The "Captain's Mast" is a disciplinary
event hailing from the age of sail where a ship's captain and other officers
publicly shame and sentence sailors who have broken some rule in a manner
severe enough to warrant public discipline but not enough to require a full
legal proceeding.
Before steam engines became standard in the nineteenth
century the most efficient means of moving a ship across the sea was to harness
the power of the wind by means of attaching a canvas sail to a wooden pole
known as the mast. Larger ships would have several masts, and the number of
masts as well as their configuration and the shapes of their many sails came to
define the types of the various sailing ships, from the clipper to the
man-o-war.
Sailor's lives depended on the
function of these masts and sails, and much of the maintenance work needed to
keep ships in working order involved these essential components of period
vessels. It is no surprise then that they came to be a focal point of naval
culture and a convenient meeting place for the crew when one was needed.
The Captain's Mast appears to have
come about as a result of the need to maintain discipline and to address the
majority of the crew at once. Meetings of this nature were held under the
mainmast, and eventually any crew meeting came to be known as a mast. The masts
eventually began to be named according to the officiating officer's rank, and
so there are admiral's masts and chaplain's masts.
The Captain's version was
traditionally held prior to religious services and served as both a
disciplinary event in front of the entire crew and as a forum where exemplary
behavior could be praised or official news shared with the crew. Once it became
so common to be held as a tradition, even as the vessels switched from sail to
steam power the event was still held in a convenient meeting area, and given
the same name.
