"A Picture for Philanthropists": men seized up in the rigging, 1846

A flogging on a whaler’s deck: a man “seized up,” his wrists lashed to the ratlines of the rigging, while an officer swings the rope’s end and the crew look on. Browne’s title is an appeal to the reformers of his day; flogging was abolished on American merchant ships on 28 Sept 1850. Being seized up without the lash, as “the Cooper, Antonio, and R. Holbrooks” were at Lahaina in January 1850, was a punishment in itself: in Hohman’s words, “the wrists were tied together and lashed to a ratline with the hands and arms extended full length above the head at such a height that the feet barely touched the deck.”