More from Melville in White Jacket after relating an account of a flogging :

"You see a human being, stripped like a slave; scourged worse than a hound. And for What? For things not essentially criminal, but only made so by arbitrary laws"

In comparing sailing the Atlantic to Cape Horn he made this interesting observation:

"Your Mediterranean captain, who with a cargo of oranges has hitherto made merry runs across the Atlantic, without so much as furling a t'-gallant-sail, oftertimes off Cape Horn, receives a lesson which he carries to the grave; though the grave-as is too often the case- follows so hard on the lesson that no benefit comes from the experience."