MDMD: 'Twas so sincere ...

[Terrance]

Paul Nightingale wrote:
> 
> The individual, therefore, becomes rather more aware of their - and
> society's - capacity for decision-making. Sovereignty is no longer so easily
> identified with the monarch who rules by divine right. This is one of the
> areas where Foucault recalls Weber on authority: traditional authority (that
> of the monarch) being superseded by rational-legal (ie bureaucratic)
> authority. One might also think of Gramsci on hegemony: the ruling class can
> only govern with the consent of the masses. I have already referred to
> Captain Smith's introduction, in Ch4, to the Seahorse and its crew: Blinky
> is the victim of a press-gang. At sea he will consent to the authority of
> the Captain, if indeed he does, solely because his life depends on it.

Well, OK. Blinky is forced into service, so maybe his comments to the
Captain are his way of reminding authority that he will play the game to
preserve his own life and no more, but  the victims of the game run all
the way up the chain (the daisy chain of scewers and the screwed--V.,
the S&M of GR) of command. 

What does Blinky actual do? 
He sneers at command, at authority, a natural reaction, common among
sailors, particularly those that have been forced into service. But his
defiance is with words. 
First, he  reminds the captain that he's got a good job, and one
assumes, better pay, better treatment, control and authority over other
men's lives. I assume the Post-Captain has not been pressed into
service. And Blinky tells him not to fuck up. 
But the Post-Captain, who has been living in a tidy corner of hell, as
he is rowed out to the ship, can only by resorting to a memory and
Dream  discover in the jackass frigate moored in the channel, a gilded
glory, a fire, a Saint Elmo's Fire to bleach away all
pain, all failure, all fear. We learn that this ship has in fact  seen
glory days, but as a diversion or a decoy. And its battle with the
French ship, a ship that runs away pooh-poohing, while fierce, is
concluded with neither side taking much in the way of  glory or victory.
It is  as if Death (not as Wicks says to the twins, some gaudian angel)
some force invisible has been satisfied with  thirty crew members lost,
nothing accomplished. The Captain angrily wonders if Dixon and Mason,
their equipment,  and their venture,  are worth it. 
The Captain says that Lord Anson ( a star, a man who joined the navy as
a boy and rose to the top becoming a very wealthy man in the bargaign,
does remind me that like LeSpark, George Washington had Arabian horses
and mad a fortune in real estate) was his boyhood hero, but I doubt he
looks up the the Lord of the golden seas now that he has matured and
learned how the men in powdered wigs have made fortunes pressing sailors
into service and sending them off on ventures that often cost them their
lives. And what about LeSpark's double book entry accounting losses?
Lives in exchange for fortunes in arms? The Sea horse is not quite a
horse, but a Jackass. A decoy, a duck mechanical? 


Some History: 

"This evening all the boats of the fleet below the town were filled with
marines, &c. covered by frigates and sloops of war, worked up, and lay
half-channel over, opposite to Beauport, as if intending to land in the
morning, and thereby fix the enemy's whole attention to that quarter;
the ships attending them are to edge over, at break of day, as near as
possible without grounding, and cannonade the French intrenchments."