First Commands
Whilst in command of the Swan Pigot rammed the merchant ship Canada in the English Channel in May 1794. He placed the blame for the mishap on the master of the merchant. Four months later Pigot was posted to the 32-gun HMS Success as her captain. During a nine-month period, he ordered at least 85 floggings, the equivalent of half the crew; two men died from their injuries. In July 1795 he was involved in another collision with the Mercury, an American ship, near Santo Domingo. He again blamed the master of the other ship. But when he had the man seized and flogged he created a diplomatic incident. Pigot was brought to court-martial but that let him off with an apology. He was initially to return to England after this but Admiral Sir Hyde Parker then in command at Jamaica thought that Pigot had been represented badly and allowed him to transfer to the 32-gun HMS Hermione instead.
Read more about this topic: Hugh Pigot (Royal Navy Captain)
Famous quotes containing the word commands:
“They went to him and woke him up, shouting, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, “Where is your faith?” They were afraid and amazed, and said to one another, “Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?””
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 8:24-25.
“The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)