Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa from 1795 to 1872, Volume 1 (4th ed, 1915).djvu/67

1797] and to secure better treatment from their officers. They complained generally of tyrannical conduct on the part of those they had sent on shore, of petty acts of oppression and extortion by individual officers, and of food bad in quality and defective in quantity.

As soon as intelligence of these occurrences reached Lord Macartney he prepared to occupy the heights above Simonstown with a strong body of troops, in order to compel the mutineers to submit. Admiral Pringle, however, adopted more lenient measures. He took the grievances of the seamen into consideration, promised them redress as far as it was in his power to give it, and offered them a general amnesty. Any officers from whom they had received ill treatment, he assured them, would be brought to trial by court martial, upon their complaints being made in the proper manner. Upon this, on the 12th, five days after the commencement of the revolt, the men resumed their duty, and the admiral issued a proclamation of general pardon.

On the 24th of October a squadron consisting of the Sceptre, Raisonable, and Jupiter arrived from sea, and a similar mutiny took place on board these ships, when the men were pacified in the same manner.

One of the most obnoxious of the officers was Captain George Hopewell Stephens, of the Tremendous. On the 6th of November he was brought before a court martial on board the Sceptre, charged by a seaman named Philip James and others of his crew with oppressive conduct and neglect of duty towards them. He had been put out of the ship by force on the 7th of October. On the second day of the trial the court was insulted, and upon the offender being committed to prison, the mutiny broke out again in the Tremendous, Sceptre, and Rattlesnake, lying in Table Bay.

Admiral Pringle concerted with Lord Macartney, with the result that on the morning of the 9th the guns of the Amsterdam battery were brought to bear on the