Had it not been smooth water, daylight, and fine weather, many of these absurd volunteers must have perished.

I call them absurd, because there is no sense in merely incurring a great hazard, without some useful purpose to guide the exercise of courage.

These intrepid fellows merely knew that a man had fallen overboard, and that was all; so away they leaped out of the ports and over the hammock-nettings, without knowing whereabouts the object of their Quixotic heroism might be.

The boats were obliged to pick up the first that presented themselves, for they were all in a drowning condition; but the two unhappy men who had been flung from aloft, being furthest off, went to the bottom before their turn came.
Whereas, had not their undisciplined shipmates gone into the water, the boats would have been at liberty to row towards them, and they might have been saved.

I am quite sure, therefore, that there can be no offence more deserving of punishment, as a matter of discipline, and in order to prevent such accidents as this, than the practice of leaping overboard after a man who has fallen into the water.