Death on the Dispatch

At the National Maritime Museum there is a slim volume containing the minutes of an extraordinary court marshal brought against Captain Hawkins in mid-February 1807 for the murder of one of the sailors on board during the final months of 1805.

An anonymous letter had made its way to the Admiralty (it was sent, in fact, by the ship’s master, Thomas Thompson, who held a grudge against Hawkins) accusing the captain of having the sailor William Davie worked and punished until – having become emaciated and sick – he was found dead in the early hours of 26 December 1805.

The letter contained enough detailed allegations to make this a grave matter. Hawkins was duly summoned to stand court marshal and evidence was taken from a wide variety of witnesses.

Davie, the court soon discovered, was a poor sailor who had taken a sizable bounty to replace an able-bodied man. This fact alone made him unpopular with the rest of the crew. His illness was due to a venereal disease that was entering its advanced stages, against which Davie was taking quack medicines.

Finding it impossible to control his bodily functions, Davie regularly soiled himself in his hammock. Because of this, the Sergeant of the Marines, Seymour, was seen to strike the man on a number of occasions with his rattan cane, while the rest of the crew now shunned him altogether.

Davie eventually received a thorough examination by the surgeon, who found that gangrene had set in on his genitalia.

On the morning of Christmas day, Davie was found by Seymour and his assistants to have fallen out of his hammock into a barrel underneath. According to Thompson’s accusation, the sergeant laughed at the dying sailor and then threw a coat over the barrel. At the court marshal Seymour asserted he had done no such thing, although he did admit to the accusations of striking Davie with his rattan, which he claimed was no wider than one of the judges’ quills and, therefore, not very painful at all.

Davie was found hours later in the evening by Michael Brian, the boatswain’s mate, who managed to get him back into the hammock. At 4am the next morning, Davie was found dead: his body slumped on the deck, his head lying on the medicine chest.

While we might find the actions of many on board unsettling to say the least, it is important to try and view the above in the context of the time. Many men received far harsher beatings from their superiors than Davie experienced. Hawkins was also on record for ordering strict instructions that no man should be struck – unless he was filthy below deck. In an age without an understanding of pathogens and detailed knowledge of disease, it was vital that good sanitary conditions were maintained.

Davie’s inability to inform the surgeon of his venereal disease too late was, for all intensive purposes, his own fault. His taking quack medicines compounded the problem and probably hastened his demise, which would have come about one way or another, particularly once gangrene had set in. This was also the conclusion of the surgeon and many other witnesses.

Hawkins was cleared of all charges.