The Lash

Although the flogging of adult sailors had been suspended in the Royal Navy in 1881, at the outset of the twentieth century boy sailors could still be caned or birched for infractions of naval discipline. Many naval officers regarded such physical chastisement as the only appropriate and effective punishment for the youths in their charge, but there were many important opinion formers and campaigners outside the Navy who regarded corporal punishment as a relic from a more barbaric age and sought its total abolition in the senior service. Pressure was particularly strong in Parliament on this point. Sensitive to this pressure, Winston Churchill set up a committee to examine the whole system of naval discipline and, under cover of its report, sought to limit the regime of corporal punishment in the Navy.