Keelhauling Folk Memory

Keelhauling was a naval punishment in which an offender was dragged under a ship’s hull from one side to the other, across the barnacle-encrusted keel, often causing severe laceration or drowning. Documented in the Dutch and other navies from the 16th to 18th centuries, it survives today only as folk memory and figurative language, the phrase meaning a harsh reprimand. The practice was abolished well before the modern seafarer-welfare regime; it has no standing under the Maritime Labour Convention 2006 or any current code.