ABSTRACT
Sir Graham Moore enjoyed a distinguished naval career, attaining the rank of admiral and holding the posts of senior lord of the Admiralty and commander in chief of the Mediterranean and at Plymouth. His journals now reside at the Cambridge University Library. They illuminate much about the life of an officer in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Among these details are rare written reflections on choosing to punish same-sex acts summarily rather than reporting them for trial. Moore’s journals contain two passages that relate to this decision. In the first, from 1788, the choice was not his, as he was still a lieutenant. By the second, however, he held his own command, that of HMS Bonetta. While he protested that it was improper, he nonetheless chose to punish the offense summarily, avoiding a trial. 1
