![]() Yet it was fairly senior petty and warrant officers who largely formed the leadership of the revolt. Questions of American, French, British, and black identity were also central to the unfolding mutiny on the mutlinational, multiethnic and multiracial decks of the gun brig. Such punishments had occurred in the past and were again looming over the immediate futures of many of the men, perhaps over the objections of his more humanitarian first lieutenant, Thomas Robinson. Among the ship’s company there was also dread of mistreatment and cruel, arbitrary and humiliating summary punishments inflicted by Captain Hills. Several impressed seamen, including Americans, were in fact very hesitant in committing to the plan for mutiny, and some refused to even secretly discuss such plans. It included an outspoken desire for liberty among several pressed seamen, but there was also an equal reluctance among others to engage in such an attempt. While financial inducement was a factor, the mutiny was more complex than portrayed in either account. 2 The account presented here provides a somewhat more detailed and nuanced version of the event than that presented by Pullen, or indeed by Captain George Hills of the Columbinehimself in his reports to Sir John Borlase Warren, the station commander at Halifax, both of which focused primarily on the enticement of British naval seamen to the United States by higher wages aboard merchant vessels there, and the role played by pressed seamen. 1Ī succinct and fairly accurate summary of the events of the Columbinemutiny was published by H.F. Some of these men no doubt brought with them their republican and revolutionary ideals, if not more formal revolutionary organisation, like the United Irishmen. ![]() Disaffection, mass desertions and even violent mutinies to seize small vessels and sail them to the United States were frequent, and the short-handed lower decks were filled out with American and Irish sailors, many of them conscripted against their will via impressment from merchant vessels and ashore in the British Isles. This may have been the case in some contexts, but by the latter part of this period, if not earlier, service in North American waters may not have had this effect. Some historians have argued that service in the British navy contributed to building a sense of "Britishness" or British nationality among the multiethnic, multinational and racially disparate crews of the lower decks of the warships of the Royal Navy. As we have seen in earlier sections, the motivations for desertion were many and varied. ![]()
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