnapping. If they'd been court-martialed, they would have been hanged.

A dozen lashes was considered a light punishment on board, and most genial captains tried to avoid them where they could. But when an offense was public, as this was (and worse, with an unrepentant offender leading a group), there would be no choice but flogging. Even 30 lashes would have been considered a low number given this offense -- back in this time period, serious offenses might result in 50 or 100 lashes, 300 lashes and being flogged around the fleet, or (for instance, down in Australia's penal colony), 500 or more (basically death sentences).

On 4/9/2018 at 10:11 PM, slothgirl said:

I get that Crozier needed to enforce discipline and have some sort of punishment... but there's a fine line between keeping subordinates' respect and preventing mutiny through appropriate discipline, vs provoking mutiny by creating rebellion from tyranny and abuse of power. I fear he crossed into the latter with the crew.

Hickey's flogging was incredibly light as a sentence by Crozier given his offenses. A dozen lashes was typically the punishment handed out by a non-flogging captain. Given the customs of the time (I am NOT a fan of flogging or torture!), my 2 cents is that Crozier did the right thing -- he was in more danger if he had NOT held down discipline (giving more opportunity for mutiny to fester) than if he had. His first sentence was light -- but Hickey deliberately goaded him. So Crozier had to do more.

On 4/10/2018 at 5:19 AM, CinematicGuy said:

I think the meaning is that a man’s brain physically looks like pudding (the stern doctor who seems to be increasingly delirious and losing his own humanity), whereas Goodsir compares a man’s mind to a cathedral, “depending on the man,” because it is both dependent on morality but capable of majesty or brilliance. Goodsir is an optimist, perhaps choosing not to see the degradation of human spirit in such awful conditions.

I think this episode shows the line between preservation of humanity vs. the emerging "beast," both in the form of the men's mindsets and the "creature" that attacks them. 

Beautifully put, and I agree that this was the subtext involved there. Where the superior ship's Doctor just sees "pudding," the noble Goodsir sees the possibility of a cathedral. Tells us everything we need to know about them in one patient and one conversation.

On 4/10/2018 at 10:39 AM, slothgirl said:

I also wondered why he kept saying "again" as though he was adding more lashes, so I counted them on the re-watch. They showed 23 lashes, and he had been sentenced to 30. I couldn't tell whether we were supposed to infer that it was being cut and edited so that the 30 had already been done before he even says "Again" the first time, or whether he was reminding the guy doing the lashing to keep going because they hadn't reached 30 yet.

I doubt they flogged children. Spanked or paddled them. The reference to "as a boy" meant hit on the buttocks, not the back, and although there were probably instances of someone "taking a strap" to a child, I don't think we are supposed to infer that whipping children with a cat o 9-tails was a frequent thing. Corporal punishment was more common then, though. It was common in the US in the past too.

1. The reason for "again" is that with a genial ship's captain, the punishment was often commuted. So the captain might tell the bosun to stop flogging halfway through as a "okay, you got the gist" kind of punishment. Crozier insisting "again" showed how serious he was about this infraction and that Hickey's near-mutiny was unacceptable.

2. Ship's boys were routinely punished by the captain. Spanked, not flogged! Well into the 1800s, British Navy ships included midshipmen (officers) who were boys (usually the sons of well-to-do captains or gentlemen entered on books almost from birth). As officers (even as children) the only person who could discipline them was the captain, who would bring offenders to his cabin and spank them "on the bare breech" as punishment. This isn't something we would approve of now but was routine for the time.

So Hickey's punishment "as a boy" is literal -- he is flogged, pants down, just like a boy would be spanked in the Captain's cabin.

On 4/10/2018 at 11:10 PM, Dowel Jones said:

On that note, I have absolutely no idea on how they would provision a ship for a minimum of two years travel, or five years if rationed (as was said at the London meeting).  How do you figure that out?

While it may seem that flogging the men was unmerited, in this case it might have been.  The ships were not on a simple geographic mission anymore.  They were essentially at war (enemy unknown, of course), and desertion of a post for any reason might have terrible consequences.

1. I think the original voyage plan was 3 or more years, but ships of this period had an incredible amount of storage space in the holds, and would have been fully able to stock up for this challenge -- especially with two ships (undermanned for the period, since they were a peaceful vs wartime mission). Thanks to salt beef, salt pork, dried peas, and other long-term foodstuffs, the food could last a really long time, and even so, barrels of beef or pork might travel the globe twice before they ate it (I'm still amazed more people didn't die of e-coli constantly). Then there was the water, beer, wine, and spirits (there was an entire hold relegated to spirits called "the spirit room" and it was always under full guard). The supply amounts -- foodstuffs, canvas, wood, powder, shot, etc, were HUGE.

2. The challenge of the period, met with violence as an easy answer at the time, was that every ship was its own world, and voyages could last years. With anywhere up to 600 men under command, a captain would be constantly working to oversee a happy, capable crew, but would also have to keep an eye out for potential mutineers (captains used to know when a mutiny was imminent when the men on the night's watches would roll cannonballs (balls of shot) in hopes of bringing down an officer in the night. The next step was outright mutiny and subversion, which usually meant death to the captain and his people (or abandonment at sea), and was a hanging offense for ALL involved. So Crozier's action here is understandable -- they are on a 5-year voyage and discipline is vital.

On 4/12/2018 at 1:40 PM, Captanne said:

This sort of punishment, also, MUST be public, ritualized, and severe.  Taking someone to a tiny closet in private and giving them a splinter is in no possible way a deterrent.  

BLIGH and Christian, on the other hand, were in tropical Tahiti with food and pretty people abounding.  They were not desperate for their lives -- they were just seduced by the tropics and wanted to be released from their commissions.  So they deserted -- or tried to.  And got flogged for it.  That makes it much easier for the crew to be sympathetic to the mutineer with whom they want to go in the first place.  Breadfruit, native women, and the tropics are far more enticing than pudding, boiled pork, and the wife back home in Merrie Olde.

Agreed on the punishment issue (given the isolation and the times). On Fletcher Christian and his compatriots, my impression was that it really was more of a "let's get away from this monster" situation versus "let's have fun in Tahiti." William Bligh was reportedly an incredibly difficult man to serve under -- petty, brutal, capricious, vindictive, ignoring the warnings of his own officers. He accomplished an incredible feat in sailing his open boat 3,618 nautical miles with a handful of loyal officers after the mutiny -- and then he promptly brought up one of those loyal officers for court martial for insubordination upon rescue! Even though the guy had demonstrated his willingness to die for Bligh to demonstrate his loyalty. Then, when set over the penal colony in New South Wales, he was once again so tyrannical that his officers once again mutinied, and he was eventually rescued and deposed.