It was mid June in the Year of our Lord 1860 and fourteen year old Billy Stowe sat huddled in a corner of the small, windowless, cupboard-like cabin which served, from time to brief time as 'The Brig' on H. M. Ship of the Line 'ASPERA', miserably awaiting his fate and mentally cursing the craving for the acrid taste and smell of the tobacco weed that had led him and Able Seaman Mick Hall to light up a furtive 'drag' between decks and their subsequent discovery and arrest. The 'Brig' was so small and crude because it was seldom used and then only for the short periods between the sentencing of a crewman to death and his execution by hanging from the yardarm, or, more frequently, the ordering of a flogging and its infliction on the bare back of the wretched sailor. At that moment, Billy knew, Mick was on the point of receiving that very punishment for their heinous crime, after which it would be his, Billy's, own turn.
It had been made very clear during the formal, on deck Court Martial, that both of them could, on a day when the Officers were in a less merciful mood, have swung from the yardarm for endangering the ship and its crew so wantonly and that they were very lucky to be 'let off', on this occasion, Mick with two dozen lashes and Billy, because of his tender years, with 'a mere eight'.
They had heard the scraping of the heavy wooden grating as it was moved across the deck above them to the bulkhead against which it would be propped so that they could be tied to it for their floggings and then the sounds of the entire crew's being mustered on deck to witness punishment. Finally a detail of Marines had come below and escorted an ashen-faced Mick up on deck to be flogged.
Billy had heard his almost tearful plea for mercy and its rejection by the Officer of the Watch. Then there had been almost dead silence and Billy could imagine the scene as the young man was tied to the grating. Like Billy, he had been barefoot and, save for the pair of rough, unbleached canvas trousers hitched round his waist with a length of rope, naked. Billy could visualise his friend's smooth, suntanned body braced against the lattice of the grating, with his naked shoulders and ribs fully exposed to the bite of the 'cat'; even worse, he could almost see himself in the same place and feel, in his rioting imagination, the searing agony of the lashes ripping into his unprotected flesh. Normally, 'a mere 8 lashes', following on a full two dozen, would have been something of an anti-climax, but he was only too well aware of the entire crew's keen interest in his punishment on this occasion, which was due to his being the first 'ship's boy' to be flogged on board the ASPERA since the new Articles of War had come into effect. These provided that all boys, including Midshipmen, under the age of 17 years, who were sentenced to be flogged, as distinct from summarily caned or ropes-ended, were to receive the cat 'upon the bare breech and no longer across the naked shoulders and back, as in the case of adult sailors'. Billy was half thankful for and half resentful of this development; there was a certain aura of martyrdom about the 'usual' sort of flogging, but he certainly didn't relish the prospect of having to explain away a scarred and welted back for the rest of his life. On the other hand, getting his arse whipped like a naughty little boy [which, of course was exactly what he had been], could lead to nothing but mockery and teasing, notwithstanding the undeniable extra severity of the 'cat'.
Then, without warning, it began; there was a sibilant, swishing hiss, followed by a sound like water being dashed on cobbles and, a moment later, by a gasp of pure agony from Mick, as the many-tailed whip raked his bare back for the first time. Billy listened, with the thick bile of nausea rising in his throat, as the flogging continued, slowly and relentlessly, the lashes falling at about 20-second intervals, the heavy, brine-soaked and knotted whipcord 'tails' whistling as they slammed into naked flesh. Then, after about 6 strokes, Mick reached the end of his endurance and began to scream, a long, high-pitched shreik of pain, accompanied by the frantic drumming of his bare feet, the only parts of his body that could move freely, on the deck right above Billy's head, as the young sailor stamped and howled in agony.
Billy counted the lashes, almost mechanically, up to 12, when the bombardment above him ceased. Unbeknown to Billy, the pause in the flogging had been to enable a second, left-handed, 'mate' to take over and to administer the remaining 12 lashes from Mick's right side, so that a fresh set of pickled lashes could carry out their cruel task on his left shoulder and ribs. However, he WAS aware, when the flogging resumed, of a new level of urgency and agony in the screams of the soundly whipped man on deck, until the lash ceased to ply and the hoarse yells died away to a low moan of pain.
Then, again without warning, the virtual silence was broken by an even more lusty yell of protest, which, Billy knew from witnessing punishment once previously, had been caused by some ratings' having been ordered to rub handfuls of coarse salt into Mick's cut and bloody back, partly to prevent infection, but mainly, everyone believed, to set the open stripes smarting afresh.
In the few minutes before the Marines came for him, Billy became aware of having yet another problem; his immature, but quite welldeveloped _c_o_c_k_ had chosen that moment to assert itself and was standing upright and rigid against his stomach. He prayed silently that whatever had caused this to happen would disappear before he was stripped of his trousers on deck. Then these concerns were dispersed by the clump of booted feet in the narrow gangway, the click of the door's being unlocked and a Marine's beckoning finger, which erased all thoughts, other than dread of what was awaiting him, from his mind.
As if in a trance, Billy stood up and followed the smnartly-uniformed squad of Marines along the gangway, and up the companion ladder, and then padded forlornly across the deck on his bare feet, towards the blood-spattered grating. He heard nervous giggling from some of his shipmates and became aware that the big and not unkindly Marine Sergeant had placed a hand on his shoulder and was steering him away from the grating and towards a solid-looking wooden trestle standing in the middle of the deck. Uncomprehendingly he stood and looked at it until suddenly he felt hands at the top of his canvas trousers, fumbling with the knot that secured their supporting rope. He recoiled violently, until brought up short by the stocky body of one of the Bosun's Mates, who quite gently pushed him back towards the trestle. Of course, that was it; if you're going to whip a boy's tail, it doesn't matter what you use to do it with, the best way is to make him bend over and that was exactly what they were going to do to him; not for him the dignity of standing upright to be flogged like a man; he was to be bent over the trestle with his bare bum (and everything else) on display while he was thrashed like a 10-yearold.
To his horror, Billy felt his canvas trousers sliding downwards over his hips until they were brought up short by hooking on five inches of rock-hard flesh, which, in spite of his very unpleasant situation, showed no signs of subsiding. The Mate who had untied the rope now gave the garment a lift and a tug and sent it on its way to the deck, leaving Billy standing stark naked and fully erect, before the entire crew. Bearing in mind that he WAS little more than a child, with a half-grown, still developing body, neither man nor boy, his sudden nakedness and the public exposure of his unruly _c_o_c_k_, rearing upwards out of its small triangle of dark, curly hair, was a devastating experience and, although worse was, of course, to follow, at that instant, young Billy felt more embarrassed and humiliated than he would have believed possible, considering that all those present were themselves male and that most of them had seen him both naked and erect before. That, however, had been under totally different sets of circumstances; now he was being paraded before them as a criminal and they were entitled to enjoy and gloat over his humiliation and his forthcoming agony. It could not have been much worse for him, that time, if he had been a girl.
In his misery, Billy froze completely until a Marine gave him a gentle push, making him step out of his crumpled trousers and move a half step towards the suddenly menacing trestle. Then he froze again and the Marine, losing patience, placed a big hand under each armpit, lifted the boy's slight body effortlessly off the deck and deposited him gently with his hips on the six-inch beam which formed the top of the trestle, his bare legs dangling in space on one side and his limp, defeated body jack-knifed towards the deck on the other, forming a sharp, inverted 'V' with his small, bare backside at its apex, drawn absolutely taut, lying horizontal, fully exposed and perfectly positioned for its appointment with the cat.
Immediately and before the boy could offer any further resistance, four sailors set about securing him for his flogging. His bare feet were pulled apart and his ankles tied to the back legs of the trestle, while his wrists were similarly fastened to the front legs. This had the effect of spreadeagling him, but in a tightly bent-over position, with his bare buttocks pulled so far apart that the cleft between them was opened to its fullest extent, exposing the insides of his bottom cheeks right down to his small, round and, at that stage of his first voyage, possibly still virgin, hole.
At that moment, now that his embarrassing erection was concealed, albeit uncomfortably, from view, Billy's main concern was with the 'cat' that was shortly to be lashing his naked tail. As he had come on deck, he had seen Mick being helped down below and had had a clear, although brief, view of his striped and bloody back; what had struck him the most, however, were not the livid, crimson weals across it, but the big purple blotches scattered among them, which, he knew, must have been caused by the hard, solid knots tied in each of the nine tails. The totality of his impending punishment was far beyond Billy's powers of calculation, but he did realise that each time the cat landed on his bare bum, it would leave up to nine of those weals and that each weal could contain some of those terrible purple bruises; Billy desperately wanted to find out whether 'his' cat was also knotted and as, looking upside-down along the deck he could see the two cats that had been used on Mick lying near the grating, already stiff with drying blood, he guessed that a freshly soaked and supple instrument of correction was to be applied to his bum, which clenched involuntarily at the prospect.
Out of the corner of his eye, Billy saw a movement and recognized the tall, burly figure of Mr. Fenwick, the Bosun himself, moving up behind him and to his right. He was rather afraid of Mr. Fenwick, who, on the second day at sea, had accused him of insolence, rejected all explanations and apologies and had him held over the breech of a cannon while he had thrashed the tightly stretched seat of his same canvas trousers with a short, but very springy and knobbly cane so soundly that Billy's bottom had ended up black and blue and had remained decidedly tender for a full week.
Now Billy's gaze focussed on the dripping wet cat o'nine tails which hung from the big man's wrist. He could see that it was quite different from those lying on the deck; it had a short, thick handle which seemed to end in a flat flange through which its nine lashes were threaded, keeping them well separated, but the feature, for which he thanked heaven in his innocent ignorance, and which drew his attention, was that the 'tails', which, while obviously heavy with brine, were both thinner and lighter than the others' and were of smooth, unknotted cord, the free end of each having been tightly bound for about two inches with thread. The implications of that binding were lost on Billy, whose attention was, in any event caught by Mr. Fenwick's asking the Skipper himself, who had also come to witness their punishment, for permission to inflict Billy's, followed by the Captain's gruff "Carry on, Mr. Bosun".
With a sense of unreality, Billy felt the cool, heavy wetness of the lashes lying almost soothingly on his naked tail as the Bosun judged his distance and sized up his unusual target. Then, with sick horror, he saw Mr. Fenwick, who already towered over his bare, upturned rump, rise up on his toes, swing the cat so far behind his head that it left Billy's restricted field of vision and then bring it down with all the strength of his powerful body, making a loud swishing whistle and its unique, splashing sound as its lashes landed hard and squarely across Billy's bare haunches.
Like most English boys of his time, Billy had been thrashed on many occasions, but nothing had prepared him for the intense agony of that first stroke of the cat. Mr. Fenwick had, of course, years of experience in flogging the bare backs of countless sailors and was well able to place his strokes exactly where he wanted them on the boy's naked bottom. The first lash landed so far round the outside of and high up on Billy's right buttock that the spreading tails of the cat, led by their heavy, bound tips, bit and stung the entire curve of his right cheek, before bridging his open crack and sinking, with everincreasing speed, into the crown of his left buttock, where each of the nine lashes left a momentarily deep white dent, which quickly turned scarlet as it refilled with blood, becoming a thick, raised 'tramline' stripe on the boy's small white rump and turning into a swollen, purple welt some two inches long where the heavy tip had sunk extra deeply into the soft, bare skin.
Somehow, Billy fought back his scream of agony - his pride refused to allow him to yell after only one stroke, when Mick had taken six, probably much harder, before crying out. Only 7 to go!! He closed his eyes tightly so as to shut out the sight of the prelude to the second lash, but could not escape its distinctive sound or the doubling of the blinding sting and burn that seemed to pulse out of his bottom, sending shock waves of brilliant, white heat up his spine, pounding against the top of his head and racing, like red-hot needles, to the tips of his clawing fingers and wildly flexing and scrabbling toes.
The second stroke, like the first, went no further than the crest of his left cheek, but was aimed low down on his right buttock, so that the full spread of the two lashes, while raising painful, smarting stripes on his right buttock, had covered the entire left one with those blistering, 'tramline' welts which were starting to ooze drops of bright red young blood.
Deciding, through a mist of pain, that it would be better to watch what was being done to him than to be caught by surprise each time, Billy opened his eyes just in time to see Mr. Fenwick take a small step forward as he raised the cat for the third lash, which then came down, flat and very hard, straight across the middle of both haunches. However, as it had this time landed squarely on the highest point of the boy's right buttock, instead of on its flank, as before, the nine loaded tails curled viciously round the middle of the left one, biting savagely into ITS naked flank, leaving a broad, central band of red and purple stripes, and forcing a harsh gasp of pain from Billy's lips.
The level of agony caused by that third lash was so much higher than before, that Billy failed to notice Mr. Fenwick's much larger backward step, which enabled him to plant the fourth stroke so far round the side of Billy's right buttock that the vicious tips of the lashes missed his left cheek completely, curling round the inside of the right one and biting savagely into the tender, virgin flesh between them. Several of them actually reached the thin, puckered brownish skin of the ring of muscle which surrounded his small, tightly-clenched hole, but mercifully missed the back of his wrinkled, fully-retracted scrotum and the distended root of his by then halflimp _c_o_c_k_.
To Billy it seemed as if a red-hot poker had been pressed against his arsehole and he screamed, not the normal yell of a child in pain, but the wild howl of a tortured animal, causing two of the younger Midshipmen to throw up violently into the fortunately nearby scuppers.
Slowly and deliberately, so as to give his victim's agony time to reach its peak, Mr. Fenwick moved round to the left side of the trestle, level with the other side of the boy's naked hindquarters; the ship's doctor officiously felt his pulse and ran his fingers lightly over his swollen, cut and very discoloured bottom before indicating, with a nod, that Billy was fit to receive his remaining four lashes without his health's being endangered and the cat was again lifted into its striking position over the lad's taut, quivering tail.
Billy had, by then, abandoned any pretence of stoicism and he howled and yelled like any other soundly-whipped boy as the previous pattern was repeated, with his already blazing and but not yet sliced, right cheek as its main target.
By the 6th stroke, though, his entire backside was virtually numb to further blows and he lay passively and in an eerie silence as the whip slammed into the raw and bloody mounds of beaten flesh which were what his buttocks had become, making some of the older hands wonder whether he had, mercifully, fainted.
However, as the final stroke tore into the inside curve of his naked left cheek and again battered at his already raw and mangled arsehole, this time also flicking his by then loosely hanging and exposed scrotum, he screamed again, shrilly and at a volume which left no doubt but that he had been fully conscious throughout his entire flogging.
Although Billy knew exactly what was happening to him, he would have taken almost no convincing to believe that a red-hot poker had been forced right up his backside and was being twisted round inside his body. Once again, Mr. Fenwick allowed enough time for the flogged boy to experience the full build-up of the pain of the whipping itself, before signalling to two of the Midshipman to do their prearranged duty.
Billy was just beginning to overcome the fierce, burning agony in his ravaged hindquarters when he saw, from his still inverted viewpoint, the bare, brown feet of the two Midshipman coming towards him. He knew, instinctively, what was in store, but was unable to brace himself against the explosion of his world into a new dimension of stinging, smarting torment, as generous quantities of coarse salt were harshly rubbed into the raw welts on his flaming bottom. As the crude chemical dissolved into the flayed hide, Billy's tail seemed to ignite and once some of the concentrated saline solution reached his torn hole, he screamed again with a tortured intensity, which made even some of the older hands, who had watched unmoved while many a bare back had been skinned with the cat and had, in some cases, felt its bite themselves, go green and lurch towards the scuppers.
At last, even Mr. Fenwick, who appeared to dislike poor Billy, considered that he had been punished enough and had a bucket of fresh water thrown over his naked, bent over, body, to revive him before he was untied from the trestle. The sobbing boy was then helped down to the infirmary by some of the very subdued and decidedly sympathetic Midshipmen and other boys. There he, like Mick, had an initially stinging, but then soothing and healing, salf liberally applied to his many cuts and wales and, to his own surprise, soon fell asleep.
To his amazement, he did not come in for any ribald teasing or taunting from his shipmates. The entire crew and especially those younger members of it who were similarly at risk, recognized that even a mere 8 lashes of the cat, when concentrated in such a small area as a boy's bare tail, amounted to a formidable, excruciating and very damaging flogging, which was to be avoided at ALL costs.
Once the worst of the swelling and discolouration had subsided, it appeared that Billy's bottom, which had at first seemed to have been comprehensively flayed, was in fact simply covered with thin, open cuts, which could easily have been made by the claws of a 'real' cat. These, thanks to the salt, the ointment and Billy's healthy young flesh, soon developed hard, thich scabs, which itched intolerably before falling off and leaving him with a corrugated, purple-striped backside for some years. Their more immediate effect, though, was to cause the unfortunate lad to become very restless and fidgety, which in turn led to his finding himself 'standing to a mast' a few times during the 'scabbing' period, while the Sailmaster's or a Petty Officer's 'colt', curling around naked shoulders and ribs, impressed on him the necessity for concentrating and sitting still while mastering the mysteries of navigation.
All in all, Billy's mere 8 lashes were remembered by the entire crew of the ASPERA as a very well-borne and spectacular punishment, long after Mick's obviously more severe flogging had been forgotten. On both that and several subsequent, voyages, Billy's scarred haunches were more than once used as an example and a stern warning to other, younger, boys, to behave themselves or face similar dire consequences.
Billy stayed on in the Royal Navy for many years, eventually reaching the rank of Petty Officer. While in the Service, as a boy and a young man, he was caned and ropes-ended innumerable times and was conventionally flogged twice, once for being drunk and disorderly while on shore leave and once for fighting with an Officer. He received two and three dozen lashes respectively on his bare back for these offences, but always maintained that none of his subsequent beatings or floggings could compare, in terms of sheer agony or humiliation, with those mere eight lashes across his bare, 14-year-old tail.