7 - The Consequences of Mutiny

Summary

Officers and naval officials reinforced social order through stability and predictability. Despite this, mutiny fostered social and institutional change in the Navy by calling attention to issues in need of urgent attention. Mutinies inspired calls for reform, which eventually led to the abolition of starting, better control over flogging, wage improvements and better health and nutrition. The remarkable operational effectiveness of the Royal Navy by the end of the eighteenth century came about, in part, because naval authorities strove more conscientiously to attend to seamen’s welfare and improve their health in the wake of mutinies. The possibility of mutiny seem to have been a necessary condition for the initiation and sustaining of many institutional reforms in the Navy.