Captain Mike Healy

Ever heard of Captain Michael A. Healy (1839-1904) of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service? This article by Prof. James M. O'Toole tells of his two courts-martial. Excerpt (footnotes omitted):

Not even two court-martial trials—the first in 1890, the second in 1896—diminished the esteem in which most people held him. The transcripts of these trials, now part of the Coast Guard records in the National Archives, show that he had always taken a no-nonsense approach to command, and this could get him into trouble. His punishment of certain members of his crew led to charges of brutality, and full investigations were ordered. On both occasions, he was accused of particularly severe forms of punishment, including “tricing” offenders. This procedure consisted of tying a man’s hands behind his back and then hoisting him up by the wrists until his feet were just above the surface of the deck, leaving him there for about five minutes. Hanging in that position was very painful, and if the man succumbed to the appealing temptation to touch his feet to the deck for relief, his arms were bent further back, and the pain redoubled. This traditional form of nautical punishment was still technically permissible in the Revenue Service, though it had become rare and was soon after abandoned, in part as a result of the graphic testimony in Healy’s trials. Compounding his offense, his accusers maintained, the captain had been drunk on both occasions, a charge that brought supporting protests from temperance advocates on shore, who apparently wanted to make an example of him as part of their general campaign against the use of liquor in the service. He was fully acquitted at the first trial: the whole case had been trumped up, one newspaper reported, by those who “knew nothing” about life in the Arctic and who simply wanted to besmirch the reputation of “a good and faithful officer.”

His second trial in 1896 did not go as well. Stories of abusive treatment of his men persisted, and this time the charges of drunkenness seemed true. On the morning of Thanksgiving Day 1895, while the Bear lay at anchor in Sausalito harbor after having just returned from its yearly Arctic cruise, Healy was “disgracefully intoxicated” and spat in the face of one of his junior officers. Worse, witnesses said, the captain had been drunk repeatedly while in command of the vessel all the previous summer and had even staggered off the dock into the water at Unalaska “to the great mortification of officers assembled at a social gathering.” A sympathetic panel of Revenue Service officers had to find him guilty, and he was punished with removal from command of the Bear. Reprimanded and dropped to the bottom of the captain’s list, he managed to redeem himself by rising to the top again. In 1900 he was given command of a new ship, the McCulloch, but his troubles persisted. While piloting that ship from the Aleutians back to Seattle in July of that year, he apparently succumbed to drink yet again. While intoxicated, he spoke sharply to a female civilian on board; when his men restrained him, he threatened to kill himself. Though he dried out, he had snapped, and an extended psychotic episode ensued: tied up and confined to his cabin, he managed to break the crystal on his watch and made a messy but unsuccessful attempt at slashing his wrists. Once back in port, he was placed for a time in a marine hospital, where he finally came to his senses. Though restored to the captaincy of yet another cutter, he retired from the service in the fall of 1903 and died of heart failure the following summer.

You never know: in 1999, USCGC Healy (WAGB-20) was commissioned. The Healy, an icebreaker, is the U.S. Coast Guard's largest vessel.