Court-martial three types: Special, Summary, and General. In Herman Melville's novella "Billy Budd" (first published 1924), the title character is convicted at a drumhead court-martial of striking and killing his superior officer on board HMS "Indomitable", is sentenced to death, and is hanged. The novella has been adapted for the stage, film and television; notably in Benjamin Britten's 1951 opera "Billy Budd". In C. S. Forester's 1938 novel "Flying Colours", Captain Horatio Hornblower is court-martialed for the loss of HMS "Sutherland". He is "most honourably acquitted". Court-martial A court-martial or court martial (plural "courts-martial" or "courts martial", as "martial" is a
HMS Diligent (1776) HMS Diligent (1776) HMS "Diligent" was the mercantile schooner "Byfield", which the Royal Navy purchased in 1776. She was wrecked in the Bay of Fundy in May 1777. The Royal Navy commissioned "Diligent " under the command of Lieutenant Edmund Dod in July 1776. On 18 May 1777 Dod went aboard , Captain Andrew Barkley, that "Diligent" "was beat to pieces upon the Gannet Rock Ledges". Barkley took "Diligent"s officers and crew aboard "Scarborough" at noon. A report, in the "Independent Chronicle" of 19 June 1777, dated Halifax 27 May, stated that "Diligent" was lost on the Gannet Rocks in