A young sailor in a homemade white jacket spends a year aboard the frigate Neversink, homeward bound from the Pacific round Cape Horn. Melville describes the whole floating world of a man-of-war, its divisions, messes and officers, the magnificent captain of the maintop Jack Chase, and above all the punishment of flogging, which he condemns at length.
Drawn from Melville’s own navy service, it appeared in 1850, the year Congress abolished flogging aboard American warships. Download the free EPUB.