they were neither necessary to be explicitly acknowledged, before they were convincingly revealed, nor simply and absolutely imposable on any particular man

The agency has been at pains to stress that its decisions are still based on sound science.

The British, French and Dutch navies also practiced a grimmer form of choking. Sailors hung the victim from the lowest beam (the yardarm) of the main mast on one side of the ship and then, using pulleys, dragged him with ropes beneath the ship's keel to the other side of the long beam. This was called “keelhauling.” Keelhauling was not some ancient nautical torture. It originated with the modern navy. […] The British abolished keelhauling in 1720 and the French and Dutch in 1750. The practice continued unofficially for some years afterward, but there are no British records of keelhauling after 1770, and the last Dutch record was in 1806.

Tom managed to winkle the truth out of John eventually.