It prompts him, and gives him time to brood over revengeful purposes; it irritates him against his officers, and if long continued almost inevitably leads to insanity and suicide.

All the beneficial effects of example, likewise, are necessarily lost; because the solitary culprit's sufferings, horrible though they no doubt are, never meet the eye of the rest of the crew, nor, indeed, can they ever be truly made known to them, while he himself, when he quits his cell, makes light of his punishment.

But not one man in a thousand, even of our hardiest spirits, can maintain this air of indifference at the gangway.

And although it must be admitted that a man, at such moments, can feel no great kindness to his officer, the transient nature of the punishment, compared to the prolonged misery of solitary confinement, leaves no time for discontent to rankle.

I never once knew, nor ever heard of an instance in which a corporal punishment, administered calmly and with strict regard to justice and established usage, was followed by any permanent ill-will resting on the mind of a sailor, either towards his captain or towards the service.
It happened to me once, when in command of a ship in the Pacific Ocean, to have occasion to punish a very good seaman.