GLR July-August 2022
Question: On what part of his person was the tar applied? De scribe, as accurately as you can, the precise part? ... Question: State whether it is not customary in the Service to flog men on their backs, and boys on their bottoms? ... Question: When boys are flogged on their bottoms, are not their trousers let down, and their posteriors exposed? For this rehearing, Levy called witnesses on his own behalf. The most effective was George Franks, who had been the ward room steward, the servant employed to care for the officers’ quarters aboard Vandalia . Franks had read a newspaper account of the first trial and had written a letter to the editor in Levy’s defense, praising his treatment of the sailors under his com mand. On the witness stand Franks gave an informal but highly evocative account of Thompson’s reaction to the exposure. “In a few minutes the boy went forward laughing, got a little grease and wiped off the tar. I heard the boy laugh, and say, ‘I don’t care a pin about it.’All the other boys laughed, and it was only a little fun. A pretty bad fellow, by the name of Van Ness, an Englishman, took occasion to say something impudent, and he was punished. This boy was a pet of Van Ness.” The court then asked Franks a question that he declined to answer. This question and his response were redacted from the official transcript, and in their place appears a bracketed sum mary: “[The witness objected to answer this question, stating that having come here to testify about the boy Thompson, and for nothing else, and that he was a Citizen, that he was not here to testify about any private affairs—the Court told the witness that it was a proper question, and he answered it.]” Almost certainly the question concerned the personal rela tionship between Van Ness and the young man he was flogged for protecting. Most of the officers called as witnesses were asked about Van Ness, and though they could remember in great detail the amount of tar and the exact position of Thompson’s trousers, when it came to the man who had violently intervened and was flogged for this disruption, they suffered from tempo rary amnesia. The only officer willing to discuss the sexual re lationship between Van Ness and Thompson was the captain himself. “The mutinous language,” Levy explained to the court, “was only the language of Van Ness—a turbulent man, and whose chicken this boy was.” The officers on the court-martial panel were irritated by President Tyler’s intervention and had reconvened solely on or ders from the Commander-in-Chief. They listened to the new testimony but came to the same conclusion as before: Levy was guilty of scandalous behavior, and he was dismissed from the Navy. Their decision was again forwarded to President Tyler, who accepted the verdict but commuted the sentence to one year’s suspension without pay. John Thompson never appeared at the trial, and his con spicuous absence is never accounted for. It is likely that in the three years between his punishment and Levy’s trial Thompson had left the Navy and disappeared into the vast stew of Ameri can youth on the move. He would presumably have been amused, though, that a commodore, five captains, nine ship’s officers, the Naval Judge Advocate, the Secretary of the Navy, and even the President of the United States had spent fourteen months judiciously establishing the precise significance of his naked posterior. July–August 2022
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