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CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance
Series Editors: Samuel O. Idowu · René Schmidpeter

Giuseppe Argiolas

Social
Management
Principles, Governance and Practice
CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance

Series editors
Samuel O. Idowu, London Metropolitan University, London, United Kingdom
René Schmidpeter, Cologne Business School, Germany
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11565
Giuseppe Argiolas

Social Management
Principles, Governance and Practice
Giuseppe Argiolas
Department of Economics and Management
Sophia University Institute
Figline e Incisa Valdarno, Firenze
Italy

Translation by N. Michael Brennen

email: michael@nmichaelbrennen.com

Translation from the Italian language edition: Il valore dei valori. La governance nell’impresa
socialmente orientata © Citt
a Nuova 2014 All Rights Reserved.

ISSN 2196-7075 ISSN 2196-7083 (electronic)

CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance
ISBN 978-3-319-54581-3 ISBN 978-3-319-54582-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54582-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017934917

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
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To Chiara and to all those who follow her
teaching and example.
To my father Ugo, my mother Lina, and my
family.
To those who are poor because they are
without work, or because they are
constrained to work in conditions of meager
relational quality.
To the entrepreneurs, the managers, and the
workers who by their daily commitment offer
an invaluable contribution to eradicating all
forms of poverty.
Preface

Thinking that a company guided by profit seeking offers a good service to

society, no matter what, is a little like fooling oneself into thinking that the
cheapest product is best for the buyer. From our experiences as consumers, we
know that frequently what is behind a cheap price are poor quality materials that
will soon break, ingredients harmful to our health, or enticement schemes aiming
to make money on replacement parts. And yet, what might lurk behind a firm’s
good economic results, beyond good management and good luck? With respect to
buyers, all the regrettable practices we just listed, as well as everything else that
can happen with other stakeholders, such as deliberately delayed payments to
suppliers, illegal dumping of toxic waste, corruption of government functionaries,
or cost cutting on workers’ safety practices. It is no accident that I left workers
for last; they are the category of stakeholders most involved in the company, not
just in numbers of hours, but even more in the wide range of ways they are
affected by what happens in it. In fact, much of the reflection regarding Corporate
Social Responsibility—CSR, or a bottom-up reconciliation of the logic of profit
with attention to the requirements of society—regards workers in particular.1
That is also true for this work. Although the author is careful to not leave out
any interested party from the “socially oriented” governance perspective he lays
out, ultimately the work is primarily about workers. In large measure, the “value
of values” that gives the title to the book has to do with workers as people and the
relationships in which they are involved. The themes regarding workers that are
addressed in the debate on socially responsible enterprises are typically about
their economic treatment, hours of work, health, professional enrichment, and so
forth. The distinctive feature of this work, which decidedly leans toward genu-

1
Cf. for example the report prepared by Standing for the United Nations: Standing G. (2007),
Decent Workplaces, Self-Regulation and CSR:From Puff to Stuff?, DESA Working Paper No.62.
See also J. Jonker, Jan and M.C. De Witte, eds. (2006), The challenge of organizing and
implementing corporate social responsibility, Palgrave Macmillan.

vii
viii Preface

inely, rather than strategically, to socially responsible behaviors,2 is the attention

it gives to themes on the quality of interpersonal relationships and the need for
significance. These are themes that the traditional vision of the economy has
systematically overlooked, interpreting the spheres of production, work, and
exchange as operating by a merely instrumental logic, and thus relegating
human aspirations for full personal fulfillment to private life.3
In calling into play all—even the deepest—dimensions of the person in corpo-
rate practices, Giuseppe Argiolas proposes communion as the mode of being of the
organizational community. You understood correctly: communion, between and
with workers, directors, and other stakeholders. Briefly, communion is establishing
interpersonal relationships inspired by overcoming one’s own egocentrism in favor
of a benevolent, reciprocal openness that can become a relationship style shared
within a social group. This is a rather surprising proposal from an author who
intends to situate his arguments within managerial science, rather than in relational
psychology or religion.
And yet, as Dr. Argiolas points out, over a half-century ago Chester Barnard, a
classic author in the managerial literature in the United States, was already talking
about communion among workers in a company. However, it is also true that after
him the topic of communion was discussed very little. While Barnard did not
succeed in clearly and convincingly introducing this concept, the ensuing silence
was also because such a concept was totally foreign to the individualistic and
reductionistic view of an economic agent that has dominated the scene for the
past 200 years. The cultural climate is changing nonetheless for two reasons. One is
that the boundaries between professional and private life are becoming increasingly
blurred; the other is that we are recognizing that the quest for meaning and relation-
ships we bear within ourselves cannot remain programmatically frustrated for such
a large portion of our lives.
The theme of communion in economic life was taken up again in recent times
with the Economy of Communion project, which sprang from within a spiritual
movement, the Focolare Movement.4
At this point, two questions spontaneously arise. If we are not content with
producing income or job stability, are we asking too much of those responsible for
an economic organization by introducing ambitious goals on themes of interper-
sonal relations and shared significance? Yes, if all this is held to be an additional

2
In the taxonomy proposed by M. Kitzmueller and J. Shimshack (2012), “Economic Perspectives
on Corporate Social Responsibility,” Journal of Economic Literature 50 (1): 51–84, the vision
according to which socially responsible actions are desired for their own sake by directors, over
and above such a possibility by some stakeholders, is indicated as not-for-profit and contrasted
with a strategic vision, on which grounds such actions are taken simply because they are ultimately
profitable.
3
Cf. for example L. Bruni and R. Sugden (2013), “Reclaiming Virtue Ethics for Economics,”
Journal of Economic Perspectives 27 (4), 141–164.
4
Gold, Lorna (2010). New Financial Horizons:The emergence of an economy of communion, New
City Press, Hyde Park (NY).
Preface ix

component of managerial performance. No, if what we are asking is that they

include these dimensions in the way they view and manage the organization,
because it will only be by the contributions of the many that those goals will be
achieved.
The second question is perhaps the more important of the two. Is it realistic for a
firm to aim so high, when so many generous attempts to join human values with
economic efficiency have failed? Actually, such firms are faced with a dual test:
they must compete with “normal” firms on the operational level without relying on
the old but effective logic of hierarchy and authority, and at the same time, they
must remain faithful to very demanding aspirations, thus maintaining a high level of
motivation in workers and managers.5 It should be noted that Giuseppe Argiolas is
not a naive neophyte. He has a solid knowledge of the managerial literature.
(Incidentally, those who know the literature well will be less surprised by certain
assertions that do not follow the stereotypes.) Furthermore, he draws from a long
proximity with organizations pursuing idealistic aims and their daily challenges.
Beyond that, not to content himself with generic assertions of principle, in the last
part of the book he proposes a toolkit of corporate practices designed to facilitate
translating ideals into organizational culture and then into effective behaviors.
With all this, the idea of a socially oriented enterprise such as Giuseppe Argiolas
proposes in this book remains an arduous adventure, with outcomes that are far
from given. Is it worth setting out on such a path? If it is true that human beings
remain human in all areas of their existence, and thus nothing that is profoundly
human can remain outside the concern of economic organizations, then yes,
certainly.

Figline e Incisa Valdarno FI, Italy Benedetto Gui

5
L. Bruni and A. Smerilli (2014). The Economics of Values-Based Organisations: An Introduction.
Routledge, London.
Acknowledgments

Bernard of Chartres expressed his own experiences as a scholar with a felicitous

metaphor so effective that many later researchers—among them Isaac Newton—have
adopted it, and it remains vivid in our time: “We are like dwarves on the shoulders of
giants.”
These same feelings emerged in me along the path that has brought me this far,
together with the knowledge that if this work has a contribution to offer, it is also
due to the thoughts and actions of the persons with whom I have come in contact in
various ways. Among them, I want to remember Chiara Lubich and Chester
I. Barnard in a very special way.
My thanks go to my scholarly colleagues in diverse disciplines, including
various branches of economics and management, philosophy, psychopedagogy,
and sociology, who have read and commented previous versions of the present
work; with some I have reconsidered some specific aspects addressed in the treatise,
while others have influenced my thought with their work and accompanied me in
the course of my research. I also thank the entrepreneurs, workers, managers,
women, and men engaged in the daily challenge of building networks of socially
oriented relationships in and between companies, public administrations, and
organizations of the civil society for having shared their experiences with me.
Much deserved and sincere thanks go to Antonio Maria Baggio, Maria Gabriella
Baldarelli, Teresa Boi, Luigino Bruni, Lorenzo Caselli, Piero Coda, Vittorio Coda,
Luca Crivelli, Francesca Dal Degan, Araceli Del Pozo Armentia, Cinzia Dessı̀,
Adriano Fabris, Gianluca Falconi, Caterina Ferrone, Michela Floris, Pasquale
Foresi, Ernestina Giudici, Anouk Grevin, Benedetto Gui, Marco Luppi, Alejandra
Marinovic, Marco Martino, Giuseppe Milan, Licia Paglione, Giampietro Parolin,
Vittorio Pelligra, Sergio Rondinara, Phillip Samouel, Stefano Zamagni, and
Giuseppe Maria Zanghı́ and to Stefano Biondi, Antonio Cantarero, Marcello
Catalucci, Roberto Doneddu, Fabio Fiorelli, Nando Garcia, Nuzzo Maria Grimaldi,
Nivaldo Inojosa de Farias, Adriano Piras, Alessandro Pirisinu, Gusti Oggenfuss,
Angelo Spinosa, Carlo Tedde, and Gianni Ugolotti. Warm thanks to my students
and doctoral candidates at the University of Cagliari and the Sophia University

xi
xii Acknowledgments

Institute, as well as all the young people whom I have met in conventions, lessons,
and summer schools held in various parts of the world; the dialogue interwoven
with them has been truly stimulating and fruitful.
Naturally, the responsibility for what I have written here is exclusively mine, but
to everyone and to each one goes my gratitude for having contributed to awakening,
nourishing, and confirming many of the reflections and proposals that are laid out in
this book; they have matured my conviction that thought and life must walk
together: thought without life is sterile, and life without thought has little
endurance.
I offer the following pages to the reader in the hope that they might in some way
generate new thought and bring a little fresh air for living.
Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 Organizations and the Contexts in Which They Operate . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1 Market Shifts Towards a New Dimension: Pluridimensionality . . . 5
2.2 Regarding Organizations and Companies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3 Culture: Shaping Organizational Excellence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3 Comparing Managerial Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.1 Taylorism: Scientific Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.2 Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson: The Centrality
of Contracts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.3 The Discovery of the “Human Factor” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.4 Chester I. Barnard: The Cooperative Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.5 Herbert Simon: Organizational Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.5.1 Authority and Delegation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.5.2 The Reward System and Identification with
the Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4 Corporate Social Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.1 Introductory Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.2 Different Theoretical Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4.3 The Contribution of the UN and the OECD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.4 The European Union’s Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5 The Foundations of Action by the Company and in the
Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.1 The Strategy for Success: Be People Centered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.2 The Multi-Faceted Potential of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

xiii
xiv Contents

5.3 Intelligence, or Intelligences? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
6 Management for a Corporate Social Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
6.1 An Integrated Approach to Corporate Orientations . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
6.2 Corporate Management and the Conditions of Communion . . . . . 83
6.2.1 The Culture of Communion and Corporate Lifestyle . . . . . 84
6.2.2 The Pillars of Communion: Dialogue, Trust,
and Reciprocity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
6.3 A Toolkit for a Social Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.3.1 The Pact on the Organizational Mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.3.2 Sharing Oneself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
6.3.3 Sharing Knowledge and Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
6.3.4 Regular Colloquies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
6.3.5 Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Chapter 1
Introduction

The crisis characterizing economic systems in the current historical period is truly
deep and acute. This condition has fueled and continues to fuel a growing number
of debates on its causes and what paths to follow to exit the crisis as best and as
quickly as possible.
One of the causes, arguably the most relevant, to which the particular conditions
in which we are living can be ascribed is found in the fact that this is not simply an
economic crisis; rather, it is a cultural, social, and relational crisis with evident
repercussions on financial and economic dynamics, as well as vice-versa. Thus the
difficulty in finding adequate responses can be located in the origin of the crisis
itself, which extends across the West in particular (Zanghı́ 2007), and which is
represented by a question of equally profound significance.
The premise that a decisive change of direction is necessary for the system as a
whole, which is anything but uncontested by the facts, is coming from many
quarters; such a question of direction cannot superficially skim over theoretical
reflections and their related operational repercussions on what it means to be and to
operate a company. One confirmation of this can be found in the increasingly broad
and meaningful debate centered around corporate social responsibility. While such
a theme is not an absolute novelty during these years of academic debate, nor—with
the required distinctions—in operational practices (Cornwall and Naughton 2008;
Grassl and Habisch 2011), it must be stated that an increasingly important role is
attributed to these themes by supranational and international institutions.
If one takes into account the evolution of managerial theories it clearly emerges
just how much they were and are influenced by the culture that inspired them in
both their theoretical construction and operational practice, and thus by a specific
anthropological vision underlying each one. If a dominant “managerial archetype”
(Di Bernardo and Rullani 1990) emerged in each historical period, there was no
lack of exceptions that proposed innovative, and in a certain sense alternative,
solutions.
Precisely because the current context is so critical, it can be a unique occasion
for authentic research into what companies can and should be in their internal

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 1

G. Argiolas, Social Management, CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54582-0_1
2 1 Introduction

dynamics and their relationships to the outside world (Caselli 2013). Indeed,
companies have always actively sought out the elements that can guarantee their
survival and success, and these define their direction (Coda et al. 2012). For its part
civil society, demonstrating an increasing maturity, is not content merely to express
its discontent with corporate practices deemed to be antisocial; rather, it asks firms
to play a lead role in building a society that is truly social and fully civil. It is clearly
evident that this is not a simplistic view that companies should take on some
additional outside philanthropic practice, or implement some sophisticated internal
technical process, much less consume itself with a nominalism that, by a superficial
makeover, makes it appear as something other than what it is. This is about
radically rethinking corporate cultures in a way that drives companies to reflect
on themselves not as abstract objects, but rather as plural subjects concretely
situated in, and, at the same time, expressions of one or more social contexts.
This reflection cannot be fulfilled by the company alone. It must happen together
with the many protagonists in its multifaceted system of internal and external
relationships, and, maintaining the concrete nature of the task, it should propel
the company to seal a new pact between itself and society.
The reflection proposed in this work revolves around these themes. We begin by
considering some definitional issues relative to organizations in general and to
companies in particular, as well as their internal and external contextual settings.
The first chapter is devoted to providing the basic cognitive elements from which
we will draw as the work develops in successive chapters.
Beginning from the premise that what we are today largely depends on our
history, in the second chapter we will consider the main managerial theories,
pointing out their most significant strengths and weaknesses. The purpose of this
analysis, among its other aspects, is to bring to light a close correlation between the
proponents’ anthropological perspectives and their proposed managerial practices.
The third chapter addresses the theme of corporate social responsibility,
highlighting the contributions of the most relevant theoretical perspectives and
the participation offered by the principal supranational and international institu-
tions. In the analysis of the various contributions we will consider the necessity of
going beyond an approach oriented towards single acts of social responsibility or
mere philanthropy in favor of one that is able to internalize a perspective that
holistically reconsiders what it means to be and to operate a company.
Such a reconsideration can only begin from the elements that are increasingly
recognized as crucial in determining the success of companies and organizations:
persons, with their knowledge and intelligence. The fourth chapter dwells on these
aspects, which are as important in word as they are often overlooked in fact. We
will focus on some questions debated even in the most recent managerial theories in
strategic settings and in human capital management.
In the fifth and final chapter we will propose a managerial model that can offer
companies a realistic and attainable path to internalizing and implementing an
authentic social orientation; this is the result of a directional perspective and
managerial practice that are able to give value to values.
References 3

References

Caselli, L. (2013). La vita buona nell’economia e nella societ

a. Rome: Edizioni Lavoro.
Coda, V., Minoja, M., Tessitore, A., & Vitale, M. (Eds.). (2012). Valori d’impresa in azione.
Milan: Egea.
Cornwall, J., & Naughton, M. J. (2008). Bringing your business to life. Ventura, CA: Regal.
Di Bernardo, B., & Rullani, E. (1990). Il management e le macchine. Bologna: il Mulino.
Grassl, W., & Habisch, A. (2011). Ethics and economics: Towards a new humanistic synthesis for
business. Journal of Business Ethics 99, 37–49.
Zanghı́, G. M. (2007). Notte della cultura europea. Rome: Citta Nuova.
Chapter 2
Organizations and the Contexts in Which
They Operate

Can an industry take on purposes? Are these found simply in

profit indexes? Beyond its evident rhythm, is there not
something more fascinating—a destination, a vocation—even
in the life of a factory? (Adriano Olivetti)

2.1 Market Shifts Towards a New Dimension:

Pluridimensionality

For several decades humanity has been overrun by profound changes in technolog-
ical development, traditions, and culture—in short, in every aspect of personal and
social life in contemporary society. What happens in a specific area of the planet
affects all other areas. One need only consider the consequences of deforestation in
the Amazon rainforests, polar ice melting, or air pollution by industry. The crisis we
have been living through since 2008, which originated with the financial collapse
related to subprime mortgages, shows once again just how strongly interdependent
people are wherever they are in the world. We live in a society in which various
economic, social, and cultural contexts interact at the planetary level as part of a
vast, complex system. This phenomenon, usually summarized by the term “glob-
alization,” carries with it countless implications for every person and organization.
The unavoidable necessity of organizing in groups to carry out a wide variety of
activities together is not new to this historical period, although to operate in a
complex society characterized by interdependence, variety, and variability in its
components one must equip oneself with the proper tools. Organizations (Barnard
1966 [1938]; Scott 1981; Simon 2000) are useful in this sense precisely because
they are made up of individuals equipped with different characteristics, sensibili-
ties, and competencies who converge and coordinate within them. On the one hand
the necessity of not undervaluing the importance of organizations must be empha-
sized; on the other, it is even more pertinent to bear in mind that, due to the
increased systemic complexity that characterizes modern societies, particularly in
the last few decades, not only has the number of organizations increased, but the
variety of organizational forms has increased as well (Weisbrod 1988; Usai 2002).

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 5

G. Argiolas, Social Management, CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54582-0_2
6 2 Organizations and the Contexts in Which They Operate

An organization, understood as a system of persons who consciously coordinate

to carry out activities directed to attaining one or more goals, can be considered
and studied in various ways and from different perspectives. This proposed defini-
tion requires a few specifications: by referring to a system, rather than simply a
collection, we intend to state that the persons who compose an organization are
neither elements isolated from others nor simply juxtaposed parts, but rather they
are connected by multi-lateral and interdependent relationships in which, in various
ways and at various levels, each component influences and is influenced by every
other component of the system in its own way of being and becoming. The fact that
it is a system of persons qualifies the system itself, highlighting its social and
relational nature. Conscious coordination emphasizes that it is an active, stable, and
non-casual way of people working together in order to attain the multiplicity of
goals defined in the organization’s mission, which they intend to pursue through
organizational activities. The elements that characterize organizations are the
following: the persons who establish them and who work in and with them, the
mission for which it exists, the network of formal and informal relationships that
continuously and dynamically energize them, and the material and immaterial
resources necessary for their operation and development over time (Usai 2002).
Another characteristic of the system/organization is its “openness with operational
closure” (Maturana and Varela 1992): the system, while remaining part of the
environment, does not dissolve into it, but constitutes a distinct part that commu-
nicates with the outside world by selecting and filtering both incoming and outgoing
interchanges. The organization thus influences and is influenced by the context in
which it is located and from which it draws opportunities, resources, and means of
various sorts that are necessary to operate, as well as restraints and conditions of
various types, all in a dynamic, coevolutional process (Giudici 1997).
People establish new organizational forms on the basis of new needs that they
are called to meet (Weisbrod 1988), and we find evidence that the so-called
nonprofit organizations find ample room to develop in the current historical period.
Burton A. Weisbrod, one of the pioneers in studying the topic, stated that “Non-
profit organizations are all around us” (1988, 1). One element it seems appropriate
to investigate concerns the creation and proliferation of such organizations. The
traditional literature attributes their presence to so-called market failures or to
government failures. According to this argument the market is considered as a
place dominated by profit, personal interest, and exchange of equivalents; the State
completes the task of redistribution, while the Third Sector is the area designated as
the fallback to intervene when the other two fail. The underlying hypothesis is that
in the presence of perfect markets and States there would be no need for the Third
Sector. Such a formulation explicitly reflects a traditional conception of the econ-
omy, enterprise, and people, with a clear reference to the methodological and
anthropological premise of individualism,1 which is an increasingly inadequate

1
In this sense “one must not forget that all individualistic theories rest on the essential assumption
that people are self-interested” (Zamagni 1998, 18–19).
2.2 Regarding Organizations and Companies 7

formulation to explain people’s behaviors in companies and in contemporary

society (Sen 1977).
The emergence of such organizations should not primarily or solely be attributed
to market failures or government failures, but rather to people’s need to place
different relational forms at the center of how they live; among these are relation-
ships that are not merely contractual, probably because they believe that this need
can be better met in such organizations (Bruni and Zamagni 2009). Rather than
simplistically opposing antisocial ways of being or operating a firm or an organi-
zation, civil society acts in a positive and propositive manner. It mobilizes
resources and expresses idealistic motivations that are capable of creating a cluster
of entities, companies, and organizations that are at once like others in size and in
products and/or services offered, but that, in contrast with others, are characterized
by the way they interpret their existence and their role in the market and society,
centering on the person, relationships, and, consequently, the common good. A
market forms that is an interwoven network of relationships based on trust, reci-
procity, and civil virtues; it is a pluridimensional market, a pluralistic reality in
which different actors operate who “infect” each other.
Such a perspective on the market seems to more coherently express the complex
contemporary socio-economic reality, in which, beyond ideological barriers, infec-
tion seems to have connotations that are sometimes positive, sometimes negative,
and in which equity, reciprocity, and efficiency are not understood as independent
or even mutually exclusive principles, but as principles that can and should interact.
From another view, considering “an approach to development that tends to be
global, and in any event socio-economic and not just economic, means by definition
refusing to privilege a specific type of organization or a specific type of company;
on the contrary, it means openly centering around all types and sorts of organiza-
tions, generally considered” (Tagliagambe and Usai 1999, 227).2 Thus, in such an
approach there is space for a plurality of organizational forms having both common
and individually distinctive traits that operate, or at least can operate, towards the
social and economic development of society.

2.2 Regarding Organizations and Companies

The preceding discussion has an important implication: the need to offer a defini-
tion for the company that differentiates it from other organizations. To do that we
must adopt a multidimensional approach that is able to adequately consider both the
general attributes observable in companies as organizations and the attributes that
are more narrowly correlated with the specific category under consideration (for
example, regarding traits related to size, legal form, products or services offered,
and so forth), all without overlooking the unique elements typical of each company.

2
Unless otherwise noted, all translations from other than English are those of the translator. Trans.
8 2 Organizations and the Contexts in Which They Operate

The question of definition relating to the company becomes even more relevant if
we consider that there is not a unanimous consensus among theoreticians on this
matter.
Thus the entity to which one refers when using the word “company” is an
organization that produces goods and/or services for the market. The idea emerg-
ing from this definition is that the system of persons who work together to provide
market-destined goods and services constitutes the central element of the
organization-company. If the united commitment of those who make up the orga-
nization should be considered in relation to achieving both personal and organiza-
tional goals (Barnard 1966 [1938]), it is not particularly important whether the
participants are partners in the company, dependent workers who are bound by a
work contract, or outside collaborators who have signed a contract to work in
conjunction with the organization: what specifically matters here is a stable, joint
working relationship to achieve a common goal—that is, being an organization.
Regarding the production of goods and/or services for the market, we should
note that it is instrumental to a more general end: offering solutions to clients’
problems by establishing positive relationships with them. The fact of operating in
the market means not only offering goods and/or services in exchange for a price,
but also managing the company according to the principle of economic viability,
keeping the economic and financial aspects in balance. That entails the necessity of
operating in conformity with the principles of efficiency and efficacy, deliberately
aiming to achieve adequate profitability levels. The company that does not operate
in this manner would be expelled from the market, unless it has some degree of
economic rents. That does not mean considering profit as the company’s only goal;
such an argument derives from the neoclassical economics perspective that sim-
plistically assumes that the goal of the company coincides with the goal of the
entrepreneur. We should emphasize, among other things, that the same entrepre-
neur can operate with different goals while running the company, which may not
necessarily be maximizing profit (Zamagni 2013). In actuality the company, as a
collective of persons, is characterized by the concurrent presence of a multiplicity
of interests, goals, and perspectives, which may even be in conflict among them-
selves, requiring a significant commitment to arrange them into a coherent system
of goals and shared values. Such an arrangement is summarized in each company’s
mission and the vision.
In this regard it seems useful to recall that authoritative studies (Peters and
Waterman Jr. 1982; Levitt 1990; Caselli 1995; Coda 1998; Simon 2000; just to cite
a few), although with different premises and arguments among themselves, assert
that using profit to indicate the company’s purpose is at least limited, if not outright
meaningless. Profit is considered as a necessity, an instrumental element that
guarantees that the company can survive in order to attain its multiplicity of
goals; it is not the aspect that exclusively defines and characterizes it.
More precisely, Theodore Levitt (1990, 13), stated that “Not so long ago a lot of
companies assumed something different about the purpose of a business. They said
quite simply that the purpose is to make money. But that proved as vacuous as
saying that the purpose of life is to eat. Eating is a requisite, not a purpose of life.
2.2 Regarding Organizations and Companies 9

Without eating, life stops. Profits are a requisite of business. Without profits,
business stops. Like food for the body, profit for the business must be defined as
the excess of what comes in over what goes out,” stressing the fact that “without
customers in sufficient and steady numbers there is no business and no profit” (3).
On this topic Vittorio Coda (1998, 2) asserted that “an ideology of profit that
absolutizes the economic role of the company, making profit almost an end in itself,
inevitably leads to instrumentalizing in varying degrees every vital relationship
with which the life of the company is interwoven, beginning with clients and
employees. This cannot but be reflected in client relationships as a refusal to
genuinely serve them; in employee relationships, at a minimum it makes it difficult
for them to identify with the company and its goals. Indeed, if profit is lived out by
corporate management as the highest good to which all other values are subordi-
nated, it is inevitable that it will produce attitudes and behaviors that seek to ‘make
profits’ at every opportunity that the system and situational contingencies permit,
with the consequence of undervaluing the long term negative repercussions that
such profit seeking could have on the company’s competitiveness and the social
approval it enjoys, and thus on its profitability.”
While at one time the company’s only assigned task was to create wealth, and
this happened with the goal of meeting the interests of the entrepreneur or group of
entrepreneurs, today it seems that a strong demand is emerging from society that the
company pay proper attention to social questions. In other words, we have no
intention of renouncing the important objective of wealth creation. Rather, we
emphasize it, but by setting it in a broader general context and correlating it with
important social requirements in its operational context: producing wealth not just
in economic terms, but in social terms as well. As will become clear over the course
of this work, the company, by participating variously in the social life of its
environment (we should not forget that a company is also an “open” system),
plays a primary role in assuring that it finds the life-blood needed for its develop-
ment, or vice versa, that it initiates or that feeds its decline. In other words, it is
embedded in a network of social relationships to which it contributes meaning and
content through the relational, strategic, and operational modes it decides to put into
practice. Thus, identifying among various organizations what we might define as a
“company” does not entail ascertaining if it has profit as its sole objective, or if or
how this profit is distributed, but rather that it creates goods and/or services for the
market, and that it does so while respecting the constraints of the principle of
economic viability.
By this we do not intend to state that all organizations, and companies in
particular, are equal. In reality however, although referring to the same conceptual
category of the company in which an entrepreneur has a “propensity for risk,” an
“ability to innovate,” and an “art for combining” (Zamagni 2013, 148), that is, of
organizing and harmonizing, all companies are in fact concretely different.
In this sense, although they have their own particular characteristics, coopera-
tives can be fully considered as companies. We should state that cooperation has an
ancient history with roots in the emergence of the Industrial Revolution, when “the
idea became widespread that groups of citizens could organize themselves to create
10 2 Organizations and the Contexts in Which They Operate

companies that were administered in a more participatory manner” (V. Zamagni

2009, 250) than traditional companies. During these nearly two centuries of history
the forms of cooperative organizations have multiplied, giving rise to: work coop-
eratives, which were created to ensure work and good working conditions for their
members; consumption cooperatives, which safeguarded the product quality and
price competitiveness of purchases; credit cooperatives, which supported economic
activity in a particular region; social cooperatives, which carried out social assis-
tance or job placement activities in the general interest of the community
(V. Zamagni 2009; Travaglini 2009; Borzaga and Tortia 2009).
The International Cooperative Alliance defines the cooperative enterprise as
follows: “A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntar-
ily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations
through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.”3 The principles
that put the founding values into practice, such as self-help, responsibility, equality,
justice, and solidarity, are: free and voluntary participation, democratic control by
the members, autonomy and independence, education, training and information,
cooperation between cooperatives, and interest in the community.
Among the various types of cooperatives, social cooperatives play the unique
role of carrying out their activities not just in the interests of the members, but also
in the general interest of the community.
Perhaps the idea that such entities are sometimes considered as outside the
general notion of a “company” is due to the fact that the social cooperative is the
result of a maturation process that came about from the ways that voluntary
organizations responded to the specific needs of the civil society. In this sense
several authors (Campi and Giorgetti 2004; Travaglini 2009) see the 1970s as the
“pioneer” phase and the 1980s as the “professionalized solidarity” phase; only since
the 1990s, has the “entrepreneurial” phase developed, which is a symptom of an
increasingly evident desire to turn to private demand over public demand. It clearly
expresses an entrepreneurial form that broadens the mutual purpose characteristic
of the cooperative to the widest social context in which such cooperatives are
located.
It is clear that these organizations must unequivocally equip themselves with
entrepreneurial and managerial skills adequate to respond to the challenges of the
current social and economic context.
More recently the European Union has also directed its attention to this legal
form; it has provided its own definition, according to which social enterprises are
“the following types of business:
• those for which the social or societal objective of the common good is the reason
for the commercial activity, often in the form of a high level of social innovation,
• those where profits are mainly reinvested with a view to achieving this social
objective,

3
http://ica.coop/en/whats-co-op/co-operative-identity-values-principles
2.2 Regarding Organizations and Companies 11

• and where the method of organization or ownership system reflects their mis-
sion, using democratic or participatory principles or focusing on social justice.
Thus:
• businesses providing social services and/or goods and services to vulnerable
persons (access to housing, health care, assistance for elderly or disabled per-
sons, inclusion of vulnerable groups, child care, access to employment and
training, dependency management, etc.); and/or
• businesses with a method of production of goods or services with a social
objective (social and professional integration via access to employment for
people disadvantaged in particular by insufficient qualifications or social or
professional problems leading to exclusion and marginalization) but whose
activity may be outside the realm of the provision of social goods or services.”
(European Commission 2011, 2–3).
The risk that these companies face, no less than traditional companies, is that of
creating a dichotomous managerial approach that sharply separates the social and
economic aspects, relegating its own distinctive characteristics either to limiting its
profit distribution or to the particular social nature of the goods or services offered;
in either case it ends up diminishing, if not betraying, its identity and values.
A similar argument can be made for a so-called “public enterprise.” According
to the European Union a public enterprise is “any undertaking over which the public
authorities may exercise directly or indirectly a dominant influence by virtue of
their ownership of it, their financial participation therein, or the rules which govern
it” (European Commission 2000). The fact that some companies’ “property” is
public does not make them any less companies than others, but rather it confers a
particular status to them: their entrepreneurial activity is distinguished by explicitly
and directly aiming to attain public goals. These goals are entrusted to public
organizations by choice due to the nature or strategic relevance of the good or
service produced, or because private companies are not producing them because
they do not generate sufficient profit. In the first case the public authorities attribute
the social and strategic relevance to performing a particular economic activity; in
the second case the public enterprise is actually a supplemental role, so to speak.
Considering the variety of existing legal forms of companies, the choice of
assigning the production of certain goods and the provision of certain services do
not lie in economic decisions, but rather they are primarily political matters.
In the last few years a new form of company has emerged in the United States,
the “Low-Profit Limited Liability Company” or L3C. Such companies are hybrid
organizational forms; from the so-called for-profit model they take the possibility of
distributing part of the profit to shareholders and management methods oriented
toward efficiency and efficacy, and from the non-profit model they take the stated
commitment to operate exclusively for social purposes in the general interest of the
community. L3C companies were established because, according to their propo-
nents, they respond to the need to facilitate the flow of financial resources from
foundations to companies with goals of a social nature, given the particular laws in
force in the United States regarding the use of resources by foundations themselves.
12 2 Organizations and the Contexts in Which They Operate

It has long been possible to identify and observe the reality of the company, not
merely unidimensionally and monolithically, but rather as a cluster of entities, and
not just regarding its legal form but also in how it interprets its role in relation to its
various stakeholders. There are many such companies, but they have one funda-
mental aspect in common: the particular relevance they attribute to their mission,
understood as the reason the companies exist. They are mission driven, and
particularly those defined as “social values based,” companies in which the mission
is not reductively limited to pursuing profit or to prohibiting its distribution; rather,
they maintain their missions in the natural complexity that originates from their
organizational identities, from the systems of purposes they integrate, from their
strategic and operational directions, as well as from the social values they internal-
ize and that inspire them (Caselli 1995; Melé 2003; Brickson 2007; Vallejo 2008;
Bruni and Smerilli 2009; Molteni 2009; Wang 2011; Coda et al. 2012; Argiolas
2014).
The Economy of Communion is an example of this. It is a project in which
companies located on five continents participate; they differ by merchandise sector,
size, and legal form, but they are engaged in a common project to “humanize the
economy” by internalizing a management style that gives attention to the quality of
relationships that intertwine internally and externally, even to the point of sharing
directly or indirectly part of their profits towards cultural and social development
projects and initiatives (Bruni and Crivelli 2004; Argiolas 2009; Argiolas et al.
2010; Baldarelli 2011). For this author, the encounter with the inspiring origins and
experience of the Economy of Communion was decisive in defining the interpretive
principle of the present work.
Entrepreneurs and managers of social values based companies are facing the
difficult challenge of safeguarding the particular values that anchor them in the
complexities of the competitive arena and ensuring that those values give substance
to what it means to be managers, entrepreneurs, and more generally, workers. The
response to such a challenge clearly cannot be entrusted either to law or to
extemporaneous improvisation. Rather, it requires focused reflection, followed by
consistently internalizing the requisite managerial skills to that end. We need to
place less emphasis on the “immediately apparent” aspects, so to speak, and greater
emphasis on the actual internal and external behaviors that are put into place.
That implies that the specific social mission, particularly when it is formally
spelled out, determines the commitment to operate with an adequate, consistent,
and responsible philosophy of action that guarantees its concrete, daily implemen-
tation. Of course, what we have said above refers to the idea of the company that
develops an expression of its organizational culture internally, as well as in its
larger context, even to the point of forging a benchmark managerial model. The rest
of this work is dedicated to the themes of organizational culture, managerial
systems, and corporate social responsibility, themes which are closely interrelated.
2.3 Culture: Shaping Organizational Excellence 13

2.3 Culture: Shaping Organizational Excellence

Knowing and understanding an organization’s or company’s culture means creating

the right conditions to direct it over time. It means carefully considering the overall
picture in order to consolidate or change the organization. It means equipping
oneself with the appropriate strategic and operational skills to steer it towards
success.
In general, carefully considering the question of culture is “an attempt to
determine what the essential human-induced elements are that pattern life in a
given society” (Pfiffner and Sherwood 1960, 251). It is well known that most of the
behaviors of individuals and groups are readily explainable by the cultural back-
ground in which they are situated; fully understanding these behaviors cannot
ignore understanding the surrounding culture. Furthermore, having a clear sense
of people’s cultural background and the setting in which they operate can be one
element that helps predict future behaviors, which can facilitate organizational
changes (Pfiffner and Sherwood 1960; Schein 2010).
An “organizational culture” can be defined as “the set of values, norms, guiding
beliefs, and understandings that is shared by members of an organization and taught
to new members as the correct way to think, feel, and behave. It represents the
unwritten, feeling part of the organization” (Daft 2010, 317). It is also considered as
“the pattern of values, beliefs, and expectations shared by organization members”
(Megginson et al. 1986, 452), and in its cognitive dimension as “a system of
socially acquired and shared cognitions that provide agents the mental schemes
for perceiving, interpreting, evaluating, and acting” (Gagliardi and Monaci 1997,
200), or also as “a structure of meaning codes, expressed in a symbolic system, that
directs the behavior of the organizational agents in both unique, extraordinary
collective events and in daily activities and interactions” (Costa and Gubitta
2004, 122).
The organizational culture affects both the internal and external dimensions of
what it means to be a company and how it operates. Regarding the internal
dimension, culture can enhance the process of internal integration by indicating
the value attributed to relationships and the ways relationships should develop.
Regarding the external dimension, culture informs how people should work with
those outside in dynamically adapting to changes in the larger environment and in
client relations, indicating the lines along which their daily interactions should
develop. The implication of what we have noted so far is that the characteristics of
the dominant culture in the larger environment can influence the organizational
culture. It is also true that organizations characterized by strong internal integration
and by strong inter-organizational integration associated with noteworthy external
recognition can, by their actions, impact the larger environment in which they are
situated. In short, a circular relationship can develop between an organizational
culture and the broader environmental culture.
Various levels can be distinguished in organizational culture. An outer or surface
level can be defined as the level of “observable symbols”; an inner level is definable
14 2 Organizations and the Contexts in Which They Operate

as “stated or tacit values.” The outer level refers to what one sees and hears when
entering the company or organization; this includes the building architecture, the
décor, people’s behavior, and the interpersonal relationship climate. Rituals,
stories, and the language used also express an organizational culture.
The inner level regards the deeper dimensions of the culture, such as the
cognitive dimension and the ethics it practices. This has to do with the beliefs
and values that motivate people’s behavior and that constitute the guiding princi-
ples and inspirations people draw from in their work. According to some authors,
values constitute a sort of cornerstone that are the basis of people’s individual
behaviors when facing difficult situations or tasks that require commitment and
discipline (Aranoff and Ward 2011). Other scholars point out that values have an
impact not only on individual behavior, but also on all aspects of social life (Dumas
and Blodget 1999). For example, such values include assumptions about human
nature, space, time, interpersonal relations, the relationship between individuals
and society, and the relationship between individuals and the cosmos (Schein
2010).
A large body of literature supports that there is a direct or indirect correlation
between corporate culture and the performance of the enterprise (Dyer 2006;
Champoux 2011; Aranoff and Ward 2011; Dessı̀ and Floris 2012). On the one
hand, there are those who state that the organizational culture can create a real
competitive advantage when it is unusual and not easily imitable (Barney 1986). A
different theoretical perspective focuses instead on the coherence between the
organizational culture and the broader environment, stating that an organization
that is situated in a highly complex and ambiguous environment cannot be effective
without a cohesive organizational culture (Wilkins and Ouchi 1983). Yet a third
perspective considers the organizational culture through four foundational charac-
teristics: involvement, consistency, adaptability, and mission (Denison and Mishira
1995). That is, it is extremely important that the members of an organization have a
high degree of participation in decision making, that there be consensus among the
organization’s members on the basic values that guide the organization’s way of
being and acting, that there be the ability to adapt internally to environmental
changes, and that there be “a core purpose that keeps members focused on what
is important to the organization” (Champoux 2011, 83). Considering culture and the
role it plays in managing organizations is therefore a step that cannot be ignored for
those who intend to approach organizational management and social responsibility
in a precise and complete manner.

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Zamagni, S. (2013). Impresa responsabile e mercato civile. Bologna: il Mulino.
Chapter 3
Comparing Managerial Systems

You were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and
knowledge. (Dante Alighieri)

3.1 Taylorism: Scientific Management

The first half of the twentieth century was rich from the point of view of scientific
production in the field of management. During those years scholars and their
theories were able to have a profound impact on the direction and management of
a remarkable number of companies across the world; they aroused an academic
debate that continued over successive decades, resulting in a valuable proliferation
of theoretical approaches and operational experiences. These theories, reflections,
and perspectives differed among themselves, starting from different anthropologi-
cal and theoretical premises; they proposed different ideas about the firm and so
suggested different management models. These theories and perspectives met with
varying success, which at times came after many years, but they have not ceased
inspiring entrepreneurs, managers, and scholars even today.
It is neither possible nor appropriate to offer a complete and detailed summary of
that history, but a few references to authors who have contributed to creating
managerial theories that have markedly influenced successive developments are
indispensable. That is what we intend to do in this second chapter, because certain
current events are more readily understandable if we have direct or indirect
references to their origins or root causes.
During the years spanning the turn of the twentieth century, the company was an
entity with the sole goal of maximizing profit; once a product was selected to be
sold, it organized its production factors to solve one basic problem: how to produce
it. Once that problem was solved, it was not difficult to situate the product in the
market; it was only necessary to decide the quantity to produce and sell it at the
current price, which was an exogenous variable. Such a company that operated in
conditions of relative certainty, simplicity, and stability was defined as “production
oriented” (Usai 2000).

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 17

G. Argiolas, Social Management, CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54582-0_3
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mere habit, or of the still more frigid motive of fear, but should be
made to spring, if possible, out of sincere good-will, as an essential,
if not the principal ingredient in the stimulus. In ordinary times, it is
true, the duty goes on pretty well in a ship-of-war, by the sheer
momentum of an established routine.
It may be added, that things often proceed with a degree of
success almost as miraculous, in the apprehension of the ignorant,
as the movements of a watch appear to the eyes of a savage. But in
times of danger, when doubts and difficulties beset an officer, or
protracted labours fatigue his crew, and untried resources and
exertions are called for every moment, it is discovered that mere
routine, (though, even at such periods, it does a great deal,) will not
accomplish all that is required. The captain then finds out, often
when it is too late, that unless motives of a more generous and
stirring nature come into play, to give fresh vigour to the formalities of
his discipline, not only his own reputation, but some of the great
ends of the public service, may be lost.
The nature of our profession is so complicated, and the occasions
are so frequent in which these well known principles are brought into
action, that, I believe, it almost invariably happens, when the captain
and his officers are not on terms, or do not pull together, that the ship
falls, more or less, out of discipline. This occurs even when the
officers and their captain are sufficiently public-spirited, to desire
sincerely not to allow private differences to interfere in any degree
with the course of official duty. For the sailors are exceedingly quick-
sighted to such matters, and both they and the midshipmen, not only
discover immediately when there is any coolness between the
captain and his officers, but are naturally prone to exaggerate the
cause and consequences of such differences. If, however, as
generally happens, the crew know nothing of the real points in
dispute, they fall into a worse error by inventing the most
preposterous stories to account for those misunderstandings which
they see exist between the higher powers. Advantage, also, is very
soon taken of these disagreements, by such persons amongst the
crew as are always ready to escape from the restraints of good
order, and who imagine, too often with reason, that the officer who is
not on pleasant terms with his captain will not be duly supported by
him. In a word, when the officers and captain cease to respect one
another, or, what comes exactly to the same thing, appear to have
lost that mutual respect for one another, of which an easy sociability
of intercourse is one of the most obvious proofs, they speedily lose
the respect of the people under their command. I can compare the
harsh and grating state of affairs on board ship, when, unhappily,
there exists bad blood between the captain and officers, to nothing
so well as to an engine amongst the machinery of which a handful of
gravel has been cast.
It may be asked, how can the simple operation of dining together
once or twice a week stave off so great an evil? But the answer is
easy; for every one must be aware, that it is by small beginnings and
slight causes of imaginary offence—by trivial misunderstandings
unexplained—or by real but small causes of just indignation not
apologised for, that the bitterest heart-burnings of life too often arise.
If, however, these seeds of dissension can only be weeded out
before they begin to germinate, their evil growth may not only be
checked, but actual good, in most instances, be made to spring up in
their place.
In order to make the practical operation of these things quite clear,
I shall state two cases, both of which I have seen occur on board
ship a hundred times, and of which I can speak with some
confidence, as I have myself often acted a part on different sides,
and therefore know their bearings from actual trial.
Suppose, in the first place, that the captain comes upon deck just
before noon, and, on seeing something wrong—the main-yard not
braced up enough, the lee foretop-gallant sheet not home, or the jib
not quite hoisted up; and suppose that, as these are points upon
which, whether whimsically or not, he is very particular, he express
himself to the officer in terms rather too strong for the occasion.
Without reflecting upon the injustice he is guilty of, the captain may
perhaps, in this way, be punishing a zealous and hard-working man,
for a mere trifle, almost as severely as if he had been found sleeping
on his watch, or was guilty of some offence caused by wilful neglect.
 The officer, however, who can say nothing, bows and submits. In a
few minutes, the sun comes to the meridian, and it is made twelve
o’clock. The boatswain pipes to dinner, the deck is relieved, and the
lieutenant of the forenoon watch goes down below, in a high state of
irritation with his captain at what he conceives the undue severity of
the reprimand. The first thing he does, on entering the ward-room
door, is to fling his hat the whole length of the apartment; so that,
unless it be adroitly caught by the marine officer, who is generally
playing the flute on the lockers abaft, it would stand a chance of
going out of the stern windows. The soldier, of course, thus called
upon to look up, stops in the middle of the second bar of ‘God save
the King,’ or ‘Robin Adair,’ at which he has been hammering, in
company with the master of the band, for the last three months, and
says,
“Holla! man—what’s the matter?”
“Matter!” cries the other. “I’ll be shot if it is not enough to make a
man run stark staring mad!”
“What is the matter, I ask you?” begs the marine, preparing to
recommence the eternal tune.
“Why, there have I been working, and slaving, and wearing my life
and soul out, all the forenoon, to please that ill-tempered, snappish,
ill-to-please knob of a skipper of ours; and what do I get? Why, he
takes mighty good care to shut his eyes to all the good a fellow does,
but catches hold eagerly enough of the smallest omission in his
thousand-and-one whims (none of which are of any consequence!)
in order to indulge himself in one of his reprimands. It’s quite clear,”
adds the officer, warmed by this explosion of his own passion, “that
the captain has a spite at me, and is determined to drive me out of
the ship, to make way for some follower of his own.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” exclaims the peace-making man of war; “the
captain is the best friend you have.”
“Friend!” roars the other; “I tell you what——”
But just at this moment the captain’s steward enters the ward-
room, and going up to the enraged officer of the forenoon watch,
says mechanically to him—
“The captain’s compliments, sir, and will be glad of your company
to dinner.”
To which the officer replies, quite as mechanically—
“My compliments, and I’ll wait on him.”
But as soon as the door is shut, he turns again to the marine, and
says—
“I’m deucedly sorry, now, that I did not refuse.”
“Are you?” says the soldier, relapsing into his loyal tune again.
By and by, however, comes two o’clock; the ward-room dinner is
placed on the table; the drum beats the ‘Roast Beef;’ the officer of
the forenoon watch is sent for, as usual, to relieve his messmate on
deck, as I have before described; and, in due course, after strutting
and fretting his hour upon the stage, in ‘full togs,’ nursing his anger,
in order to let the captain see that he is hurt, he is told that dinner is
ready in the cabin. In he marches, accordingly, and there takes his
appointed seat as doggedly as if he were nailed to the chair. The
pea-soup is discussed in pretty solemn silence; but while the remove
is under adjustment, the captain says to his offended officer, “Come,
Mr. Haultight, shall you and I have a glass of wine? What shall it be?”
By these few magical words, and in this single glass of sherry, is
forgotten, for ever and ever, all the previous irritation. It is not by the
words, so much as by the tone and manner of saying them, that the
captain makes the officer feel how anxious he is to have the good
understanding restored, or that he regrets what has passed. Of
course, if the officer be not one of those pig-headed and inflexible
fellows, upon whom all sense of kindness is wasted, he seizes the
bottle, and filling his glass, replies,
“With all my heart, sir.”
And there, in all probability, is an end of a matter which, but for this
early opportunity of putting things to rights, might perhaps have
rankled long in the mind of the officer, and given rise to acts of
insubordination, as injurious to himself as to the public service.
 It may not be useless to suggest here, to young people, that in
most cases of dispute that arise between gentlemen, the smallest
voluntary apology is beyond calculation more satisfactory, from its
affording a far more complete reparation to wounded honour, than
any conceivable amount of compulsory acknowledgment. The rough
savage, who is acquainted with no measure in these things, takes
his revenge at the point of the scalping-knife. But a gentleman, in a
widely-different spirit, and who knows that even the slightest
admission of error causes more pain than he can ever deliberately
wish to inflict, will always catch with eagerness at the first symptoms
of regret on the part of his antagonist, being quite certain that the
less he exacts, the more of what is really worthy of his acceptance
will be given him. Besides which, instead of urging another into
permanent mortification and perhaps enmity, he may manage to
secure, by well-timed moderation, both the gratitude and the respect
of a man who might otherwise become permanently his foe.
I am not aware that, by any other means, the numerous
misunderstandings which occur on board ship could be arranged
without great risk of injuring discipline. In cases where the matter in
dispute is small, or where the fault is equally shared between the
parties, formal explanations are not only useless, but often
ridiculous, and generally prove as annoying to one side as to the
other. Where the dispute, on the other hand, is really of
consequence, there may often be a serious and hurtful loss of official
dignity, on the part of the superior, if he make too express an
apology. These occasional, but uniformly-recurring opportunities of
meeting at table, however, furnish not only ready but very ample
means of finally accommodating such things in every case which can
fall within the proper range of compromise. If officers be only
influenced by a right spirit of public duty, and always recollect what is
due to private dignity of character, it will rarely happen that
arrangements, creditable alike to both parties, and useful to the
service, may not be easily effected.
The above example is one in which the superior is supposed to
have been in the wrong; but, as may be imagined, the opposite case
will often happen likewise. I have seen an officer go on, for several
days together, purposely teasing his captain, but all the time taking
the greatest possible care to keep within the law. Who, I may ask,
that has had to do with command of any kind, whether afloat or on
shore, in the navy or in the nursery, has not felt the provocation of
such petty hostility? For my part, I can compare it to nothing but the
stinging of a mosquitto, which you spend half the night in trying to
catch, losing your rest and your temper to no purpose, owing to the
dexterity of your antagonist, who thus shews that, though he be
small, he is far from insignificant.
But if, while this sort of snapping and snarling is going on, Sunday
comes about, all is settled. On this day the captain invariably dines in
the ward-room; and when once there, he is received, as a matter of
course, with attention by all—Mr. Mosquitto inclusive. It is the
general custom, on these occasions, to unbend a little of the straight-
lacedness of our discipline, so that a kind of regulated, starched
familiarity is permitted to appear above the surface. This the captain
rather encourages, though, of course, in a cautious way, but more
than he ever permits himself to allow at his own table.
During dinner, all the officers drink wine with their guest; and when
this office of hospitality is performed by the tormenting officer, above
alluded to, the captain, if he be a man of sense, will not fail to play off
a little of his agreeableness upon the person who has been buzzing
round him during the preceding week. By this means, or some one of
the numberless little devices by which people who are met together
professedly to be social, and wish to be on good terms with one
another, always know how to hit upon, all such scores as this, and
many others, may be wiped off. Without some safety-valve of this
kind to the high pressure of naval discipline, I really do not know how
so enormous and complicated a contrivance could go on at all. I
believe, accordingly, it is now pretty generally allowed in the Navy,
that, in those ships where the captain either lives altogether alone, or
altogether with his officers, or where they sometimes dine with one
another, and sometimes not, instead of following the established
routine of the service, and meeting at regular periods, the discipline
is found greatly wanting, and all parties, high and low, speedily
become discontented.
 I have already mentioned, that the First watch begins, nominally,
at eight, and ends at midnight; but people are much mistaken, who
suppose that a sleepy-headed midshipman, with the prospect of a
cold Middle watch before him, and just awakened out of a sound
nap, is disposed to jump up at once, dress himself, and run upon
deck. Alas! it is far from this; and no one who has not been exposed
to the trial can conceive the low ebb to which patriotism, zeal, public
spirit—call it what you please—sinks at such an hour, in the breast of
the unhappy wretch who, in the midst of one of those light and airy
dreams, which render the night season of young people such a
heaven of repose, is suddenly roused up. After being awakened by a
rude tug at the clews of his hammock, he is hailed, after the following
fashion, by the gruff old quarter-master.
“Mr. Doughead!”
No answer. Another good tug at the hammock.
“Mr. Doughead! it’s twelve o’clock, sir!”
“Very well—very well; you need not shake me out of bed, need
you? What sort of a night is it?”
“It rains a little, sir, and is just beginning to blow. It looks very
black, sir.”
“Oh, plague take it! Then we shall have to take in a reef, I
suppose?”
“It seems very like it, sir. It is beginning to snuffle.”
With this, Mr. Doughead gives himself a good shrug in his blanket,
turns half round, to escape the glare of light from the quarter-
master’s lantern, hung up within six inches of his face, expressly to
keep him awake, and in ten seconds he is again tightly clasped in
the arms of Morpheus, the presiding deity of the cock-pit at that hour.
By and by comes down the quarter-master of the middle watch, who,
unlike the young gentleman, has relieved the deck twenty minutes
before.
“Mr. Doughead! it’s almost one bell, sir.”
 “Indeed!” exclaims the youth. “I never knew any thing of it. I never
was called.”
“Oh yes, you were, sir. The man I relieved said you asked him
what sort of weather it was, and whether we should have to take in a
reef.”
“I ask about the weather? That’s only one of the lies he always
tells, to get me into a scrape.”
While they are speaking, the bell strikes one, indicating that half
an hour has elapsed since the first conversation took place, touching
the weather; and presently, before Mr. Doughead has got his second
foot over the side of his hammock, the mid who is to be relieved by
him comes rattling down the cock-pit ladder, as wet as a shag, cold,
angry, and more than half asleep.
“I say, Master Doughy, do you mean to relieve the deck to-night?
Here it’s almost two bells, and you have hardly shewn a leg yet. I’ll
be hanged if it is not too bad! You are the worst relief in the whole
ship. I am obliged to keep all my own watch, and generally half of
yours. I’ll not stand it any more; but go to the first lieutenant to-
morrow morning, and see whether he cannot find ways and means
of making you move a little faster. It’s a disgrace to the service!” To
all this Duffy has only one pettish, dogged reply—
“I tell you again, I was not called.”
The appeal to the first lieutenant, however, is seldom made; for all
the parties concerned are pretty much alike. But the midshipmen are
not slow at times to take the law of these cases into their own hands,
and to execute summary justice, according to their own fashion, on
any particularly incorrigibly ‘bad relief,’ as these tardy gentlemen are
aptly termed.
One of the most common punishments, on these occasions, is
called ‘cutting down’—a process not quite so fatal as might be
imagined from the term. Most people, I presume, know what sort of a
thing a hammock is. It consists of a piece of canvass, five feet long
by two wide, suspended to the deck overhead by means of two sets
of small lines, called clews, made fast to grummets, or rings of rope,
which, again, are attached by a lanyard to the battens stretching
along the beams. In this sacking are placed a small mattress, a
pillow, and a couple of blankets, to which a pair of sheets may or
may not be added. The degree of nocturnal room and comfort
enjoyed by these young gentlemen may be understood, when it is
mentioned that the whole of the apparatus just described occupies
less than a foot and a half in width, and that the hammocks touch
one another. Nevertheless, I can honestly say, that the soundest
sleep, by far, that I have ever known, has been found in these
apparently uncomfortable places of repose; and though the
recollection of many a slumber broken up, and the bitter pang
experienced on making the first move to exchange so cozy a nest,
for the snarling of a piercing north-west gale on the coast of America,
will never leave my memory, yet I look back to those days and nights
with a sort of evergreen freshness of interest, which only increases
with years.
The wicked operation of ‘cutting down’ may be managed in three
ways. The mildest form is to take a knife and divide the foremost
lanyard or suspending cord. Of course, that end of the hammock
instantly falls, and the sleepy-headed youth is pitched out, feet
foremost, on the deck. The other plan, which directs the after lanyard
to be cut, is not quite so gentle, nor so safe, as it brings down the
sleeper’s head with a sharp bang on the deck, while his heels are
jerked into the air. The third is to cut away both ends at once, which
has the effect of bringing the round stern of the young officer in
contact with the edge of any of the chests, which may be placed so
as to receive it. The startled victim is then rolled out of bed with his
nose on the deck; or, if he happen to be sleeping in the tier, he
tumbles on the hard bends of the cable coiled under him. This
flooring is much more rugged, and not much softer than the planks,
so that his fall is but a choice of miserable bumps.
The malice of this horse-play is sometimes augmented by placing
a line round the middle part of the hammock, and fastening it to the
beams overhead, in such a way that, when the lanyards at the ends
are cut, the head and tail of the youth shall descend freely; but the
nobler part of him being secured by the belly-band, as it is called, the
future hero of some future Trafalgar remains suspended ingloriously,
in mid air, like the golden fleece over a woollen-draper’s shop.
These are but a few of the tricks played off upon those who will not
relieve the deck in proper time. I remember an incorrigible snooser,
who had been called three or four times, but still gave no symptoms
of any intention of ‘shewing a leg,’ the only allowable test of sincerity
in the process called ‘turning out.’ About five o’clock, on a fine
tropical morning, when the ship was cruising off the Mono Passage,
in the West Indies; and just before the day began to dawn, it was
resolved, in a full conclave of the middies of his own watch,
assembled on the lee side of the quarter-deck, that an example
should forthwith be made of the sleeper.
A detachment, consisting of four stout hands, were sent to the
hammock of the culprit. Two of them held the youth firmly down,
while the others wrapped the bedclothes round him, and then lashed
him up—that is, strapped him tightly in by means of the lashing—a
long cord with which the hammocks are secured when brought upon
deck in the day-time. No part of the unfortunate wight was left
exposed except his face. When he was fairly tied in, the lanyards of
his hammock were cast off, and the bundle, half midshipman half
bedding, was dragged along, like a log of wood, to the square of the
hatchway.
Meanwhile the confederates on deck had thrown the end of the
signal haulyards down the cock-pit wind-sail, a wide canvass-pipe,
by which, in hot climates, air is sent to the lower parts of the ship.
These signal haulyards, I must explain, are led through small
sheeve-holes in the truck, a little turban-shaped, wooden cap, fitted
on the royal mast-head. The ordinary purpose of the signal
haulyards, as their name points out, is to display the flags necessary
in communicating with other ships; but, upon this occasion, they
were fastened to one of the grummets of the unhappy sleepy-
headed reefer’s hammock.
When all was secure, the word ‘haul up!’ was given from below,
upon which the party on deck hoisted away. The sleeper awakened
vanished from the cock-pit, only to make his appearance, in a few
seconds, at the mouth of the wind-sail, half way between the quarter-
deck and the mizen-stay. Of course, the boys watched their
opportunity, when the officer of the watch had gone forward on the
gangway, to see how the head-yards were trimmed; but long before
he came aft again, their victim was lowered down, and the signal
haulyards unbent. What to do with the wretch next was a great
puzzle; till one of them said, “Oh! let us stick him up on his end,
between two of the guns on the weather side of the deck, and
perhaps the officer of the watch may take him for an Egyptian
mummy, and have him sent to the British Museum as a present to
the king.” This advice was instantly followed; and the enraged,
mortified, and helpless youngster, being placed so that the first rays
of the sun should fall on his countenance, there was no mistaking his
identity.
I need scarcely mention, that the lieutenants and other
commissioned officers cannot be ‘served up’ in this way, which is
almost a pity, for they are sometimes as abominably lazy as the most
pudding-pated midshipman of their watch. It too often happens that,
instead of being the first, they are the very last persons to relieve the
deck. There is hardly any thing more annoying than being detained
on deck half an hour, and sometimes more, for want of our relief,
after the watch we have kept is ended. This extra, and most tedious
period, often looks longer than double the same length of time
passed in our own proper turn of duty; and the dislocation of temper
it produces is very difficult of repair. Many a time and oft, when I
have been kept waiting for the officer who was to relieve me, long,
long beyond the proper time, I have inwardly sworn deeply, that, if
ever I came to the command of a ship, I would reform this intolerable
abuse; and I flatter myself I made good my promise. I gave positive
orders, and took measures to have them duly obeyed, that the usual
mustering of the watch whose turn it was to come on deck, should
take place, not, as it generally does, at the half hour, but exactly at
ten minutes after the bell struck, which announced the close of the
preceding watch. And I directed—and carefully enforced my
directions—that this ceremony of mustering the fresh watch should
take place under the superintendence of the officer whose turn of
duty it now became. Thus, the deck was always relieved
considerably within a quarter of an hour after the former watch was
ended.
In addition to this, I made it an invariable rule, the instant it struck
eight in the evening, to begin mustering the people of the First
watch, of course under the superintendence of the lieutenant of that
watch: so that the men who were to be called up at midnight might
tumble into their beds at once, and have their full period of four
hours’ rest before being ‘turned out’ to keep the Middle watch. I take
the liberty of recommending these plans to my brother-officers afloat,
as, I can assure them, they answer exceedingly well in practice.
The officers and midshipmen are divided into three watches, as I
have described above; but the crew, in most ships, are divided into
only two watches. By taking a good deal of care, however, in
arranging the people properly, the seamen and marines, almost in
every case, may likewise be put at three watches, instead of what is
termed ‘watch and watch,’ which is simply, turn about.
The illustrious voyager Captain Cook was, I believe, the first who
introduced this admirable practice, as may be seen in his Essay on
the Method of preserving the health of the crew of the Resolution,
printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1776, vol. lxvi. p. 402.
From that masterly paper we discover that many of the most
important of our modern improvements in naval discipline are
essentially due to the sagacity of that great navigator. Of all officers
that ever lived, Captain Cook may be said to have taken the best
way of establishing the soundness of his principles—that of
invariable practical success—not in one or two situations only, but in
the midst of so great a variety of circumstances, that no part of his
system remained untried. His plans were found applicable in the
coldest regions, when his people were exposed to severe hardships
in their attempts to reach the South Pole; and not less so when they
became acquainted with the luxurious climate and voluptuous
manners of the South Sea Islands.
Unfortunately, the science of discipline cannot be reduced to rule
and compass, like that of navigation; but a great deal has already
been done, and may still be done, to establish some leading
principles of this important branch of the profession, round which its
numerous details revolve. It appears, however, that much remains to
be accomplished towards its improvement. Nor am I aware of any
greater benefit that could be conferred upon the Navy, than the
composition of a perfectly intelligible, popular treatise on discipline,
which should include all that is known, and has actually been tried by
the best authorities, together with such examples of the operation of
these principles as appear capable of useful application to general
practice.
Such, however, is the diversity of our nature, that, supposing a
work of this kind to be distributed throughout the Navy, and
supposing it possible to have it made as complete as the condition of
things will allow, there would still remain, I suspect, an ample field for
the exercise of any amount of talents and resource on the part of
officers. So far, indeed, from such a methodised system acting as
any constraint upon the conduct of a judicious officer, the chances
are, that he would only derive from it fresh suggestions, or hints, for
rendering his discipline still more perfect; while at each fresh
increment of knowledge he would be made sensible how much more
he had still to learn.
I do not state this idea either as new, or as applicable solely to
naval affairs. The same thing occurs, in a still more striking degree,
in politics, and, generally, in all those branches of civil as well as
military authority, or any other kind of rule, where the passions and
interests of men are placed under the guidance of their fellow-
creatures. But, without launching forth on such a sea of topics, it will
be admitted to be highly important that officers, and particularly
young officers, should be made sensible how much caution is
necessary in their discipline, since we know that even the wisest and
the most experienced arrive, at last, only at this conclusion, that
much still remains beyond their grasp, which they have not yet
learned; and that every day may be expected to produce
complicated cases of such doubt and difficulty, as will require the
exercise of all their patience and attention.
But, although we cannot get to the bottom of the subject, or ever
hope to frame a set of regulations to meet one thousandth part of the
cases of ordinary discipline, we ought not to despair upon this point,
any more than upon other perplexing questions. Nor should we relax
in our efforts to investigate those laws in the moral organization of
our nature, merely because they are complicated. It is a fine remark
of La Place, that even the motes which we see dancing in the sun-
beam are regulated, in their apparently capricious movements, by
the very same laws of gravitation and momentum which determine
the orbits of the planets. In like manner, there can be no doubt that, if
we only knew how to trace it, this beautiful analogy would be found
to extend to the laws regulating the minutest of those moral
influences, which we are apt so hastily to pronounce irregular and
uncertain.
The science of moral government, whether afloat or on shore, and
whether the scale be great or small, is like that of physical
astronomy, and has what may be called its anomalies and
disturbances, sometimes very difficult to be estimated, and requiring
numberless equations, or allowances, to set them right; but the
pursuit is not, on that account, one whit the less true to our nature, or
less worthy of that patient investigation by which alone truth can ever
be reached, and all such apparent discordances reconciled.
 CHAPTER X.
DANGERS OF A NOVA SCOTIA FOG.

On the 9th of May, we reached Halifax, off which port we were

detained in a very disagreeable way; for we had the misfortune to be
kept three whole days off the harbour, in one of those Nova Scotia
fogs, which are celebrated all over the world. I can hardly give by
description an idea of how gloomy they are; but I think their effects
can be compared to those of the sirocco; with the further annoyance,
that, while they last, we are not able to see far beyond our noses.
They are even worse than rain, for they seem to wet one through
sooner; while they make every thing appear dreary, and certainly
render all the world lazy and discontented.
On the day we made the land, we had great hopes of being able to
enter the harbour, as the wind was fair: when, all at once, we were
surrounded by so thick a mist, that, for the three succeeding days,
we could not see above twenty yards on any side.
There are few things, indeed, more provoking than these fogs off
Halifax; for, as they happen to be companions of that very wind, the
south-east, which is the best for running in, the navigator is plagued
with the tormenting consciousness, that if he could be allowed but a
couple of hours’ clear weather, his port would be gained, and his
troubles over. The clearing up, therefore, of these odious clouds or
veils is about the most delightful thing I know; and the instantaneous
effect which a clear sight of the land, or even of the sharp horizon,
when far at sea, has on the mind of every person on board, is quite
remarkable. All things look bright, fresh, and more beautiful than
ever. The stir over the whole ship at these moments is so great, that
even persons sitting below can tell at once that the fog has cleared
away. The rapid clatter of the men’s feet, springing up the hatchways
at the lively sound of the boatswain’s call to “make sail!” soon
follows. Then comes the cheerful voice of the officer, hailing the
topmen to shake out the reefs, trice up the staysails, and rig out the
booms. That peculiar and well-known kind of echo, also, by which
the sound of the voice is thrown back from the wet sails, contributes,
in like manner, to produce a joyous elasticity of spirits, greater, I
think, than is excited by most of the ordinary occurrences of a sea
life.
A year or two after the time I am speaking of, it was resolved to
place a heavy gun upon the rock on which Sambro light-house is
built; and, after a good deal of trouble, a long twenty-four pounder
was hoisted up to the highest ridge of this prominent station. It was
then arranged that, if, on the arrival of any ship off the harbour, in a
period of fog, she chose to fire guns, these were to be answered
from the light-house; and in this way a kind of audible, though
invisible, telegraph might be set to work. If it happened that the
officers of the ship were sufficiently familiar with the ground, and
possessed nerves stout enough for such a groping kind of
navigation, perilous at best, it was possible to run fairly into the
harbour, notwithstanding the obscurity, by watching the sound of
these guns, and attending closely to the depth of water.
I never was in any ship which ventured upon this feat; but I
perfectly recollect a curious circumstance, which occurred, I think, to
His Majesty’s ship Cambrian. She had run in from sea towards the
coast, enveloped in one of these dense fogs. Of course they took for
granted that the light-house and the adjacent land, Halifax included,
were likewise covered with an impenetrable cloud or mist. But it so
chanced, by what freak of Dame Nature I know not, that the fog, on
that day, was confined to the deep water; so that we, who were in
the port, could see it, at the distance of several miles from the coast,
lying on the ocean like a huge stratum of snow, with an abrupt face,
fronting the shore. The Cambrian, lost in the midst of this fog bank,
supposing herself to be near the land, fired a gun. To this the light-
house replied; and so the ship and the light went on, pelting away,
gun for gun, during half the day, without ever seeing one another.
The people at the light-house had no means of communicating to the
frigate, that, if she would only stand on a little further, she would
disentangle herself from the cloud, in which, like Jupiter Olympus of
old, she was wasting her thunder.
 At last the captain, hopeless of its clearing up, gave orders to pipe
to dinner; but as the weather, in all respects except this abominable
haze, was quite fine, and the ship was still in deep water, he directed
her to be steered towards the shore, and the lead kept constantly
going. As one o’clock approached, he began to feel uneasy, from the
water shoaling, and the light-house guns sounding closer and closer;
but, being unwilling to disturb the men at their dinner, he resolved to
stand on for the remaining ten minutes of the hour. Lo and behold!
however, they had not sailed half a mile further before the flying-jib-
boom end emerged from the wall of mist—then the bowsprit shot into
daylight—and, lastly, the ship herself glided out of the cloud into the
full blaze of a bright and ‘sunshine holyday.’ All hands were instantly
turned up to make sail; and the men, as they flew on deck, could
scarcely believe their senses when they saw behind them the fog
bank, right ahead the harbour’s mouth, with the bold cliffs of Cape
Sambro on the left, and, farther still, the ships at their moorings, with
their ensigns and pendants blowing out, light and dry in the breeze.
A far different fate, alas! attended His Majesty’s ship Atalante,
Captain Frederick Hickey. On the morning of the 10th of November,
1813, this ship stood in for Halifax harbour in very thick weather,
carefully feeling her way with the lead, and having look-out men at
the jib-boom end, fore-yardarms, and every where else from which a
glimpse of the land was likely to be obtained. After breakfast, a fog
signal-gun was fired, in the expectation of its being answered by the
light-house on Cape Sambro, near which it was known they must be.
Within a few minutes, accordingly, a gun was heard in the N.N.W.
quarter, exactly where the light was supposed to lie. As the
soundings agreed with the estimated position of the ship, and as the
guns from the Atalante, fired at intervals of fifteen minutes, were
regularly answered in the direction of the harbour’s mouth, it was
determined to stand on, so as to enter the port under the guidance of
these sounds alone. By a fatal coincidence of circumstances,
however, these answering guns were fired, not by Cape Sambro, but
by His Majesty’s ship Barrossa, which was likewise entangled by the
fog. She, too, supposed that she was communicating with the light-
house, whereas it was the guns of the unfortunate Atalante that she
heard all the time.
 There was, certainly, no inconsiderable risk incurred by running in
for the harbour’s mouth under such circumstances. But it will often
happen that it becomes an officer’s duty to put his ship, as well as
his life, in hazard; and this appears to have been exactly one of
those cases. Captain Hickey was charged with urgent despatches
relative to the enemy’s fleet, which it was of the greatest importance
should be delivered without an hour’s delay. But there was every
appearance of this fog lasting a week; and as he and his officers had
passed over the ground a hundred times before, and were as
intimately acquainted with the spot as any pilot could be, it was
resolved to try the bold experiment; and the ship was forthwith
steered in the supposed direction of Halifax.
They had not, however, stood on far, before one of the look-out
men exclaimed, “Breakers ahead! Hard a-starboard!” But it was too
late, for, before the helm could be put over, the ship was amongst
those formidable reefs known by the name of the Sisters’ Rocks, or
eastern ledge of Sambro Island. The rudder and half of the
sternpost, together with great part of the false keel, were driven off at
the first blow, and floated up alongside. There is some reason to
believe, indeed, that a portion of the bottom of the ship, loaded with
120 tons of iron ballast, was torn from the upper works by this fearful
blow, and that the ship, which instantly filled with water, was
afterwards buoyed up merely by the empty casks, till the decks and
sides were burst through, or riven asunder by the waves.
The captain, who, throughout the whole scene, continued as
composed as if nothing remarkable had occurred, now ordered the
guns to be thrown overboard; but before one of them could be cast
loose, or a breeching cut, the ship fell over so much that the men
could not stand. It was, therefore, with great difficulty that a few guns
were fired as signals of distress. In the same breath that this order
was given, Captain Hickey desired the yard tackles to be hooked, in
order that the pinnace might be hoisted out; but as the masts,
deprived of their foundation, were tottering from side to side, the
people were called down again. The quarter boats were then
lowered into the water with some difficulty; but the jolly-boat, which
happened to be on the poop undergoing repairs, in being launched
overboard, struck against one of the stern davits, bilged, and went
down. The ship was now falling fast over on her beam ends, and
directions were given to cut away the fore and main-mast.
Fortunately, they fell without injuring the large boat on the booms—
their grand hope. At the instant of this crash, the ship parted in two,
between the main and mizen-masts; and, within a few seconds
afterwards, she again broke right across, between the fore and main-
masts: so that the poor Atalante now formed a mere wreck, divided
into three pieces, crumbling into smaller fragments at every send of
the swell.
By this time a considerable crowd of the men had got into the
pinnace on the booms, in hopes that she might float off as the ship
sunk; but Captain Hickey, seeing that the boat, so loaded, could
never swim, desired some twenty of the men to quit her; and, what is
particularly worthy of remark, his orders, which were given with the
most perfect coolness, were as promptly obeyed as ever.
Throughout the whole of these trying moments, indeed, the discipline
of the ship appears to have been maintained, not only without the
smallest trace of insubordination, but with a degree of cheerfulness
which is described as truly wonderful. Even when the masts fell, the
sound of the crashing spars was drowned in the animating huzzas of
the undaunted crew, though they were then clinging to the weather
gunwale, with the sea, from time to time, making a clean breach over
them, and when they were expecting every instant to be carried to
the bottom!
As soon as the pinnace was relieved from the pressure of the
crowd, she floated off the booms, or rather, was knocked off by a
sea, which turned her bottom upwards, and whelmed her into the
surf amidst the fragments of the wreck. The people, however,
imitating the gallant bearing of their captain, and keeping their eyes
fixed upon him, never, for one instant, lost their self-possession. By
dint of great exertions, they succeeded not only in righting the boat,
but in disentangling her from the confused heap of spars, and the
dash of the breakers, so as to place her at a little distance from the
wreck, where they waited for further orders from the captain, who,
with about forty men, still clung to the poor remains of the gay
Atalante—once so much admired!
An attempt was next made to construct a raft, as it was feared the
three boats could not possibly carry all hands; but the violence of the
waves prevented this, and it was resolved to trust to the boats alone,
though they were already, to all appearance, quite full. It was now,
however, absolutely necessary to take to them, as the wreck was
disappearing rapidly; and in order to pack close, most of the men
were removed to the pinnace, where they were laid flat in the
bottom, like herrings in a barrel, while the small boats returned to
pick off the rest. This was no easy matter in any case, while in others
it was impossible; so that many men had to swim for it; others were
dragged through the waves by ropes, and some were forked off by
oars and other small spars.
Amongst the crew there was one famous merry fellow, a black
fiddler, who was discovered, at this critical juncture, clinging to the
main chains, with his beloved Cremona squeezed tightly but
delicately under his arm—a ludicrous picture of distress, and a
subject of some joking amongst the men, even at this moment. It
soon became absolutely necessary that he should lose one of two
things—his fiddle or his life. So, at last, after a painful struggle, the
professor and his violin were obliged to part company!
The poor negro musician’s tenacity of purpose arose from sheer
love of his art. There was another laugh raised, however, about the
same time, at the expense of the captain’s clerk, who, stimulated
purely by a sense of duty, lost all recollection of himself, in his
anxiety to save what was intrusted to his care, and thus was very
nearly being drowned. This zealous person had general instructions,
that whenever guns were fired, or any other circumstance occurred
likely to shake the chronometer, he was to hold it in his hand, to
prevent the concussion deranging its works. As soon, therefore, as
the ship was dashed against the rocks, the clerk’s thoughts naturally
turned exclusively on the time-piece. He caught the watch up, and
ran on deck; but as he was no swimmer, he was obliged to cling to
the mizen-mast, where he stuck fast, careless of every thing but his
important charge. When the ship fell over, and the mast became