Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/25

12 bear pain or endure physic, and wrap themselves up and shrink from the cold, for which they seem to have an extra hatred above the ordinary preference of the rest of Anglo-Saxon mankind for foul over fresh air. Their sensitiveness and jealousies are keen in proportion to their effeminacy. But so also are their sympathies and affections. Though his discipline is strict, it is upon these that Captain Fenwick relies as the fulcrum of all the other agencies of reformation. They give the lever its whole power. As a pleasing proof of this, Captain Fenwick being overdone lately with his work, had been absent for about three months to recruit, but returned scarcely recovered. The boys crowded round him, expressed the most intense delight at his return, and volunteered a promise that they would give him no trouble whatever if he would stay with them; and he says that the whole establishment kept their word and behaved unexceptionably.

The state of discipline appeared to be excellent. The chief offences to be coped with, are want of perseverance, recurrence to their own listless habits, and an intense love of chattering together on all occasions. Insubordination rarely shows itself, and is very easily put down by firmness without recourse to force. On one occasion seven new boys came in from another reformatory, and were soon after found in the forecastle comfortably smoking their pipes, a forbidden luxury.

“Hollo!” shouts the boatswain, “what’s the rig here? This won’t do.”

“What won’t do? We are only a havin’ a bit of a smoke.”

“But I tell you that won’t do here—so avast at that.”

“We smoked where we come from, and we shall smoke here.”

They all seven puffed on with increased vigour, with a dogged look, and that in their eyes which boded no good for discipline.

“Put those pipes down this moment.”

The scowls and puffs continued unabated. The boatswain saw it was now or never. The result of the experiment would be no secret. The discipline of the ship was at stake. The boatswain is a strong, broad-chested, resolute man, not given to dally with emergencies. In one moment a well-aimed blow from his clenched fist tumbles the spokesman wrong side upwards, pipe and all, into the corner. The other six, at first taken aback, bristle up, waver, look fierce, think twice, and put down their pipes.

“Now, mind—no more smoking,” and the boatswain left them to their own reflections on the discipline of the Akbar.

They gave little trouble in future.

It seems to be the habit of reformatories to pass their worst coin on one another. An overgrown “juvenile” was pointed out, who came with a high reputation for his pious propensities. He was obedient and of the devoutest demeanour, but was shortly afterwards found to be very immoral.

There was once a mere conversation touching mutiny. The matter was made known to the superintendent, who ordered the whole band likely to have been at all affected, to appear before him, and addressed them nearly as follows:

“I hear you have been chatting about mutiny. It will perhaps be as well to think twice before; you try it. It is quite true that we have no fire-arms or cutlasses on board, because we don’t want them, or mean to use them: but the moment your mutiny begins, a signal from us brings a couple of gigs full of men-of-war’s men from the Hastings, with their coxswains and cats, who will at once administer two dozen to each of you mutineers to begin with. Now, go back to work, like good lads, and let us hear no more of mutineering.”

And no more was heard of it. The pattern-boy from Reformatory has ceased to be dangerous; though he will never make a sailor.

Music is a great auxiliary to the system. A band has been formed, which plays famously on cornets à pistons, with drums, fifes, &c. They keep perfect time, and play with taste, and even with expression. This acquirement makes them very serviceable in the army, and is indeed forming one of the most expeditious modes of getting the pauper boys in the great District School near Croydon, into lucrative employment. Captain Fenwick has also taught his lads to chant, leading them with an harmonium; and few cathedrals need have been ashamed of their performance of Jubilate or the Magnificat. I was vastly struck by the quiet, decorous, yet earnest demeanour of the lads during the time they were thus engaged. I can readily believe in the effect which music, sacred and secular, must have on the hearts of these children, and how very powerfully it must open avenues to the access of those various kindly influences which Captain Fenwick addresses to their love and confidence.

An Irish boy whose general conduct was careless in the extreme, but who had never committed any great fault since his admittance, or (as far as could be ascertained) told a falsehood, fell suddenly from the maintop to the deck (about fifty feet), and smashed his lower jaw. Instead of crying out in pain, or for help, his first expression, in a voice hardly audible from pain and mutilation, was: “How thankful I am that He has spared my life, and I such a miserable sinner!”

The great advantages of floating reformatories are such as recommend them for general adoption. There is no means so good for thorough industrial discipline, both of a healthy and a useful kind, while the little floating island in which the community lives, powerfully enhances discipline. I wonder that others are not established in the Medway, at Milford, and in the Plymouth Waters, the Humber, &c. There are plenty of suitable hulks for the purpose. The boys, when fit, can be drafted into the Queen’s ships only by special favour, but readily into the army and the merchant service. Some are now on board the Hastings, who were trained in the Akbar. Thus the great difficulty which stands at the further end of all reformatory treatment—how to provide for the reformed cases—has no existence in the Akbar.

The results of the system are thus stated. Since