Meta on the flogging scene from 1x04.
Originally posted on March 26, 2019 for The Terror Appreciation Week: Best Scene. I figured I'd crosspost since I've since changed URLs -- I'm sure I'd write this really differently now, but I didn't want it to be lost entirely.
Content warnings: discussion of canon corporal punishment, sexual violence, and homophobia; mentions of book-typical ableism and Hickey's canonical crimes against Indigenous people.
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Punish him, your honour, but not with that instrument of torture, the cat; it is cruel, degrading and unnatural. The man who has been once publicly whipped, if he possess one spark of manly feeling, sinks too low in his own estimation ever again to rise-, and, I trust, the day is not far distant, when so foul a stain to our national character, as the laceration of a fellow-creature's flesh, will be blotted from old England's naval and military code for ever!
- C.A. Somerset, The Sea
His flesh creeps it reddens as if blushing at the indignity ; the sufferer groans; lash follows lash, until the first mate, wearied with the cruel employment, gives place to a second. Now two dozen of these dreadful lashes have been inflicted: the lacerated back looks inhuman; it resembles roasted meat burnt nearly black before a scorching fire; yet still the lashes fall…
- Samuel Leech, Thirty Years from Home, Or A Voice from the Main Deck