To go back. In due time Some few weeks after the execution
event , execution, end of the Foretopman among other matters under
the head of News from the Mediterranean ,
there appeared in an a authorized naval
Chronicle of the time, a an authorized weekly publication ,
an account of the execution and alleged crime. affair . It was doubtless
for the most part written in good faith, tho' the medium,
partly rumor, through which the facts
must have reached the writer, served
to deflect and in part falsify them. The account was as
follows: —
"On the tenth of the last
month a deplorable occurence
took place
Indomitable . John Claggart, the
ship's master-at-arms, discovering
that some sort of plot was incipient incipient being
hatched among an inferior section of
the ship's company, and that the
plotter ringleader was one William Budd ;
a foretopman he, Claggart in the act of arraigning
the man before the Captain Comm was
vindictivly stabbed to the heart by the suddenly
drawn sheath-knife of Budd.
The deed and the implement
employed, sufficiently suggest that the tho'
mustered into the service under
an English name the assasin was
no Englishman, but one of those aliens
adopting English names cognomens whom
caused to be admitted into it . in
considerable numbers
The enormity of the
crime and the extreme depravity of the
criminal, appear the greater in view
of the character of the victim, ^ a middle-aged man
a middle-aged man eminently respectable, sober and and discreet,
belonging to that minor official grade, in the
the petty-officers, upon whom, as service, the petty officers ? and his Majesty 's navy upon which, as one
upon whom as none know better than the commissioned
officers, gentlemen, the efficiency of the service His Majesty's navy
so considerably largely depends . — the petty
officers. His function was a an onerous and responsible
one; at once onerous & thankless and his fidelity in it the more greater
impulse. In this instance as in so
many other instances in these days, the
example of this the character of this unfortunate man signally
refutes, if refutation were needed,
that peevish saying attributed to the
late Dr. Johnson, that patriotism is
the last refuge of a scoundrel.
The criminal paid the
penalty of his crime. The promptitude
of the example punishment has proved salutary.
Nothing amiss is now apprehended
aboard H. M. S. Indomitable ."
The above appearing in a
publication now
is all that stands hitherto has stood in human authorative
record up to the present time to attest what manner
of men respectivly were
John Claggart and Billy Budd.
End