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+Project Gutenberg's The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore, by John R. Hutchinson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore
+
+Author: John R. Hutchinson
+
+
+Release Date: October, 2004  [EBook #6766]
+This file was first posted on January 24, 2003
+Last Updated: June 14, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRESS-GANG AFLOAT AND ASHORE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Steve Schulze, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from
+images generously made available by the CWRU Preservation
+Department Digital Library.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PRESS-GANG AFLOAT AND ASHORE
+
+By J. R. Hutchinson
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+I. HOW THE PRESS-GANG CAME IN.
+
+II. WHY THE GANG WAS NECESSARY.
+
+III. WHAT THE PRESS-GANG WAS.
+
+IV. WHOM THE GANG MIGHT TAKE.
+
+V. WHAT THE GANG DID AFLOAT.
+
+VI. EVADING THE GANG.
+
+VII. WHAT THE GANG DID ASHORE.
+
+VIII. AT GRIPS WITH THE GANG.
+
+IX. THE GANG AT PLAY.
+
+X. WOMEN AND THE PRESS-GANG.
+
+XI. IN THE CLUTCH OF THE GANG.
+
+XII. HOW THE GANG WENT OUT.
+
+APPENDIX: ADMIRAL YOUNG'S TORPEDO.
+
+INDEX
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:
+
+
+
+AN UNWELCOME VISIT FROM THE PRESS GANG.
+
+MANNING THE NAVY. Reproduced by kind permission from a rare print in the
+collection of Mr. A. M. BROADLEY.
+
+THE PRESS-GANG SEIZING A VICTIM.
+
+SEIZING A WATERMAN ON TOWER HILL ON THE MORNING OF HIS WEDDING DAY.
+
+JACK IN THE BILBOES. From the Painting by MORLAND.
+
+ONE OF THE RAREST OF PRESS-GANG RECORDS. A play-bill announcing the
+suspension of the Gang's operations on "Play Nights," in the collection
+of Mr. A. M. BROADLEY, by whose kind permission it is reproduced.
+
+SAILORS CAROUSING. From the Mezzotint after J. IBBETSON.
+
+ANNE MILLS WHO SERVED ON BOARD THE _MAIDSTONE_ IN 1740.
+
+MARY ANNE TALBOT.
+
+MARY ANNE TALBOT DRESSED AS A SAILOR.
+
+THE PRESS GANG, OR ENGLISH LIBERTY DISPLAYED.
+
+ADMIRAL YOUNG'S TORPEDO. Reproduced from the Original Drawing at the
+Public Record Office.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PRESS-GANG.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+HOW THE PRESS-GANG CAME IN.
+
+
+
+The practice of pressing men--that is to say, of taking by intimidation
+or force those who will not volunteer--would seem to have been
+world-wide in its adoption.
+
+Wherever man desired to have a thing done, and was powerful enough
+to insure the doing of it, there he attained his end by the simple
+expedient of compelling others to do for him what he, unaided, could not
+do for himself.
+
+The individual, provided he did not conspire in sufficient numbers to
+impede or defeat the end in view, counted only as a food-consuming atom
+in the human mass which was set to work out the purpose of the master
+mind and hand. His face value in the problem was that of a living wage.
+If he sought to enhance his value by opposing the master hand, the
+master hand seized him and wrung his withers.
+
+So long as the compelling power confined the doing of the things it
+desired done to works of construction, it met with little opposition
+in its designs, experienced little difficulty in coercing the labour
+necessary for piling its walls, excavating its tanks, raising its
+pyramids and castles, or for levelling its roads and building its ships
+and cities. These were the commonplace achievements of peace, at
+which even the coerced might toil unafraid; for apart from the normal
+incidence of death, such works entailed little danger to the lives
+of the multitudes who wrought upon them. Men could in consequence be
+procured for them by the exercise of the minimum of coercion--by, that
+is to say, the mere threat of it.
+
+When peace went to the wall and the pressed man was called upon to go to
+battle, the case assumed another aspect, an acuter phase. Given a state
+of war, the danger to life and limb, the incidence of death, at once
+jumped enormously, and in proportion as these disquieting factors in the
+pressed man's lot mounted up, just in that proportion did his opposition
+to the power that sought to take him become the more determined,
+strenuous, and undisguised.
+
+Particularly was this true of warlike operations upon the sea, for to
+the extraordinary and terrible risks of war were here added the ordinary
+but ever-present dangers of wind and wave and storm, sufficient in
+themselves to appal the unaccustomed and to antagonise the unwilling.
+In face of these superlative risks the difficulty of procuring men was
+accentuated a thousand-fold, and with it both the nature and the degree
+of the coercive force necessary to be exercised for their procuration.
+
+In these circumstances the Ruling Power had no option but to resort
+to more exigent means of attaining its end. In times of peace, working
+through myriad hands, it had constructed a thousand monuments of
+ornamental or utilitarian industry. These, with the commonweal they
+represented, were now threatened and must be protected at all costs.
+What more reasonable than to demand of those who had built, or of
+their successors in the perpetual inheritance of toil, that they should
+protect what they had reared. Hitherto, in most cases, the men required
+to meet the national need had submitted at a threat. They had to live,
+and coercive toil meant at least a living wage. Now, made rebellious by
+a fearful looking forward to the risks they were called upon to incur,
+they had to be met by more effective measures. Faced by this emergency,
+Power did not mince matters. It laid violent hands upon the unwilling
+subject and forced him, _nolens volens_, to sail its ships, to man its
+guns, and to fight its battles by sea as he already, under less overt
+compulsion, did its bidding by land.
+
+It is with this phase of pressing--pressing open, violent and
+unashamed--that we purpose here to deal, and more particularly with
+pressing as it applies to the sea and sailors, to the Navy and the
+defence of an Island Kingdom.
+
+At what time the pressing of men for the sea service of the Crown was
+first resorted to in these islands it is impossible to determine. There
+is evidence, however, that the practice was not only in vogue, but
+firmly established as an adjunct of power, as early as the days of the
+Saxon kings. It was, in fact, coeval with feudalism, of which it may be
+described as a side-issue incidental to a maritime situation; for though
+it is impossible to point to any species of fee, as understood of the
+tenure of land, under which the holder was liable to render service at
+sea, yet it must not be forgotten that the great ports of the kingdom,
+and more especially the Cinque Ports, were from time immemorial bound
+to find ships for national purposes, whenever called upon to do so, in
+return for the peculiar rights and privileges conferred upon them by
+the Crown. The supply of ships necessarily involved the supply of men
+to sail and fight them, and in this supply, or, rather, in the mode
+of obtaining it, we have undoubtedly the origin of the later impress
+system.
+
+With the reign of John the practice springs into sudden prominence.
+The incessant activities of that uneasy king led to almost incessant
+pressing, and at certain crises in his reign commission after commission
+is directed, in feverish succession, to the sheriffs of counties and the
+bailiffs of seaports throughout the kingdom, straitly enjoining them
+to arrest and stay all ships within their respective jurisdictions, and
+with the ships the mariners who sail them. [Footnote: By a plausible
+euphemism they were said to be "hired." As a matter of fact, both
+ships and men were retained during the royal pleasure at rates fixed by
+custom.] No exception was taken to these edicts. Long usage rendered the
+royal lien indefeasible. [Footnote: In more modern times the pressing
+of ships, though still put forward as a prerogative of the Crown, was
+confined in the main to unforeseen exigencies of transport. On the fall
+of Louisburg in 1760, vessels were pressed at that port in order to
+carry the prisoners of war to France (_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1491--Capt.
+Byron, 17 June 1760); and in 1764, again, we find Capt. Brereton, of the
+_Falmouth_, forcibly impressing the East India ship _Revenge_ for
+the purpose of transporting to Fort St. George, in British India,
+the company, numbering some four hundred and twenty-one souls, of the
+_Siam_, then recently condemned at Manilla as unseaworthy.--_Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1498--Letters of Capt. Brereton, 1764.]
+
+In the carrying out of the royal commands there was consequently, at
+this stage in the development of pressing, little if any resort to
+direct coercion. From the very nature of the case the principle of
+coercion was there, but it was there only in the bud. The king's right
+to hale whom he would into his service being practically undisputed, a
+threat of reprisals in the event of disobedience answered all purposes,
+and even this threat was as yet more often implied than openly
+expressed. King John was perhaps the first to clothe it in words.
+Requisitioning the services of the mariners of Wales, a notoriously
+disloyal body, he gave the warrant, issued in 1208, a severely minatory
+turn. "Know ye for certain," it ran, "that if ye act contrary to this,
+we will cause you and the masters of your vessels to be hanged, and all
+your goods to be seized for our use."
+
+At this point in the gradual subjection of the seaman to the needs of
+the nation, defensive or the contrary, we are confronted by an event
+as remarkable in its nature as it is epoch-making in its consequences.
+Magna Charta was sealed on the 13th of June 1215, and within a year of
+that date, on, namely, the 14th of April then next ensuing, King John
+issued his commission to the barons of twenty-two seaports, requiring
+them, in terms admitting of neither misconstruction nor compromise,
+to arrest all ships, and to assemble those ships, together with their
+companies, in the River of Thames before a certain day. [Footnote:
+Hardy, _Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum_, 1833.] This wholesale embargo upon
+the shipping and seamen of the nation, imposed as it was immediately
+after the ensealing of Magna Charta, raises a question of great
+constitutional interest. In what sense, and to what extent, was the
+Charter of English Liberties intended to apply to the seafaring man?
+
+Essentially a tyrant and a ruthless promise-breaker, John's natural
+cruelty would in itself sufficiently account for the dire penalties
+threatened under the warrant of 1208; but neither his tyranny, his
+faithlessness of character, nor his very human irritation at
+the concessions wrung from him by his barons, can explain to our
+satisfaction why, having granted a charter affirming and safeguarding
+the liberties of, ostensibly, every class of his people, he should
+immediately inflict upon one of those classes, and that, too, the one
+least of all concerned in his historic dispute, the pains of a most
+rigorous impressment. The only rational explanation of his conduct is,
+that in thus acting he was contravening no convention, doing violence to
+no covenant, but was, on the contrary, merely exercising, in accordance
+with time-honoured usage, an already well-recognised, clearly denned and
+firmly seated prerogative which the great charter he had so recently put
+his hand to was in no sense intended to limit or annul.
+
+This view of the case is confirmed by subsequent events. Press warrants,
+identical in every respect save one with the historic warrant of 1216,
+continued to emanate from the Crown long after King John had gone to his
+account, and, what is more to the point, to emanate unchallenged. Stubbs
+himself, our greatest constitutional authority, repeatedly admits as
+much. Every crisis in the destinies of the Island Kingdom--and they were
+many and frequent--produced its batch of these procuratory documents,
+every batch its quota of pressed men. The inference is plain. The
+mariner was the bondsman of the sea, and to him the _Nullus liber homo
+capiatur_ clause of the Great Charter was never intended to apply. In
+his case a dead-letter from the first, it so remained throughout the
+entire chapter of his vicissitudes.
+
+The chief point wherein the warrants of later times differed from those
+of King John was this: As time went on the penalties they imposed on
+those who resisted the press became less and less severe. The death
+penalty fell into speedy disuse, if, indeed, it was ever inflicted at
+all. Imprisonment for a term of from one to two years, with forfeiture
+of goods, was held to meet all the exigencies of the case. Gradually
+even this modified practice underwent amelioration, until at length
+it dawned upon the official intelligence that a seaman who was free
+to respond to the summons of the boatswain's whistle constituted an
+infinitely more valuable physical asset than one who cursed his king and
+his Maker in irons. All punishment of the condign order, for contempt
+or resistance of the press, now went by the board, and in its stead the
+seaman was merely admonished in paternal fashion, as in a Proclamation
+of 1623, to take the king's shilling "dutifully and reverently" when it
+was tendered to him.
+
+In its apparent guilelessness the admonition was nevertheless woefully
+deceptive. Like the subdued beat of drum by which, some five years
+later, the seamen of London were lured to Tower Hill, there to be seized
+and thrown bodily into the waiting fleet, it masked under its mild
+exterior the old threat of coercion in a new form. The ancient pains and
+penalties were indeed no more; but for the back of the sailor who was
+so ill-advised as to defy the press there was another rod in pickle. He
+could now be taken forcibly.
+
+For side by side with the negative change involved in the abolition
+of the old punishments, there had been in progress, throughout the
+intervening centuries, a positive development of far worse omen for the
+hapless sailor-man. The root-principle of direct coercion, necessarily
+inherent in any system that seeks to foist an arbitrary and obnoxious
+status upon any considerable body of men, was slowly but surely bursting
+into bud. The years that had seen the unprested seaman freed from the
+dread of the yardarm and the horrors of the forepeak, had bred a new
+terror for him. Centuries of usage had strengthened the arm of that
+hated personage the Press-Master, and the compulsion which had once
+skulked under cover of a threat now threw off its disguise and stalked
+the seafaring man for what it really was--Force, open and unashamed. The
+_dernier ressort_ of former days was now the first resort. The seafaring
+man who refused the king's service when "admonished" thereto had short
+shrift. He was "first knocked down, and then bade to stand in the king's
+name." Such, literally and without undue exaggeration, was the later
+system which, reaching the climax of its insolent pretensions to
+justifiable violence in the eighteenth century, for upwards of a hundred
+years bestrode the neck of the unfortunate sailor like some monstrous
+Old Man of the Sea.
+
+Outbursts of violent pressing before the dawn of the eighteenth century,
+though spasmodic and on the whole infrequent, were not entirely unknown.
+Times of national stress were peculiarly productive of them. Thus when,
+in 1545, there was reason to fear a French invasion, pressing of the
+most violent and unprecedented character was openly resorted to in order
+to man the fleet. The class who suffered most severely on that occasion
+were the fisher folk of Devon, "the most part" of whom were "taken
+as marryners to serve the king." [Footnote: _State Papers_, Henry
+VIII.--Lord Russell to the Privy Council, 22 Aug. 1545. Bourne, who
+cites the incident in his _Tudor Seamen_, misses the essential point
+that the fishermen were forcibly pressed.]
+
+During the Civil Wars of the next century both parties to the strife
+issued press warrants which were enforced with the utmost rigour. The
+Restoration saw a marked recrudescence of similar measures. How great
+was the need of men at that time, and how exigent the means employed
+to procure them, may be gathered from the fact, cited by Pepys, that in
+1666 the fleet lay idle for a whole fortnight "without any demand for a
+farthing worth of anything, but only to get men." The genial diarist
+was deeply moved by the scenes of violence that followed. They were, he
+roundly declares, "a shame to think of."
+
+The origin of the term "pressing," with its cognates "to press" and
+"pressed," is not less remarkable than the genesis of the violence it
+so aptly describes. Originally the man who was required for the king's
+service at sea, like his twin brother the soldier, was not "pressed"
+in the sense in which we now use the term. He was merely subjected to a
+process called "presting." To "prest" a man meant to enlist him by
+means of what was technically known as "prest" money--"prest" being the
+English equivalent of the obsolete French _prest_, now _pret_, meaning
+"ready." In the recruiter's vocabulary, therefore, "prest" money stood
+for what is nowadays, in both services, commonly termed the "king's
+shilling," and the man who, either voluntarily or under duress, accepted
+or received that shilling at the recruiter's hands, was said to be
+"prested" or "prest." In other words, having taken the king's ready
+money, he was thenceforth, during the king's pleasure, "ready" for the
+king's service.
+
+By the transfer of the prest shilling from the hand of the recruiter to
+the pouch of the seaman a subtle contract, as between the latter and
+his sovereign, was supposed to be set up, than which no more solemn or
+binding pact could exist save between a man and his Maker. One of the
+parties to the contract was more often than not, it is true, a strongly
+dissenting party; but although under the common law of the land this
+circumstance would have rendered any similar contract null and void, in
+this amazing transaction between the king and his "prest" subject it was
+held to be of no vitiating force. From the moment the king's shilling,
+by whatever means, found its way into the sailor's possession, from that
+moment he was the king's man, bound in heavy penalties to toe the
+line of duty, and, should circumstances demand it, to fight the king's
+enemies to the death, be that fate either theirs or his.
+
+By some strange irony of circumstance there happened to be in the
+English language a word--"pressed"--which tallied almost exactly in
+pronunciation with the old French word _prest_, so long employed, as we
+have seen, to differentiate from his fellows the man who, by the devious
+means we have here described, was made "ready" for the sea service.
+"Press" means to constrain, to urge with force--definitions precisely
+connoting the development and manner of violent enlistment. Hence, as
+the change from covert to overt violence grew in strength, "pressing,"
+in the mouths of the people at large, came to be synonymous with that
+most obnoxious, oppressive and fear-inspiring system of recruiting
+which, in the course of time, took the place of its milder and more
+humane antecedent, "presting." The "prest" man disappeared, [Footnote:
+The Law Officers of the Crown retained him, on paper, until the close
+of the eighteenth century--an example in which they were followed by
+the Admiralty. To admit his disappearance would have been to knock the
+bottom out of their case.] and in his stead there came upon the
+scene his later substitute the "pressed" man, "forced," as Pepys so
+graphically describes his condition, "against all law to be gone."
+An odder coincidence than this gradual substitution of "pressed" for
+_prest,_ or one more grimly appropriate in its application, it would
+surely be impossible to discover in the whose history of nomenclature.
+
+With the growth of the power and violence of the impress there was
+gradually inaugurated another change, which perhaps played a larger part
+than any other feature of the system in making it finally obnoxious to
+the nation at large--finally, because, as we shall see, the nation
+long endured its exactions with pathetic submission and lamentable
+indifference. The incidence of pressing was no longer confined, as in
+its earlier stages, to the overflow of the populace upon the country's
+rivers, and bays, and seas. Gradually, as naval needs grew in volume and
+urgency, the press net was cast wider and wider, until at length, during
+the great century of struggle, when the system was almost constantly
+working at its highest pressure and greatest efficiency, practically
+every class of the population of these islands was subjected to its
+merciless inroads, if not decimated by its indiscriminate exactions.
+
+On the very threshold of the century we stumble upon an episode
+curiously indicative of the set of the tide. Czar Peter of Russia had
+been recently in England, acquiring a knowledge of English customs
+which, on his return home, he immediately began to put in practice. His
+navy, such as it was, was wretchedly manned. [Footnote: The navy got
+together by Czar Peter had all but disappeared by the time Catherine II.
+came to the throne. "Ichabod" was written over the doors of the
+Russian Admiralty. Their ships of war were few in number, unseaworthy,
+ill-found, ill-manned. Two thousand able-bodied seamen could with
+difficulty be got together in an emergency. The nominal fighting
+strength of the fleet stood high, but that strength in reality consisted
+of men "one half of whom had never sailed out of the Gulf of Finland,
+whilst the other half had never sailed anywhere at all." When the fleet
+was ordered to sea, the Admiralty "put soldiers on board, and by calling
+them sailors persuaded themselves that they really were so."--_State
+Papers, Russia,_ vol. lxxvii.--Macartney, Nov. 16-27, 1766.] Russian
+serfs made bad sailors and worse seamen. In the English ships thronging
+the quays at Archangel there was, however, plenty of good stuff-men who
+could use the sea without being sick, men capable of carrying a ship to
+her destination without piling her up on the rocks or seeking nightly
+shelter under the land. He accordingly pressed every ninth man out of
+those ships.
+
+When news of this high-handed proceeding reached England, it roused the
+Queen and her advisers to indignation. Winter though it was, they lost
+no time in dispatching Charles Whitworth, a rising diplomat of the
+suavest type, as "Envoy Extraordinary to our Good (but naughty) Brother
+the Czar of Muscovy," with instructions to demand the release, immediate
+and unconditional, of the pressed men. Whitworth found the Czar at
+Moscow. The Autocrat of All the Russias listened affably enough to what
+he had to say, but refused his demand in terms that left scant room
+for doubt as to his sincerity of purpose, and none for protracted
+"conversations." "Every Prince," he declared for sole answer, "can take
+what he likes out of his own havens." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1436--Capt. J. Anderson's letters and enclosures; _State Papers,
+Russia_, vol. iv.--Whitworth to Secretary Harley.] The position thus
+taken up was unassailable. Centuries of usage hedged the prerogative in,
+and Queen Anne herself, in the few years she had been on the throne, had
+not only exercised it with a free hand, but had laid that hand without
+scruple upon many a foreign seaman.
+
+The lengths to which the system had gone by the end of the third quarter
+of the century is thrown into vivid relief by two incidents, one of
+which occurred in 1726, the other fifty years later.
+
+In the former year one William Kingston, pressed in the Downs--a man
+who hailed from Lyme Regis and habitually "used the sea"--was,
+notwithstanding that fact, discharged by express Admiralty order
+because he was a "substantial man and had a landed estate." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1473--Capt Charles Browne, 25 March 1726, and
+endorsement.]
+
+The incident of 1776, known as the Duncan case, occurred, or rather
+began, at North Shields. Lieutenant Oaks, captain of the press-gang in
+that town, one day met in the streets a man who, unfortunately for his
+future, "had the appearance of a seaman." He accordingly pressed him;
+whereupon the man, whose name was Duncan, produced the title-deeds
+of certain house property in London, down Wapping way, worth some six
+pounds per annum, and claimed his discharge on the ground that as a
+freeholder and a voter he was immune from the press. The lieutenant
+laughed the suggestion to scorn, and Duncan was shipped south to the
+fleet.
+
+The matter did not end there. Duncan's friends espoused his cause and
+took energetic steps for his release. Threatened with an action at law,
+and averse from incurring either unnecessary risks or opprobrium where
+pressed men were concerned, the Admiralty referred the case to Mr.
+Attorney-General (afterwards Lord) Thurlow for his opinion.
+
+The point of law Thurlow was called upon to resolve was, "Whether being
+a freeholder is an exception from being pressed;" and as Duncan was
+represented in counsel's instructions--on what ground, other than his
+"appearance," is not clear--to be a man Who habitually used the sea, it
+is hardly matter for surprise that the great jurist's opinion, biassed
+as it obviously was by that alleged fact, should have been altogether
+inimical to the pressed man and favourable to the Admiralty.
+
+"I see no reason," he writes, in his crabbed hand and nervous diction,
+"why men using the sea, and being otherwise fit objects to be impressed
+into His Majesty's service, should be exempted only because they
+are Freeholders. Nor did I ever read or hear of such an exemption.
+Therefore, unless some use or practice, which I am ignorant of, gives
+occasion to this doubt, I see no reason for a Mariner being discharged,
+seriously, because he is a Freeholder. It's a qualification easily
+attained: a single house at Wapping would ship a first-rate man-of-war.
+If a Freeholder is exempt, _eo nomine_, it will be impossible to go
+on with the pressing service. [Footnote: It would have been equally
+impossible to go on with the naval service had the fleet contained many
+freeholders like John Barnes. Granted leave of absence from his ship,
+the _Neptune,_ early in May, "in order to give his vote in the city,"
+he "return'd not till the 8th of August."--_Admiralty Records_ 1.
+2653--Capt. Whorwood, 23 Aug. 1741.] There is no knowing a Freeholder
+by sight: and if claiming that character, or even showing deeds is
+sufficient, few Sailors will be without it." [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 7. 299--Law Officers' Opinions, 1756-77, No. 64.]
+
+Backed by this opinion, so nicely in keeping with its own inclinations,
+the Admiralty kept the man. Its views, like its practice, had undergone
+an antipodal change since the Kingston incident of fifty years before.
+And possession, commonly reputed to be nine points of the law, more
+than made up for the lack of that element in Mr. Attorney-General's
+sophistical reasoning.
+
+In this respect Thurlow was in good company, for although Coke, who
+lived before violent pressing became the rule, had given it as his
+opinion that the king could not lawfully press men to serve him in his
+wars, the legal luminaries who came after him, and more particularly
+those of the eighteenth century, differed from him almost to a man.
+Blackstone, whilst admitting that no statute expressly legalised
+pressing, reminded the nation--with a leer, we might almost say--that
+many statutes strongly implied, and hence--so he put it--amply justified
+it. In thus begging the question he had in mind the so-called Statutes
+of Exemption which, in protecting from impressment certain persons or
+classes of persons, proceeded on the assumption, so dear to the Sea
+Lords, that the Crown possessed the right to press all. This also
+was the view taken by Yorke, Solicitor-General in 1757. "I take the
+prerogative," he declares, "to be most clearly legal." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers' Opinions, 1733-56, No. 102.]
+
+Another group of lawyers took similar, though less exalted ground. Of
+these the most eminent was that "great oracle of law," Lord Mansfield.
+"The power of pressing," he contends, "is founded upon immemorial usage
+allowed for ages. If not, it can have no ground to stand upon. The
+practice is deduced from that trite maxim of the Constitutional Law
+of England, that private mischief had better be submitted to than that
+public detriment should ensue."
+
+The sea-lawyer had yet to be heard. With him "private mischief" counted
+for much, the usage of past ages for very little. He lived and suffered
+in the present. Of common law he knew nothing, but he possessed a fine
+appreciation of common justice, and this forced from him an indictment
+of the system that held him in thrall as scathing in its truth, its
+simplicity and its logic as it is spontaneous and untutored in its
+diction.
+
+"You confidently tell us," said he, dipping his pen in the gall of
+bitterness, "that our King is a father to us and our officers friends.
+They are so, we must confess, in some respects, for Indeed they use us
+like Children in Whiping us into Obedience. As for English Tars to
+be the Legitimate Sons of Liberty, it is an Old Cry which we have
+Experienced and Knows it to be False. God knows, the Constitution is
+admirable well Callculated for the Safety and Happiness of His Majesty's
+Subjects who live by Employments on Shore; but alass, we are not
+Considered as Subjects of the same Sovereign, unless it be to Drag us by
+Force from our Families to Fight the Battles of a Country which Refuses
+us Protection." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Petitions of the
+Seamen of the Fleet, 1797.]
+
+Such, in rough outline, was the Impress System of the eighteenth
+century. In its inception, its development, and more especially in its
+extraordinary culmination, it perhaps constitutes the greatest anomaly,
+as it undoubtedly constitutes the grossest imposition, any free
+people ever submitted to. Although unlawful in the sense of having no
+foundation in law, and oppressive and unjust in that it yearly enslaved,
+under the most noxious conditions, thousands against their will, it was
+nevertheless for more than a hundred years tolerated and fostered as the
+readiest, speediest and most effective means humanly devisable for the
+manning of a fleet whose toll upon a free people, in the same period
+of time, swelled to more than thrice its original bulk. Standing as a
+bulwark against aggression and conquest, it ground under its heel the
+very people it protected, and made them slaves in order to keep them
+free. Masquerading as a protector, it dragged the wage-earner from
+his home and cast his starving family upon the doubtful mercies of the
+parish. And as if this were not enough, whilst justifying its existence
+on the score of public benefit it played havoc with the fisheries,
+clipped the wings of the merchant service, and sucked the life-blood out
+of trade.
+
+It was on the rising tide of such egregious contradictions as these that
+the press-gang came in; for the press-gang was at once the embodiment
+and the active exponent of all that was anomalous or bad in the Impress
+System.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+WHY THE GANG WAS NECESSARY.
+
+
+
+The root of the necessity that seized the British sailor and made of him
+what he in time became, the most abject creature and the most efficient
+fighting unit the world has ever produced, lay in the fact that he was
+island-born.
+
+In that island a great and vigorous people had sprung into being--a
+people great in their ambitions, commerce and dominion; vigorous in
+holding what they had won against the assaults, meditated or actual, of
+those who envied their greatness and coveted their possessions. Of this
+island people, as of their world-wide interests, the "chiefest defence"
+was a "good fleet at sea." [Footnote: This famous phrase is used,
+perhaps for the first time, by Josiah Burchett, sometime Secretary to
+the Admiralty, in his _Observations on the Navy_, 1700.]
+
+The Peace of Utrecht, marking though it did the close of the protracted
+war of the Spanish Succession, brought to the Island Kingdom not peace,
+but a sword; for although its Navy was now as unrivalled as its commerce
+and empire, the supreme struggle for existence, under the guise of the
+mastery of the sea, was only just begun. Decade after decade, as that
+struggle waxed and waned but went remorselessly on, the Navy grew in
+ships, the ships in tonnage and weight of metal, and with their growth
+the demand for men, imperative as the very existence of the nation,
+mounted ever higher and higher. In 1756 fifty thousand sufficed for the
+nation's needs. By 1780 the number had reached ninety-two thousand; and
+with 1802 it touched high-water mark in the unprecedented total of
+one hundred and twenty-nine thousand men in actual sea pay. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 7. 567-Navy Progress, 1756-1805. These figures are
+below rather than above the mark, since the official returns on which
+they are based are admittedly deficient.]
+
+Beset by this enormous and steadily growing demand, the Admiralty, the
+defensive proxy of the nation, had perforce to face the question as to
+where and how the men were to be obtained.
+
+The source of supply was never at any time in doubt. Here, ready to
+hand, were some hundreds of thousands of persons using the sea, or
+following vocations merging into the sea in the capacity of colliers,
+bargemen, boatmen, longshoremen, fishermen and deep-sea sailors or
+merchantmen, who constituted the natural Naval Reserve of an Island
+Kingdom--a reserve ample, if judiciously drawn upon, to meet, and more
+than meet, the Navy's every need.
+
+The question of means was one more complicated, more delicate, and hence
+incomparably more difficult of solution. To draw largely upon these
+seafaring classes, numerous and fit though they were, meant detriment
+to trade, and if the Navy was the fist, trade was the backbone of the
+nation. The sufferings of trade, moreover, reacted unpleasantly upon
+those in power at Whitehall. Methods of procuration must therefore be
+devised of a nature such as to insure that neither trade nor Admiralty
+should suffer--that they should, in fact, enjoy what the unfortunate
+sailor never knew, some reasonable measure of ease.
+
+In its efforts to extricate itself and trade from the complex
+difficulties of the situation, Admiralty had at its back what an
+eighteenth century Beresford would doubtless have regarded as the finest
+talent of the service. Neither the unemployed admiral nor the half-pay
+captain had at that time, in his enforced retirement at Bath or
+Cheltenham, taken seriously to parliamenteering, company promoting,
+or the concocting of pedigrees as a substitute for walking the
+quarter-deck. His occupation was indeed gone, but in its stead there
+had come to him what he had rarely enjoyed whilst on the active service
+list--opportunity. Carried away by the stimulus of so unprecedented
+a situation as that afforded by the chance to make himself heard,
+he rushed into print with projects and suggestions which would have
+revolutionised the naval policy and defence of the country at a stroke
+had they been carried into effect. Or he devoted his leisure to the
+invention of signal codes, semaphore systems, embryo torpedoes, gun
+carriages, and--what is more to our point--methods ostensibly calculated
+to man the fleet in the easiest, least oppressive and most expeditious
+manner possible for a free people. Armed with these schemes, he
+bombarded the Admiralty with all the pertinacity he had shown in his
+quarter-deck days in applying for leave or seeking promotion. Many,
+perhaps most, of the inventions which it was thus sought to father upon
+the Sea Lords, were happily never more heard of; but here and there one,
+commending itself by its seeming practicability, was selected for trial
+and duly put to the test.
+
+Fair to look upon while still in the air, these fruits of leisured
+superannuation proved deceptively unsound when plucked by the hand of
+experiment. Registration, first adopted in 1696, held out undeniable
+advantages to the seaman. Under its provisions he drew a yearly
+allowance when not required at sea, and extra prize-money when on
+active service. Yet the bait did not tempt him, and the system was
+soon discarded as useless and inoperative. Bounty, defined by some
+sentimentalist as a "bribe to Neptune," for a while made a stronger
+appeal; but, ranging as it did from five to almost any number of pounds
+under one hundred per head, it proved a bribe indeed, and by putting an
+irresistible premium on desertion threatened to decimate the very ships
+it was intended to man. In 1795 what was commonly known as the Quota
+Scheme superseded it. This was a plan of Pitt's devising, under which
+each county contributed to the fleet according to its population, the
+quota varying from one thousand and eighty-one men for Yorkshire to
+twenty-three for Rutland, whilst a minor Act levied special toll on
+seaports, London leading the way with five thousand seven hundred and
+four men. Like its predecessor Bounty, however, this mode of recruiting
+drained the Navy in order to feed it. Both systems, moreover, possessed
+another and more serious defect. When their initial enthusiasm had
+cooled, the counties, perhaps from force of habit as component parts of
+a country whose backbone was trade, bought in the cheapest market. Hence
+the Quota Man, consisting as he generally did of the offscourings of the
+merchant service, was seldom or never worth the money paid for him. An
+old man-o'-war's-man, picking up a miserable specimen of this class of
+recruit by the slack of his ragged breeches, remarked to his grinning
+messmates as he dangled the disreputable object before their eyes:
+"'Ere's a lubber as cost a guinea a pound!" He was not far out in his
+estimate.
+
+As in the case of the good old method of recruiting by beat of drum and
+the lure of the king's shilling, system after system thus failed to draw
+into its net, however speciously that net was spread, either the class
+or the number of men whose services it was desired to requisition. And
+whilst these futilities were working out their own condemnation the
+stormcloud of necessity grew bigger and bigger on the national horizon.
+Let trade suffer as it might, there was nothing for it but to discard
+all new-fangled notions and to revert to the system which the usage
+of ages had sanctioned. The return was imperative. Failing what Junius
+stigmatised as the "spur of the Press," the right men in the right
+numbers were not to be procured. The wisdom of the nation was at fault.
+It could find no other way.
+
+There were, moreover, other reasons why the press-gang was to the Navy
+an indispensable appendage--reasons perhaps of little moment singly,
+but of tremendous weight in the scale of naval necessity when lumped
+together and taken in the aggregate.
+
+Of these the most prominent was that fatal flaw in naval administration
+which Nelson was in the habit of anathematising as the "Infernal
+System." Due partly to lack of foresight and false economy at Whitehall,
+partly to the character of the sailor himself, it resolved itself into
+this, that whenever a ship was paid off and put out of commission, all
+on board of her, excepting only her captain and her lieutenants, ceased
+to be officially connected with the Navy. Now, as ships were for various
+reasons constantly going out of commission, and as the paying off of a
+first-second-or third-rate automatically discharged from their country's
+employ a body of men many hundreds in number, the "lowering" effects of
+such a system, working year in, year out, upon a fleet always in chronic
+difficulties for men, may be more readily imagined than described.
+
+To a certain limited extent the loss to the service was minimised by
+a process called "turning over"; that is to say, the company of a
+ship paying off was turned over bodily, or as nearly intact as it was
+possible to preserve it, to another ship which at the moment chanced to
+be ready, or making ready, for sea. Or it might be that the commander of
+a ship paying off, transferred to another ship fitting out, carried the
+best men of his late command, commonly known as "old standers," along
+with him.
+
+Unfortunately, the occasion of fitting out did not always coincide with
+the occasion of paying off; and although turnovers were frequently made
+by Admiralty order, there were serious obstacles in the way of their
+becoming general. Once the men were paid off, the Admiralty had no
+further hold upon them. By a stretch of authority they might, it is
+true, be confined to quarters or on board a guardship; but if in these
+circumstances they rose in a body and got ashore, they could neither
+be retaken nor punished as deserters, but--to use the good old service
+term--had to be "rose" again by means of the press-gang. Turnovers,
+accordingly, depended mainly upon two closely related circumstances: the
+goodwill of the men, and the popularity of commanders. A captain who
+was notorious for his use of the lash or the irons, or who was reputed
+unlucky, rarely if ever got a turnover except by the adoption of the
+most stringent measures. One who, on the other hand, treated his men
+with common humanity, who bested the enemy in fair fight and sent rich
+prizes into port, never wanted for "followers," and rarely, if ever,
+had recourse to the gang. [Footnote: In his Autobiography Lord Dundonald
+asserts that he was only once obliged to resort to pressing--a statement
+so remarkable, considering the times he lived in, as to call for
+explanation. The occasion was when, returning from a year's "exile in a
+tub," a converted collier that "sailed like a hay-stack," he fitted out
+the _Pallas_ at Portsmouth and could obtain no volunteers. Setting
+his gangs to work, he got together a scratch crew of the wretchedest
+description; yet so marvellous were the personality and disciplinary
+ability of the man, that with only this unpromising material ready
+to his hand he intercepted the Spanish trade off Cape Finisterre and
+captured four successive prizes of very great value. The _Pallas_
+returned to Portsmouth with "three large golden candlesticks, each about
+five feet high, placed upon the mast-heads," and from that time onward
+Dundonald's reputation as a "lucky" commander was made. He never again
+had occasion to invoke the aid of the gang.] Under such men the seaman
+would gladly serve "even in a dung barge." [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 2733--Capt. Young, 28 Sept. 1776.] Unhappily for the
+service, such commanders were comparatively few, and in their absence
+the Infernal System drained the Navy of its best blood and accentuated a
+hundred-fold the already overwhelming need for the impress.
+
+The old-time sailor, [Footnote: The use of the word "sailor" was
+long regarded with disfavour by the Navy Board, who saw in it only a
+colourless substitute for the good old terms "seaman" and "mariner."
+Capt. Bertie, of the _Ruby_ gunship, once reported the pressing of a
+"sailor," Thomas Letting by name, out of a collier in Yarmouth Roads,
+and was called upon by My Lords to define the new-fangled term. This
+he did with admirable circumlocution. "As for explaining the word
+'sailor,'" said he, "I can doe it no otherwise than (by) letting of
+you know that Thomas Letting is a Sailor."--_Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1468--Capt. Bertie, 6 May 1706.] again, was essentially a creature of
+contradictions. Notorious for a "swearing rogue," who punctuated his
+strange sea-lingo with horrid oaths and appalling blasphemies, he
+made the responses required by the services of his Church with all the
+superstitious awe and tender piety of a child. Inconspicuous for his
+thrift or "forehandedness," it was nevertheless a common circumstance
+with him to have hundreds of pounds, in pay and prize-money, to his
+credit at his bankers, the Navy Pay-Office; and though during a voyage
+he earned his money as hardly as a horse, and was as poor as a church
+mouse, yet the moment he stepped ashore he made it fly by the handful
+and squandered it, as the saying went, like an ass. When he was sober,
+which was seldom enough provided he could obtain drink, he possessed
+scarcely a rag to his back; but when he was drunk he was himself
+the first to acknowledge that he had "too many cloths in the wind."
+According to his own showing, his wishes in life were limited to three:
+"An island of tobacco, a river of rum, and--more rum;" but according
+to those who knew him better than he knew himself, he would at any time
+sacrifice all three, together with everything else he possessed, for the
+gratification of a fourth and unconfessed desire, the dearest wish of
+his life, woman. Ward's description of him, slightly paraphrased, fits
+him to a hair: "A salt-water vagabond, who is never at home but when
+he is at sea, and never contented but when he is ashore; never at ease
+until he has drawn his pay, and never satisfied until he has spent
+it; and when his pocket is empty he is just as much respected as a
+father-in-law is when he has beggared himself to give a good portion
+with his daughter." [Footnote: Ward, _Wooden World Dissected_, 1744.]
+With all this he was brave beyond belief on the deck of a ship, timid to
+the point of cowardice on the back of a horse; and although he fought to
+a victorious finish many of his country's most desperate fights, and
+did more than any other man of his time to make her the great nation
+she became, yet his roving life robbed him of his patriotism and made it
+necessary to wring from him by violent means the allegiance he shirked.
+It was at this point that he came in contact with what he hated most in
+life, yet dearly loved to dodge--the press-gang.
+
+That such a creature of contradictions should be averse from serving the
+country he loved is perhaps the most consistent trait in his
+character; for here at least the sailor had substantial grounds for his
+inconsistency.
+
+For one thing, his aversion to naval service was as old as the Navy
+itself, having grown with its growth. We have seen in what manner King
+John was obliged to admonish the sailor in order to induce him to take
+his prest-money; and Edward III., referring to his attitude in the
+fourteenth century, is said to have summed up the situation in the
+pregnant words: "There is navy enough in England, were there only
+the will." Raleigh, recalling with bitterness of soul those glorious
+Elizabethan days when no adventurer ever dreamt of pressing, scoffed
+at the seamen of King James's time as degenerates who went on board a
+man-of-war "with as great a grudging as if it were to be slaves in the
+galleys." A hundred years did not improve matters. The sailors of Queen
+Anne entered her ships like men "dragged to execution." [Footnote:
+Justice, _Dominion and Laws of the Sea_, 1705, Appendix on Pressing.]
+
+In the merchant service, where the sailor received his initiation into
+the art and mystery of the sea, life during the period under review, and
+indeed for long after, was hard enough in all conscience. Systematic
+and unspeakably inhuman brutality made the merchant seaman's lot a daily
+inferno. Traders sailing out of Liverpool, Bristol and a score of other
+British ports depended almost entirely for their crews upon drugged rum,
+so evil was their reputation in this respect amongst seafaring men. In
+the East India Company's ships, even, the conditions were little short
+of unendurable. Men had rather be hanged than sail to the Indies in
+them. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1463, 1472--Letters of Captains
+Bouler and Billingsley, and numerous instances.]
+
+Of all these bitternesses the sailor tasted freely. Cosmopolite that
+he was, he wandered far a-sea and incurred the blows and curses of many
+masters, happy if, amid his manifold tribulations, he could still call
+his soul his own. Just here, indeed, was where the shoe of naval service
+pinched him most sorely; for though upon the whole life on board a
+man-of-war was not many shades worse than life aboard a trader, it yet
+introduced into his already sadly circumscribed vista of happiness the
+additional element of absolute loss of free-will, and the additional
+dangers of being shot as an enemy or hanged as a deserter. These
+additional things, the littles that yet meant so much, bred in him a
+hatred of the service so implacable that nothing less drastic than the
+warrant and the hanger could cope with or subdue it. Eradicated it never
+was.
+
+The keynote to the sailor's treatment in the Navy may be said to have
+been profane abuse. Officers of all ranks kept the Recording Angel
+fearfully busy. With scarcely an exception they were men of blunt speech
+and rough tongue who never hesitated to call a spade a spade, and the
+ordinary seaman something many degrees worse. These were technicalities
+of the service which had neither use nor meaning elsewhere. But to the
+navigation of the ship, to daily routine and the maintenance of that
+exact discipline on which the Navy prided itself, they were as essential
+as is milk to the making of cheese. Nothing could be done without them.
+Decent language was thrown away upon a set of fellows who had been bred
+in that very shambles of language, the merchant marine. To them "'twas
+just all the same as High Dutch." They neither understood it nor
+appreciated its force. But a volley of thumping oaths, bellowed at them
+from the brazen throat of a speaking-trumpet, and freely interlarded
+with adjectives expressive of the foulness of their persons, and the
+ultimate state and destination of their eyes and limbs, saved the
+situation and sometimes the ship. Officers addicted to this necessary
+flow of language were sensible of only one restraint. Visiting parties
+caused them embarrassment, and when this was the case they fell back
+upon the tactics of the commander who, unable to express himself with
+his usual fluency because of the presence of ladies on the quarter-deck,
+hailed the foreyard-arm in some such terms as these: "Foreyard-arm
+there! God bless you! God bless you! God bless you! _You know what I
+mean!_"
+
+Hard words break no bones, and to quarter-deck language, as such, the
+sailor entertained no rooted objection. What he did object to, and
+object to with all the dogged insistence of his nature, was the fact
+that this habitual flow of profane scurrility was only the prelude to
+what, with grim pleasantry, he was accustomed to describe as "serving
+out slops." Anything intended to cover his back was "slops" to the
+sailor, and the punishments meted out to him covered him like a garment.
+
+The old code of naval laws, the _Monumenta Juridica_ or _Black Book_ of
+the Admiralty, contained many curious disciplinary methods, not a few
+of which too long survived the age they originated in. If, for instance,
+one sailor robbed another and was found guilty of the crime, boiling
+pitch was poured over his head and he was powdered with feathers "to
+mark him," after which he was marooned on the first island the ship fell
+in with. Seamen guilty of undressing themselves while at sea were ducked
+three times from the yard-arm--a more humane use of that spar than
+converting it into a gallows. On this code were based Admiral the
+Earl of Lindsay's "Instructions" of 1695. These included ducking,
+keel-hauling, fasting, flogging, weighting until the "heart or back be
+ready to break," and "gogging" or scraping the tongue with hoop-iron
+for obscene or profane swearing; for although the "gentlemen of the
+quarter-deck" might swear to their heart's content, that form of
+recreation was strictly taboo in other parts of the ship. Here we have
+the origin of the brutal discipline of the next century, summed up in
+the Consolidation Act of George II. [Footnote: 22 George II. c. 33.]--an
+Act wherein ten out of thirty-six articles awarded capital punishment
+without option, and twelve death or minor penalties.
+
+Of the latter, the one most commonly in use was flogging at the gangway
+or jears. This duty fell to the lot of the boatswain's mate. [Footnote:
+"As it is the Custom of the Army to punish with the Drums, so it is
+the known Practice of the Navy to punish with the Boatswain's
+Mate."--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1482--Capt. (afterwards Admiral)
+Boscawen, 25 Feb. 1746-7.] The instrument employed was the
+cat-o'-nine-tails, the regulation dose twelve lashes; but since the
+actual number was left to the captain's discretion or malice, as the
+case might be, it not infrequently ran into three figures. Thus John
+Watts, able seaman on board H.M.S. _Harwich,_ Capt. Andrew Douglas
+commander, in 1704 received one hundred and seventy lashes for striking
+a shipmate in self-defence, his captain meanwhile standing by and
+exhorting the boatswain's mate to "Swinge the Dog, for hee has a Tough
+Hide"--and that, too, with a cat waxed to make it bite the harder.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5265--Courts-Martial, 1704-5.]
+
+It was just this unearned increment of blows--this dash of bitter added
+to the regulation cup--that made Jack's gorge rise. He was not the sort
+of chap, it must be confessed, to be ruled with a feather. "An impudent
+rascal" at the best of times, he often "deserved a great deal and had
+but little." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1472--Capt. Balchen, 26
+Jan. 1716-7.] But unmerited punishment, too often devilishly devised,
+maliciously inflicted and inhumanly carried out, broke the back of his
+sense of justice, already sadly overstrained, and inspired him with a
+mortal hatred of all things naval.
+
+For the slightest offence he was "drubbed at the gears"; for serious
+offences, from ship to ship. If, when reefing topsails on a dark night
+or in the teeth of a sudden squall, he did not handle the canvas with
+all the celerity desired by the officer of the watch, he and his fellow
+yardsmen were flogged _en bloc_. He was made to run the gauntlet, often
+with the blood gushing from nose and ears as the result of a previous
+dose of the cat, until he fell to the deck comatose and at the point of
+death. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1466--Complaint of ye Abuse of
+a Sayler in the _Litchfield_, 1704. In this case the man actually died.]
+Logs of wood were bound to his legs as shackles, and whatever the nature
+of his offence, he invariably began his expiation of it, the preliminary
+canter, so to speak, in irons. If he had a lame leg or a bad foot, he
+was "started" with a rope's-end as a "slacker." If he happened to be
+the last to tumble up when his watch was called, the rattan [Footnote:
+Carried at one time by both commissioned and warrant officers.] raised
+weals on his back or drew blood from his head; and, as if to add insult
+to injury, for any of these, and a hundred and one other offences, he
+was liable to be black-listed and to lose his allowance of grog.
+
+Some things, too, were reckoned sins aboard ship which, unhappily for
+the sailor, could not well be avoided. Laughing, or even permitting the
+features to relax in a smile in the official presence, was such a sin.
+"He beats us for laughing," declare the company of the _Solebay_, in
+a complaint against their commander, "more like Doggs than Men."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1435--Capt. Aldred, 29 Feb. 1703-4.]
+One of the _Nymph's_ company, in or about the year 1797, received three
+dozen for what was officially termed "Silent Contempt"--"which was
+nothing more than this, that when flogged by the boatswain's mate the
+man smiled." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Petitions, 1793-7.]
+This was the "Unpardonable Crime" of the service.
+
+Contrariwise, a man was beaten if he sulked. And as a rule the sailor
+was sulky enough. Works of supererogation, such as polishing everything
+polishable--the shot for the guns, in extreme cases, not even
+excepted--until it shone like the tropical sun at noonday, left him
+little leisure or inclination for mirth. "Very pretty to look at,"
+said Wellington, when confronted with these glaring evidences of
+hyper-discipline, "but there is one thing wanting. I have not seen a
+bright face in the ship."
+
+A painful tale of discipline run mad, or nearly so, is unfolded by that
+fascinating series of sailor-records, the Admiralty Petitions. Many of
+them, it must in justice be owned, bear unqualified testimony to the
+kindness and humanity of officers; but in the great majority of cases
+the evidence they adduce is overwhelmingly to the contrary. And if their
+language is sometimes bombastic, if their style is almost uniformly
+illiterate, if they are the productions of a band of mutinous dogs
+standing out for rights which they never possessed and deserving of a
+halter rather than a hearing, these are circumstances that do not in
+the least detract from the veracity of the allegations they advance. The
+sailor appealed to his king, or to the Admiralty, "the same as a child
+to its father"; and no one who peruses the story of his wrongs, as set
+forth in these documents, can doubt for a moment that he speaks the
+truth with all a child's simplicity.
+
+The seamen of the _Reunion_ open the tale of oppression and ill-usage.
+"Our Captain oblidges us to Wash our Linnen twice a week in Salt Water
+and to put 2 Shirts on every Week, and if they do not look as Clean as
+if they were washed in Fresh Water, he stops the person's Grog which has
+the misfortune to displease him; and if our Hair is not Tyd to please
+him, he orders it to be Cutt Off." On the _Amphitrite_ "flogging is
+their portion." The men of the _Winchelsea_ "wold sooner be Shot at like
+a Targaite than to Remain." The treatment systematically meted out
+to the _Shannon's_ crew is more than the heart "can Cleaverly
+Bear"--enough, in short, to make them "rise and Steer the Ship into an
+Enemies Port." The seamen of the _Glory_ are made wretched by "beating,
+blacking, tarring, putting our heads in Bags," and by being forced to
+"drink half a Gallon of Salt Water" for the most trivial breaches of
+discipline or decorum. On the _Blanch,_ if they get wet and hang or
+spread their clothes to dry, the captain "thros them overboard." The
+_Nassau's_ company find it impossible to put the abuse they receive on
+paper. It is "above Humanity." Though put on board to fight for king and
+country, they are used worse than dogs. They have no encouragement to
+"face the Enemy with a chearful Heart." Besides being kept "more
+like Convicts than free-born Britons," the _Nymph's_ company have an
+unspeakable grievance. "When Engaged with the Enemy off Brest, March
+the 9th, 1797, they even Beat us at our Quarters, though on the Verge of
+Eternity." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5l25--Petitions, 1793-7.]
+
+On the principle advanced by Rochefoucault, that there is something
+not displeasing to us in the misfortunes of our friends, the sailor
+doubtless derived a sort of negative satisfaction from the fact that he
+was not the only one on shipboard liable to the pains and penalties of
+irascibility, brutality and excessive disciplinary zeal. Particularly
+was this true of his special friend the "sky-pilot" or chaplain, that
+super-person who perhaps most often fell a victim to quarter-deck
+ebullitions. Notably there is on record the case of one John
+Cruickshank, chaplain of H.M.S. _Assurance,_ who was clapped in irons,
+court-martialled and dismissed the service merely because he happened
+to take--what no sailor could ever condemn him for-a drop too much, and
+whilst in that condition insisted on preaching to the ship's company
+when they were on the very point of going into action. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 5265--Courts-Martial, 1704-5. His zeal was
+unusual. Most naval chaplains thought "of nothing more than making His
+Majesty's ships sinecures"] There is also that other case of the "saucy
+Surgeon of the _Seahorse_" who incurred his captain's dire displeasure
+all on account of candles, of which necessary articles he, having his
+wife on board, thought himself entitled to a more liberal share than
+was consistent with strict naval economy; and who was, moreover, so
+"troblesome about his Provisions, that if he did not always Chuse out
+of ye best in ye whole Ship," he straightway got his back up and
+"threatened to Murder the Steward." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1470--Capt. Blowers, 3 Jan. 1710-11.] Such interludes as these would
+assuredly have proved highly diverting to the foremast-man had it not
+been for the cat and that savage litter of minor punishments awaiting
+the man who smiled.
+
+In the matter of provisions, there can be little doubt that the sailor
+shared to the full the desire evinced by the surgeon of the _Seahorse_
+to take blood-vengeance upon someone on account of them. His
+"belly-timber," as old Misson so aptly if indelicately describes it, was
+mostly worm-eaten or rotten, his drink indescribably nasty.
+
+Charles II. is said to have made his breakfast off ship's diet the
+morning he left the _Naseby,_ and to have pronounced it good; and Nelson
+in 1803 declared it "could not possibly be improved upon." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 580-Memorandum on the State of the Fleet, 1803.]
+Such, however, was not the opinion of the chaplain of the _Dartmouth,_
+for after dining with his captain on an occasion which deserves to
+become historic, he swore that "although he liked that Sort of Living
+very well, as for the King's Allowance there was but a Sheat of
+Browne Paper between it and Hell." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1464--Misdemenors Comited by Mr Edward Lewis, Chapling on Board H. M.
+Shipp Dartmouth, 1 Oct. 1702.] Which of these opinions came nearest to
+the truth, the sequel will serve to show.
+
+On the face of it the sailor's dietary was not so bad. A ship's stores,
+in 1719, included ostensibly such items as bread, wine, beef, pork,
+peas, oatmeal, butter, cheese, water and beer, and if Jack had but had
+his fair share of these commodities, and had it in decent condition,
+he would have had little reason to grumble about the king's allowance.
+Unhappily for him, the humanities of diet were little studied by the
+Victualling Board.
+
+Taking the beef, the staple article of consumption on shipboard, cooking
+caused it to shrink as much as 45 per cent., thus reducing the sailor's
+allowance by nearly one-half. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1495--Capt. Barrington, 23 Dec. 1770.] The residuum was often "mere
+carrion," totally unfit for human consumption. "Junk," the sailor
+contemptuously called it, likening it, in point of texture,
+digestibility and nutritive properties, to the product of picked oakum,
+which it in many respects strongly resembled. The pork, though it lost
+less in the cooking, was rancid, putrid stuff, repellent in odour and
+colour-particulars in which it found close competitors in the butter and
+cheese, which had often to be thrown overboard because they "stunk
+the ship." [Footnote: To disinfect a ship after she had been fouled by
+putrid rations or disease, burning sulphur and vinegar were commonly
+employed. Their use was preferable to the means adopted by the carpenter
+of the _Feversham_, who in order to "sweeten ship" once "turn'd on
+the cock in the hould" and through forgetfulness "left it running for
+eighteen howers," thereby not only endangering the vessel's safety,
+but incidentally spoiling twenty-one barrels of powder in the
+magazine.--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2653--Capt. Watson, 18 April 1741.]
+The peas "would not break." Boiled for eight hours on end, they came
+through the ordeal "almost as hard as shott." Only the biscuit, apart
+from the butter and cheese, possessed the quality of softness. Damp,
+sea-water, mildew and weevil converted "hard" into "soft tack" and added
+another horror to the sailor's mess. The water he washed these varied
+abominations down with was frequently "stuff that beasts would cough
+at." His beer was no better. It would not keep, and was in consequence
+both "stinking and sour." [Footnote: According to Raleigh, old oil
+and fish casks were used for the storing of ship's beer in Elizabeth's
+reign.] Although the contractor was obliged to make oath that he had
+used both malt and hops in the brewing, it often consisted of nothing
+more stimulating than "water coloured and bittered," and sometimes the
+"stingy dog of a brewer" even went so far as to omit the "wormwood."
+
+Such a dietary as this made a meal only an unavoidable part of the day's
+punishment and inspired the sailor with profound loathing. "Good
+Eating is an infallible Antidote against murmuring, as many a Big-Belly
+Place-Man can instance," he says in one of his petitions. Poor fellow!
+his opportunities of putting it to the test were few enough. On Mondays,
+Wednesdays and Fridays, the so-called Banyan days of the service, when
+his hateful ration of meat was withheld and in its stead he regaled
+himself on plum-duff--the "plums," according to an old regulation, "not
+worse than Malaga"--he had a taste of it. Hence the banyan day, though
+in reality a fast-day, became indelibly associated in his simple mind
+and vocabulary with occasions of feasting and plenty, and so remains to
+this day.
+
+If the sailor's only delicacy was duff, his only comforts were rum and
+tobacco, and to explore some unknown island, and discover therein a
+goodly river of the famous Jamaica spirit, flowing deep and fragrant
+between towering mountains of "pig tail," is commonly reputed to have
+been the cherished wish of his heart. With tobacco the Navy Board did
+not provide him, nor afford dishonest pursers opportunity to "make dead
+men chew," [Footnote: Said of pursers who manipulated the Muster Books,
+which it was part of their duty to keep, in such a way as to make it
+appear that men "discharged dead" had drawn a larger quantity of tobacco
+than was actually the case, the difference in value of course going
+into their own pockets.] until 1798; but rum they allowed him at a
+comparatively early date. When sickness prevailed on board, when beer
+ran short or had to be turned over the side to preserve a sweet ship,
+rum or wine was issued, and although the Admiralty at first looked
+askance at the innovation, and at times left commanders of ships to foot
+the bill for spirits thus served out, the practice made gradual headway,
+until at length it ousted beer altogether and received the stamp of
+official approval. Half a pint, dealt out each morning and evening in
+equal portions, was the regular allowance--a quantity often doubled were
+the weather unusually severe or the men engaged in the arduous duty
+of watering ship. At first the ration of rum was served neat and
+appreciated accordingly; but about 1740 the practice of adding water was
+introduced. This was Admiral Vernon's doing. Vernon was best known to
+his men as "Old Grog," a nickname originating in a famous grogram coat
+he affected in dirty weather; and as the rum and water now served out
+to them was little to their liking, they marked their disapproval of the
+mixture, as well as of the man who invented it, by dubbing it "grog."
+The sailor was not without his sense of humour.
+
+The worst feature of rum, from the sailor's point of view, worse by far
+than dilution, was the fact that it could be so easily stopped. Here his
+partiality for the spirit told heavily against him. His grog was stopped
+because he liked it, rather than because he deserved to lose it. The
+malice of the thing did not make for a contented ship.
+
+The life of the man-o'-war's-man, according to Lord Nelson, was on an
+average "finished at forty-five years." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 580--Memorandum on the State of the Fleet, 1803.] Bad food and
+strenuous labour under exceptionally trying conditions sapped his
+vitals, made him prematurely old, and exposed him to a host of ills
+peculiar to his vocation. He "fell down daily," to employ the old
+formula, in spotted or putrid fevers. He was racked by agues, distorted
+by rheumatic pains, ruptured or double-ruptured by the strain of
+pulling, hauling and lifting heavy weights. He ate no meal without
+incurring the pangs of acute indigestion, to which he was fearfully
+subject. He was liable to a "prodigious inflammation of the head, nose
+and eyes," occasioned by exposure. Scurvy, his most inveterate and
+merciless enemy, "beat up" for him on every voyage and dragged his
+brine-sodden body down to a lingering death. Or, did he escape these
+dangers and a watery grave, protracted disease sooner or later rendered
+him helpless, or a brush with the enemy disabled him for ever from
+earning his bread.
+
+His surgeons were, as a rule, a sorry lot. Not only were they deficient
+in numbers, they commonly lacked both professional training and skill.
+Their methods were consequently of the crudest description, and long
+continued so. The approved treatment for rupture, to which the sailor
+was painfully liable, was to hang the patient up by the heels until the
+prolapsus was reduced. Pepys relates how he met a seaman returning from
+fighting the Dutch with his eye-socket "stopped with oakum," and as late
+at least as the Battle of Trafalgar it was customary, in amputations,
+to treat the bleeding stump with boiling pitch as a cauterant. In his
+general attitude towards the sick and wounded the old-time naval surgeon
+was not unlike Garth, Queen Anne's famous physician. At the Kit Cat Club
+he one day sat so long over his wine that Steele ventured to remind
+him of his patients. "No matter," said Garth. "Nine have such bad
+constitutions that no physician can save them, and the other six such
+good ones that all the physicans in the world could not kill them."
+
+Many were the devices resorted to in order to keep the man-o'-war's-man
+healthy and fit. As early as 1602 a magic electuary, invented by one
+"Doctor Cogbourne, famous for fluxes," was by direction of the Navy
+Commissioners supplied for his use in the West Indies. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1464--Capt. Barker, 14 Oct. 1702.] By Admiral
+Vernon and his commanders he was dosed freely with "Elixir of Vitriol,"
+which they not only "reckoned the best general medicine next to
+rhubarb," but pinned their faith to as a sovereign specific for scurvy
+and fevers. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 161--Admiral Vernon, 31
+Oct. 1741.] Lime-juice, known as a valuable anti-scorbutic as early as
+the days of Drake and Raleigh, was not added to his rations till 1795.
+He did not find it very palatable. The secret of fortifying it was
+unknown, and oil had to be floated on its surface to make it keep.
+Sour-crout was much more to his taste as a preventive of scurvy, and
+in 1777, at the request of Admiral Montagu, then Governor and
+Commander-in-Chief over the Island of Newfoundland, the Admiralty caused
+to be sent out, for the use of the squadron on that station, where
+vegetables were unprocurable, a sufficient quantity of that succulent
+preparation to supply twelve hundred men for a period of two months.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 471--Admiral Montagu, 28 Feb. 1777,
+and endorsement.]
+
+Rice the sailor detested. Of all species of "soft tack" it was least to
+his liking. He nicknamed it "strike-me-blind," being firmly convinced
+that its continued use would rob him of his eyesight. Tea was not added
+to his dietary till 1824, but as early as 1795 he could regale himself
+on cocoa. For the rest, sugar, essence of malt, essence of spruce,
+mustard, cloves, opium and "Jesuits'" or Peruvian bark were considered
+essential to his well-being on shipboard. He was further allowed a
+barber-one to every hundred men-without whose attentions it was found
+impossible to keep him "clean and healthy."
+
+With books he was for many years "very scantily supplied." It was not
+till 1812, indeed, that the Admiralty, shocked by the discovery that he
+had practically nothing to elevate his mind but daily association with
+the quarter-deck, began to pour into the fleet copious supplies of
+literature for his use. Thereafter the sailor could beguile his leisure
+with such books as the _Old Chaplains Farewell Letter_, Wilson's
+_Maxims, The Whole Duty of Man_, Seeker's _Duties of the Sick_, and,
+lest returning health should dissipate the piety begotten of his
+ailments, Gibson's _Advice after Sickness_. Thousands of pounds were
+spent upon this improving literature, which was distributed to the fleet
+in strict accordance with the amount of storage room available at the
+various dockyards. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ Accountant-General,
+Misc. (Various), No. l06--Accounts of the Rev. Archdeacon Owen,
+Chaplain-General to the Fleet, 1812-7.]
+
+A fundamental principle of man-o'-war routine was that the sailor formed
+no part of it for hospital purposes. Hence sickness was not encouraged.
+If the sailor-patient did not recover within a reasonable time, he was
+"put on shore sick," sometimes to the great terror of the populace, who,
+were he supposed to be afflicted with an infectious disease, fled
+from him "as if he had the plague." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+2732--Capt. Young, 24 June 1740.] On shore he was treated for thirty
+days at his country's charges. If incurable, or permanently disabled, he
+was then turned adrift and left to shift for himself. A clean record
+and a sufficiently serious wound entitled him to a small pension or
+admission to Greenwich Hospital, an institution which had religiously
+docked his small pay of sixpence a month throughout his entire service.
+Failing these, there remained for him only the streets and the beggar's
+role.
+
+His pay was far from princely. From 3d. a day in the reign of King John
+it rose by grudging increments to 20s. a month in 1626, and 24s. in
+1797. Years sometimes elapsed before he touched a penny of his earnings,
+except in the form of "slop" clothing and tobacco. Amongst the instances
+of deferred wages in which the Admiralty records abound, there may be
+cited the case of the _Dreadnought_, whose men in 1711 had four years'
+pay due; and of the _Dunkirk_, to whose company, in the year following,
+six and a half years' was owing. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1470--Capt. Bennett, 8 March 1710-11. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt.
+Butler, 19 March, 1711-12,] And at the time of the Nore Mutiny it was
+authoritatively stated that there were ships then in the fleet which
+had not been paid off for eight, ten, twelve and in one instance even
+fifteen years. "Keep the pay, keep the man," was the policy of the
+century--a sadly mistaken policy, as we shall presently see.
+
+In another important article of contentment the sailor was hardly better
+off. The system of deferred pay amounted practically to a stoppage of
+all leave for the period, however protracted, during which the pay was
+withheld. Thus the _Monmouth's_ men had in 1706 been in the ship "almost
+six years, and had never had the opportunity of seeing their families
+but once." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1468-Capt. Baker, 3 Nov.
+1706.] In Boscawen's ship, the _Dreadnought_, there were in 1744 two
+hundred and fifty men who "had not set foot on shore near two year."
+Admiral Penrose once paid off in a seventy-four at Plymouth, many
+of whose crew had "never set foot on land for six or seven years";
+[Footnote: Penrose (Sir V. C., Vice-Admiral of the Blue), _Observations
+on Corporeal Punishment, Impressment, etc.,_ 1824.] and Brenton, in
+his _Naval History_, instances the case of a ship whose company, after
+having been eleven years in the East Indies, on returning to England
+were drafted straightway into another ship and sent back to that quarter
+of the globe without so much as an hour's leave ashore.
+
+What was true of pay and leave was also true of prize-money. The
+sailor was systematically kept out of it, and hence out of the means of
+enjoyment and carousal it afforded him, for inconscionable periods. From
+a moral point of view the check was hardly to his detriment. But
+the Navy was not a school of morals, and withholding the sailor's
+hard-earned prize-money over an indefinite term of years neither made
+for a contented heart nor enhanced his love for a service that first
+absorbed him against his will, and then, having got him in its clutches,
+imposed upon and bested him at every turn.
+
+Although the prime object in withholding his pay was to prevent his
+running from his ship, so far from compassing that desirable end it had
+exactly the contrary effect. Both the preventive and the disease were of
+long standing. With De Ruyter in the Thames in 1667, menacing London
+and the kingdom, the seamen of the fleet flocked to town in hundreds,
+clamouring for their wages, whilst their wives besieged the Navy Office
+in Seething Lane, shrieking: "This is what comes of not paying our
+husbands!"
+
+Essentially a creature of contradictions, the sailor rarely, if he could
+avoid it, steered the course laid down for him, and in nothing perhaps
+was this idiosyncrasy so glaringly apparent as in his behaviour as his
+country's creditor. He "would get to London if he could." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 12 Dec. 1742.] "An
+unaccountable humour" impelled him "to quit His Majesty's service
+without leave." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 480--Shirley, Governor
+of Massachusetts, 12 Sept. 1746.] Once the whim seized him, no ties of
+deferred pay or prize-money had power to hold him back. The one he could
+obtain on conditions; the other he could dispose of at a discount which,
+though ruinously heavy, still left him enough to frolic on.
+
+The weapon of deferred pay was thus a two-edged one. If it hurt the
+sailor, it also cut the fingers of those who employed it against him. So
+exigent were the needs of the service, he could "run" with impunity.
+For if he ran whilst his pay was in arrears, he did so with the full
+knowledge that, barring untimely recapture by the press-gang, he would
+receive a free pardon, together with payment of all dues, on the sole
+condition, which he never kept if he could help it, of returning to his
+ship when his money was gone. He therefore deserted for two reasons:
+First, to obtain his pay; second, to spend it.
+
+The penalty for desertion, under a well-known statute of George I.,
+[Footnote: 13 George I., art. 7.] was death by hanging. As time went on,
+however, discipline in this respect suffered a grave relapse, and fear
+of the halter no longer served to check the continual exodus from the
+fleet. If the runaway sailor were taken, "it would only be a whipping
+bout." So he openly boasted. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1479--Capt. Boscawen, 26 April 1743.] The "bout," it is true, at times
+ran to six, or even seven hundred lashes--the latter being the heaviest
+dose of the cat ever administered in the British navy; [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 482--Admiral Lord Colvill, 12 Nov. 1765.] but
+even this terrible ordeal had no power to hold the sailor to his duty,
+and although Admiral Lord St. Vincent, better known in his day as
+"hanging Jervis," did his utmost to revive the ancient custom of
+stretching the sailor's neck, the trend of the times was against him,
+and within twenty-five years of the reaffirming of the penalty, in the
+22nd year of George II., hanging for desertion had become practically
+obsolete.
+
+In the declining days of the practice a grim game at life and death was
+played upon the deck of a king's ship lying in the River St. Lawrence.
+The year was 1760. Quebec had only recently fallen before the British
+onslaught. A few days before that event, at a juncture when every man in
+the squadron was counted upon to play his part in the coming struggle,
+and to play it well, three seamen, James Mike, Thomas Wilkinson and
+William M'Millard by name, deserted from the _Vanguard_. Retaken some
+months later, they were brought to trial; but as men were not easy to
+replace in that latitude, the court, whilst sentencing all three to
+suffer the extreme penalty of the law, added to their verdict a rider
+to the effect that it would be good policy to spare two of them. Admiral
+Lord Colvill, then Commander-in-Chief, issued his orders accordingly,
+and at eleven o'clock on the morning of the 12th of July the condemned
+men, preceded to the scaffold by two chaplains, were led to the
+_Vanguard's_ forecastle, where they drew lots to determine which of them
+should die. The fatal lot fell to James Mike, who, in presence of the
+assembled boats of the squadron, was immediately "turned off" at the
+foreyard-arm. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 482--Admiral Lord
+Colvill, 10 July 1760; Captains' Logs, 1026--Log of H.M.S. _Vanguard_.]
+
+Encouraged in this grim fashion, desertion assumed alarming proportions.
+Nelson estimated that whenever a large convoy of merchant ships
+assembled at Portsmouth, at least a thousand men deserted from the
+fleet. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Memorandum on the State
+of the Fleet, 1803.] This was a "liberty they would take," do what you
+could to prevent it.
+
+Of those who thus deserted fully one-third, according to the same high
+authority, never saw the fleet again. "From loss of clothes, drinking
+and other debaucheries" they were "lost by death to the country." Some
+few of the remainder, after drinking His Majesty's health in a final
+bowl, voluntarily returned on board and "prayed for a fair wind"; but
+the majority held aloof, taking their chances and their pleasures in
+sailorly fashion until, their last stiver gone, they fell an easy prey
+to the press-gang or the crimp.
+
+While the crimp was to the merchant service what the press-gang was
+to the Navy, a kind of universal provider, there was in his method of
+preying upon the sailor a radical difference. Like his French compeer,
+the recruiting sergeant of the Pont Neuf in the days of Louis the
+Well-Beloved, wherever sailors congregated the crimp might be heard
+rattling his money-bags and crying: "Who wants any? Who wants any?"
+Where the press-gang used the hanger or the cudgel, the crimp employed
+dollars. The circumstance gave him a decided "pull" in the contest for
+men, for the dollars he offered, whether in the way of pay or bounty,
+were invariably fortified with rum. The two formed a contraption no
+sailor could resist. "Money and liquor held out to a seaman," said
+Nelson, "are too much for him."
+
+In law the offence of enticing seamen to desert His Majesty's service,
+like desertion itself, was punishable with death; [Footnote: 22
+George n. cap. 33.] but in fact the penalty was either commuted to
+imprisonment, or the offender was dealt with summarily, without invoking
+the law. Crimps who were caught red-handed had short shrift. Two of the
+fraternity, named respectively Henry Nathan and Sampson Samuel, were
+once taken in the Downs. "Send Nathan and Samuel," ran the Admiralty
+order in their case, "to Plymouth by the first conveyance. Admiral Young
+is to order them on board a ship going on foreign service as soon as
+possible." Another time an officer, boarding a boat filled with men as
+it was making for an Indiaman at Gravesend, found in her six crimps,
+all of whom suffered the same fate. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1542--Capt. Bazeley, 7 Feb. 1808. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1513--Capt.
+Bowater, 12 June 1796.]
+
+Men seduced by means of crimpage bounty were said to be "silver cooped,"
+and the art of silver cooping was not only practised at home, it was
+world-wide. In whatever waters a British man-o'-war cast anchor, there
+the crimp appeared, plying his crafty trade. His assiduity paid a high
+compliment to the sterling qualities of the British seaman, but for the
+Navy it spelt wholesale depletion.
+
+In home ports he was everywhere in evidence. No ship of war could lie in
+Leith Roads but she lost a good part of her crew through his seductions.
+"M'Kirdy & M'Lean, petty-fogging writers," were the chief crimps at
+Greenock. Sheerness crimps gave "great advance money." Liverpool was
+infested with them, all the leading merchant shippers at Bristol,
+London and other great ports having "agents" there, who offered the
+man-o'-war's-man tempting bounties and substantial wages to induce him
+to desert his ship. A specially active agent of Bristol shipowners was
+one Vernon Ley, who plied his trade chiefly at Exeter and Plymouth,
+whence he was known to send to Bristol, in the space of six months, as
+many as seventy or eighty men, whom he provided with postchaises for the
+journey and 8 Pounds per man as bounty. James White, a publican who kept
+the "Pail of Barm" at Bedminster, made a close second in his activity
+and success. Spithead had its regular contingent of crimps, and many an
+East India ship sailing from that famous anchorage was "entirely manned"
+by their efforts, of course at the expense of the ships of war lying
+there. At Chatham, crimpage bounty varied from fifteen to twenty
+guineas per head; and at Cork, a favourite recruiting ground for both
+merchantmen and privateers, the same sum could be had any day, with high
+wages to boot.
+
+In the Crown Colonies a similar state of things prevailed. Queen's ships
+visiting Jamaica in or about the year 1716 lost so heavily they scarce
+dared venture the return voyage to England, their men having "gone
+a-wrecking" in the Gulf of Florida, where one armed sloop was reputed
+to have recovered Spanish treasure to the value of a hundred thousand
+dollars. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt. Balchen, 13 May
+1716.] Time did not lessen desertion in the island, though it wrought a
+change in the cause. When Admiral Vernon was Commander-in-Chief there
+in the forties, he lost five hundred men within a comparatively short
+time--"seduced out," to use his own words, "through the temptations of
+high wages and thirty gallons of rum, and conveyed drunk on board from
+the punch-houses where they are seduced." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 233--Admiral Vernon, 5 Sept. 1742. A rare recruiting sheet of 1780,
+which has for its headpiece a volunteer shouting: "Rum for nothing!"
+describes Jamaica as "that delightful Island, abounding in Rum, Sugar
+and Spanish Dollars, where there is delicious living and plenty of GROGG
+and PUNCH."]
+
+At Louisberg, in the Island of Cape Breton, the North American Squadron
+in 1746 lost so many men through the seductions practised by New England
+skippers frequenting that port, that Townsend, the admiral in command,
+indited a strongly worded protest to Shirley, then Governor of
+Massachusetts; but the latter, though deploring the "vile behaviour"
+of the skippers in question, could do nothing to put a stop to it.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 480--Townsend, 17 Aug.; Shirley, 12
+Sept. 1746.] As a matter of fact he did not try.
+
+On the coast of Carolina many of the English merchantmen in 1743 paid
+from seventeen to twenty guineas for the run home, and in addition "as
+many pounds of Sugar, Gallons of Rum and pounds of Tobacco as pounds
+in Money." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1 1479-Capt. Bladwell, 1 July
+1743.]
+
+The lust for privateering had much to answer for in this respect. So
+possessed were the Virginians by the desire to get rich at the expense
+of their enemies that they quite "forgot their allegiance to the King."
+By the offer of inordinately high wages and rich prizes they did their
+utmost to seduce carpenters, gunners, sailmakers and able seamen from
+His Majesty's ships. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1480--Capt.
+Lord Alexander Banff, 21 Oct. 1744.] Any ship forced to winter at Rhode
+Island, again, always counted upon losing enough men to "disable her
+from putting to sea" when the spring came. Here, too, the privateering
+spirit was to blame, Rhode Island being notorious for its enterprise in
+that form of piracy. Another impenitent sinner in her inroads upon the
+companies of king's ships was Boston, where "a sett of people made it
+their Business" to entice them away. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1440--Capt. Askew, 27 Aug. 1748.] No ship could clean, refit, victual
+or winter there without "the loss of all her men." Capt. Young, of
+the _Jason_, was in 1753 left there with never a soul on board except
+"officers and servants, widows' men, the quarter-deck gentlemen and
+those called idlers." The rest had been seduced at 30 Pounds per head.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 6 Oct. 1753. The
+"widows' men" here humorously alluded to would not add much to the
+effectiveness of the depleted company. They were imaginary sailors,
+borne on the ship's books for pay and prize-money which went to
+Greenwich Hospital.]
+
+So it went on. Day in, day out, at home and abroad, this ceaseless drain
+of men, linking hands in the decimation of the fleet with those able
+adjutants Disease and Death, accentuated progressively and enormously
+the naval needs of the country. For the apprehension and return of
+deserters from ships in home ports a drag-net system of rewards and
+conduct-money sprang into being; but this the sailor to some extent
+contrived to elude. He "stuck a cockade in his hat" and made shift to
+pass for a soldier on leave; or he laid furtive hands on a horse and
+set up for an equestrian traveller. In the neighbourhood of all great
+seaport towns, as on all main roads leading to that paradise and
+ultimate goal of the deserter, the metropolis, horse-stealing by sailors
+"on the run" prevailed to an alarming extent; and although there was
+a time when the law strung him up for the crime of borrowing horses to
+help him on his way, as it had once hanged him for deserting, the naval
+needs of the country eventually changed all that and brought him a
+permanent reprieve. Thenceforth, instead of sending the happy-go-lucky,
+devil-may-care felon to the gallows, they turned him over to the
+press-gang and so re-consigned him, penniless and protesting, to the
+duty he detested.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+WHAT THE PRESS-GANG WAS.
+
+
+
+From the standpoint of a systematic supply of men to the fleet, the
+press-gang was a legitimate means to an imperative end. This was the
+official view. In how different a light the people came to regard the
+petty man-trap of power, we shall presently see.
+
+Designed as it was for the taking up of able-bodied adults, the main
+idea in the formation of the gang was strength and efficiency. It was
+accordingly composed of the stoutest men procurable, dare-devil fellows
+capable of giving a good account of themselves in fight, or of carrying
+off their unwilling prey against long odds. Brute strength combined
+with animal courage being thus the first requisite of the ganger, it
+followed--not perhaps as a matter of course so much as a matter of
+fact--that his other qualities were seldom such as to endear him to the
+people. Wilkes denounced him for a "lawless ruffian," and one of the
+newspapers of his time describes him, with commendable candour and
+undeniable truth, as a "profligate and abandoned wretch, perpetually
+lounging about the streets and incessantly vomiting out oaths and horrid
+curses." [Footnote: _London Chronicle,_ 16 March 1762.]
+
+The getting of a gang together presented little difficulty. The first
+business of the officer charged with its formation was to find suitable
+quarters, rent not to exceed twenty shillings a week, inclusive of fire
+and candle. Here he hung out a flag as the sign of authority and a bait
+for volunteers. As a rule, they were easily procurable. All the roughs
+of the town were at his disposal, and when these did not yield material
+enough recourse was had to beat of drum, that instrument, together with
+the man who thumped it, being either hired at half-a-crown a day or
+"loaned" from the nearest barracks. Selected members of the crowd thus
+assembled were then plied with drink "to invite them to enter"--an
+invitation they seldom refused.
+
+It goes without saying that gangs raised in this manner were of an
+exceedingly mixed character. On the principle of setting a thief
+to catch a thief, seafaring men of course had first preference, but
+landsmen were by no means excluded. The gang operating at Godalming in
+1782 may be cited as typical of the average inland gang. It consisted of
+three farmers, one weaver, one bricklayer, one labourer, and two others
+whose regular occupations are not divulged. They were probably sailors.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1502--Capt. Boston, Report on
+Rendezvous, 1782.]
+
+Landsmen entered on the express understanding that they should not
+be pressed when the gang broke up. Sailor gangsmen, on the contrary,
+enjoyed no such immunity. The most they could hope for, when their
+arduous duties came to an end, was permission to "choose their ship."
+The concession was no mean one. By choosing his ship discreetly the
+gangsman avoided encounters with men he had pressed, thus preserving his
+head unbroken and his skin intact.
+
+Ship-gangs, unlike those operating on land, were composed entirely of
+seamen. For dash, courage and efficiency, they had no equal and few
+rivals.
+
+Apart from the officers commanding it, the number of men that went to
+the making of a gang varied from two to twenty or more according to the
+urgency of the occasion that called it into being and the importance or
+ill-repute of the centre selected as the scene of its operations.
+For Edinburgh and Leith twenty-one men, directed by a captain, two
+lieutenants and four midshipmen, were considered none too many. Greenock
+kept the same number of officers and twenty men fully employed, for
+here there was much visiting of ships on the water, a fast cutter being
+retained for that purpose. The Liverpool gang numbered eighteen men,
+directed by seven officers and backed by a flotilla of three tenders,
+each under the command of a special lieutenant. Towns such as
+Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Great Yarmouth, Cowes and Haverfordwest also had
+gangs of at least twenty men each, with boats as required; and Deal,
+Dover and Folkstone five gangs between them, totalling fifty men and
+fifteen officers, and employing as many boats as gangs for pressing in
+the Downs.
+
+In the case of ship-gangs, operating directly from a ship of war in
+harbour or at sea, the officers in charge were as a matter of course
+selected from the available ward or gun-room contingent. Few, if any, of
+the naval men whose names at one time or another spring into prominence
+during the century, escaped this unpleasant but necessary duty in their
+younger days. But on shore an altogether different order of things
+prevailed.
+
+ [Illustration: MANNING THE NAVY. Reproduced by kind permission from a
+rare print in the collection of Mr. A. M. Broadley.]
+
+The impress service ashore was essentially the grave of promotion.
+Whether through age, fault, misfortune or lack of influence in high
+places, the officers who directed it were generally disappointed men,
+service derelicts whose chances of ever sporting a second "swab," or
+of again commanding a ship, had practically vanished. Naval men afloat
+spoke of them with good-natured contempt as "Yellow Admirals," the
+fictitious rank denoting a kind of service quarantine that knew no
+pratique.
+
+Like the salt junk of the foremast--man, the Yellow Admiral got
+fearfully "out of character" through over-keeping. With the service he
+lost all touch save in one degrading particular. His pay was better
+than his reputation, but his position was isolated, his duties and his
+actions subject to little official supervision. With opportunity came
+peculiar temptations to bribery and peculation, and to these he often
+succumbed. The absence of congenial society frequently weighed heavy
+upon him and drove him to immoderate drinking. Had he lived a generation
+or so later the average impress officer ashore could have echoed with
+perfect truth, and almost nightly iteration, the crapulous sentiment
+in which Byron is said to have toasted his hosts when dining on board
+H.M.S. _Hector_ at Malta:--
+
+   "Glorious Hector, son of Priam,
+    Was ever mortal drunk as I am!"
+
+[Footnote: The authenticity of the anecdote, notwithstanding the fact
+that it was long current in naval circles, is more than doubtful. When
+Bryon visited Malta in 1808 the _Hector_ was doing duty at Plymouth as a
+prison-ship, and naval records disclose no other ship of that name till
+1864.]
+
+A lieutenant attached to the gang at Chester is responsible for a piece
+of descriptive writing, of a biographical nature, which perhaps depicts
+the impress officer of the century at his worst. Addressing a brother
+lieutenant at Waterford, to which station his superior was on the point
+of being transferred, "I think but right," says he, "to give you a
+character of Capt. P., who is to be your Regulating Captain. I have been
+with him six months here, and if it had not been that he is leaving
+the place, I should have wrote to the Board of Admiralty to have been
+removed from under his command. At first you'll think him a Fine old
+Fellow, but if it's possible he will make you Quarrel with all your
+Acquaintance. Be very Careful not to Introduce him to any Family that
+you have a regard for, for although he is near Seventy Years of Age, he
+is the greatest Debauchee you ever met with--a Man of No Religion, a
+Man who is Capable of any Meanness, Arbitrary and Tyrannicall in his
+Disposition. This City has been several times just on the point of
+writing against him to the Board of Admiralty. He has a wife, and
+Children grown up to Man's Estate. The Woman he brings over with him
+is Bird the Builder's Daughter. To Conclude, there is not a House in
+Chester that he can go into but his own and the Rendezvous, after having
+been Six Months in one of the agreeablest Cities in England." [Footnote:
+_Ad,_ 1. 1500--Lieut. Shuckford, 7 March 1780.]
+
+Ignorant of the fact that his reputation had thus preceded him, Capt. P.
+found himself assailed, on his arrival at Waterford, by a "most Infamous
+Epitaph," emanating none knew whence, nor cared. This circumstance,
+accentuated by certain indiscretions of which the hectoring old officer
+was guilty shortly after his arrival, aroused strong hostility against
+him. A mob of fishwives, attacking his house at Passage, smashed the
+windows and were with difficulty restrained from levelling the place
+with the ground. His junior officers conspired against him. Piqued by
+the loss of certain perquisites which the newcomer remorselessly swept
+away, they denounced him to the Admiralty, who ordered an inquiry into
+his conduct. After a hearing of ten days it went heavily against him,
+practically every charge being proved. He was immediately superseded and
+never again employed--a sad ending to a career of forty years under such
+men as Anson, Boscawen, Hawke and Vernon. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1500--Capt. Bennett, 13 Nov. 1780, and enclosures constituting the
+inquiry.] Yet such was the ultimate fate of many an impress officer.
+A stronger light focussed him ashore, and habits, proclivities and
+weaknesses that escaped censure at sea, were here projected odiously
+upon the sensitive retina of public opinion.
+
+Of the younger men who drifted into the shore service there were some,
+it need scarcely be said, who for obvious reasons escaped, or, rather,
+did not succumb to the common odium. A notable example of this type
+of officer was Capt. Jahleel Brenton, who for some years commanded the
+gangs at Leith and Greenock. Though a man of blunt sensibilities and
+speech, he possessed qualities which carried him out of the stagnant
+back-water of pressing into the swim of service afloat, where he
+eventually secured a baronetcy and the rank of Vice-Admiral. Singularly
+enough, he was American-born.
+
+The senior officer in charge of a gang, commonly known as the Regulating
+Captain, might in rank be either captain or lieutenant. It was his duty
+to hire, but not to "keep" the official headquarters of the gang, to
+organise that body, to direct its operations, to account for all moneys
+expended and men pressed, and to "regulate" or inspect the latter and
+certify them fit for service or otherwise. In this last-named duty a
+surgeon often assisted him, usually a local practitioner, who received a
+shilling a head for his pains. One or more lieutenants, each of whom had
+one or more midshipmen at his beck and call, served under the Regulating
+Captain. They "kept" the headquarters and led the gang, or contingents
+of the gang, on pressing forays, thus coming in for much of the hard
+work, and many of the harder knocks, that unpopular body was liable to.
+Sometimes, as in the case of Dover, Deal and Folkestone, several gangs
+were grouped under a single regulating officer.
+
+The pay of the Regulating Captain was 1 Pound a day, with an additional
+5s. subsistence money. Lieutenants received their usual service pay, and
+for subsistence 3s. 6d. In special cases grants were made for coach-hire
+[Footnote: Capt. William Bennett's bill for the double journey between
+Waterford and Cork, on the occasion of the inquiry into the conduct
+of the Regulating Officer at the former place, over which he presided,
+amounted to forty-three guineas--a sum he considered "as moderate as
+any gentleman's could have been, laying aside the wearing of my uniform
+every day." Half the amount went in chaise and horse hire, "there
+being," we are told, "no chaises upon the road as in England," and
+"only one to be had at Cork, all the rest being gone to Dublin with
+the Lawyers and the Players, the Sessions being just ended and the Play
+House broke up" (_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1503--Capt. Bennett, 24 March
+1782). Nelson's bill for posting from Burnham, Norfolk, to London
+and back, 260 miles, in the year 1789, amounted to 19 Pounds, 55. 2d.
+(_Admiralty Records_ Victualling Dept, Miscellanea, No. 26).] and
+such purposes as "entertainments to the Mayor and Corporation, the
+Magistrates and the Officers of the Regulars and the Militia, by way of
+return for their civilities and for their assistance in carrying on the
+impress." The grant to the Newcastle officers, under this head, in 1763
+amounted to upwards of 93 Pounds. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1493--Capt. Bover, 6 March 1763, and endorsement.]
+
+"Road-money" was generally allowed at the rate of 3d. a mile for
+officers and 1d. a mile for gangers when on the press; but as a matter
+of fact these modest figures were often largely exceeded--to the no
+small emolument of the regulating officer. Lieut. Gaydon, commanding at
+Ilfracombe, in 1795 debited the Navy Board with a sum of 148 Pounds for
+1776 miles of travel; Capt. Gibbs, of Swansea, with 190 Pounds for 1561
+miles; and Capt. Longcroft, of Haverfordwest, with 524 Pounds for 8388
+miles--a charge characterised by Admiral M'Bride, who that year reported
+upon the working of the impress, as "immense." [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 579--Admiral M'Bride, 19 March 1795.] He might well have
+used a stronger term.
+
+An item which it was at one time permissible to charge, possesses a
+special interest. This was a bonus of 1s. a head on all men pressed--a
+bonus that was in reality nothing more than the historic prest shilling
+of other days, now no longer paid to pressed men, diverted into the
+pockets of those who did the pressing. The practice, however, was
+short-lived. Tending as it did to fill the ships with unserviceable men,
+it was speedily discontinued and the historic shilling made over to the
+certifying surgeon.
+
+The shore midshipman could boast but little affinity with his namesake
+of the quarter-deck. John Richards, midshipman of the Godalming gang,
+had never in his life set foot on board a man-of-war or been to sea. His
+age was forty. The case of James Good, of Hull, is even more remarkable.
+He had served as "Midshipman of the Impress" for thirty years out of
+sixty-three. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1455--Capt. Acklom,
+6 Oct. 1814. _Admiralty Records_ 1.1502--Capt. Boston, Report on
+Rendezvous, 1782.] The pay of these elderly youths at no time exceeded a
+guinea a week.
+
+The gangsman was more variously, if not more generously remunerated. At
+Deal, in 1743, he had 1s. per day for his boat, and "found himself," or,
+in the alternative, "ten shillings for every good seaman procured, in
+full for his trouble and the hire of the boat." At Dover, in 1776, he
+received 2s. 6d. a day; at Godalming, six years later, 10s. 6d. a week;
+and at Exeter, during the American War of Independence, when the demand
+for seamen was phenomenal, 14s. a week, 5s. for every man pressed, and
+clothing and shoes "when he deserved it." Pay and allowances were thus
+far from uniform. Both depended largely upon the scarcity or abundance
+of suitable gangsmen, the demand for seamen, and the astuteness of the
+officer organising the gang. Some gangs not on regular wages received as
+much as "twenty shillings for each man impressed, and six-pence a mile
+for as many miles as they could make it appear each man had travelled,
+not exceeding twenty, besides (a noteworthy addition) the twelve-pence
+press-money "; but if a man pressed under these conditions were found
+to be unserviceable after his appearance on shipboard, all money
+considerations for his capture were either withheld or recalled. On the
+whole, considering the arduous and disagreeable nature of the gangsman's
+calling, the Navy Board cannot be accused of dealing any too generously
+by him.
+
+"If ever you intend to man the fleet without being cheated by the
+captains and pursers," Charles II. is credited with having once said
+to his council, "you may go to bed." What in this sense was true of the
+service afloat was certainly not less true of that loosely organised and
+laxly supervised naval department, the impress ashore. Considering the
+repute of the officers engaged in it, and the opportunities they enjoyed
+for peculation and the taking of bribes--considering, above all, the
+extreme difficulty of keeping a watchful eye upon officers scattered
+throughout the length and breadth of the land, the wonder is, not that
+irregularities crept in, but that they should have been, upon the whole,
+so few and so venial.
+
+To allow the gangsmen to go fishing for sea-fish or dredging for
+oysters, as was commonly done when there was little prospect of a catch
+on land, was no more heinous than the custom prevailing--to everybody's
+knowledge--at King's Lynn in Norfolk, where the gang had no need to
+go a-fishing because, regularly as the cobbles came in, the midshipman
+attached to the gang appeared on the quay and had the "insolence to
+demand Three of the Best Fysh for the Regulating Captain, the Lieutenant
+and himself." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1546--Petition of the
+Owners of the Fishing Cobbles of Lynn, 3 March 1809.] And if, again,
+rating a gangsman in choicest quarterdeck language were no serious
+offence, why should not the Regulating Captain rate his son as
+midshipman, even though "not proper to be employed as such." And
+similarly, granting it to be right to earn half a sovereign by pressing
+a man contrary to law, where was the wrong in "clearing him of the
+impress" for the same amount, as was commonly done by the middies at
+Sunderland and Shields. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1557--Capt.
+Bell, 27 June 1806, enclosure.] These were works of supererogation
+rather than sins against the service, and little official notice was
+taken of them unless, as in the case of Liverpool, they were carried
+to such lengths as to create a public scandal. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 579--Admiral Child, 30 Jan. 1800.]
+
+There were, as a matter of course, some officers in the service who went
+far beyond the limits of such venial irregularities and, like Falstaff,
+"misused the king's press damnably." Though according to the terms
+of their warrant they were "to take care not to demand or receive any
+money, gratuity, reward, or any other consideration whatsoever for the
+sparing, exchanging or discharging any person or persons impressed or to
+be impressed," the taking of "gratifications" for these express purposes
+prevailed to a notorious extent. The difficulty was to fasten the
+offence upon the offenders. "Bailed men," as they were called, did not
+"peach." Their immunity from the press was too dearly bought to admit of
+their indulging personal animus against the officer who had taken their
+money. It was only through some tangle of circumstance over which the
+delinquent had no control that the truth leaked out. Such a case was
+that of the officer in command of the _Mary_ tender at Sunderland, a
+lieutenant of over thirty years' standing. Having pressed one Michael
+Dryden, a master's mate whom he ought never to have pressed at all, he
+so far "forgot" himself as to accept a bribe of 15 Pounds for the man's
+release, and then, "having that day been dining with a party of military
+officers," forgot to release the man. The double lapse of memory
+proved his ruin. Representations were made to the Admiralty, and the
+unfortunately constituted lieutenant was "broke" and black-listed.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2740--Lieut. Atkinson, 24 June 1798,
+and endorsement.]
+
+Another species of fraud upon which the Admiralty was equally severe,
+was that long practised with impunity by a certain regulating officer at
+Poole. Not only did he habitually put back the dates on which men were
+pressed, thus "bearing" them for subsistence money they never received,
+he made it a further practice to enter on his books the names of
+fictitious pressed men who opportunely "escaped" after adding their
+quota to his dishonest perquisites. So general was misappropriation of
+funds by means of this ingenious fraud that detection was deservedly
+visited with instant dismissal. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1526--Capt. Boyle, 2 Oct. 1801, and endorsement.]
+
+Though to the gangsman all things were reputedly lawful, some things
+were by no means expedient. He could with impunity deprive almost any
+ablebodied adult of his freedom, and he could sometimes, with equal
+impunity, add to his scanty earnings by restoring that freedom for a
+consideration in coin of the realm; but when, like Josh Cooper, sometime
+gangsman at Hull, he extended his prerogative to the occupants of
+hen-roosts, he was apt to find himself at cross-purposes with the law as
+interpreted by the sitting magistrates.
+
+Amongst less questionable perquisites accruing to the gangsman two only
+need be mentioned here. One was the "straggling-money" paid to him
+for the apprehension of deserters--20s. for every deserter taken, with
+"conduct" money to boot; the other, the anker of brandy designedly
+thrown overboard by smugglers when chased by a gang engaged in pressing
+afloat. Occasionally the brandy checked the pursuit; but more often
+it gave an added zest to the chase and so hastened the capture of the
+fugitive donors.
+
+To the unscrupulous outsider the opportunities for illicit gain afforded
+by the service made an irresistible appeal. Sham gangs and make-believe
+press-masters abounded, thriving exceedingly upon the fears and
+credulity of the people until capture put a term to their activities
+and sent them to the pillory, the prison or the fleet they pretended to
+cater for.
+
+Their mode of operation seldom varied. They pressed a man, and then took
+money for "discharging" him; or they threatened to press and were bought
+off. One Philpot was in 1709 fined ten nobles and sentenced to the
+pillory for this fraud. He had many imitators, amongst them John Love,
+who posed as a midshipman, and William Moore, his gangsman, both of
+whom were eventually brought to justice and turned over to His Majesty's
+ships.
+
+The role adopted by these last-named pretenders was a favourite one with
+men engaged in crimping for the merchant service. Shrewsbury in 1780
+received a visit from one of these individuals--"a Person named Hopkins,
+who appeared in a Lieutenant's Uniform and committed many fraudulant
+Actions and Scandalous Abuses in raising Men," as he said, "for the
+Navy." Two months later another impostor of the same type appeared at
+Birmingham, where he scattered broadcast a leaflet, headed with the
+royal arms and couched in the following seductive terms: "Eleven Pounds
+for every Able Seaman, Five Pounds for every ordinary Seaman, and Three
+Pounds for every Able-bodied Landsman, exclusive of a compleat set of
+Sea Clothing, given by the Marine Society. All Good Seamen, and other
+hearty young Fellows of Spirit, that are willing to serve on board any
+of His Majesty's Vessels or Ships of War, Let them with Chearfulness
+repair to the Sailors' Head Rendezvous in this Town, where a proper
+Officer attends, who will give them every encouragement they can desire.
+Now my Jolly Lads is the time to fill your Pockets with Dollars, Double
+Doubloon's & Luidores. Conduct Money allowed, Chest and Bedding sent
+Carriage Free." Soon after, the two united forces at Coventry, whither
+Capt. Beecher desired to "send a party to take them," but to this
+request the Admiralty turned a deaf ear. In their opinion the game was
+not worth the candle. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Letters of
+Capt. Beecher, 1780]
+
+Ex-midshipman Rookhad, who when dismissed the service took to boarding
+vessels in the Thames and extorting money and liquor from the masters as
+a consideration for not pressing their men, did not escape so lightly.
+Him the Admiralty prosecuted. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law
+Officers' Opinions, 1733-56, No. 12. Process was by information in the
+Court of King's Bench, for a misdemeanour.]
+
+It was in companies, however, that the sham ganger most frequently took
+the road, for numbers not only enhanced his chances of obtaining money,
+they materially diminished the risk of capture. One such gang was
+composed of "eighteen desperate villians," who were nevertheless taken.
+Another, a "parcel of fellows armed with cutlasses like a pressgang,"
+appeared at Dublin in 1743, where they boldly entered public-houses on
+pretence of looking for sailors, and there extorted money and drink.
+What became of them we are not told; but in the case of the pretended
+gang whose victim, after handing over two guineas as the price of his
+release, was pressed by a regularly constituted gang, we learn the
+gratifying sequel. The real gang gave chase to the sham gang and pressed
+every man of them.
+
+According to the "Humble Petition of Grace Blackmore of Stratford le
+Bow, widow," on Friday the 29th of May, in an unknown year of Queen
+Anne's reign, "there came to Bow ffaire severall pretended pressmasters,
+endeavouring to impress." A tumult ensued. Murder was freely "cryed
+out," apparently with good reason, for in the melee petitioner's
+husband, then constable of Bow, was "wounded soe that he shortly after
+dyed." [Footnote: _State Papers Domestic,_ Anne, xxxvi. No. 17.]
+
+There were occasions when the sham gang operated under cover of a real
+press-warrant, and for this the Admiralty was directly to blame. It had
+become customary at the Navy Office to send out warrants, whether to
+commanders of ships or to Regulating Captains, in blank, the person
+to whom the warrant was directed filling in the name for himself. Such
+warrants were frequently stolen and put to irregular uses, and of this a
+remarkable instance occurred in 1755.
+
+In that year one Nicholas Cooke, having by some means obtained
+possession of such a warrant, "filled up the blank thereof by directing
+it to himself, by the name and description of Lieutenant Nicholas Cooke,
+tho' in truth not a Lieutenant nor an Officer in His Majesty's Navy,"
+hired a vessel--the _Providence_ snow of Dublin--and in her cruised the
+coasts of Ireland, pressing men. After thus raising as many as he could
+carry, he shaped his course for Liverpool, no doubt intending, on his
+arrival at that port, to sell his unsuspecting victims to the merchant
+ships in the Mersey at so much a head. Through bad seamanship, however,
+the vessel was run aground at Seacombe, opposite to Liverpool, and Capt.
+Darby, of H.M.S. _Seahorse_, perceiving her plight, and thinking to
+render assistance in return for perhaps a man or two, took boat and
+rowed across to her. To his astonishment he found her full of Irishmen
+to the number of seventy-three, whom he immediately pressed and removed
+to his own ship. The circumstance of the false warrant now came to
+light, and with it another, of worse omen for the mock lieutenant. In
+the hold a quantity of undeclared spirits was discovered, and this fact
+afforded the Admiralty a handle they were not slow to avail themselves
+of. They put the Excise Officers on the scent, and Cooke was prosecuted
+for smuggling. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers'
+Opinions, 1733-56, No. 101.]
+
+The most successful sham gang ever organised was perhaps that said to
+have been got together by a trio of mischievous Somerset girls. The
+scene of the exploit was the Denny-Bowl quarry, near Taunton. The
+quarrymen there were a hard-bitten set and great braggarts, openly
+boasting that no gang dare attack them, and threatening, in the event
+of so unlikely a contingency, to knock the gangsmen on the head and bury
+them in the rubbish of the pit. There happened to be in the neighbouring
+town "three merry maids," who heard of this tall talk and secretly
+determined to put the vaunted courage of the quarrymen to the test.
+They accordingly dressed themselves in men's clothing, stuck cockades in
+their hats, and with hangers under their arms stealthily approached the
+pit. Sixty men were at work there; but no sooner did they catch sight of
+the supposed gang than they one and all threw down their tools and ran
+for their lives.
+
+Officially known as the Rendezvous, a French term long associated with
+English recruiting, the headquarters of the gang were more familiarly,
+and for brevity's sake, called the "rondy." Publicans were partial to
+having the rondy on their premises because of the trade it brought
+them. Hence it was usually an alehouse, frequently one of the shadiest
+description, situated in the lowest slum of the town; but on occasions,
+as when the gang was of uncommon strength and the number of pressed
+men dealt with proportionately large, a private house or other suitable
+building was taken for the exclusive use of the service. It was
+distinguished by a flag--a Jack--displayed upon a pole. The cost of the
+two was 27s., and in theory they were supposed to last a year; but in
+towns where the populace evinced their love for the press by hewing
+down the pole and tearing the flag in ribbons, these emblems of national
+liberty had frequently to be renewed. At King's Lynn as much as 13
+Pounds was spent upon them in four years--an outlay regarded by the
+Navy Board with absolute dismay. It would have been not less dismayed,
+perhaps, could it have seen the bunting displayed by rendezvous whose
+surroundings were friendly. There the same old Jack did duty year after
+year until, grimy and bedraggled, it more resembled the black flag than
+anything else that flew, wanting only the skull and cross-bones to make
+it a fitting emblem of authorised piracy.
+
+The rondy was hardly a spot to which one would have resorted for a
+rest-cure. When not engaged in pressing, the gangsmen were a roistering,
+drinking crew, under lax control and never averse from a row, either
+amongst themselves or with outsiders. Sometimes the commanding officer
+made the place his residence, and when this was the case some sort of
+order prevailed. The floors were regularly swept, the beds made, the
+frowsy "general" gratified by a weekly "tip" on pay-day. But when, on
+the other hand, the gangsmen who did not "find themselves" occupied
+the rondy to the exclusion of the officer, eating and sleeping there,
+tramping in and out at all hours of the day and night, dragging pressed
+men in to be "regulated" and locked up, and diverting such infrequent
+intervals of leisure as they enjoyed by pastimes in which fear of the
+"gent overhead" played no part--when this was the case the rondy became
+a veritable bear-garden, a place of unspeakable confusion wherein papers
+and pistols, boots and blankets, cutlasses, hats, beer-pots and staves
+cumbered the floors, the lockers and the beds with a medley of articles
+torn, rusty, mud-stained, dirt-begrimed and unkept.
+
+Amongst accessories essential to the efficient activity of gangs
+stationed at coast or river towns the boat had first place. Sometimes
+both sail and row-boats were employed. Luggers of the old type, fast
+boats carrying a great press of sail, served best for overhauling ships;
+but on inland waterways, such as the Thames, the Humber or the Tyne, a
+"sort of wherry, constructed for rowing fast," was the favourite vehicle
+of pursuit. The rate of hire varied from 1s. a day to two or more
+guineas a week, according to the size and class of boat. At Cork it was
+"five shillings Irish" per day.
+
+Accessories of a less indispensable nature, occasionally allowed, were,
+at Dartmouth and a few other places, cockades for the gangsmen's hats,
+supplied at a cost of 1s. each; at Tower Hill a messenger, pay 20s. a
+week; and at Appledore an umbrella for use in rainy weather, price 12s.
+6d.
+
+The arms of the gang comprised, first, a press-warrant, and, second,
+such weapons as were necessary to enforce it.
+
+In the literature of the eighteenth century the warrant is inseparably
+associated with the short, incurvated service sword commonly known as
+the cutlass or hanger; but in the press-gang prints of the period the
+gangsmen are generally armed with stout clubs answering to Smollett's
+"good oak plant." Apart from this artistic evidence, however, there is
+no valid reason for believing that the bludgeon ever came into general
+use as the ganger's weapon. As early as the reign of Anne he went armed
+with the "Queen's broad cutlash," and for most gangs, certainly for all
+called upon to operate in rough neighbourhoods, the hanger remained the
+stock weapon throughout the century. In expeditions involving special
+risk or danger, the musket and the pistol supplemented what must have
+been in itself no mean weapon.
+
+As we have already seen, the earliest recorded press-warrants emanated
+from the king in person, whilst later ones were issued by the king in
+council and endorsed by the naval authorities. As the need of men became
+more and more imperative, however, this mode of issue was found to be
+too cumbersome and inexpeditious. Hence, by the time the eighteenth
+century came in, with its tremendously enhanced demands on behalf of the
+Navy, the royal prerogative in respect to warrants had been virtually
+delegated to the Admiralty, who issued them on their own initiative,
+though ostensibly in pursuance of His Majesty's Orders in Council.
+
+An Admiralty warrant empowered the person to whom it was directed to
+"impress" as many "seamen" as possibly he could procure, giving to each
+man so impressed 1s. "for prest money." He was to impress none but such
+as "were strong bodies and capable to serve the king"; and, having
+so impressed such persons, he was to deliver them up to the officer
+regulating the nearest rendezvous. All civil authorities were to be
+"aiding and assisting" to him in the discharge of this duty.
+
+Now this document, the stereotyped press-warrant of the century, here
+concisely summarised in its own phraseology, was not at all what it
+purported to be. It was in fact a warrant out of time, an official
+anachronism, a red-tape survival of that bygone period when pressing
+still meant "presting" and force went no further than a threat. For men
+were now no longer "prested." They were pressed, and that, too, in the
+most drastic sense of the term. The king's shilling no longer changed
+hands. Even in Pepys' time men were pressed "without money," and in
+none of the accounts of expenses incurred in pressing during the century
+which followed, excepting only a very few of the earlier ones, can
+any such item as the king's shilling or prest-money be discovered.
+Its abolition was a logical sequence of the change from presting to
+pressing.
+
+The seaman, moreover, so far from being the sole quarry of the
+warrant-holder, now sought concealment amongst a people almost without
+exception equally liable with himself to the capture he endeavoured to
+elude. Retained merely as a matter of form, and totally out of keeping
+with altered conditions, the warrant was in effect obsolete save as an
+instrument authorising one man to deprive another of his liberty in
+the king's name. Even the standard of "able bodies and capable" had
+deteriorated to such an extent that the officers of the fleet were kept
+nearly as busy weeding out and rejecting men as were the officers of the
+impress in taking them.
+
+Still, the warrant served. Stripped of its obsolete injunctions, it
+read: "Go ye out into the highways and hedges, and water-ways, and
+compel them to come in"--enough, surely, for any officer imbued with
+zeal for His Majesty's service.
+
+Though according to the strict letter of the law as defined by various
+decisions of the courts a press-warrant was legally executable only by
+the officer to whom it was addressed, in practice the limitation was
+very widely departed from, if not altogether ignored; for just as a
+constable or sheriff may call upon bystanders to assist him in the
+execution of his office, so the holder of a press-warrant, though
+legally unable to delegate his authority by other means, could call upon
+others to aid him in the execution of his duty. Naturally, the gangsmen
+being at hand, and being at hand for that very purpose, he gave them
+first preference. Hence, the gangsman pressed on the strength of a
+warrant which in reality gave him no power to press.
+
+While the law relating to the intensive force of warrants was thus
+deliberately set at naught, an extraordinary punctiliousness for legal
+formality was displayed in another direction. According to tradition and
+custom no warrant was valid until it had received the sanction of the
+civil power. Solicitor-General Yorke could find no statutory authority
+for such procedure. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers'
+Opinions, 1733-56, No. 102.] He accordingly pronounced it to be
+non-essential to the validity of warrants. Nevertheless, save in cases
+where the civil power refused its endorsement, it was universally
+adhered to. What was bad law was notoriously good policy, for a
+disaffected mayor, or an unfriendly Justice of the Peace, had it in his
+power to make the path of the impress officer a thorny one indeed. "Make
+unto yourselves friends," was therefore one of the first injunctions
+laid upon officers whose duties unavoidably made them many enemies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+WHOM THE GANG MIGHT TAKE.
+
+
+
+In theory an authority for the taking of seafaring men only, the
+press-warrant was in practice invested with all the force of a Writ
+of Quo Warranto requiring every able-bodied male adult to show by what
+right he remained at large. The difference between the theory and the
+practice of pressing was consequently as wide as the poles.
+
+While the primary and ostensible objective of the impress remained
+always what it had been from the outset, the seaman who had few if any
+land-ties except those of blood or sex, from this root principle
+there sprang up a very Upas tree of pretension, whose noxious branches
+overspread practically every section of the community. Hence the
+press-gang, the embodiment of this pretension, eventually threw aside
+ostence and took its pick of all who came its way, let their occupation
+or position be what it might. It was no duty of the gangsman to employ
+his hanger in splitting hairs. "First catch your man," was for him the
+greatest of all the commandments. Discrimination was for his masters.
+The weeding out could be done when the pressing was over.
+
+The classes hardest hit by this lamentable want of discrimination were
+the classes engaged in trade. "Mr. Coventry," wrote Pepys some four
+years after the Restoration, "showed how the medium of the men the King
+hath one year with another employed in his navy since his coming, hath
+not been above 3000 men, or at most 4000; and now having occasion for
+30,000, the remaining 26,000 _must be found out of the Trade of the
+Nation_." Naturally. Where a nation of shopkeepers was concerned it
+could hardly have been otherwise. They who go down to the sea in ships
+and do business in great waters, returning laden with the spoils of the
+commercial world, have perforce to render tribute unto Caesar; but Mr.
+Commissioner Coventry little guessed, when he enunciated his corollary
+with such nice precision, to what it was destined to lead in the next
+hundred years or so.
+
+Under the merciless exactions of the press-gang Trade did not, however,
+prove the submissive thing that was wont to stand at its doors and cry:
+"Will you buy? will you buy?" or to bow prospective customers into its
+rich emporiums with unctuous rubbing of hands and sauve words.
+Trade knew its power and determined to use it. "Look you! my Lords
+Commissioners," cried Trade, truculently cocking its hat in the face of
+Admiralty, "I have had enough. You have taken my butcher, my baker, my
+candlestick-maker, nor have you spared that worthy youth, the 'prentice
+who was to have wed my daughter. My coachman, the driver of my gilded
+chariot, goes in fear of you, and as for my sedan-chair man, he is no
+more found. My colliers, draymen, watermen, the carpenters who build my
+ships and the mariners who sail them, the ablest of these my necessary
+helpers sling their hammocks in your fleet. You have crippled the
+printing of my Bible and the brewing of my Beer, and I can bear no more.
+Protect me from my arch-enemy the foreigner if you must and will, but
+not, my Lords Commissioners, by such monstrous personal methods as
+these." "Your servant!" said Admiralty, obsequious before the only power
+it feared--"your servant to command!" and straightway set about finding
+a remedy for the evils Trade complained of.
+
+Now, to attain this end, so desirable if Trade were to be placated, it
+was necessary to define with precision either whom the gang might take,
+or whom it might not take; and here Admiralty, though notoriously a body
+without a brain, achieved a stroke of genius, for it brought down both
+birds with a single stone. Postulating first of all the old _lex sine
+lege_ fiction that every native-born Briton and every British male
+subject born abroad was legally pressable, it laid it down as a logical
+sequence that no man, whatever his vocation or station in life,
+was lawfully exempt; that exemption was in consequence an official
+indulgence and not a right; and that apart from such indulgence every
+man, unless idiotic, blind, lame, maimed or otherwise physically unfit,
+was not only liable to be pressed, but could be legally pressed for
+the king's service at sea. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law
+Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 26; and _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+581--Admiral Berkeley, 14 Feb. 1805, well express the official view.]
+Having thus cleared the ground root and branch, Admiralty magnanimously
+proceeded to frame a category of persons whom, as an act of grace and a
+concession to Trade, it was willing to protect from assault and capture
+by its emissary the press-gang.
+
+These exemptions from the wholesale incidence of the impress were not
+granted all at once. Embodied from time to time in Acts of Parliament
+and so-called acts of official grace--slowly and painfully wrung from a
+reluctant Admiralty by the persistent demands and ever-growing power of
+Trade--they spread themselves over the entire century of struggle for
+the mastery of the sea, from which they were a reaction, and, touching
+the lives of the common people in a hundred and one intimate points and
+interests, culminated at length in the abolition of that most odious
+system of oppression from which they had sprung, and in a charter
+of liberties before which the famous charter of King John sinks into
+insignificance.
+
+ [Illustration: THE PRESS-GANG SEIZING A VICTIM.]
+
+As a matter of policy the foreigner had first place in the list of
+exemptions. He could volunteer if he chose, [Footnote: Strenuous efforts
+were made in 1709 to induce the "Poor Palatines"--seven thousand of them
+encamped at Blackheath, and two thousand in Sir John Parson's brewhouse
+at Camberwell--to enter for the navy. But the "thing was New to them to
+go aboard a Man of Warr," so they declined the invitation, "having the
+Notion of being sent to Carolina."--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1437--Letters
+of Capt. Aston.] but he must not be pressed. [Footnote: 13 George II.
+cap. 17.] To deprive him of his right in this respect was to invite
+unpleasant diplomatic complications, of which England had already
+too many on her hands. Trade, too, looked upon the foreigner as her
+perquisite, and Trade must be indulged. Moreover, he fostered mutiny in
+the fleet, where he was prone to "fly in the face" of authority and to
+refuse to work, much less fight, for an alien people. If, however, he
+served on board British merchant ships for two years, or if he married
+in England, he at once lost caste, since he then became a naturalised
+British subject and was liable to have even his honeymoon curtailed by
+a visit from the press-gang. Such, in fact, was the fate of one William
+Castle of Bristol in 1806. Pressed there in that year on his return
+from the West Indies, he was discharged as a person of alien birth; but
+having immediately afterwards committed the indiscretion of taking a
+Bristol woman to wife, he was again pressed, this time within three
+weeks of his wedding-day, and kept by express order of Admiralty.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1537--Capt. Barker, 23 July 1806.]
+
+For some years after the passing of the Act exempting the foreigner,
+his rights appear to have been generally, though by no means universally
+respected. "Discharge him if not married or settled in England," was the
+usual order when he chanced to be taken by the gang. With the turn of
+the century, however, a reaction set in. Pressed men claiming to be
+of alien birth were thenceforth only liberated "if unfit for service."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2733--Capt. Young, 11 March 1756,
+endorsement, and numerous instances.] For this untoward change the
+foreigner could blame none but himself. When taxed with having an
+English wife, he could seldom or never be induced to admit the soft
+impeachment. Consequently, whenever he was taken by the gang he was
+assumed, in the absence of proof to the contrary, to have committed
+the fatal act of naturalisation. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+581--Admiral Phillip, 26 Feb. 1805.] Alien seamen in distress through
+shipwreck or other accidental causes, formed a humane exception to this
+unwritten law.
+
+The negro was never reckoned an alien. Looked upon as a proprietary
+subject of the Crown, and having no one in particular to speak up for
+or defend him, he "shared the same fate as the free-born white man."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 482--Admiral Lord Colvill, 29 Oct.
+1762.] Many blacks, picked up in the West Indies or on the American
+coast "without hurting commerce," were to be found on board our ships
+of war, where, when not incapacitated by climatic conditions, they
+made active, alert seamen and "generally imagined themselves free."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 585--Admiral Donnelly, 22 Feb. 1815.]
+Their point of view, poor fellows, was doubtless a strictly comparative
+one.
+
+Theoretically exempt by virtue of his calling, whatever that might be,
+the landsman was in reality scarcely less marked down by the gang than
+his unfortunate brother the seafaring man; for notwithstanding all its
+professions to the contrary, Admiralty could not afford to ignore
+the potentialities of the reserve the landsman represented. Hence no
+occupation, no property qualification, could or did protect him. As
+early as 1705 old Justice, in his treatise on sea law, deplores bitterly
+the "barbarous custom of pressing promiscuously landsmen and seamen,"
+and declares that the gang, in its purblind zeal, "hurried away
+tradesmen from their houses, 'prentices and journeymen from their
+masters' shops, and even housekeepers (householders) too." By 1744
+the practice had become confirmed. In that year Capt. Innes, of His
+Majesty's armed sloop the _Hind_, applied to the Lords Commissioners for
+"Twenty Landsmen from Twenty to Twenty-five years of Age." The Admiralty
+order, "Let the Regulating Captains send them as he desires," [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1983--Capt. Innes, 3 May 1744, and endorsement.]
+leaves no room for doubt as to the class of men provided. They were
+pressed men, not volunteers.
+
+Nor is this a solitary instance of a practice that was rapidly growing
+to large proportions. Many a landsman, in the years that followed,
+shared the fate of the Irish "country farmer" who went into Waterford
+to sell his corn, and was there pressed and sent on board the tender; of
+James Whitefoot, the Bristol glover, "a timid, unformed young man, the
+comfort and support of his parents," who, although he had "never seen
+a ship in his life," was yet pressed whilst "passing to follow his
+business," which knew him no more; and of Winstanley, the London
+butcher, who served for upwards of sixteen years as a pressed man.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1501--Capt. Bligh, 16 May 1781.
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1531--Duchess of Gordon, 14 Feb. 1804. _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 584--Humble Petition of Betsey Winstanley, 2 Sept. 1814.]
+Wilkes' historic barber would have entered upon the same enforced career
+had not that astute Alderman discovered, to the astonishment of the
+nation at large, that a warrant which authorised the pressing of seamen
+did not necessarily authorise the pressing of a city tonsor.
+
+Amongst landsmen the harvester, as a worker of vital utility to the
+country, enjoyed a degree of exemption accorded to few. Impress officers
+had particular instructions concerning him. They were to delete him from
+the category of those who might be taken. Armed with a certificate from
+the minister and churchwardens of his parish, this migratory farm-hand,
+provided always he were not a sailor masquerading in that disguise,
+could traverse the length and breadth of the land to all intents and
+purposes a free man. To him, as well as to the grower of corn who
+depended so largely upon his aid in getting his crop, the concession
+proved an inestimable boon. There were violations of the harvester's
+status, it is true; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Memorial of
+Sir William Oglander, Bart., July 1796.] but these were too infrequent
+to affect seriously the industry he represented.
+
+So far as the press was concerned, the harvester was better off than the
+gentleman, for while the former could dress as he pleased, the latter
+was often obliged to dress as he could, and in this lay an element of
+danger. So long as his clothes were as good as the blood he boasted, and
+he wore them with an aplomb suggestive of position and influence, the
+gentleman was safe; but let his pretensions to gentility lie more in the
+past than in the suit on his back, and woe betide him! In spite of his
+protestations the gang took him, and he was lucky indeed if, like the
+gentleman who narrates his experience in the _Review_ for the both of
+February 1706, he was able to convince his captors that he was foreign
+born by "talking Latin and Greek."
+
+To the people at large, whether landsmen or seafarers, the Act exempting
+from the press every male under eighteen and over fifty-five years of
+age would have brought a sorely needed relief had not Admiralty been a
+past-master in the subtle art of outwitting the law. In this instance
+a simple regulation did the trick. Every man or boy who claimed the
+benefit of the age-limit when pressed, was required to prove his claim
+ere he could obtain his discharge. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7.
+300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 43: "It is incumbent on those
+who claim to be exempted to prove the facts."] The impossibility of any
+general compliance with such a demand on the part of persons often as
+ignorant of birth certificates as they were of the sea, practically
+wiped the exemption off the slate.
+
+In the eyes of the Regulating Captain no man was older than he looked,
+no lad as young as he avowed. Hence thousands of pressed men over
+fifty-five, who did not look the age they could not prove, figured on
+the books of the fleet with boys whose precocity of appearance gave
+the lie to their assertions. George Stephens, son of a clerk in the
+Transport Office, suffered impressment when barely thirteen; and the son
+of a corporal in Lord Elkinton's regiment, one Alexander M'Donald,
+was listed in the same manner while still "under the age of twelve."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 583--Vice-Admiral Hunter, 10 May
+1813. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1503--Capt. Butchart, 22 Jan. 1782, and
+enclosure.] The gang did not pause by the way to discuss such questions.
+
+Apprentices fell into a double category--those bound to the sea, those
+apprenticed on land. Nominally, the sea apprentice was protected from
+the impress for a term of three years from the date of his indentures,
+provided he had not used the sea before; [Footnote: 2 & 3 Anne, cap. 6,
+re-affirmed 13 George II. cap. 17.] while the land apprentice enjoyed
+immunity under the minimum age-limit of eighteen years. The proviso in
+the first case, however, left open a loop-hole the impress officer was
+never slow to take advantage of; and the minimum age-limit, as we have
+just seen, had little if any existence in fact. Apprentices pressed
+after the three years' exemption had expired were never given up, nor
+could their masters successfully claim them in law. They dropped like
+ripe fruit into the lap of Admiralty. On the other hand, apprentices
+pressed within the three years' exemption period were generally
+discharged, for if they were not, they could be freed by a writ of
+Habeas Corpus, or else the masters could maintain an action for damages
+against the Admiralty. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law
+Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 25.] 'Prentices who "eloped" or ran
+away from their masters, and then entered voluntarily, could not be
+reclaimed by any known process at law if they were over eighteen years
+of age. On the whole, the position of the apprentice, whether by land or
+sea, was highly anomalous and uncertain. Often taken by the gang in the
+hurry of visiting a ship, or in the scurry of a hot press on shore, he
+was in effect the shuttlecock of the service, to-day singing merrily
+at his capstan or bench, to-morrow bewailing his hard fate on board a
+man-o'-war.
+
+When it came to the exemption of seamen, Admiralty found itself on the
+horns of a dilemma. Both the Navy and the merchant service depended in a
+very large degree upon the seaman who knew the ropes--who could take his
+turn at the wheel, scud aloft without going through the lubber-hole, and
+act promptly and sailorly in emergency. To take wholesale such men
+as these, while it would enormously enhance the effectiveness of His
+Majesty's ships of war, must inevitably cripple sea-borne trade. It was
+therefore necessary, for the well-being of both services, to discover
+the golden mean. According to statute law [Footnote: 13 George II. cap.
+17.] every person using the sea, of what age soever he might be, was
+exempt from the impress for two years from the time of his first making
+the venture. The concession did not greatly improve the situation from
+a trade point of view. It merely touched the fringe of the problem, and
+Trade was insistent.
+
+A further concession was accordingly made. All masters, mates,
+boatswains and carpenters of vessels of fifty tons and upwards were
+exempted from the impress on condition of their going before a Justice
+of the Peace and making oath to their several qualifications. This
+affidavit, coupled with a succinct description of the deponent,
+constituted the holder's "protection" and shielded him, or was supposed
+to shield him, from molestation by the gang. Masters and mates of
+colliers, and of vessels laid up for the winter, came under this head;
+but masters or mates of vessels detected in running dutiable goods, or
+caught harbouring deserters from the fleet, could be summarily dealt
+with notwithstanding their protections. The same fate befell the mate or
+apprentice who was lent by one ship to another.
+
+In addition to the executive of the vessel, as defined in the foregoing
+paragraph, it was of course necessary to extend protection to as many
+of her "hands", as were essential to her safe and efficient working. How
+many were really required for this purpose was, however, a moot point on
+which ship-masters and naval officers rarely saw eye to eye; and since
+the arbiter in all such disputes was the "quarter-deck gentlemen," the
+decision seldom if ever went in favour of the master.
+
+The importance of the coal trade won for colliers an early concession,
+which left no room for differences of opinion. Every vessel employed
+in that trade was entitled to carry one exempt able-bodied man for each
+hundred units of her registered tonnage, provided it did not exceed
+three hundred. The penalty for pressing such men was 10 Pounds for each
+man taken. [Footnote: 2 & 3 Anne, cap. 6.]
+
+On the coasts of Scotland commanders of warships whose carpenters had
+run or broken their leave, and who perhaps were left, like Capt. Gage of
+the _Otter_ sloop, "without so much as a Gimblett on board," [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1829-Capt. Gage, 29 Sept. 1742.] might press
+shipwrights from the yards on shore to fill the vacancy, and suffer no
+untoward consequences; but south of the Tweed this mode of collecting
+"chips" was viewed with disfavour. There, although ship-carpenters,
+sailmakers and men employed in rope-walks were by a stretch of the
+official imagination reckoned as persons using the sea, and although
+they were generally acknowledged to be no less indispensable to the
+complete economy of a ship than the able-bodied seaman, legal questions
+of an extremely embarrassing nature nevertheless cropped up when the
+scene of their activities underwent too sudden and violent a change.
+The pressing of such artificers consequently met with little official
+encouragement. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers'
+Opinions, 1778-83, No. 2.]
+
+Where the Admiralty scored, in the matter of ship protections, and
+scored heavily, was when the protected person went ashore. For when on
+shore the protected master, mate, boatswain, carpenter, apprentice
+or seaman no longer enjoyed protection unless he was there "on ship's
+duty." The rule was most rigorously, not to say arbitrarily, enforced.
+Thus at Plymouth, in the year 1746, a seaman who protested in broken
+English that he had come ashore to "look after his master's _sheep_" was
+pressed because the naval officer who met and questioned him "imagined
+sheep to have no affinity with a ship!" [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 2381--Capt. John Roberts, 11 July 1746. Capt. Roberts was a very
+downright individual, and years before the characteristic had got him
+into hot water. The occasion was when, in 1712, an Admiralty letter,
+addressed to him at Harwich and containing important instructions, by
+some mischance went astray and Roberts accused the Clerk of the Check of
+having appropriated it. The latter called him a liar, whereupon Roberts
+"gave him a slap in the face and bid him learn more manners." For this
+exhibition of temper he was superseded and kept on the half-pay list
+for some six years. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt. Brand, 8 March
+1711-12. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2378, section 11, Admiralty note.]
+
+Any mate who failed to register his name at the rendezvous, as soon as
+his ship arrived in port, did so at his peril. Without that formality he
+was "not entitled to liberty." So strict was the rule that when William
+Tassell, mate of the _Elizabeth_ ketch, was caught drinking in a Lynn
+alehouse one night at ten o'clock, after having obtained "leave to run
+about the town" until eight only, he was immediately pressed and
+kept, the Admiralty refusing to declare the act irregular. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1546--Capt. Bowyer, 25 July 1809, and enclosure.]
+
+In many ports it was customary for sailors to sleep ashore while
+their ships lay at the quay or at moorings. The proceeding was highly
+dangerous. No sailor ever courted sleep in such circumstances, even
+though armed with a "line from the master setting forth his business,"
+without grave risk of waking to find himself in the bilboes. The Mayor
+of Poole once refused to "back" press-warrants for local use unless
+protected men belonging to trading vessels of the port were granted the
+privilege of lodging ashore. "Certainly not!" retorted the Admiralty.
+"We cannot grant Poole an indulgence _that other towns do not enjoy_."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2485--Capt. Scott, 4 Jan. 1780, and
+endorsement.]
+
+In spite of the risk involved, the sailor slept ashore and--if he
+survived the night--tried to steal back to his ship in the grey of the
+morning. Now and then, by a run of luck, he made his offing in safety;
+but more frequently he met the fate of John White of Bristol, who was
+taken by the gang when only "about ninety yards from his vessel."
+
+The only exceptions to this stringent rule were certain classes of
+men engaged in the Greenland and South Seas whale fisheries. Skilled
+harpooners, linesmen and boat-steerers, on their return from a whaling
+cruise, could obtain from any Collector of Customs, for sufficient bond
+put in, a protection from the impress which no Admiralty regulation,
+however sweeping, could invalidate or override. Safeguarded by this
+document, they were at liberty to live and work ashore, or to sail in
+the coal trade, until such time as they should be required to proceed
+on another whaling voyage. If, however, they took service on board any
+vessel other than a collier, they forfeited their protections and could
+be "legally detained." [Footnote: 13 George II. cap. 28. _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 14 March 1756. _Admiralty Records_ 7.
+300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 42.]
+
+In one ironic respect the gang strongly resembled a boomerang. So
+thoroughly and impartially did it do its work that it recoiled upon
+those who used it. The evil was one of long standing. Pepys complained
+of it bitterly in his day, asserting that owing to its prevalence
+letters could neither be received nor sent, and that the departmental
+machinery for victualling and arming the fleet was like to be undone.
+With the growth of pressing the imposition was carried to absurd
+lengths. The crews of the impress tenders, engaged in conveying pressed
+men to the fleet, could not "proceed down" without falling victims to
+the very service they were employed in. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1486--Capt. Baird, 27 Feb. 1755, and numerous instances.] To check
+this egregious robbing of Peter to pay Paul, both the Navy Board and the
+Government were obliged to "protect" their own sea-going hirelings, and
+even then the protections were not always effective.
+
+Between the extremes represented by the landsman who enjoyed nominal
+exemption and the seaman who enjoyed none, there existed a middle or
+amphibious class of persons who lived exclusively on neither land
+nor water, but habitually used both in the pursuit of their various
+callings. These were the wherry or watermen, the lightermen, bargemen,
+keelmen, trowmen and canal-boat dwellers frequenting mainly the inland
+waterways of the country.
+
+In the reign of Richard II. the jurisdiction of Admirals was denned as
+extending, in a certain particular, to the "main stream of great rivers
+nigh the sea." [Footnote: 15 Richard II. cap. 2.] Had the same line of
+demarcation been observed in the pressing of those whose occupations lay
+upon rivers, there would have been little cause for outcry or complaint.
+But the Admiralty, the successors of the ancient "Guardians of the Sea"
+whose powers were so clearly limited by the Ricardian statute, gradually
+extended the old-time jurisdiction until, for the purposes of the
+impress, it included all waterways, whether "nigh the sea" or inland,
+natural or artificial, whereon it was possible for craft to navigate.
+All persons working upon or habitually using such waterways were
+regarded as "using the sea," and later warrants expressly authorised the
+gangs to take as many of them as they should be able, not excepting even
+the ferryman. The extension was one of tremendous consequence, since
+it swept into the Navy thousands of men who, like the Ely and Cambridge
+bargemen, were "hardy, strong fellows, who never failed to make good
+seamen." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1486--Capt. Baird, 29 April
+1755.]
+
+Amongst these denizens of the country's waterways the position of the
+Thames wherryman was peculiar in that from very early times he had been
+exempt from the ordinary incidence of the press on condition of
+his periodically supplying from his own numbers a certain quota of
+able-bodied men for the use of the fleet. The rule applied to all
+watermen using the river between Gravesend and Windsor, and members
+of the fraternity who "withdrew and hid themselves" at the time of the
+making of such levies, were liable to be imprisoned for two years and
+"banished any more to row for a year and a day." [Footnote: 2 & 3 Philip
+and Mary, cap. 16.] The exemption he otherwise enjoyed appears to have
+conduced not a little to the waterman's proverbial joviality. As a
+youth he spent his leisure in "dancing and carolling," thus earning the
+familiar sobriquet of "the jolly young waterman." Even so, his tenure of
+happiness was anything but secure. With the naval officer and the gang
+he was no favourite, and few opportunities of dashing his happiness were
+allowed to pass unimproved. In the person of John Golden, however,
+they caught a Tartar. To the dismay of the Admiralty and the officer
+responsible for pressing him, he proved to be one of my Lord Mayor's
+bargemen. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2733-Capt. Young, 7 March
+1756.]
+
+Apart from the watermen of the Thames, the purchase of immunity from the
+press by periodic levies met with little favour, and though the levy was
+in many cases reluctantly adopted, it was only because it entailed the
+lesser of two evils. The basis of such levies varied from one man in ten
+to one in five--a percentage which the Admiralty considered a "matter
+of no distress"; and the penalty for refusing to entertain them was
+wholesale pressing.
+
+The Tyne keelmen, while ostensibly consenting to buy immunity on this
+basis, seldom levied the quota upon themselves. By offering bounties
+they drew the price of their freedom to work in the keels from outside
+sources. Lord Thurlow confessed that he did not know what "working in
+the keels" meant. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 299--Law Officers'
+Opinions, 1752-77, No. 70.] There were' few in the fleet who could have
+enlightened him of their own experience. The keelmen kept their ranks as
+far as possible intact. In this they were materially aided by the Mayor
+and Corporation of Newcastle, who held a "Grand Protection" of the
+Admiralty, and in return for this exceptional mark of their Lordships'
+favour did all they could to further the pressing of persons less
+essential to the trade of the town and river than were their own
+keelmen.
+
+On the rivers Severn and Wye there was plying in 1806 a flotilla of
+ninety-eight trows, ranging in capacity from sixty to one hundred and
+thirty tons, and employing five hundred and eighty-eight men, of whom
+practically all enjoyed exemption from the press. It being a time of
+exceptional stress for men, the Admiralty considered this proportion
+excessive, and Capt. Barker, at that time regulating the press at
+Bristol, was ordered to negotiate terms. He proposed a contribution of
+trowmen on the basis of one in every ten, coupling the suggestion with a
+thinly veiled threat that if it were not complied with he would set
+his gangs to work and take all he could get. The Association of Severn
+Traders, finding themselves thus placed between the devil and the deep
+sea, agreed to the proposal with a reluctance they in vain endeavoured
+to hide under ardent protestations of loyalty. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1537--Capt. Barker, 24 April and 9 May 1806, and enclosure.]
+
+In the three hundred "flats" engaged in carrying salt, coals and other
+commodities between Nantwich and Liverpool there were employed, in
+1795, some nine hundred men who had up to that time largely escaped
+the attentions of the gang. In that year, however, an arrangement was
+entered into, under duress of the usual threat, to the effect that they
+should contribute one man in six, or at the least one man in nine,
+in return for exemption to be granted to the remainder. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 578--Admiral Pringle, Report on Rendezvous, 2
+April 1795.]
+
+Turf-boats plying on the Blackwater and the Shannon seem to have enjoyed
+no special concessions. The men working them were pressed when-ever they
+could be laid hold of, and if they were not always kept, their discharge
+was due to reasons of physical unfitness rather than to any acknowledged
+right to labour unmolested. Ireland's contribution to the fleet, apart
+from the notoriously disaffected, was of too much consequence to be
+played with; for the Irishman was essentially a good-natured soul,
+and when his native indolence and slowness of movement had been duly
+corrected by a judicious use of the rattan and the rope's-end, his
+services were highly esteemed in His Majesty's ships of war.
+
+In the category of exemptions the fisheries occupied a place entirely
+their own. They were carefully fostered, but indifferently protected.
+
+Previous to the year 1729 the most important concession granted to those
+engaged in the taking of fish was the establishing of two extra "Fishe
+Dayes" in the week. The provision was embodied in a statute of 1563,
+whereby the people were required, under a penalty of, 3 Pounds for each
+omission, "or els three monethes close Imprisonment without Baile or
+Maineprise," to eat fish, to the total exclusion of meat, on Fridays and
+Saturdays, and to content themselves with "one dish of flesh to three
+dishes of fish" on Wednesdays. [Footnote: 5 Elizabeth, cap. 5.] The
+enactment had no religious significance whatever; but in order to avoid
+any suspicion of Popish tendencies it was deemed advisable, by those
+responsible for the measure, to saddle it with a rider to the effect
+that all persons teaching, preaching or proclaiming the eating of fish,
+as enjoined by the Act, to be of "necessitee for the saving of the soule
+of man," should be punished as "spreaders of fause newes." The true
+significance of the measure lay in this. The abolition of Romish
+fast-days had resulted, since the Reformation, in an enormous falling
+off in the consumption of fish, and this decrease had in turn played
+havoc with the fisheries. Now the fisheries were in reality the national
+incubator for seamen, and Cecil, Elizabeth's astute Secretary of
+State, perceiving in their decadence a grave menace to the manning of
+prospective fleets, determined, for that reason if for no other, to
+reanimate the dying industry. The Act in question was the practical
+outcome of his deliberations. [Footnote: _State Papers Domestic_,
+Elizabeth, vol. xxvii. Nos. 71 and 72, comprising Cecil's original
+memoranda.]
+
+An enactment which combined so happily the interests of the fisher
+classes with those of national defence could not but be productive
+of far-reaching consequences. The fishing industry not only throve
+exceedingly because of it, it in time became, as Cecil clearly foresaw
+it would become, a nursery for seamen and a feeder of the fleet as
+unrivalled for the excellence of its material as it was inexhaustible in
+its resources. Its prosperity was in fact its curse. Few exemptions were
+granted it. Adventurers after whale and cod had special concessions,
+suited to the peculiar conditions of their calling; but with these
+exceptions craft of every description employed in the taking or the
+carrying of fish, for a very protracted period enjoyed only such
+exemptions as were grudgingly extended to sea-going craft in general.
+The source of supply represented by the leviathan industry was too
+valuable to be lightly restricted.
+
+On the other hand, it was too important to be lightly depleted.
+Therefore under Cecil's Act establishing extra "Fishe Dayes," no
+fisherman "using or haunting the sea" could be pressed off-hand to serve
+in the Queen's Navy. The "taker," as the press-master was at that time
+called, was obliged to carry his warrant to the Justices inhabiting
+the place or places where it was proposed that the fishermen should be
+pressed, and of these Justices any two were empowered to "choose
+out such nomber of hable men" as the warrant specified. In this way
+originated the "backing" or endorsing of warrants by the civil power. At
+first obligatory only as regards the pressing of fishermen, it came to
+be regarded in time as an essential preliminary to all pressing done on
+land.
+
+No further provision of a special nature would appear to have been made
+for the protecting of fisher folk from the press until the year 1729,
+when an exemption was granted which covered the master, one apprentice,
+one seaman and one landsman for each vessel. [Footnote: 2 George n. cap.
+15.] In 1801, however, a sweeping change was inaugurated. A statute
+of that date provided that no person engaged in the taking, curing or
+selling of fish should be impressed. [Footnote: 41 George in. cap. 21.]
+The exemption came too late to prove substantially beneficial to an
+industry which had suffered incalculable injury from the then recent
+wars. The press-gang was already nearing its last days.
+
+Prior to the Act of 1801 persons whose sole occupation was "to
+pick oysters and mussels at low water" were accounted fishermen and
+habitually pressed as "using the sea."
+
+The position of the smaller fry of fishermen is thrown into vivid relief
+by an official communique of 1709 as opposed to an incident of later
+date. "These poor people," runs the note, which was addressed to a naval
+commander who had pressed a fisherman out of a boat of less than three
+tons, "have been always protected for the support of their indigent
+families, and therefore they must not Be taken into the service
+unless there is a pressing occasion, _and then they will be all forced
+thereinto_." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.2377--Capt. Robinson, 4
+Feb. 1708-9, and endorsement.] Captain Boscawen, writing from the Nore
+in 1745, supplies the antithesis. He had been instructed to procure half
+a dozen fishing smacks, each of not less than sixty tons burden, for
+transport purposes. None were to be had. "The reason the fishermen give
+for not employing vessels of that size," he states, in explanation of
+the fact, "is that all the young men are pressed, and that the old men
+and boys are not able to work them." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1481--Capt. Boscawen, 23 Dec. 1745.]
+
+Conditions such as these in time taught the fisherman wisdom, and he
+awoke to the fact that exemption for a consideration, as in the case of
+workers on rivers and canals, was preferable to paying through the
+nose. The Admiralty was never averse from driving a bargain of this
+description. It saved much distress, much bad blood, much good money.
+In this way Worthing fishermen bought exemption in 1780. The fishery of
+that town was then in its infancy, the people engaged in it "very poor
+and needy." They employed only sixteen boats. Yet they found it cheaper
+to contribute five men to the Navy, at a cost of 40 Pounds in
+bounties, than to entertain the gang. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1446--Capt. Alms, 2 Jan. 1780.]
+
+The Orkney fisherman bought his freedom, both on his fishing-grounds and
+when carrying his catch to market, on similar terms; but being a person
+of frugal turn of mind, he gradually developed the habit of withholding
+his stipulated quota. The unexpected arrival in his midst of an armed
+smack, followed by a spell of vigorous pressing, taught him that to
+be penny-wise is sometimes to be pound-foolish. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 2740--Lieut. Abbs, 11 May 1798, and Admiralty note.]
+
+On the Scottish coasts fishermen and ferrymen--the latter a numerous
+class on that deeply indented seaboard--offered up one man in every five
+or six on the altar of protection. The sacrifice distressed them less
+than indiscriminate pressing. A prosperous people, they chose out those
+of their number who could best be spared, supporting the families thus
+left destitute by common subscription. Buss fishermen, who followed
+the migratory herring; from fishing-ground to fishing-ground, were
+in another category. Their contribution, when on the Scottish coast,
+figured out at a man per buss, but as they were for some inscrutable
+reason called upon to pay similar tribute on other parts of the coast,
+they cannot be said to have escaped any too lightly. Neither did the
+four hundred fishing-boats composing the Isle of Man fleet. Their crews
+were obliged to surrender one man in every seven. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 579--Admiral Pringle, Report on Rendezvous, 2 April 1795;
+Admiral Philip, Report on Rendezvous, 1 Aug. 1801.]
+
+Opinions as to the value of material drawn from these sources differed
+widely. The buss fisherman was on all hands acknowledged to be a
+seasoned sailor; but when it came to those employed in smaller craft, it
+was held that heaving at the capstan for a matter of only six or seven
+weeks in the year could never convert raw lads into useful seamen, even
+though they continued that healthful form of exercise all their lives.
+This was the view entertained by the masters of fishing-smacks smarting
+from loss of "hands." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1497--Thomas
+Hurry, master, 3 March 1777.]
+
+Admiralty saw things in quite another light. "What you admit," said
+their Lordships, expressing the counter-view, "it is our business to
+prevent. We will therefore take these lads, who are admittedly of no
+service to you save for hauling in your nets or getting your anchors,
+and will make of them what you, on your own showing, can never
+make--able seamen.": The argument, backed as it was by the strong arm of
+the press-gang, was unanswerable.
+
+The fact that the fisherman passed much of his time on shore did not
+free him from the press any more than it freed the waterman, or the
+worker in keel or trow. In his main vocation he "used the sea," and that
+was enough. For the use of the sea was the rule and standard by which
+every man's liability to the press was supposed to be measured and
+determined.
+
+Except in the case of masters, mates and apprentices to the sea, whose
+affidavits or indentures constituted their respective safeguards against
+the press, every person exempt from that infliction, whether by statute
+law or Admiralty indulgence, was required to have in his possession an
+official voucher setting forth the fact and ground of his exemption.
+This document was ironically termed his "protection."
+
+Admiralty protections were issued under the hand of the Lord High
+Admiral; ordinary protections, by departments and persons who possessed
+either delegated or vested powers of issue. Thus each Trinity House
+protected its own pilots; the Customs protected whale fishermen and
+apprentices to the sea; impress officers protected seamen temporarily
+lent to ships in lieu of men taken out of them by the gangs. Some
+protections were issued for a limited period and lapsed when that period
+expired; others were of perpetual "force," unless invalidated by some
+irregular acton the part of the holder. No protection was good unless
+it bore a minute description of the person to whom it applied, and all
+protections had to be carried on the person and produced upon demand.
+Thomas Moverty was pressed out of a wherry in the Thames owing to his
+having changed his clothes and left his protection at home; and
+John Scott of Mistley, in Suffolk, was taken whilst working in his
+shirtsleeves, though his protection lay in the pocket of his jacket,
+only a few yards away. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1479--Capt.
+Bridges, 11 August 1743. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1531--Capt. Ballard, 15
+March 1804, and enclosure.]
+
+The most trifling irregularity in the protection itself, or the
+slightest discrepancy between the personal appearance of the bearer and
+the written description of him, was enough to convert the protection
+into so much waste paper and the bearer into a naval seaman.
+North-country apprentices, whose indentures bore a 14s. stamp in
+accordance with Scottish law, were pressed because that document did not
+bear a 15s. stamp according to English law. A seaman was in one instance
+described in his protection as "smooth-faced," that is, beardless. The
+impress officer scrutinised him closely. "Aha!" said he, "you are not
+smooth-faced. You are pockmarked"; and he pressed the poor fellow for
+that reason.
+
+To be over-protected was as bad as having no protection at all.
+Thomas Letting, a collier's man, and John Anthony of the merchant ship
+_Providence_, learnt this fact to their cost when they were taken out
+of their respective ships for having each two protections. In short,
+the slightest pretext served. If a protection had but a few more days to
+run; if the name, date, place or other essential particular showed
+signs of "coaxing," that is, of having been "on purpose rubbed out" or
+altered; if a man's description did not figure in his protection, or
+if it figured on the back instead of in the margin, or in the margin
+instead of on the back; if his face wore a ruddy rather than a pale
+look, if his hair were red when it ought to have been brown, if he
+proved to be "tall and remarkable thin" when he should have been
+middle-sized and thick-set--in any of these, as in a hundred and one
+similar cases, the bearer of the protection paid the penalty for what
+the impress officer regarded as a "hoodwinking attempt" to cheat the
+King's service of an eligible man.
+
+Notwithstanding the fact that the impress officer regarded every
+pressable man as a person who made it his chief business in life
+to defraud the Navy of his services on the "miserable plea of a
+protection," it by no means followed that his zeal in pressing him
+on that account had in every case the countenance or met with the
+unqualified approval of the Admiralty. Thousands of men and boys taken
+in this irresponsible fashion obtained their discharge, though with
+more or less difficulty and delay, when the facts of the case were
+laid before the naval authorities; and in general it may be said, that
+although the Lords Commissioners were only too ready to wink at any
+colourable excuse whereby another physical unit might be added to the
+fleet, they nevertheless laid it down as a rule, inviolable at least
+on paper, "never to press any man from protections," since it brought
+"great trouble and clamour upon them." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+3. 50--Admiralty Minutes, 26 Feb. 1744-5.] To assert that the rule was
+generally obeyed would be to turn the truth into a lie. On the contrary,
+it was almost universally disregarded. Both officers and gangs traversed
+it on every possible occasion, leaving the justice or injustice of the
+act to the arbitrament of the higher tribunal. Zeal for the service was
+no crime, and to release a man was always so much easier than to catch
+him.
+
+"Pressing from protections," as the phrase ran in the service, did
+not therefore mean that the Admiralty over-rode its own protections
+at pleasure. It merely signified that on occasion more than ordinarily
+stringent measures were adopted for the holding-up and examining of
+all protected persons, or of as many of them as could be got at by the
+gangs, to the end that all false or fraudulent vouchers might be weeded
+out and the dishonest bearers of them consigned to another place. And
+yet there were times when "pressing from protections" had its plenary
+significance too.
+
+Lovers of prints who are familiar with Hogarth's "Stage Coach; or,
+a Country Inn Yard," date 1747, will readily recall the two
+"outsides"--the one a down-in-the-mouth soldier, the other a jolly
+Jack-tar on whose bundle may be read the word "Centurion." Now the
+_Centurion_ was Anson's flag-ship, and in this print Hogarth has
+incidentally recorded the fact that her crew, on their return from that
+famous voyage round the world, were awarded life-protections from the
+press. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Capt. Anson, 24 July
+1744.]
+
+The life-protection was an indulgence extended to few. Samuel Davidson
+of Newcastle, sailor, aged fifty, who had "served for nine years during
+the late wars," in 1777 made bold to plead that fact as a reason why he
+should be freed from the attentions of the press-gang for the rest of
+his life. But the Lords Commissioners refused to admit the plea "unless
+he was in a position not inferior to that of chief mate." On the other
+hand, Henry Love of Hastings, who had merely served in a single Dutch
+expedition, but had the promise of Pitt and Dundas that both he and
+those who volunteered with him should never be pressed, was immediately
+discharged when that calamity befell him. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1449--Capt. Columbine, 21 July 1800.]
+
+The granting of extraordinary protections was thus something entirely
+erratic and not to be counted upon. Captain Balchen in 1708 had special
+protections for ten of his ship's company whom he desired to bring to
+London as witnesses in a suit then pending against him; but the building
+of the three earlier Eddystone lighthouses was allowed to be seriously
+impeded by the pressing of the unprotected workmen when on shore at
+Plymouth, and the keepers of the first erection of that name were once
+carried off bag and baggage by the gang.
+
+Smeaton, who built the third Eddystone, protected his men by means of
+silver badges, and his storeboat enjoyed similar immunity--presumably
+with the consent of Admiralty--by reason of a picture of the lighthouse
+painted on her sail. Other great constructors, as well as rich
+mercantile firms, bought protection at a price. They supplied a
+stipulated number of men for the fleet, and found the arrangement a
+highly convenient one for ridding themselves of those who were useless
+to them or had incurred their displeasure. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 583--Admiral Thornborough, 30 Nov. 1813.]
+
+Private protections, of which great numbers saw the light, were in no
+case worth the paper they were written on. Joseph Bettesworth of Ryde,
+Isle of Wight, Attorney-at-Law and Lord of the Manor of Ashey and Ryde,
+by virtue of an ancient privilege pertaining to that Manor and confirmed
+by royal Letters Patent, in 1790 protected some twenty seafaring men to
+work his "Antient Ferry or Passage for the Wafting of Passengers to and
+from Ride, Portsmouth and Gosport, in a smack of about 14 tons, and a
+wherry." The regulating captain at the last-named place asked what he
+should do about it. "Press every man as soon as possible," replied their
+Lordships. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1506--Capt. John Bligh,
+June 1790, and enclosure.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+WHAT THE GANG DID AFLOAT.
+
+
+
+"A man we want, and a man we must have," was the naval cry of the
+century. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1531--Deposition of John
+Swinburn, 28 July 1804.]
+
+Nowhere was the cry so loud or so insistent as on the sea, where every
+ship of war added to its volume. In times of peace, when the demand
+for men was gauged by those every-day factors, sickness, death and
+desertion, it dwindled, if it did not altogether die away; but given
+a war-cloud on the near horizon and the cry for men swelled, as
+many-voiced as there were keels in the fleet, to a sudden clamour of
+formidable proportions--a clamour that only the most strenuous and
+unremitting exertions could in any measure appease.
+
+Every navy is argus-eyed, and in crises such as these, when the
+very existence of the nation was perhaps at stake, it was first and
+principally towards the crews of the country's merchant ships that the
+eyes of the Navy were directed; for, shipboard life and shipboard duty
+being largely identical in both services, no elaborate training
+was required to convert the merchant sailor into a first-rate
+man-o'-war's-man. The ships of both services were sailing ships. Both,
+as a rule, went armed. Hence, not only was the merchant sailor an able
+seaman, he was also trained in the handling of great guns, and in the
+use of the cutlass, the musket and the boarding-pike. In a word, he was
+that most valuable of all assets to a people seeking to dominate the
+sea--a man-o'-war's-man ready-made, needing only to be called in in
+order to become immediately effective.
+
+The problem was how to catch him--how to take him fresh and vigorous
+from his deep-sea voyaging--how to enroll him in the King's Navy ere he
+got ashore with a pocketful of money and relaxed his hardened muscles in
+the uncontrolled debauchery he was so partial to after long abstention.
+
+A device of the simplest yet of the most elaborate description met the
+difficulty. It was based upon the fact that to take the sailor afloat
+was a much easier piece of strategy than to ferret him out of his
+hiding-places after he got ashore. The impress trap was therefore set in
+such a way as to catch him before he reached the land.
+
+With infinite ingenuity and foresight sea-gangs were picketed from
+harbour to harbour, from headland to headland, until they formed an
+almost unbroken chain around the coasts and guarded the sailor's every
+point of accustomed approach from overseas: This was the outer cordon
+of the system, the beginning of the gauntlet the returning sailor had to
+run, and he was a smart seaman indeed who could successfully negotiate
+the uncharted rocks and shoals with which the coast was everywhere
+strewn in his despite.
+
+The composition of this chain of sea-gangs was mixed to a degree, yet
+singularly homogeneous.
+
+First of all, on its extreme outer confines, perhaps as far down Channel
+as the Scillies, or as far north as the thirteen-mile stretch of sea
+running between the Mull of Kintyre and the Irish coast, where the trade
+for Liverpool, Whitehaven, Dublin and the Clyde commonly came in, the
+homing sailor would suddenly descry, bearing down upon him under press
+of sail, the trim figure of one of His Majesty's frigates, or the clean,
+swift lines of an armed sloop. The meeting was no chance one. Both
+the frigate and the sloop were there by design, the former cruising
+to complete her own complement, the latter to complete that of some
+ship-of-the-line at Plymouth, Spithead or the Nore, to which she stood
+in the relation of tender.
+
+Tenders were vessels taken into the king's service "at the time of
+Impressing Seamen." Hired at certain rates per month, they continued in
+the service as long as they were required, often most unwillingly, and
+were principally employed in obtaining men for the king's ships or in
+matters relative thereto. In burden they varied from thirty or forty to
+one hundred tons, [Footnote: This was the maximum tonnage for which the
+Navy Board paid, but when trade was slack larger vessels could be had,
+and were as a matter of fact frequently employed, at the nominal tonnage
+rate.] the smaller craft hugging the coast and dropping in from port
+to port, the larger cruising far beyond shore limits. For deep-sea or
+trade-route cruising the smaller craft were of little use. No ship of
+force would bring-to for them.
+
+While press-warrants were supplied regularly to every warship, no matter
+what her rating, the supply of tenders was less general and much more
+erratic. It was only when occasion demanded it, and then only to ships
+of the first, second and third rate, that tenders were assigned for the
+purpose of bringing their crews up to full strength. The urgency of
+the occasion, the men to be "rose," the diplomacy of the commander
+determined the number. A tender to each ship was the rule, but however
+parsimonious the Navy Board might be on such occasions, a carefully
+worded appeal to its prejudices seldom failed to produce a second,
+or even a third attendant vessel. Boscawen once had recourse to this
+ingenious ruse in order to obtain tender number two. The Navy Board
+detested straggling seamen, so he suggested that, with several tenders
+lying idle in the Thames, his men might be far more profitably employed
+than in straggling about town. "Most reprehensible practice!" assented
+the Board, and placed a second vessel at his disposal without more ado.
+Lieut. Upton was immediately put in charge of her and ordered seawards.
+He returned within a week with twenty-seven men, pressed out of
+merchantmen in Margate Roads. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1478--Letters of Capt. Boscawen, July and August 1743.]
+
+The tender assigned to Boscawen on this occasion was the _Galloper_, an
+American-built vessel, "rigged in the manner the West Indians do
+their sloops." Her armament consisted of six 9-pounders and threescore
+small-arms, but as a sea-boat she belied her name, for she was
+hopelessly sluggish under sail, and the great depth of her waist, and
+her consequent liability to ship seas in rough weather, rendered her
+"very improper" for cruising in the Channel.
+
+For her company she had a master, a mate and six hands supplied by the
+owners, in addition to thirty-four seamen temporarily drafted into her
+from Boscawen's ship, the _Dreadnought_. It was the duty of the former
+to work the vessel, of the latter to do the pressing; but these
+duties were largely interchangeable. All were under the command of the
+lieutenant, who with forty-two men at his beck and call could organise,
+on a pinch, five gangs of formidable strength and yet leave sufficient
+hands, given fair weather, to mind the tender in their temporary
+absence. Tender's men were generally the flower of a ship's company,
+old hands of tried fidelity, equal to any emergency and reputedly proof
+against bribery, rum and petticoats. Yet the temptation to give duty the
+slip and enjoy the pleasures of town for a season sometimes proved too
+strong, even for them, and we read of one boat's-crew of eight, who,
+overcome in this way, were discovered after many days in a French
+prison. Instead of going pressing in the Downs, they had gone to
+Boulogne.
+
+On the commanders of His Majesty's ships the onus of raising men fell
+with intolerable insistence. Nelson's greatest pleasure in his promotion
+to Admiral's rank is said to have been derived from the fact that with
+it there came a blessed cessation to the scurvy business of pressing;
+and there were in the service few captains, whether before or after
+Nelson's day, who could not echo with hearty approval the sentiment of
+Capt. Brett of the _Roebuck_, when he said: "I can solemnly declare
+that the getting and taking care of my men has given me more trouble and
+uneasiness than all the rest of my duty." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1478--Capt. Brett, 27 Oct. 1742.]
+
+Commanders of smaller and less effective ships found themselves on the
+horns of a cruel dilemma did they dare to ask for tenders. Beg and
+pray as they would, these were rarely allowed them save as a special
+indulgence or a crying necessity. To most applications from this source
+the Admiralty opposed a front well calculated "to encourage the others."
+"If he has not men enough to proceed on service," ran its dictum, "their
+Lordships will lay up the ship." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1471--Capt. Boyle, 1 March 1715-6, endorsement, and numerous instances.]
+Faced with the summary loss of his command, their Lordships' high
+displeasure, and consequent inactivity and half-pay for an indefinite
+period, the captain whose complement was short, and who could obtain
+neither men nor tender from the constituted authority, had no option but
+to put to sea with such hands as he already bore and there beat up for
+others. This, with their Lordships' gracious permission, he accordingly
+did, thus adding another unit to the fleet of armed vessels already
+prowling the Narrow Seas on a similar errand. It can be readily imagined
+that such commanders were not out for pleasure.
+
+To the great and incessantly active flotilla got together in this way,
+the regulating captains on shore contributed a further large contingent.
+Every seaport of consequence had its rendezvous, every seaport
+rendezvous its amphibious gang or gangs who ranged the adjacent coast
+for many leagues in swift bottoms whose character and mission often
+remained wholly unsuspected until some skilful manoeuvre laid them
+aboard their intended victim and brought the gang swarming over her
+decks, armed to the teeth and resolute to press her crew.
+
+We have now three classes of vessels, of varying build, rig, tonnage and
+armament, engaged in a common endeavour to intercept and take the homing
+sailor. Let us next see how they were disposed upon the coast.
+
+Tenders from Greenwich and Blackwall ransacked the Thames below bridge
+as far as Blackstakes in the river Medway, the Nore and the Swin
+channel. Tenders from Margate, Ramsgate, Deal and Dover watched the
+lower Thames estuary, swept the Downs, and kept a sharp lookout along
+the coasts of Kent and Sussex, of Essex and of Norfolk. To these tenders
+from Lynn dipped their colours off Wells-on-Sea or Cromer, whence
+they bore away for the mouth of Humber, where Hull tenders took up the
+running till met by those belonging to Sunderland, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
+and Shields, which in turn joined up the cordon with others hailing
+from Leith and the Firth of Forth. Northward of the Forth, away to the
+extreme Orkneys, and all down the west coast of Scotland through the two
+Minches and amongst the Hebrides, specially armed sloops from Leith and
+Greenock made periodic cruises. Greenock tenders, again, united with
+tenders from Belfast and Whitehaven in a lurking watch for ships making
+home ports by way of the North Channel; or circled the Isle of Man, ran
+thence across to Morecambe Bay, and so down the Lancashire coast the
+length of Formby Head, where the Mersey tenders, alert for the Jamaica
+trade, relieved them of their vigil. Dublin tenders guarded St. George's
+Channel, aided by others from Milford Haven and Haverfordwest. Bristol
+tenders cruised the channel of that names keeping a sharp eye on Lundy
+Island and the Holmes, where shipmasters were wont to play them tricks
+if they were not watchful. Falmouth and Plymouth tenders guarded the
+coast from Land's End to Portland Bill, Portsmouth tenders from Portland
+Bill to Beachy Head, and Folkestone and Dover tenders from Beachy Head
+to the North Foreland, thus completing the encircling chain. Nor was
+Ireland forgotten in the general sea-rummage. As a converging point for
+the great overseas trade-routes it was of prime importance, and tenders
+hailing from Belfast, Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, or making
+those places their chief ports of call, exercised unceasing vigilance
+over all the coast.
+
+In this general scouring of the coastal waters of the kingdom certain
+points were of necessity subjected to a much closer surveillance than
+others. Particularly was this true of the sea routes followed by the
+East and West India, and the Baltic, Virginia, Newfoundland, Dutch
+and Greenland trades, where these converged upon such centres of
+world-commerce as London, Poole, Bristol, Liverpool and the great
+northern entrepots on the Forth and Clyde, the Humber and the Tyne. A
+tender stationed off Poole, when a Newfoundland fish-convoy was expected
+in, never failed to reap a rich harvest. At Highlake, near the mouth
+of the Mersey, many a fine haul was made from the sugar and rum-laden
+Jamaica ships, the privateers and slavers from which Liverpool drew her
+wealth. Early in the century sloops of war had orders "to cruise between
+Beechy and the Downs to Impress men out of homeward-bound Merchant
+Ships," and in 1755 Rodney's lieutenants found the Channel "full of
+tenders." Except in times of profound peace--few and brief in the
+century under review--it was rarely or never in any other state. An
+ocean highway so congested with the winged vehicles of commerce could
+not escape the constant vigilance of those whose business it was to
+waylay the inward-bound sailor.
+
+A favourite station in the Channel was "at ye west end of ye Isle of
+Wight, near Hurst Castle," where the watchful tender, having under her
+eye all ships coming from the westward, as well as all passing through
+the Needles, could press at pleasure by the simple expedient of sending
+gangs aboard of them. At certain times of the year such ports as
+Grimsby, Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft and Brixham came in for similar
+attention. When the fleets were due back from the "Great Fishery" on the
+Dogger Banks, tenders cruising off those ports netted more men than they
+could find room for; and so heavy was the tribute paid in this way by
+the fishermen of the last-named port in 1805, that "not a single man was
+to be found in Brixham liable to the impress." Every unprotected man,
+out of a total of ninety-six fishing-smacks then belonging to the place,
+had been snapped up by the tenders and ships of war cruising off the bay
+or further up-Channel. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral
+Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 15 Sept.]
+
+The double cordon composed of ships and tenders on the cruise by no
+means exhausted the resources called into play for the intercepting of
+the sailor afloat. Still nearer the land was a third or innermost line
+composed of boat-gangs operating, like so many of the tenders, from
+rendezvous on shore, or from ships of war lying in dock or riding
+at anchor. Less continuous than the outer cordon, it was not less
+effective, and many a sailor who by strategy or good luck had all but
+won through, struck his flag to the gang when perhaps only the cast of a
+line separated him from shore and liberty.
+
+It was across the entrance to harbours and navigable estuaries that this
+innermost line was most frequently and most successfully drawn. Pill,
+the pilot station for the port of Bristol, threw out such a line to
+the further bank of Avon and thereby caught many an able seaman who
+had evaded the tenders below King Road. On Southampton Water it was
+generally so impassable that few men who could in the slightest
+degree be considered liable to the press escaped its toils. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 5
+Aug. 1805.] Dublin Bay knew it well. A press "on float" there, carried
+out silently and swiftly in the grey of a September morning, 1801,
+whilst the mists still hung thick over the water, resulted in the
+seizure of seventy-four seamen who had eluded the press-smacks cruising
+without the bay; but of this number two proving to be protected
+apprentices, the Lord Mayor sent the Water Bailiff of the city, "with a
+detachment of the army," and took them by force out of the hands of the
+gang. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1526--Capt. Brabazon, 16 Sept.
+1801.] On the Thames, notwithstanding the ceaseless activity of the
+outer cordons, the innermost line of capture yielded enormously. The
+night of October the 28th, 1776, saw three hundred and ninety-nine men,
+the greater part of them good seamen, pressed by the boats of a single
+ship--the _Princess Augusta_, Captain Sir Richard Bickerton commander,
+then fitting out at Woolwich. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1497--Capt. Bickerton, 29 Oct. 1776.] Such a raid was very properly
+termed a "hot press."
+
+The amazing feature of this exploit is, that it should have been
+possible at all, in view of what was going on in the Thames estuary
+below a line drawn across the river's mouth from Foulness to
+Sheerness-reach. Seawards of this line lay the two most famous
+anchorages in the world, where ships foregathered from every quarter
+of the navigable globe. Than the Nore and the Downs no finer
+recruiting-ground could anywhere be found, and here the shore-gangs
+afloat, and the boat-gangs from ships of war, were for ever on the
+alert. No ship, whether inward or outward bound, could pass the Nore
+without being visited. Nothing went by unsearched. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 2733--Capt. Young, 7 March 1756.] The wonder is that any
+unprotected sailor ever found his way to London.
+
+Between the Nore and the North Foreland the conditions were equally
+rigorous. Through all the channels leading to the sea, channels
+affording anchorage to innumerable ships of every conceivable rig and
+tonnage, the gangs roamed at will, exacting toll of everything that
+carried canvas. Even the smaller craft left high and dry upon the
+flats, or awaiting the tide in some sand-girt pool, did not escape their
+hawk-like vigilance.
+
+ [Illustration: SEIZING A WATERMAN ON TOWER HILL ON THE MORNING OF HIS
+WEDDING DAY.]
+
+In the Downs these conditions reached their climax, for thither, in
+never-ending procession, came the larger ships which were so fruitful of
+good hauls. With the wind at north, or between north and east, few ships
+came in and little could be done. But when the wind veered and came
+piping out of the west or sou'-west, in they came in such numbers that
+the gangs, however numerous they might be, had all their work cut out
+to board them. A special tender, swift and exceedingly well-found, was
+accordingly stationed here, whose duty it was to be "very watchful that
+no vessel passed without a visit from the impress boats." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2733--Orders of Vice-Admiral Buckle to Capt.
+Yates, 29 April 1778.] In such work as this man-o'-war boats were of
+little use. Just as they could not negotiate Deal beach without danger
+of being reduced to matchwood, so they could not live in the choppy sea
+kicked up in the Downs by a westerly gale. Folkstone market boats and
+Deal cutters had to be requisitioned for pressing in those waters. Their
+seaworthiness and speed made the Downs the crux of inward-bound ships,
+whose only means of escaping their attentions was to incur another
+danger by "going back of the Goodwins."
+
+The procedure of boat-gangs pressing in harbour or on rivers seldom
+varied, unless it were by accident. As a rule, night was the time
+selected, for to catch the sailor asleep conduced greatly to the success
+and safety of the venture. The hour chosen was consequently either close
+upon midnight, some little time after he had turned in, or in the early
+morning before he turned out. The darker the night and the dirtier the
+weather the better. Surprise, swiftly and silently carried out, was half
+the battle.
+
+A case in point is the attempt made by Lieut. Rudsdale, of H.M.S.
+_Licorne_, "to impress all men (without exception) from the ships and
+vessels lying at Cheek Point above Passage of Waterford," in the year
+'79. Putting-off in the pinnace with a picked crew at eleven o'clock
+on a dark and tempestuous October night, he had scarcely left the ship
+astern ere he overtook a boatload of men, how many he could not well
+discern in the darkness, pulling in the direction he himself was bound.
+Fearful lest they should suspect the nature of his errand and alarm
+the ships at Passage, he ran alongside of them and pressed the entire
+number, sending the boat adrift. Putting back, he set his capture on
+board the _Licorne_ and once more turned the nose of the pinnace towards
+Passage. There, dropping noiselessly aboard the _Triton_ brig, he caught
+the hands asleep, pressed as many of them as he had room for, and with
+them returned to the ship. Meanwhile, the master of the _Triton_ armed
+what hands he had left and met Rudsdale's second attempt to board
+him with a formidable array of handspikes, hatchets and crowbars.
+A fusillade of bottles and billets of wood further evinced his
+determination to protect the brig against all comers, and lest there
+should be any doubt on that point he swore roundly that he would be the
+death of every man in the pinnace if they did not immediately sheer
+off and leave him in peace. This the lieutenant wisely did. No further
+surprises were possible that night, for by this time the alarm had
+spread, the pinnace was half-full of missiles, and one of his men lay
+in the bottom of her severely wounded. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+471--Deposition of Lieut. Rudsdale, 24 Oct. 1779.] As it was, he had a
+very fair night's work to his credit. Between the occupants of the boat
+and those of the brig he had obtained close upon a score of men.
+
+The expedients resorted to by commanders of ships of war temporarily
+in port and short of their tale of men are vividly depicted in a report
+made to the Admiralty in 1711. "Three days ago, very privately,"
+writes Capt. Billingsley, whose ship, the _Vanguard_, was then lying at
+Blackstakes, "I Sent two fishing Smacks with a Lieutenant and some Men,
+with orders to proceede along the Essex Coast, and downe as far as the
+Wallet, to the Naze, with directions to take all the men out of Oyster
+Vessels and others that were not Exempted. The project succeeded, and
+they are return'd with fourteen men, all fit, and but one has ever been
+in the Service. The coast was Alarm'd, and the country people came downe
+and fir'd from the Shore upon the Smacks, and no doubt but they doe
+still take 'em to be privateers." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1470--Capt. Billingsley, 5 May 1711.]
+
+Pressing at sea differed materially in many of its aspects from pressing
+on the more sheltered waters of rivers and harbours. Carried out as a
+rule in the broad light of day, it was for that very reason accompanied
+with a more open and determined display of force than those quieter
+ventures which depended so largely for their success upon the element
+of surprise. Situated as we are in these latter days, when anyone who
+chooses may drive his craft from Land's End to John o' Groats without
+hindrance, it is difficult to conceive that there was ever a time when
+the whole extent of the coastal waters of the kingdom, as ranged by
+the impress tender, was under rigorous martial law. Yet such was
+unquestionably the case. Throughout the eighteenth century the flag was
+everywhere in armed evidence in those waters, and no sailing master of
+the time could make even so much as a day's run with any certainty that
+the peremptory summons: "Bring to! I'm coming aboard of you," would not
+be bawled at him from the mouth of a gun.
+
+The retention of the command of a tender depended entirely upon her
+success in procuring men. As a rule, she was out for no other purpose,
+and this being so, it is not to be supposed that the officer in charge
+of her would do otherwise than employ the means ordained for that end.
+Accordingly, as soon as a sail was sighted by the tender's lookout man,
+a gun was loaded, shotted with roundshot, and run out ready for the
+moment when the vessel should come within range.
+
+The first intimation the intended victim had of the fate in store for
+her was the shriek of the roundshot athwart her bows. This was the
+signal, universally known as such, for her to back her topsails and
+await the coming of the gang, already tumbling in ordered haste into the
+armed boat prepared for them under the tender's quarter. And yet it was
+not always easy for the sprat to catch the whale. A variety of factors
+entered into the problem and made for failure as often as for success.
+Sometimes the tender's powder was bad--so bad that in spite of an extra
+pound or so added to the charge, the shot could not be got to carry
+as far as a common musket ball. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+2485--Capt. Shirley, 5 Nov. 1780, and numerous instances.] When this was
+the case her commander suffered a double mortification. His shot,
+the symbol of authority and coercion, took the water far short of its
+destined goal, whilst the vessel it was intended to check and intimidate
+surged by amid the derisive cat-calls and laughter of her crew.
+
+Even with the powder beyond reproach, ships did not always obey the
+summons, peremptory though it was. One pretended not to hear it, or to
+misunderstand it, or to believe it was meant for some other craft, and
+so held stolidly on her course, vouchsafing no sign till a second shot,
+fired point-blank, but at a safe elevation, hurtled across her decks and
+brought her to her senses. Another, perhaps some well-armed Levantine
+trader or tall Indiaman whose crew had little mind to strike their
+colours submissively at the behest of a midget press-smack, would pipe
+to quarters and put up a stiff fight for liberty and the dear delights
+of London town--a fight from which the tender, supposing her to have
+accepted the gage of battle, rarely came off victor. Or the challenged
+ship, believing herself to be the faster craft of the two, clapped on
+all sail, caught an opportune "slatch of wind," and showed her pursuer
+a clean pair of heels, the tender's guns meanwhile barking away at her
+until she passed out of range. These were incidents in the chapter of
+pressing afloat which every tender's commander was familiar with. Back
+of them all lay a substantial fact, and on that he relied for his supply
+of men. There was somehow a magic in the boom of a naval gun that
+had its due effect upon most ship-masters. They brought-to, however
+reluctantly, and awaited the pleasure of the gang. But the sailor had
+still to be reckoned with.
+
+In order to invest the business of taking the sailor with some semblance
+of legality, it was necessary that the commander of the tender, in whose
+name the press-warrant was made out, or one of his two midshipmen, each
+of whom usually held a similar warrant, should conduct the proceedings
+in person; and the first duty of this officer, on setting foot upon the
+deck of the vessel held up in the manner just described, was to order
+her entire company to be mustered for his inspection. If the master
+proved civil, this preliminary passed off quickly and with no more
+confusion than was incidental to a general and hasty rummaging of
+sea-chests and lockers in search of those magic protections on which
+hung the immediate destiny of every man in the ship, excepting only the
+skipper, his mate and that privileged person, the boatswain. The muster
+effected, the officer next subjected each protection to the closest
+possible scrutiny, for none who knew the innate trickery of seamen
+would ever "take their words for it." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1482--Capt. Boscawen, 20 March 1745-6.] Men who had no protections,
+men whose papers bore evident traces of "coaxing" or falsification,
+men whose appearance and persons failed to tally exactly with the
+description there written down--these were set apart from their more
+fortunate messmates, to be dealt with presently. To their ranks were
+added others whose protections had either expired or were on the point
+of expiry, as well as skulkers who sought to evade His Majesty's press
+by stowing themselves away between or below decks, and who had been
+by this time more or less thoroughly routed out by members of the gang
+armed with hangers. The two contingents now lined up, and their total
+was checked by reference to the ship's articles, the officer never
+omitting to make affectionate inquiries after men marked down as "run,"
+"drowned," or "discharged"; for none knew better than he, if an old hand
+at the game, how often the "run" man ran no further afield than some
+secure hiding-place overlooked by his gangers, or how miraculously the
+"drowned" bobbed up once more to the surface of things when the gang had
+ceased from troubling. If the ship happened to be an inward-bound, and
+to possess a general protection exempting her from the press only
+for the voyage then just ending, that fact greatly simplified and
+abbreviated the proceedings, for then her whole company was looked upon
+as the ganger's lawful prey. In the case of an outward-bound ship, the
+gang-officer's duty was confined to seeing that she carried no more
+hands than her protection and tonnage permitted her to carry. All others
+were pressed. Cowed by armed authority, or wounded and bleeding in a
+lost cause as hereafter to be related, the men were hustled into the
+boat with "no more violence than was necessary for securing them."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1437--Capt. Aldred, 12 June 1708.]
+Their chests and bedding followed, making a full boat; and so, having
+cleared the ship of all her pressable hands, the gang prepared to return
+to the tender. But first there was a last stroke of business to be done.
+The gunner must have his bit.
+
+Up to this point, beyond producing the ship's papers for inspection and
+gruffly answering such questions as were put to, him, the master of the
+vessel had taken little part in what was going on. His turn now came. By
+virtue of his position he could not be pressed, but there existed a very
+ancient naval usage according to which he could be, and was, required to
+pay for the powder and shot expended in inducing him to receive the
+gang on board. In law the exaction was indefensible. Litigation often
+followed it, and as the century grew old the practice for that reason
+fell into gradual desuetude, a circumstance almost universally deplored
+by naval commanders of the old school, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1511--Capt. Bowen, 13 Oct. 1795, and Admiralty endorsement.] who were
+ever sticklers for respect to the flag; but during the first five or six
+decades of the century the shipmaster who had to be fired upon rarely
+escaped paying the shot. The money accruing from his compliance with
+the demand, 6s. 8d., went to the gunner, whose perquisite it was, and
+as several shots were frequently necessary to reduce a crew to becoming
+submissiveness, the gunners must have done very well out of it. Refusal
+to "pay the shot" could be visited upon the skipper only indirectly.
+Another man or two were taken out of him by way of reprisals, and the
+press-boat shoved off--to return a second, or even a third time, if the
+pressed men numbered more than she could stow.
+
+From this summary mode of depriving a ship of a part or the whole of her
+crew two serious complications arose, the first of which had to do
+with the wages of the men pressed, the second with what was technically
+called "carrying the ship up," that is to say, sailing her to her
+destination.
+
+According to the law of the land, the sailor who was pressed out of a
+ship was entitled to his wages in full till the day he was pressed, and
+not only was every shipmaster bound to provide such men with tickets
+good for the sums severally due to them, tickets drawn upon the owners
+and payable upon demand, but it was the duty of every impress officer
+to see that such tickets were duly made out and delivered to the men.
+Refusal to comply with the law in this respect led to legal proceedings,
+in which, except in the case of foreign ships, the Admiralty invariably
+won. Eminently fair to the sailor, the provision was desperately hard on
+masters and owners, for they, after having shipped their crews for the
+run or voyage, now found themselves left either with insufficient hands
+to carry the ship up, or with no hands at all. As a concession to the
+necessity of the moment a gang was sometimes put on board a ship for the
+avowed purpose of pressing her hands when she arrived in port; but such
+concessions were not always possible, [Footnote: Nor were they always
+effective, as witness the following: "Tuesday the 15th, the _Shandois_
+sloop from Holland came by this place (the Nore). I put 15 men on board
+her to secure her Company till their Protection was expired. Soon after
+came from Sheerness the Master Attendant's boat to assist me on that
+service. I immediately sent her away with more Men and Armes for the
+better Securing of the Sloop's Company, but that night, in Longreach,
+the Vessel being near the Shore, and almost Calme, they hoisted the boat
+out to tow the Sloop about, and all the Sloop's men, being 18, got
+into her and Run ashore, bidding defiance to my people's
+fireing."--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1473--Capt. Bouler, H.M.S. _Argyle_,
+18 Feb. 1725-6.] and common equity demanded that in their absence ample
+provision should be made for the safety of vessels suddenly disabled by
+the gang. This the Admiralty undertook to do, and hence there grew up
+that appendage to the impress afloat generally known as "men in lieu" or
+"ticket men."
+
+The vocation of the better type "man in lieu" was a vicarious sort of
+employment, entailing any but disagreeable consequences upon him who
+followed it. At every point on the coast where a gang was stationed, and
+at many where they were not, great numbers of these men were retained
+for service afloat whenever required. The three ports of Dover, Deal and
+Folkestone alone at one time boasted no less than four hundred and fifty
+of them, and when a hot press was in full swing in the Downs even this
+number was found insufficient to meet the demand. Mostly fishermen,
+Sea-Fencibles and others of a quasi-seafaring type, they enjoyed
+complete exemption from the impress as a consideration for "going
+in pressed men's rooms," received a shilling, and in some cases
+eighteen-pence a day while so employed, and had a penny a mile
+road-money for their return to the place of their abode, where they
+were free, in the intervals between carrying ships up, to follow any
+longshore occupation they found agreeable, save only smuggling. The
+enjoyment of these privileges, and particularly the privilege of
+exemption from the press, made them, as a class, notorious for their
+independence and insolence--characteristics which still survive in not a
+few of their descendants. Tenders going a-pressing often bore a score
+or two of these privileged individuals as supers, who were drafted into
+ships, as the crews were taken out, to assist the master, mate and few
+remaining hands, were any of the latter left, in carrying them up. Or,
+if no supers of this class were borne by the tender, she "loaned" the
+master a sufficient number of her own company, duly protected by tickets
+from the commanding officer, and invariably the most unserviceable
+people on board, to work the ship into the nearest port where regular
+"men in lieu" could be obtained.
+
+Had all "men in lieu" conformed to the standard of the better class
+substitute of that name, the system would have been laudable in the
+extreme and trade would have suffered little inconvenience from the
+depredations of the gangs; but there was in the system a flaw that
+generally reduced the aid lent to ships to something little better than
+a mere travesty of assistance. That flaw lay in the fact that Admiralty
+never gave as good as it took. Clearly, it could not. True, it supplied
+substitutes to go in "pressed men's rooms," but to call them "men in
+lieu" was a gross abuse of language. In reality the substitutes supplied
+were in the great majority of cases mere scum in lieu, the unpressable
+residuum of the population, consisting of men too old or lads too
+young to appeal to the cupidity of the gangs, poor creatures whom the
+regulating captains had refused, useless on land and worse than useless
+at sea.
+
+In the general character of the persons sent in pressed men's rooms
+Admiralty thus had Trade on the hip, and Trade suffered much in
+consequence. More than one rich merchantman, rusty from long voyaging,
+strewed the coast with her cargo and timbers because all the able seamen
+had been taken out of her, and none better than old men and boys could
+be found to sail her. Few seaport towns were as wise as Sunderland,
+where they had a Society of Shipowners for mutual insurance against
+the risks arising from the pressing of their men. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1541--Capt. Bligh, 8 Jan. 1807, enclosure.] Elsewhere
+masters, owners and underwriters groaned under the galling imposition;
+but the wrecker rejoiced exceedingly, thanking the gangs whose ceaseless
+activities rendered such an outrageous state of things possible.
+
+Whichever of these two classes the ticket man belonged to, he was an
+incorrigible deserter. "Thirteen out of the fifteen men in lieu that I
+sent up in the _Beaufort_ East-Indiaman," writes the disgusted commander
+of the _Comet_ bombship, from the Downs, "have never returned. As
+they are not worth inquiring for, I have made them run." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1478--Capt. Burvill, 4 Sept. 1742. A
+man-o'-war's-man was "made run" when he failed to return to his ship
+after a reasonable absence and an R was written over against his name on
+the ship's books.] Such instances might be multiplied indefinitely. Once
+the ticket man had drawn his money for the trip, there was no such thing
+as holding him. The temptation to spend his earnings in town proved too
+strong, and he went on the spree with great consistency and enjoyment
+till his money was gone and his protection worthless, when the
+inevitable overtook him. The ubiquitous gang deprived him of his only
+remaining possession, his worthless liberty, and sent him to the fleet,
+a ragged but shameless derelict, as a punishment for his breach of
+privilege.
+
+The protecting ticket carried by the man in lieu dated from 1702, when
+it appears to have been first instituted; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1433--Capt. Anderson, 5 April 1702.] but even when the bearer was no
+deserter in fact or intention, it had little power to protect him. No
+ticket man could count upon remaining unmolested by the gangs except the
+undoubted foreigner and the marine, both of whom were much used as men
+in lieu. The former escaped because his alien tongue provided him with
+a natural protection; the latter because he was reputedly useless on
+shipboard. In the person of the marine, indeed, the man in lieu achieved
+the climax of ineptitude. It was an ironical rule of the service that
+persons refusing to act as men in lieu should suffer the very fate they
+stood in so much danger of in the event of their consenting. Broadstairs
+fishermen in 1803 objected to serving in that capacity, though tendered
+the exceptional wage of 27s. for the run to London. "If not compelled
+to go in that way," they alleged, "they could make their own terms
+with shipmasters and have as many guineas as they were now offered
+shillings." Orders to press them for their contumacy were immediately
+sent down. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1450--Capt. Carter, 16 Aug.
+1803.]
+
+By the year 1811 the halcyon days of the man in lieu were at an end. As
+a class he was then practically extinct. Inveterate and long-continued
+pressing had drained the merchant service of all able-bodied British
+seamen except those who were absolutely essential to its existence.
+These were fully protected, and when their number fell short of the
+requirements of the service the deficiency was supplied by foreigners
+and apprentices similarly exempt. So few pressable men were to be found
+in any one ship that it was no longer considered necessary to send
+ticket men in their stead when they were taken out, and as a matter
+of fact less than a dozen such men were that year put on board ships
+passing the Downs. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1453--Capt.
+Anderson, 31 Aug. 1811.] Pressing itself was in its decline, and as for
+the vocation of the man in lieu, it had gone never to return.
+
+Ships and tenders out for men met with varied fortunes. In the winter
+season the length of the nights, the tempestuous weather and the cold
+told heavily against success, as did at all times that factor in the
+problem which one old sea-dog so picturesquely describes as "the room
+there is for missing you." Capt. Barker, of the _Thetis_, in 1748 made
+a haul of thirty men off the Old-Head of Kinsale, but lost his barge
+in doing so, "it blowed so hard." Byng, of the _Sutherland_, grumbled
+atrociously because in the course of his run up-Channel in '42 he was
+able to press "no more than seventeen." Anson, looking quite casually
+into Falmouth on his way down-Channel, found there in '46 the _Betsey_
+tender, then just recently condemned, and took out of her every man she
+possessed at the cost of a mere hour's work, ignorant of the fact that
+when pressing eight of those men the commander of the _Betsey_ had been
+"eight hours about it." It was all a game of chance, and when you played
+it the only thing you could count upon was the certainty of having both
+the sailor and the elements dead against you.
+
+ [Illustration: JACK IN THE BILBOES. From the painting by Morland.]
+
+But if the "room there is for missing you," conspiring with other
+unfavourable conditions, rendered pressing afloat an uncertain and
+vexatious business, the chances of making a haul were on the other hand
+augmented by every ship that entered or left the Narrow Seas, not even
+excepting the foreigner. The foreign sailor could not be pressed unless,
+as we have seen, he had naturalised himself by marrying an English
+wife, but the foreign ship was fair game for every hunter of British
+seamen.--An ancient assumption of right made it so.
+
+From the British point of view the "Right of Search" was an eminently
+reasonable thing. Here was an island people to whose keeping Heaven had
+by special dispensation committed the dominion of the seas. To defend
+that dominion they needed every seaman they possessed or could produce.
+They could spare none to other nations; and when their sailors, who
+enjoyed no rights under their own flag, had the temerity to seek refuge
+under another, there was nothing for it but to fire on that flag
+if necessary, and to take the refugee by armed force from under its
+protection. This in effect constituted the time-honoured "Right of
+Search," and none were so reluctant to forego the prerogative, or so
+keen to enforce it, as those naval officers who saw in it a certain
+prospect of adding to their ships' companies. The right of search was
+always good for another man or two.
+
+It was often good for a great many more, for the foreign skipper was at
+the best an arrant man-stealing rogue. If a Yankee, he hated the British
+because he had beaten them; if a Frenchman or a Hollander, because
+they had beaten him. His animus was all against the British Navy, his
+sympathies all in favour of the British sailor, in whom he recognised
+as good, if not a better seaman than himself. He accordingly enticed
+him with the greatest pertinacity and hid him away with the greatest
+cunning.
+
+Every impress officer worth his salt was fully alive to these facts, and
+on all the coast no ship was so thoroughly ransacked as the ship whose
+skipper affected a bland ignorance of the English tongue or called
+Heaven to witness the blamelessness of his conduct with many
+gesticulations and strange oaths. Lieut. Oakley, regulating officer at
+Deal, once boarded an outward-bound Dutch East-Indiaman in the Downs.
+The master strenuously denied having any English sailors on board, but
+the lieutenant, being suspicious, sent his men below with instructions
+to leave no part of the ship unsearched. They speedily routed out three,
+"who discovered that there were in all thirteen on board, most of them
+good and able seamen." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 3363--Lieut.
+Oakley, 8 Dec. 1743.] The case is a typical one.
+
+Another source of joy and profit to the gangs afloat were the great
+annual convoys from overseas. For safety's sake merchantmen in times
+of hostilities sailed in fleets, protected by ships of war, and when a
+fleet of this description was due back from Jamaica, Newfoundland or the
+Baltic, that part of the coast where it might be expected to make its
+land-fall literally swarmed with tenders, all on the _qui vive_ for
+human plunder. They were seldom disappointed. The Admiralty protections
+under which the ships had put to sea in the first instance expired with
+the home voyage, leaving the crews at the mercy of the gangs. If,
+that is to say, the commanders of the convoying men-o'-war had not
+forestalled them, or the ships' companies were not composed, as in one
+case we read of, of men who were all "either sick or Dutchmen."
+
+The privateer had to be approached more warily than the merchantman,
+since the number of men and the weight of metal she carried made her an
+ugly customer to deal with. She was in consequence notorious for being
+the sauciest craft afloat, and though "sauce" was to the naval officer
+what a red rag is to a bull, there were few in the service who did
+not think twice before attempting to violate the armed sanctity of the
+privateer. At the same time the hands who crowded her deck were the
+flower of British seamen, and in this fact lay a tremendous incentive to
+dare all risks and press her men. Her commission or letter of marque of
+course protected her, but when she was inward-bound that circumstance
+carried no weight.
+
+Against such an adversary the tender stood little chance. When she
+hailed the privateer, the latter laughed at her, threatening to sink her
+out of hand, or, if ordered to bring to, answered with all the insolent
+contempt of the Spanish grandee: "Mariana!" Accident sometimes stood
+the tender in better stead, where the pressing of privateer's-men was
+concerned, than all the guns she carried. Capt. Adams, cruising for men
+in the Bristol Channel, one day fell in with the Princess Augusta, a
+letter of marque whose crew had risen upon their officers and tried
+to take the ship. After hard fighting the mutiny was quelled and the
+mutineers confined to quarters, in which condition Adams found them.
+The whole batch, twenty-nine in number, was handed over to him, "though
+'twas only with great threats" that he could induce them to submit,
+"they all swearing to die to a man rather than surrender." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Capt. Adams, 28 June 1745.]
+
+A year or two prior to this event this same ship, the Princess Augusta,
+had a remarkable adventure whilst sailing under the merchant flag of
+England. On the homeward run from Barbadoes, some fifty leagues to the
+westward of the Scillies, she fell in with a Spanish privateer, who
+at once engaged and would undoubtedly have taken her but for an
+extraordinary occurrence. Just as the trader's assailants were on the
+point of boarding her the Spaniard blew up, strewing the sea with his
+wreckage, but leaving the merchantman providentially unharmed. Capt.
+Dansays, of H.M.S. the _Fubbs_ yacht, who happened to be out for men
+at the time in the chops of the Channel, brought the news to England.
+Meeting with the trader a few days after her miraculous escape, he had
+boarded her and pressed nine of her crew. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1439--Capt. Ambrose, 7 Feb. 1741-2.]
+
+From the smuggling vessels infesting the coasts the sea-going gangs drew
+sure returns and rich booty. In the south and east of England people who
+were "in the know" could always buy tobacco, wines and silks for a mere
+song; and in Cumberland, in the coast towns there, and inland too, the
+very beggars are said to have regaled themselves on tea at sixpence or
+a shilling the pound. These commodities, as well as others dealt in by
+runners of contrabrand, were worth far more on the water than on land,
+and none was so keenly alive to the fact as the gangsman who prowled the
+coast. Animated by the prospect of double booty, he was by all odds the
+best "preventive man" the country ever had.
+
+There was a certainty, too, about the pressing of a smuggler that was
+wanting in other cases. The sailor taken out of a merchant ship, or the
+fisherman out of a smack, might at the eleventh hour spring upon you a
+protection good for his discharge. Not so the smuggler. There was in his
+case no room for the unexpected. No form of protection could save him
+from the consequences of his trade. Once caught, his fate was a foregone
+conclusion, for he carried with him evidence enough to make him a
+pressed man twenty times over. Hence the gangsman and the naval officer
+loved the smuggler and lost no opportunity of showing their affection.
+
+"Strong Breezes and Cloudy," records the officer in command of H.M.S.
+_Stag_, a twenty-eight gun frigate, in his log. "Having made the Signal
+for Two Strange Sail in the West, proceeded on under Courses & Double
+Reeft Topsails. At 1 sett the Jibb and Driver, at 3 boarded a Smugling
+Cutter, but having papers proving she was from Guernsey, and being out
+limits, pressed one Man and let her go." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 2734--Log of H.M.S. _Stag_, Capt. Yorke commander, 5 Oct. 1794.]
+
+"Friday last," says the captain of the _Spy_ sloop of war, "I sail'd out
+of Yarmouth Roads with a Fleet of Colliers in order to press Men, & in
+my way fell in with Two Dutch Built Scoots sail'd by Englishmen, bound
+for Holland, one belonging to Hull, call'd the _Mary_, the other to
+Lyn, call'd the _Willing Traveller_. I search'd 'em and took out of the
+former 64 Pounds 14. and out of the latter 300 Pounds 6, all English
+Money, which I've deliver'd to the Collector of Custome at Yarmouth.
+I likewise Imprest out of the Two Vessells seven men." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1438--Capt. Arnold, 29 May 1727. The exporting of
+coin was illegal.]
+
+"In the execution of my orders for pressing," reports Capt. Young, from
+on board the Bonetta sloop under his command, "I lately met with two
+Smuglers, & landing my boats into a Rocky Bay where they were running of
+Goods, the Weather came on so Violent I had my pinnace Stove so much as
+to be rendered unservisable. They threw overboard all their Brandy, Tea
+and Tobacco, of which last wee recover'd about 14 Baggs and put it
+to the Custom house. In Endeavouring to bring one of them to Sail, my
+Boatswain, who is a very Brisk and Deserving Man, had his arm broke, so
+that tho' wee got no more of their Cargo, it has broke their Voyage and
+Trade this bout." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 6
+April 1739.]
+
+On the 13th of December 1703, George Messenger, boatswain of the _Wolf_
+armed sloop, whilst pressing on the Humber descried a "keel" lying high
+and dry apart from the other shipping in the river, where it was then
+low water. Boarding her with the intention of pressing her men, he found
+her deserted save for the master, and thinking that some of the hands
+might be in hiding below--where the master assured him he would find
+nothing but ballast--he "did order one of his Boat's crew to goe down in
+the Hold and see what was therein"; who presently returned and reported
+"a quantity of wool conceal'd under some Coales a foot thik." The
+exportation of wool being at that time forbidden under heavy penalties,
+the vessel was seized and the master pressed--a course frequently
+adopted in such circumstances, and uniformly approved. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1465--Deposition of George Messenger, 20 Dec.
+1703. Owling, ooling or wooling, as the exportation of wool contrary
+to law was variously termed, was a felony punishable, according to
+an enactment of Edward III., with "forfeiture of life and member." So
+serious was the offence considered that in 1565 a further enactment was
+formulated against it. Thereafter any person convicted of exporting a
+live ram, lamb or sheep, was not only liable to forfeit all his goods,
+but to suffer imprisonment for a year, and at the end of the year "in
+some open market town, in the fulness of the market on the market day,
+to have his right hand cut off and nailed up in the openest place of
+such market." The first of these Acts remained in nominal force till
+1863.]
+
+While the gangs afloat in this way lent their aid in the suppression
+of smuggling, they themselves were sometimes subjected to disagreeable
+espionage on the part of those whose duty it was to keep a special
+lookout for runners of contraband goods. An amusing instance of this
+once occurred in the Downs. The commanding officer of H.M.S. _Orford_,
+discovering his complement to be short, sent one of his lieutenants,
+Richardson by name, in quest of men to make up the deficiency. In the
+course of his visits from ship to ship there somehow found their way
+into the lieutenant's boat a fifteen-gallon keg of rum and ten bottles
+of white wine. Between seven and eight o'clock in the evening he boarded
+an Indiaman and went below with the master. Scarcely had he done so,
+however, when an uproar alongside brought him hurriedly on deck--to find
+his boat full of strange faces. A Customs cutter, in some unaccountable
+way getting wind of what was in the boat, had unexpectedly "clapt them
+aboard," collared the man-o'-war's-men for a set of rascally smugglers,
+and confiscated the unexplainable rum and wine, becoming so fuddled on
+the latter, which they lost no time in consigning to bond, that one of
+their number fell into the sea and was with difficulty fished out by
+Richardson's disgusted gangsmen. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1473--Capt. Brown, 30 July 1727, and enclosures.]
+
+The only inward-bound ship the gangsmen were forbidden to press from was
+the "sick ship" or vessel undergoing quarantine because of the presence,
+or the suspected presence, on board of her of some "catching" disease,
+and more particularly of that terrible scourge the plague. Dread of the
+plague in those days rode the country like a nightmare, and just as the
+earliest quarantine precautions had their origin in that fact, so those
+precautions were never more rigorously enforced than in the case of
+ships trading to countries known to be subject to plague or reported
+to be in the grip of it. The Levantine trader suffered most severely
+in this respect. In 1721 two vessels from Cyprus, where plague was then
+prevalent, were burned to the water's edge by order of the authorities,
+and as late as 1800 two others from Morocco, suspected of carrying the
+dread disease in the hides composing their cargo, were scuttled and sent
+to the bottom at the Nore. This was quarantine _in excelsis_. Ordinary
+preventive measures went no further than the withdrawal of "pratique,"
+as communication with the shore was called, for a period varying usually
+from ten to sixty-five days, and during this period no gang was allowed
+to board the ship.
+
+The seamen belonging to such ships always got ashore if they could;
+for though the penalty for deserting a ship in quarantine was death,
+[Footnote: 26 George II. cap. 6.] it might be death to remain, and the
+sailor was ever an opportunist careless of consequences. So, for that
+matter, was the gangsman. Knowing well that Jack would make a break
+for it the first chance he got, he hovered about the ship both day and
+night, alert for every movement on board, watchful of every ripple on
+the water, taunting the woebegone sailors with the irksomeness of their
+captivity or the certainty of their capture, and awaiting with what
+patience he could the hour that should see pratique restored and the
+crew at his mercy. Whether the ship had "catching" disease on board or
+not might be an open question. There was no mistaking its symptoms in
+the gangsman.
+
+Stangate Creek, on the river Medway, was the great quarantine station
+for the port of London, and here, in the year 1744, was enacted one of
+the most remarkable scenes ever witnessed in connection with pressing
+afloat. The previous year had seen a recrudescence of plague in the
+Levant and consequent panic in England, where extraordinary precautions
+were adopted against possible infection. In December of that year there
+lay in Stangate Creek a fleet of not less than a dozen Levantine ships,
+in which were cooped up, under the most exacting conditions imaginable,
+more than two hundred sailors. At Sheerness, only a few miles distant,
+a number of ships of war, amongst them Rodney's, were at the same
+time fitting out and wanting men. The situation was thus charged with
+possibilities.
+
+It was estimated that in order to press the two hundred sailors from the
+quarantine ships, when the period of detention should come to an end,
+a force of not less than one hundred and fifty men would be required.
+These were accordingly got together from the various ships of war
+and sent into the Creek on board a tender belonging to the _Royal
+Sovereign_. This was on the 15th of December, and quarantine expired on
+the 22nd.
+
+The arrival of the tender threw the Creek into a state of consternation
+bordering on panic, and that very day a number of sailors broke bounds
+and fell a prey to the gangs in attempting to steal ashore. Seymour,
+the lieutenant in command of the tender, did not improve matters by his
+idiotic and unofficerlike behaviour. Every day be rowed up and down the
+Creek, in and out amongst the ships, taunting the men with what he would
+do unless they volunteered, when the 22nd arrived, and he was free to
+work his will upon them. He would have them all, he assured them, if he
+had to "shoot them like small birds."
+
+By the 22nd the sailors were in a state of "mutinous insolence."
+When the tender's boats approached the ships they were welcomed "with
+presented arms," and obliged to sheer off in order to obtain "more
+force," so menacing did the situation appear. Seeing this, and either
+mistaking or guessing the import of the move, the desperate seamen
+rushed the cabins, secured all the arms and ammunition they could lay
+hands on, hoisted out the ship's boats, and in these reached the shore
+in safety ere the tender's men, by this time out in strength, could
+prevent or come up with them. The fugitives, to the number of a hundred
+or more, made off into the country to the accompaniment, we are told,
+of "smart firing on both sides." With this exchange of shots the curtain
+falls on the "Fray at Stangate Creek." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1480--Capt. Berkeley, 30 Dec. 1744, and enclosure.] In the engagement
+two of the seamen were wounded, but all escaped the snare of the fowler,
+and in that happy denouement our sympathies are with them.
+
+Returning transports paid immediate and heavy tribute to the gangs
+afloat. Out of a fleet of such vessels arriving at the Nore in 1756
+two hundred and thirty men, "a parcel of as fine fellows as were ever
+pressed," fell to the gangs. Not a man escaped from any of the ships,
+and the boats were kept busy all next day shifting chests and bedding
+and putting in ticket men to navigate the depleted vessels to London.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1487--Capt. Boys, 6, 7 and 8 July
+1756.] A similar press at the Cove of Cork, on the return of the
+transports from America in '79, proved equally productive. Hundreds of
+sailors were secured, to the unspeakable grief of the local crimps, who
+were then offering long prices in order to recruit Paul Jones, at that
+time cruising off the Irish coast. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1499--Letters of Capt. Bennett, 1779.]
+
+The cartel ship was an object of peculiar solicitude to the sea-going
+gangsman. In her, after weary months passed in French, Spanish or Dutch
+prisons, hundreds of able-bodied British seamen returned to their native
+land in more or less prime condition for His Majesty's Navy. The warmest
+welcome they received was from the waiting gangsman. Often they got
+no other. Few cartels had the extraordinary luck of the ship of that
+description that crept into Rye harbour one night in March 1800, and in
+bright moonlight landed three hundred lusty sailor-men fresh from French
+prisons, under the very nose of the battery, the guard at the port
+head and the _Clinker_ gun-brig. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1449--Capt. Aylmer, 9 March 1800.]
+
+Of all the seafaring men the gangsman took, there was perhaps none whom
+he pressed with greater relish than the pilot. The every-day pilot of
+the old school was a curious compound. When he knew his business, which
+was only too seldom, he was frequently too many sheets in the wind to
+embody his knowledge in intelligent orders; and when he happened to be
+sober enough to issue intelligent orders, he not infrequently showed
+his ignorance of what he was supposed to know by issuing wrong ones.
+The upshot of these contradictions was, that instead of piloting His
+Majesty's ships in a becoming seamanly manner, he was for ever running
+them aground. Fortunately for the service, an error of this description
+incapacitated him and made him fair game for the gangs, who lost no
+time in transferring him to those foremast regions where ship's grog
+was strictly limited and the captain's quite unknown. William Cook,
+impressed upon an occasion at Lynn, with unconscious humour styled
+himself a landsman. He was really a pilot who had qualified for that
+distinction by running vessels ashore.
+
+In the aggregate this unremitting and practically unbroken surveillance
+of the coast was tremendously effective. Like Van Tromp, the vessels
+and gangs engaged in it rode the seas with a broom at their masthead,
+sweeping into the service, not every man, it is true, but enormous
+numbers of them. As for their quality, "One man out of a merchant ship
+is better than three the lieutenants get in town." [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 2379--Capt. Roberts, 27 June 1732.] This was the general
+opinion early in the century; but as the century wore on the quality of
+the man pressed in town steadily deteriorated, till at length the sailor
+taken fresh from the sea was reckoned to be worth six of him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+EVADING THE GANG.
+
+
+
+As we have just seen, it was when returning from overseas that
+the British sailor ran the gravest risk of summary conversion into
+Falstaff's famous commodity, "food for powder."
+
+Outward bound, the ship's protection--that "sweet little cherub" which,
+contrary to all Dibdinic precedent, lay down below--had spread its
+kindly aegis over him, and, generally speaking, saved him harmless from
+the warrant and the hanger. But now the run for which he has signed
+on is almost finished, and as the Channel opens before him the magic
+Admiralty paper ceases to be of "force" for his protection. No sooner,
+therefore, does he make his land-fall off the fair green hills or
+shimmering cliffs than his troubles begin. He is now within the outer
+zone of danger, and all about him hover those dreaded sharks of the
+Narrow Seas, the rapacious press-smacks, seeking whom they may devour.
+Conning the compass-card of his chances as they bear down upon him
+and send their shot whizzing across his bows, the sailor, in his fixed
+resolve to evade the gang at any cost, resorted first of all to the most
+simple and sailorly expedient imaginable. He "let go all" and made a run
+for it. That way lay the line of least resistance, and, with luck on his
+side, of surest escape.
+
+Three modes of flight were his to choose between--three modes involving
+as many nice distinctions, plus a possible difference with the master.
+He could run away in his ship, run away with her, or as a last resort
+he could sacrifice his slops, his bedding, his pet monkey and the gaudy
+parrot that was just beginning to swear, and run from her. Which
+should it be? It was all a toss-up. The chance of the moment, instantly
+detected and as instantly acted upon, determined his choice.
+
+The sailor's flight in his ship depended mainly upon her sailing
+qualities and the master's willingness to risk being dismasted or hulled
+by the pursuer's shot. Granted a capful of wind on his beam, a fleet
+keel under foot, and a complacent skipper aft, the flight direct was
+perhaps the means of escape the sailor loved above all others. The spice
+of danger it involved, the dash and frolic of the chase, the joy of
+seeing his leaping "barky" draw slowly away from her pursuer in the
+contest of speed, and of watching the stretch of water lying between him
+and capture surely widen out, were sensations dear to his heart.
+
+Running away _with_ his ship was a more serious business, since the
+adoption of such a course meant depriving the master of his command,
+and this again meant mutiny. Happily, masters took a lenient view of
+mutinies begotten of such conditions. Not infrequently, indeed, they
+were consenting parties, winking at what they could not prevent, and
+assuming the command again when the safety of ship and crew was assured
+by successful flight, with never a hint of the irons, indictment or
+death decreed by law as the mutineer's portion.
+
+These modes of flight did not in every instance follow the hard-and-fast
+lines here laid down. Under stress of circumstance each was liable to
+become merged in the other; or both, perhaps, had to be abandoned
+in favour of fresh tactics rendered necessary by the accident or the
+exigency of the moment. The _Triton_ and _Norfolk_ Indiamen, after
+successfully running the gauntlet of the Channel tenders, in the
+Downs fell in with the _Falmouth_ man-o'-war. The meeting was entirely
+accidental. Both merchantmen were congratulating themselves on having
+negotiated the Channel without the loss of a man. The _Triton_ had all
+furled except her fore and mizen topsails, preparatory to coming to an
+anchor; but as the wind was strong southerly, with a lee tide running,
+the _Falmouth's_ boats could not forge ahead to board her before the set
+of the tide carried her astern of the warship's guns, whereupon her crew
+mutinied, threw shot into the man-o'-war's boats, which had by this time
+drawn alongside, and so, making sail with all possible speed, got clear
+away. Meantime a shot had brought the _Norfolk_ to on the _Falmouth's_
+starboard bow, where she was immediately boarded. On her decks an
+ominous state of things prevailed. Her crew would not assist to clew up
+the sails, the anchor had been seized to the chain-plates and could not
+be let go, and when the gang from the _Falmouth_ attempted to cut the
+buoy ropes with which it was secured, the "crew attacked them with
+hatchets and treenails, made sail and obliged them to quit the ship."
+Being by that, time astern of the _Falmouth's_ guns, they too made their
+escape. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1485--Capt. Brett, 25 June
+1755.]
+
+Never, perhaps, did the sailor adopt the expedient of running away,
+ship and all, with so malicious a goodwill or so bright a prospect of
+success, as when sailing under convoy. In those days he seldom ventured
+to "risk the run," even to Dutch ports and back, without the protection
+of one or more ships of war, and in this precaution there was danger as
+well as safety; for although the king's ships safeguarded him against
+the enemy if hostilities were in progress, as well as against the
+"little rogues" of privateers infesting the coasts and the adjacent
+seas, no sooner did the voyage near its end than the captains of the
+convoying ships took out of him, by force if necessary, as many men as
+they happened to require. This was a _quid pro quo_ of which the sailor
+could see neither the force nor the fairness, and he therefore let slip
+no opportunity of evading it.
+
+"Their Lordships," writes a commander who had been thus cheated, "need
+not be surprised that I pressed so few men out of so large a Convoy,
+for the Wind taking me Short before I got the length of Leostaff
+(Lowestoft), the Pilot would not take Charge of the Shipp to turn her
+out over the Stamford in the Night, which Oblig'd me to come to an
+Anchor in Corton Road. This I did by Signal, but the Convoy took no
+Notice of it, and all of them Run away and Left me, my Bottom being
+like a Rock for Roughness, so that I could not Follow them." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Letters of Capt. Young, 1742.]
+
+Supposing, however, that all these manoeuvres failed him and the gang
+after a hot chase appeared in force on deck, the game was not yet up
+so far as the sailor was concerned. A ship, it is true, had neither the
+length of the Great North Road nor yet the depth of the Forest of Dean,
+but all the same there was within the narrow compass of her timbers many
+a lurking place wherein the artful sailor, by a judicious exercise of
+forethought and tools, might contrive to lie undetected until the gang
+had gone over the side.
+
+About five o'clock in the afternoon of the 25th of June 1756, Capt.
+William Boys, from the quarter-deck of his ship the _Royal Sovereign_,
+then riding at anchor at the Nore, observed a snow on fire in the
+five-fathom channel, a little below the Spoil Buoy. He immediately sent
+his cutter to her assistance, but in spite of all efforts to save her
+she ran aground and burnt to the water's edge. Her cargo consisted of
+wine, and the loss of the vessel was occasioned by one of her crew, who
+was fearful of being pressed, hiding himself in the hold with a lighted
+candle. He was burnt with the ship. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1487--Capt. Boys, 26 June 1756. Oddly enough, a somewhat similar
+accident was indirectly the cause of Capt. Boys' entering the Navy. In
+1727, whilst the merchantman of which he was then mate was on the voyage
+home from Jamaica, two mischievous imps of black boys, inquisitive
+to know whether some liquor spilt on deck was rum or water, applied a
+lighted candle to it. It proved to be rum, and when the officers
+and crew, who were obliged to take to the boats in consequence, were
+eventually picked up by a Newfoundland fishing vessel, unspeakable
+sufferings had reduced their number from twenty-three to seven,
+and these had only survived by feeding on the bodies of their dead
+shipmates. In memory of that harrowing time Boys adopted as his seal the
+device of a burning ship and the motto: "From Fire, Water and Famine by
+Providence Preserved."]
+
+Barring the lighted candle and the lamentable accident which followed
+its use, the means of evading the gang resorted to in this instance
+was of a piece with many adopted by the sailor. He contrived cunning
+hiding-places in the cargo, where the gangsmen systematically "pricked"
+for him with their cutlasses when the nature of the vessel's lading
+admitted of it, or he stowed himself away in seachests, lockers and
+empty "harness" casks with an ingenuity and thoroughness that often
+baffled the astutest gangsman and the most protracted search. The spare
+sails forward, the readily accessible hiding-hole of the green-hand,
+afforded less secure concealment. Pierre Flountinherre, routed out of
+hiding there, endeavoured to save his face by declaring that he
+had "left France on purpose to get on board an English man-of-war."
+Frenchman though he was, the gang obliged him. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1510--Capt. Baskerville, 5 Aug. 1795.]
+
+In his endeavours to best the impress officers and gangsmen the sailor
+found a willing backer in his skipper, who systematically falsified
+the ship's articles by writing "run," "drowned," "discharged" or
+"dead" against the names of such men as he particularly desired to save
+harmless from the press. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1525--Capt.
+Berry, 31 March 1801.] This done, the men were industriously coached
+in the various parts they were to play at the critical moment. In the
+skipper's stead, supposing him to be for some reason unfit for naval
+service, some specially valuable hand was dubbed master. Failing this
+substitution, which was of course intended to save the man and not the
+skipper, the ablest seaman in the ship figured as mate, whilst others
+became putative boatswain or carpenter and apprentices--privileged
+persons whom no gang could lawfully take, but who, to render their
+position doubly secure, were furnished with spurious papers, of which
+every provident skipper kept a supply at hand for use in emergencies.
+When all hands were finally mustered to quarters, so to speak, there
+remained on deck only a "master" who could not navigate the ship, a
+"mate" unable to figure out the day's run, a "carpenter" who did not
+know how to handle an adze, and some make-believe apprentices "bound"
+only to outwit the gang. And if in spite of all these precautions an
+able seaman were pressed, the real master immediately came forward and
+swore he was the mate.
+
+Such thoroughly organised preparedness as this, however, was the
+exception rather than the rule, for though often attempted, it rarely
+reached perfection or stood the actual test. The sailor was too
+childlike by nature to play the fraud successfully, and as for the
+impress officer and the gangsman, neither was easily gulled. Supposing
+the sailor, then, to have nothing to hope for from deception or
+concealment, and supposing, too, that it was he who had the rough bottom
+beneath him and the fleet keel in pursuit, how was he to outwit the gang
+and evade the pinch? Nothing remained for him but to heave duty by the
+board and abandon his ship to the doubtful mercies of wind and wave.
+He accordingly went over the side with all the haste he could,
+appropriating the boats in defiance of authority, and leaving only the
+master and his mate, the protected carpenter and the apprentices to work
+the ship. Many a trader from overseas, summarily abandoned in this
+way, crawled into some outlying port, far from her destination, in
+quest--since a rigorous press often left no others available--of "old
+men and boys to carry her up." There is even on record the case of
+a ship that passed the Nore "without a man belonging to her but the
+master, the passengers helping him to sail her." Her people had "all
+got ashore by Harwich." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1473--Capt.
+Bouler, 18 Feb. 1725-6.]
+
+Few shipowners were so foolhardy as to incur the risk of being thus hit
+in the pocket by the sailor's well-known predilection for French leave
+when in danger of the press. Nor were the masters, for they, even when
+not part owners, had still an appreciable stake in the safety of the
+ships they sailed. As between masters, owners and men there consequently
+sprang up a sort of triangular sympathy, having for its base a common
+dread of the gangs, and for its apex their circumvention. This apex
+necessarily touched the coast at a point contiguous to the ocean tracks
+of the respective trades in which the ships sailed; and here, in some
+spot far removed from the regular haunts of the gangsman, an emergency
+crew was mustered by those indefatigable purveyors, the crimps, and held
+in readiness against the expected arrival.
+
+Composed of seafaring men too old, too feeble, or too diseased to excite
+the cupidity of the most zealous lieutenant who eked out his pay on
+impress perquisites; of lads but recently embarked on the adventurous
+voyage of their teens; of pilots willing, for a consideration, to forego
+the pleasure of running ships aground; of fishermen who evaded His
+Majesty's press under colour of Sea-Fencible, Militia, or Admiralty
+protections; and of unpressable foreigners whose wives bewailed them
+more or less beyond the seas, this scratch crew--the Preventive Men of
+the merchant service--here awaited the preconcerted signal which should
+apprise them that their employer's ship was ready for a change of hands.
+
+For safety's sake the transfer was generally effected by night, when
+that course was possible; but the untimely appearance of a press-smack
+on the scene not infrequently necessitated the shifting of the crews in
+the broad light of day and the hottest of haste. On shore all had been
+in readiness perhaps for days. At the signal off dashed the deeply laden
+boats to the frantic ship, the scratch crew scrambled aboard, and the
+regular hands, thus released from duty, tumbled pell-mell into the empty
+boats and pulled for shore with a will mightily heartened by a running
+fire of round-shot from the smack and of musketry from her cutter,
+already out to intercept the fugitives. Then it was:--
+
+  "Cheerily, lads, cheerily! there's a ganger hard to wind'ard;
+    Cheerily, lads, cheerily! there's a ganger hard a-lee;
+  Cheerily, lads, cheerily! else 'tis farewell home and kindred,
+    And the bosun's mate a-raisin' hell in the King's Navee.
+  Cheerily, lads, cheerily ho! the warrant's out, the hanger's drawn!
+  Cheerily, lads, so cheerily! we'll leave 'em an _R_ in pawn!"
+
+[Footnote: When Jack deserted his ship under other conditions than those
+here described, an _R_ was written against his name to denote that he
+had "run." So, when he shirked an obligation, monetary or moral, by
+running away from it, he was said to "leave an _R_ in pawn."]
+
+The place of muster of the emergency men thus became in turn the
+landing-place of the fugitive crew. Its whereabouts depended as a matter
+of course upon the trade in which the ship sailed. The spot chosen for
+the relief of the Holland, Baltic and Greenland traders of the East
+Coast was generally some wild, inaccessible part abutting directly
+on the German Ocean or the North Sea. London skippers in those trades
+favoured the neighbourhood of Great Yarmouth, where the maze of inland
+waterways constituting the Broads enabled the shifty sailor to lead the
+gangs a merry game at hide and seek. King's Lynners affected Skegness
+and the Norfolk lip of the Wash. Of the men who sailed out of Hull not
+one in ten could be picked up, on their return, by the gangs haunting
+the Humber. They went ashore at Dimlington on the coast of Holderness,
+or at the Spurn. The homing sailors of Leith, as of the ports on the
+upper reaches of the Firth of Forth, enjoyed an immunity from the
+press scarcely less absolute than that of the Orkney Islanders, who for
+upwards of forty years contributed not a single man to the Navy. Having
+on either hand an easily accessible coast, inhabited by a people upon
+whose hospitality the gangs were chary of intruding, and abounding in
+lurking-places as secure as they were snug, the Mother Firth held on to
+her sailor sons with a pertinacity and success that excited the envy of
+the merchant seaman at large and drove impress officers to despair. The
+towns and villages to the north of the Firth were "full of men." On
+no part of the north coast, indeed, from St. Abb's Head clear round to
+Annan Water, was it an easy matter to circumvent the canny Scot who went
+a-sailoring. He had a trick of stopping short of his destination,
+when homeward bound, that proved as baffling to the gangs as it was
+in seeming contradiction to all the traditions of a race who pride
+themselves on "getting there." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+579--Admiral Pringle, Report on Rendezvous, 2 April 1795, and Captains'
+Letters, _passim_.]
+
+In the case of outward-bound ships, the disposition of the two crews
+was of course reversed. The scratch crew carried the ship down to the
+stipulated point of exchange, where they vacated her in favour of the
+actual crew, who had been secretly conveyed to that point by land.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Admiral Lord Nelson, Memorandum
+on the State of the Fleet, 1803.] Whichever way the trick was worked, it
+proved highly effective, for, except from the sea, no gang durst venture
+near such points of debarkation and departure without strong military
+support.
+
+There still remained the emergency crew itself. The most decrepit,
+crippled or youthful were of course out of the question. But the
+foreigner and our shifty friend the man in lieu were fair game. Entering
+largely as they did into the make-up of almost every scratch crew, they
+were pressed without compunction whenever and wherever caught abusing
+their privileges by playing the emergency man. To keep such persons
+always and in all circumstances was a point of honour with the Navy
+Board. It had no other means of squaring accounts with the scratch crew.
+
+The emergency man who plied "on his own" was more difficult to deal
+with. Keepers of the Eddystone made a "great deal of money" by putting
+inward-bound ships' crews ashore; but when one of their number, Matthew
+Dolon by name, was pressed as a punishment for that offence, the
+Admiralty, having the fear of outraged Trade before its eyes, ordered
+his immediate discharge. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt.
+Yeo, 25 July 1727.]
+
+The pilot, the fisherman and the longshoreman were notorious offenders
+in this respect. Whenever they saw a vessel bound in, they were in the
+habit of putting off to her and of first inciting the crew to escape and
+then hiring themselves at exorbitant rates to work the vessel into port.
+On such mischievous interlopers the gangsman had no mercy. He took
+them whenever he could, confident that when their respective cases were
+stated to the Board, that body would "tumble" to the occasion.
+
+Any attempt at estimating the number of seafaring men who evaded the
+gangs and the call of the State by means of the devices and subterfuges
+here roughly sketched into the broad canvas of our picture would prove a
+task as profitless as it is impossible of accomplishment. One thing only
+is certain. The number fluctuated greatly from time to time with the
+activity or inactivity of the gangs. When the press was lax, there arose
+no question as there existed no need of escape; when it was hot, it was
+evaded systematically and with a degree of success extremely gratifying
+to the sailor. Taking the sea-borne coal trade of the port of London
+alone, it is estimated that in the single month of September 1770, at
+a time when an exceptionally severe press from protections was in full
+swing, not less than three thousand collier seamen got ashore between
+Yarmouth Roads and Foulness Point. As the coal trade was only one of
+many, and as the stretch of coast concerned comprised but a few miles
+out of hundreds equally well if not better adapted to the sailor's
+furtive habits, the total of escapes must have been little short of
+enormous. It could not have been otherwise. In this grand battue of the
+sea it was clearly impossible to round-up and capture every skittish son
+of Neptune.
+
+On shore, as at sea, the sailor's course, when the gang was on his
+track, followed the lines of least resistance, only here he became a
+skulk as well as a fugitive. It was not that he was a less stout-hearted
+fellow than when at sea. He was merely the victim of a type of land
+neurosis. Drink and his recent escape from the gang got on his nerves
+and rendered him singularly liable to panic. The faintest hint of a
+press was enough to make his hair rise. At the first alarm he scuttled
+into hiding in the towns, or broke cover like a frightened hare.
+
+The great press of 1755 affords many instances of such panic flights.
+Abounding in "lurking holes" where a man might lie perdue in comparative
+safety, King's Lynn nevertheless emptied itself of seamen in a few
+hours' time, and when the gang hurried to Wells by water, intending to
+intercept the fugitives there, the "idle fishermen on shore" sounded a
+fresh alarm and again they stampeded, going off to the eastward in great
+numbers and burying themselves in the thickly wooded dells and hills of
+that bit of Devon in Norfolk which lies between Clay-next-the-Sea and
+Sheringham. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1486--Capt. Baird, 29
+March and 21 April 1755.]
+
+A similar exodus occurred at Ipswich. The day the warrants came down, as
+for many days previous, the ancient borough was full of seamen; but no
+sooner did it become known that the press was out than they vanished
+like the dew of the morning. For weeks the face of but one sailor was
+seen in the town, and he was only ferreted out, with the assistance of a
+dozen constables, after prolonged and none too legal search. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1486--Capt. Brand, 26 Feb. 1755.]
+
+How effectually the sailor could hide when dread of the press had him in
+its grip is strikingly illustrated by the hot London press of 1740. On
+that occasion the docks, the riverside slums and dens, the river itself
+both above and below bridge, were scoured by gangs who left no stratagem
+untried for unearthing and taking the hidden sailor. When the rigour of
+the press was past not a seaman, it is said, was to be found at large in
+London; yet within four-and-twenty hours sixteen thousand emerged from
+their retreats. [Footnote: Griffiths, _Impressment Fully Considered_.]
+
+The secret of such effectual concealment lay in the fact that the nature
+of his hiding-place mattered little to the sailor so long as it was
+secure. Accustomed to quarters of the most cramped description on
+shipboard, he required little room for his stowing. The roughest
+bed, the worst ventilated hole, the most insanitary surroundings and
+conditions were all one to him. He could thus hide himself away in
+places and receptacles from which the average landsman would have turned
+in fear or disgust. In quarry, clay-pit, cellar or well; in holt, hill
+or cave; in chimney, hayloft or secret cell behind some old-time oven;
+in shady alehouse or malodorous slum where a man's life was worth
+nothing unless he had the smell of tar upon him, and not much then; on
+isolated farmsteads and eyots, or in towns too remote or too hostile
+for the gangsman to penetrate--somewhere, somehow and of some sort the
+sailor found his lurking-place, and in it, by good providence, lay safe
+and snug throughout the hottest press.
+
+Many of the seamen employed in the Newfoundland trade of Poole, gaining
+the shore at Chapman's Pool or Lulworth, whiled away their stolen
+leisure either in the clay-pits of the Isle of Purbeck, where they
+defied intrusion by posting armed sentries at every point of access to
+their stronghold, or--their favourite haunt--on Portland Island,
+which the number and ill-repute of the labourers employed in its stone
+quarries rendered well-nigh impregnable. To search for, let alone
+to take the seamen frequenting that natural fortress--who of course
+"squared" the hard-bitten quarrymen--was more than any gang durst
+undertake unless, as was seldom the case, it consisted of some "very
+superior force." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral
+Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 5 Aug. 1805.]
+
+With the solitary exception of Falmouth town, the Cornish coast was
+merely another Portland Neck enormously extended. From Rame Head to the
+Lizard and Land's End, and in a minor sense from Land's End away to Bude
+Haven in the far nor'-east, the entire littoral of this remote part of
+the kingdom was forbidden ground whereon no gangsman's life was worth
+a moment's purchase. The two hundred seins and twice two hundred
+drift-boats belonging to that coast employed at least six thousand
+fishermen, and of these the greater part, as soon as the fishing season
+was at an end, either turned "tinners" and went into the mines, where
+they were unassailable,
+
+ [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report
+on Rendezvous, 28 Sept. 1805.] or betook themselves to their strongholds
+at Newquay, St. Ives, Newland, Mousehole, Coversack, Polpero, Cawsand
+and other places where, in common with smugglers, deserters from the
+king's ships at Hamoaze, and an endless succession of fugitive merchant
+seamen, they were as safe from intrusion or capture as they would have
+been on the coast of Labrador. It was impossible either to hunt them
+down or to take them on a coast so "completely perforated." A thousand
+"stout, able young fellows" could have been drawn from this source
+without being missed; but the gangs fought shy of the task, and only
+when they carried vessels in distress into Falmouth were the redoubtable
+sons of the coves ever molested. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+579--Admiral M'Bride, 9 March 1795. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 578--Petition
+of the Inhabitants of the Village of Coversack, 31 Jan. 1778.]
+
+On the Bristol Channel side Lundy Island offered unrivalled facilities
+for evasion, and many were the crews marooned there by far-sighted
+skippers who calculated on thus securing them against their return from
+Bristol, outward bound. The gangs as a rule gave this little Heligoland
+a wide berth, and when carried thither against their will they had a
+disconcerting habit of running away with the press-boat, and of thus
+marooning their commanding officer, that contributed not a little to
+the immunity the island enjoyed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1439--Capt. Aylmer, 22 Dec. 1743.]
+
+The sailor's objection to Lundy was as strong as the gangsman's. From
+his point of view it was no ideal place to hide in, and the effect upon
+him of enforced sojourn there was to make him sulky and mutinous. Rather
+the shore with all its dangers than an island that produced neither
+tobacco, rum, nor women! He therefore preferred sticking to his ship,
+even though he thereby ran the risk of impressment, until she arrived
+the length of the Holmes.
+
+These islands are two in number, Steep Holme and Flat Holme, and so
+closely can vessels approach the latter, given favourable weather
+conditions, that a stone may be cast on shore from the deck. The
+business of landing and embarking was consequently easy, and though the
+islands themselves were as barren as Lundy of the three commodities the
+sailor loved, he was nevertheless content to terminate his voyage there
+for the following reasons. Under the lee of one or other of the islands
+there was generally to be found a boat-load of men who were willing, for
+a suitable return in coin of the realm, to work the ship into King Road,
+the anchorage of the port of Bristol. The sailor was thus left free to
+gain the shore in the neighbourhood of Uphill, Weston, or Clevedon Bay,
+whence it was an easy tramp, not to Bristol, of which he steered clear
+because of its gangs, but to Bath, or, did he prefer a place nearer at
+hand, to the little town of Pill, near Avon-mouth.
+
+A favourite haunt of seafaring men, fishermen, pilots and pilots'
+assistants, with a liberal sprinkling of that class of female known
+in sailor lingo as "brutes," this lively little town was a place after
+Jack's own heart. The gangsmen gave it a wide berth. It offered an
+abundance of material for him to work upon, but that material was a
+trifle too rough even for his infastidious taste. The majority of the
+permanent indwellers of Pill, as well as the casual ones, not only
+protected themselves from the press, when such a course was necessary,
+by a ready use of the fist and the club, but, when this means of
+exemption failed them, pleaded the special nature of their calling with
+great plausibility and success. They were "pilots' assistants," and as
+such they enjoyed for many years the unqualified indulgence of the
+naval authorities. The appellation they bore was nevertheless purely
+euphemistic. As a matter of fact they were sailors' assistants who,
+under cover of an ostensible vocation, made it their real business,
+at the instigation and expense of Bristol shipowners, to save crews
+harmless from the gangs by boarding ships at the Holmes and working them
+from thence into the roadstead or to the quays. They are said to have
+been "very fine young men," and many a longing look did the impress
+officers at Bristol cast their way whilst struggling to swell their
+monthly returns. So essentially necessary to the trade of the place were
+they considered to be, however, that they were allowed to checkmate
+the gangs, practically without molestation or hindrance, till about the
+beginning of the last century, when the Admiralty, suddenly awaking to
+the unpatriotic nature of a practice that so effectually deprived the
+Navy of its due, caused them to be served with a notice to the effect
+that "for the future all who navigated ships from the Holmes should
+be pressed as belonging to those ships." At this threat the Pill men
+jeered. Relying on the length of pilotage water between King Road and
+Bristol, they took a leaf from the sailor's log and ran before the
+press-boats could reach the ships in which they were temporarily
+employed. For four years this state of things continued. Then there was
+struck at the practice a blow which not even the Admiralty had foreseen.
+Tow-paths were constructed along the river-bank, and the pilots'
+assistants, ousted by horses, fell an easy prey to the gangs. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 14
+April 1805.]
+
+Bath had no gang, and was in consequence much frequented by sailors
+of the better class. In 1803--taking that as a normal year--the number
+within its limits was estimated at three hundred--enough to man a
+ship-of-the-line. The fact being duly reported to the Admiralty, a
+lieutenant and gang were ordered over from Bristol to do some
+pressing. The civic authorities--mayor, magistrates, constables and
+watchmen--fired with sudden zeal for the service, all came forward "in
+the most handsome manner" with offers of countenance and support. In the
+purlieus of the town, however, the advent of the gang created panic. The
+seamen went into prompt hiding, the mob turned out in force, angry and
+threatening, resolved that no gang should violate the sanctuary of a
+cathedral city. Seeing how the wind set, the mayor and magistrates,
+having begun by backing the warrant, continued backing until they backed
+out of the affair altogether. The zealous watchmen could not be found,
+the eager constables ran away. Dismayed by these untimely defections,
+the lieutenant hurriedly resolved "to drop the business." So the gang
+marched back to Bristol empty-handed, followed by the hearty execrations
+of the rabble and the heartier good wishes of the mayor, who assured
+them that as soon as he should be able to clap the skulking seamen in
+jail "on suspicion of various misdemeanours," he would send for them
+again. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1528--Capt. Barker, 3 and 11
+July 1803.] We do not learn that he ever did.
+
+To Bristol no unprotected sailor ever repaired of his own free will,
+for early in the century of pressing the chickens of the most notorious
+kidnapping city in England began to come home to roost. The mantle of
+the Bristol mayor whom Jeffreys tried for a "kidnapping knave" fell
+upon a succession of regulating captains whose doings put their civic
+prototype to open shame, and more petitions and protests against the
+lawlessness of the gangs emanated from Bristol than from any other city
+in the kingdom.
+
+The trowmen who navigated the Severn and the Wye, belonging as they did
+mainly to extra-parochial spots in the Forest of Dean, were exempt from
+the Militia ballot and the Army of Reserve. On the ground that they
+came under the protection of inland navigation, they likewise considered
+themselves exempt from the sea service, but this contention the Court
+of Exchequer in 1798 completely overset by deciding that the "passage
+of the River Severn between Gloucester and Bristol is open sea." A
+press-gang was immediately let loose upon the numerous tribe frequenting
+it, whereupon the whole body of newly created sailors deserted their
+trows and fled to the Forest, where they remained in hiding till the
+disappointed gang sought other and more fruitful fields. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 14
+April 1805.]
+
+Within Chester gates the sailor for many years slept as securely as upon
+the high seas. No householder would admit the gangsmen beneath his roof;
+and when at length they succeeded in gaining a foothold within the city,
+all who were liable to the press immediately deserted it--"as they do
+every town where there is a gang"--and went "to reside at Parkgate."
+Parkgate in this way became a resort of sea-faring men without parallel
+in the kingdom--a "nest" whose hornet bands were long, and with good
+reason, notorious for their ferocity and aggressiveness. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1446--Capt. Ayscough, 17 Nov. 1780.] An attempt
+to establish a rendezvous here in 1804 proved a failure. The seamen
+fled, no "business" could be done, and officer and gang were soon
+withdrawn.
+
+In comparison with the seething Deeside hamlet, Liverpool was tameness
+itself. Now and then, as in 1745, the sailor element rose in arms,
+demanding who was master; but as a rule it suffered the gang, if not
+gladly, at least with exemplary patience. Homing seamen who desired to
+evade the press in that city--and they were many--fled ashore from
+their ships at Highlake, a spot so well adapted to their purpose that it
+required "strict care to catch them." From Highlake they made their
+way to Parkgate, swelling still further the sailor population of that
+far-famed nest of skulkers.
+
+Cork was a minor Parkgate. A graphic account of the conditions obtaining
+in that city has been left to us by Capt. Bennett, of H.M.S. _Lennox_,
+who did port duty there from May 1779 till March 1783. "Many hundreds
+of the best Seamen in this Province," he tells us, "resort in Bodys
+in Country Villages round about here, where they are maintained by the
+Crimps, who dispose of them to Bristol, Liverpool and other Privateers,
+who appoint what part of the Coast to take them on Board. They go in
+Bodys, even in the Town of Cork, and bid defiance to the Press-gangs,
+and resort in houses armed, and laugh at both civil and military Power.
+This they did at Kinsale, where they threatened to pull the Jail down
+in a garrison'd Town." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1502--Capt.
+Bennett, 12 and 26 April 1782.] These tactics rendered the costly
+press-gangs all but useless. A hot press at Cork, in 1796, yielded only
+sixteen men fit for the service.
+
+Space fails us to tell of how, owing to a three days' delay in the
+London post that brought the warrants to Newhaven in the spring of '78,
+the "alarm of soon pressing" spread like wildfire along that coast and
+drove every vessel to sea; of how "three or four hundred young fellows"
+belonging to Great Yarmouth and Gorleston, who had no families and could
+well have been spared without hindrance to the seafaring business of
+those towns, thought otherwise and took a little trip of "thirty or
+forty miles in the country to hide from the service"; or of how Capt.
+Routh, of the rendezvous at Leeds, happened upon a great concourse of
+skulkers at Castleford, whither they had been drawn by reasons of safety
+and the alleged fact that
+
+   "Castleford woman must needs be fair,
+   Because they wash both in Calder and Aire,"
+
+and after two unsuccessful attempts at surprise, at length took them
+with the aid of the military. These were everyday incidents which were
+accepted as matters of course and surprised nobody. Nevertheless the
+vagaries of the wayward children of the State, who chose to run away and
+hide instead of remaining to play the game, cost the naval authorities
+many an anxious moment. _They_ had to face both evasion and invasion,
+and the prevalence of the one did not help to repel the other.
+
+His country's fear of invasion by the French afforded the seafaring
+man the chance of the century. Pitt's Quota Bill put good money in his
+pocket at the expense of his liberty, but in Admiral Sir Home Popham's
+great scheme for the defence of the coasts against Boney and his
+flat-bottomed boats he scented something far more to his advantage and
+taste.
+
+From the day in 1796 when Capt. Moriarty, press-gang-officer at Cork,
+reported the arrival of the long-expected Brest fleet off the Irish
+coast, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1621--Capt. Crosby, 30 Dec.
+1796.] the question how best to defend from sudden attack so enormously
+extended and highly vulnerable a seaboard as that of the United Kingdom,
+became one of feverish moment. At least a hundred different projects
+for compassing that desirable end at one time or another claimed
+the attention of the Navy Board. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 581--Admiral Knowles, 25 Jan. 1805.] One of these was decidedly
+ingenious. It aimed at destroying the French flotilla by means of logs
+of wood bored hollow and charged with gunpowder and ball. These were to
+be launched against the invaders somewhat after the manner of the modern
+torpedo, of which they were, in fact, the primitive type and original.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Rear-Admiral Young, 14 Aug. 1803,
+and secret enclosure, as in the Appendix. The Admiral's "machine," as he
+termed it, though embodying the true torpedo idea of an explosive device
+to be propelled against an enemy's ship, was not designed to be so
+propelled on its own buoyancy, but by means of a fishing-boat, in which
+it lay concealed. Had his inventive genius taken a bolder flight and
+given us a more finished product in place of this crudity, the Whitehead
+torpedo would have been anticipated, in something more than mere
+principle, by upwards of half a century.]
+
+Meantime, however, the Admiralty had adopted another plan--Admiral
+Popham, already famous for his improved code of signals, its originator.
+On paper it possessed the merits of all Haldanic substitutes for the
+real thing. It was patriotic, cheap, simple as kissing your hand. All
+you had to do was to take the fisherman, the longshoreman and other
+stalwarts who lived "one foot in sea and one on shore," enroll them in
+corps under the command (as distinguished from the control) of naval
+officers, and practise them (on Sundays, since it was a work of strict
+necessity) in the use of the pike and the cannon, and, hey presto! the
+country was as safe from invasion as if the meddlesome French had never
+been. The expense would be trivial. Granting that the French did not
+take alarm and incontinently drop their hostile designs upon the tight
+little island, there would be a small outlay for pay, a trifle of a
+shilling a day on exercise days, but nothing more--except for martello
+towers. The boats it was proposed to enroll and arm would cost nothing.
+Their patriotic owners were to provide them free of charge.
+
+Such was the Popham scheme on paper. On a working basis it proved
+quite another thing. The pikes provided were old ship-pikes, rotten and
+worthless. The only occasion on which they appear to have served any
+good purpose was when, at Gerrans and St. Mawes, the Fencibles joined
+the mob and terrified the farmers, who were ignorant of the actual
+condition of the pikes, into selling their corn at something less than
+famine prices. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Capt. Spry, 14
+April 1801.] Guns hoary with age, requisitioned from country churchyards
+and village greens where they had rusted, some of them, ever since the
+days of Drake and Raleigh, were dragged forth and proudly grouped as
+"parks of artillery." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1513--Capt.
+Bradley, 21 Aug. 1796.] Signal stations could not be seen one from the
+other, or, if visible, perpetrated signals no one could read. The armed
+smacks were equally unreliable. In Ireland they could not be "trusted
+out of sight with a gun." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1529--Capt.
+Bowen, 12 Oct. 1803.] In England they left the guns behind them. The
+weight, the patriotic owners discovered, seriously hampered the carrying
+capacity and seaworthiness of their boats; so to abate the nuisance they
+hove the guns overboard on to the beach, where they were speedily buried
+in sand or shingle, while the appliances were carried off by those who
+had other uses for them than their country's defence. The vessels thus
+armed, moreover, were always at sea, the men never at home. When it was
+desired to practise them in the raising of the sluice-gates which, in
+the event of invasion, were to convert Romney Marsh into an inland
+sea, no efforts availed to get together sufficient men for the purpose.
+Immune from the press by reason of their newly created status of
+Sea-Fencibles, they were all elsewhere, following their time-honoured
+vocations of fishing and smuggling with industry and gladness of heart.
+As a means of repelling invasion the Popham scheme was farcical and
+worthless; as a means of evading the press it was the finest thing
+ever invented. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley,
+Reports on Sea-Fencibles, 1805; Admiral Lord Keith, Sentiments upon the
+Sea-Fencible System, 7 Jan. 1805.] The only benefits the country ever
+drew from it, apart from this, were two. It provided the Admiralty with
+an incomparable register of seafaring men, and some modern artists with
+secluded summer retreats.
+
+It goes without saying that a document of such vital consequence to the
+seafaring man as an Admiralty protection did not escape the attention
+of those who, from various motives, sought to aid and abet the sailor
+in his evasion of the press. Protections were freely lent and exchanged,
+bought and sold, "coaxed," concocted and stolen. Skilful predecessors
+of Jim the Penman imitated to the life the signatures of Pembroke and
+Sandwich, Lord High Admirals, and of the lesser fry who put the official
+hand to those magic papers. "Great abuses" were "committed that
+way." Bogus protections could be obtained at Sunderland for 8s. 6d.,
+Stephenson and Collins, the disreputable schoolmasters who made a
+business of faking them, coining money by the "infamous practice." In
+London "one Broucher, living in St. Michael's Lane," supplied them
+to all comers at 3 Pounds apiece. Even the Navy Office was not above
+suspicion in this respect, for in '98 a clerk there, whose name does
+not transpire, was accused of adding to his income by the sale of
+bogus protections at a guinea a head. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+2740--Lieut. Abbs, 5 Oct. 1798.]
+
+American protections were the Admiralty's pet bugbear. For many years
+after the successful issue of the War of Independence a bitter animosity
+characterised the attitude of the British naval officer towards the
+American sailor. Whenever he could be laid hold of he was pressed, and
+no matter what documents he produced in evidence of his American birth
+and citizenship, those documents were almost invariably pronounced false
+and fraudulent. There were weighty reasons, however, for refusing to
+accept the claim of the alleged American sailor at its face value. No
+class of protection was so generally forged, so extensively bought and
+sold, as the American. Practically every British seaman who made the run
+to an American port took the precaution, during his sojourn in that land
+of liberty, to provide himself with spurious papers against his return
+to England, where he hoped, by means of them, to checkmate the gang. The
+process of obtaining such papers was simplicity itself. All the sailor
+had to do, at, say, New York, was to apply himself to one Riley, whose
+other name was Paddy. The sum of three dollars having changed hands,
+Riley and his client betook themselves to the retreat of some shady
+Notary Public, where the Irishman made ready oath that the British
+seaman was as much American born as himself. The business was now as
+good as done, for on the strength of this lying affidavit any Collector
+of Customs on the Atlantic coast would for a trifling fee grant the
+sailor a certificate of citizenship. Riley created American citizens
+in this way at the rate, it is said, of a dozen a day, [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1523-Deposition of Zacharias Pasco, 20 Jan.
+1800.] and as he was only one of many plying the same lucrative trade,
+the effect of such wholesale creations upon the impress service in
+England, had they been allowed to pass unchallenged, may be readily
+conceived.
+
+The fraud, worse luck for the service, was by no means confined to
+America. Almost every home seaport had its recognised perveyor of
+"false American passes." At Liverpool a former clerk to the Collector
+of Customs for Pembroke, Pilsbury by name, grew rich on them, whilst at
+Greenock, Shields and other north-country shipping centres they were for
+many years readily procurable of one Walter Gilly and his confederates,
+whose transactions in this kind of paper drove the Navy Board to
+desperation. They accordingly instructed Capt. Brown, gang-officer at
+Greenock, to take Gilly at all hazards, but the fabricator of passes
+fled the town ere the gang could be put on his track. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1549--Capt. Brown, 22 Aug. 1809.]
+
+Considering that every naval officer, from the Lord High Admiral
+downwards, had these facts and circumstances at his fingers' end, it
+is hardly suprising that protections having, or purporting to have,
+an American origin, should have been viewed with profound
+distrust--distrust too often justified, and more than justified, by the
+very nature of the documents themselves. Thus a gentleman of colour,
+Cato Martin by name, when taken out of the _Dolly_ West-Indiaman at
+Bristol, had the assurance to produce a white man's pass certifying his
+eyes, which were undeniably yellow, to be a soft sky-blue, and his hair,
+which was hopelessly black and woolly, to be of that well-known hue most
+commonly associated with hair grown north of the Tweed. It was reserved,
+however, for an able seaman bearing the distinguished name of Oliver
+Cromwell to break all known records in this respect. When pressed, he
+unblushingly produced a pass dated in America the 29th of May and
+vised by the American Consul in London on the 6th of June immediately
+following, thus conferring on its bearer the unique distinction of
+having crossed the Atlantic in eight days at a time when the voyage
+occupied honester men nearly as many weeks. To press such frauds was a
+public benefit. On the other hand, one confesses to a certain sympathy
+with the American sailor who was pressed because he "spoke English very
+well." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2734--Capt. Yorke, 8 March
+1798.]
+
+Believing in the simplicity of his heart that others were as gullible
+as himself, the fugitive sailor sought habitually to hide his identity
+beneath some temporary disguise of greater or less transparency. That of
+farm labourer was perhaps his favourite choice. The number of seamen so
+disguised, and employed on farms within ten miles of the coast between
+Hull and Whitby prior to the sailing of the Greenland and Baltic
+ships in 1803, was estimated at more than a thousand able-bodied men.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Admiral Phillip, Report on
+Rendezvous, 25 April 1804.] Seamen using the Newfoundland trade of
+Dartmouth were "half-farmer, half-sailor." When the call of the sea no
+longer lured them, they returned to the land in an agricultural sense,
+resorting in hundreds to the farmsteads in the Southams, where they
+were far out of reach of the gangs. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+579--Admiral M'Bride, Report on Rendezvous, 28 Feb. 1795]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+WHAT THE GANG DID ASHORE.
+
+
+
+In his endeavours to escape the gang the sailor resembled nothing so
+much as that hopelessly impotent fugitive the flying-fish. For both the
+sea swarmed with enemies bent on catching them. Both sought to evade
+those enemies by flight, and both, their ineffectual flight ended,
+returned to the sea again whether they would or not. It was their fate,
+a deep-sea kismet as unavoidable as death.
+
+The ultimate destination of the sailor who by strategy or accident
+succeeded in eluding the triple line of sea-gangs so placed as to head
+him off from the coast, was thus never in doubt. His longest flights
+were those he made on land, for here the broad horizon that stood
+the gangs in such good stead at sea was measurably narrower, while
+hiding-places abounded and were never far to seek. All the same, in
+spite of these adventitious aids to self-effacement, the predestined end
+of the seafaring man sooner or later overtook him. The gang met him at
+the turning of the ways and wiped him off the face of the land. In the
+expressive words of a naval officer who knew the conditions thoroughly
+well, the sailor's chances of obtaining a good run for his money "were
+not worth a chaw of tobacco."
+
+For this inevitable finish to all the sailor's attempts at flight on
+shore there existed in the main two reasons. The first of these lay in
+the sailor himself, making of him an unconscious aider and abettor in
+his own capture. Just as love and a cough cannot be hid, so there was
+no disguising the fact that the sailor was a sailor. He was marked by
+characteristics that infallibly betrayed him. His bandy legs and rolling
+gait suggested irresistibly the way of a ship at sea, and no "soaking"
+in alehouse or tavern could eliminate the salt from the peculiar oaths
+that were as natural to him as the breath of life. Assume what disguise
+he would, he fell under suspicion at sight, and he had only to open
+his mouth to turn that suspicion into certainty. It needed no Sherlock
+Holmes of a gangsman to divine what he was or whence he came.
+
+The second reason why the sailor could never long escape the gangs was
+because the gangs were numerically too many for him. It was no question
+of a chance gang here and there. The country swarmed with them.
+
+Take the coast. Here every seaport of any pretensions in the way of
+trade, together with every spot between such ports known to be favoured
+or habitually used by the homing sailor as a landing-place, with certain
+exceptions already noted, either had its own particular gang or was
+closely watched by some gang stationed within easy access of the spot.
+In this way the whole island was ringed in by gangs on shore, just as it
+was similarly ringed in by other gangs afloat.
+
+"If their Lordships would give me authority to press here," says Lieut.
+Oakley, writing to the Sea Lords from Deal in 1743, "I could frequently
+pick up good seamen ashoar. I mean seamen _who by some means escape
+being prest by the men of war and tenders_."
+
+In this modest request the lieutenant states the whole case for the
+land-gang, at once demonstrating its utility and defining its functions.
+Unconsciously he does more. He echoes a cry that incessantly assailed
+the ears of Admiralty: "The sailor has escaped! Send us warrants and
+give us gangs, and we will catch him yet."
+
+It was this call, the call of the fleet, that dominated the situation
+and forced order out of chaos. The men must be "rose," and only
+method could do it. The demand was a heavy one to make upon the most
+unsystematic system ever known, yet it survived the ordeal. The coast
+was mapped out, warrants were dispatched to this point and that,
+rendezvous were opened, gangs formed. No effort or outlay was spared to
+take the sailor the moment he got ashore, or very soon after.
+
+In this systematic setting of land-traps that vast head-centre of the
+nation's overseas trade, the metropolis, naturally had first place. The
+streets, and especially the waterside streets, were infested with gangs.
+At times it was unsafe for any able-bodied man to venture abroad
+unless he had on him an undeniable protection or wore a dress that
+unmistakeably proclaimed the gentleman. The general rendezvous was on
+Tower Hill; but as ships completing their complement nearly always sent
+a gang or two to London, minor rendezvous abounded. St. Katherine's by
+the Tower was specially favoured by them. The "Rotterdam Arms" and the
+"Two Dutch Skippers," well-known taverns within that precinct, were
+seldom without the bit of bunting that proclaimed the headquarters of
+the gang. At Westminster the "White Swan" in King's Street usually bore
+a similar decoration, as did also the "Ship" in Holborn.
+
+A characteristic case of pressing by a gang using the last-named house
+occurred in 1706. Ransacking the town in quest of pressable subjects of
+Her Majesty, they came one day to the "Cock and Rummer" in Bow Street,
+where a big dinner was in progress. Here nothing would suit their tooth
+but mine host's apprentice, and as ill-luck would have it the apprentice
+was cook to the establishment and responsible for the dinner. Him they
+nevertheless seized and would have hurried away in spite of his master's
+supplications, protests and offers of free drinks, had it not been for
+the fact that a mob collected and forcibly prevented them. Other gangs
+hurrying to the assistance of their hard-pressed comrades--to the
+number, it is said, of sixty men--a free fight ensued, in the course of
+which a burly constable, armed with a formidable longstaff, was singled
+out by the original gang, doubtless on account of the prominent part he
+took in the fray, as a fitting substitute for the apprentice. By dint of
+beating the poor fellow till he was past resistance they at length got
+him to the "Ship," where they were in the very act of bundling him
+into a coach, with the intention of carrying him to the waterside below
+bridge, and of their putting him on board the press-smack, when in the
+general confusion he somehow effected his escape. [Footnote: "A Horrible
+Relation," _Review_, 17 March 1705-6.] Such incidents were common enough
+not only at that time but long after.
+
+At Gravesend sailors came ashore in such numbers from East India and
+other ships as to keep a brace of gangs busy. Another found enough to do
+at Broadstairs, whence a large number of vessels sailed in the Iceland
+cod fishery and similar industries. Faversham was a port and had its
+gang, and from Margate right away to Portsmouth, and from Portsmouth to
+Plymouth, nearly every town of any size that offered ready hiding to the
+fugitive sailor from the Channel was similarly favoured. Brighton formed
+a notable exception, and this circumstance gave rise to an episode about
+which we shall have more to say presently.
+
+To record in these pages the local of all the gangs that were stationed
+in this manner upon the seaboard of the kingdom would be as undesirable
+as it is foreign to the scope of this chapter. Enough to repeat that
+the land, always the sailor's objective in eluding the triple cordon of
+sea-borne gangs, was ringed in and surrounded by a circle of land-gangs
+in every respect identical with that described as hedging the southern
+coast, and in its continuity almost as unbroken as the shore itself.
+Both sea-gangs and coast-gangs were amphibious, using either land or sea
+at pleasure.
+
+Inland the conditions were the same, yet materially different. What was
+on the coast an encircling line assumed here the form of a vast net,
+to which the principal towns, the great cross-roads and the arterial
+bridges of the country stood in the relation of reticular knots, while
+the constant "ranging" of the gangs, now in this direction, now in that,
+supplied the connecting filaments or threads. The gangs composing this
+great inland net were not amphibious. Their most desperate aquatic
+ventures were confined to rivers and canals. Ability to do their twenty
+miles a day on foot counted for more with them than a knowledge of how
+to handle an oar or distinguish the "cheeks" of a gaff from its "jaw."
+
+Just as the sea-gangs in their raids upon the land were the Danes and
+"creekmen" of their time, so the land-gangsman was the true highwayman
+of the century that begot him. He kept every strategic point of every
+main thoroughfare, held all the bridges, watched all the ferries,
+haunted all the fairs. No place where likely men were to be found
+escaped his calculating eye.
+
+He was an inveterate early riser, and sailors sauntering to the fair for
+want of better employment ran grave risks. In this way a large number
+were taken on the road to Croydon fair one morning in September 1743.
+For actual pressing the fair itself was unsafe because of the
+great concourse of people; but it formed one of the best possible
+hunting-grounds and was kept under close observation for that reason.
+Here the gangsman marked his victim, whose steps he dogged into the
+country when his business was done or his pleasure ended, never for a
+moment losing sight of him until he walked into the trap all ready set
+in some wayside spinny or beneath some sheltering bridge.
+
+Bridges were the inland gangsman's favourite haunt. They not only
+afforded ready concealment, they had to be crossed. Thus Lodden Bridge,
+near Reading, accounted one of the "likeliest places in the country
+for straggling seamen," was seldom without its gang. Nor was the great
+bridge at Gloucester, since, as the first bridge over the Severn, it
+drew to itself all the highroads and their users from Wales and the
+north. To sailors making for the south coast from those parts it was a
+point of approach as dangerous as it was unavoidable. Great numbers
+were taken here in consequence. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+58l--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 14 April 1805.]
+
+So of ferries. The passage boats at Queensferry on the Firth of Forth,
+watched by gangs from Inverkeithing, yielded almost as many men in the
+course of a year as the costly rendezvous at Leith. Greenock ferries
+proved scarcely less productive. But there was here an exception. The
+ferry between Glenfinart and Greenock plied only twice a week, and
+as both occasions coincided with market-days the boat was invariably
+crowded with women. Only once did it yield a man. Peter Weir, the hand
+in charge, one day overset the boat, drowning every soul on board except
+himself. Thereupon the gang pressed him, arguing that one who used the
+sea so effectively could not fail to make a valuable addition to the
+fleet.
+
+Inland towns traversed by the great highroads leading from north to
+south, or from east to west, were much frequented by the gangs. Amongst
+these Stourbridge perhaps ranked first. Situated midway between
+the great ports of Liverpool and Bristol, it easily and effectually
+commanded Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Bridgnorth, Bewdley, Kidderminster
+and other populous towns, while it was too small to afford secure
+hiding within itself. The gangs operating from Stourbridge brought in
+an endless procession of ragged and travel-stained seamen. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Letters of Capt. Beecher, 1780.]
+
+From ports on the Bristol Channel to ports on the English Channel, and
+the reverse, many seamen crossed the country by stage-coach or wagon,
+and to intercept them gangs were stationed at Okehampton, Liskeard and
+Exeter. Taunton and Salisbury also, as "great thoroughfares to and from
+the west," had each its gang, and a sufficient number of sailors escaped
+the press at the latter place to justify the presence of another at
+Romsey. Andover had a gang as early as 1756, on the recommendation of no
+less a man than Rodney.
+
+Shore gangs were of necessity ambulatory. To sit down before the
+rendezvous pipe in hand, and expect the evasive sailor to come of his
+own accord and beg the favour of being pressed, would have been a futile
+waste of time and tobacco. The very essence of the gangman's duty lay in
+the leg-work he did. To that end he ate the king's victuals and wore the
+king's shoe-leather. Consequently he was early afoot and late to bed.
+Ten miles out and ten home made up his daily constitutional, and if
+he saw fit to exceed that distance he did not incur his captain's
+displeasure. The gang at Reading, a strategic point of great importance
+on the Bath and Bristol road, traversed all the country round about
+within a radius of twenty miles--double the regulation distance. That at
+King's Lynn, another centre of unmeasured possibilities, trudged as far
+afield as Boston, Ely, Peterborough and Wells-on-Sea. And the Isle of
+Wight gang, stationed at Cowes or Ryde, now and then co-operated with a
+gang from Portsmouth or Gosport and ranged the whole length and breadth
+of the island, which was a noted nest of deserters and skulkers.
+"Range," by the way, was a word much favoured by the officers who led
+such expeditions. Its use is happy. It suggests the object well in view,
+the nicely calculated distance, the steady aim that seldom missed its
+mark. The gang that "ranged" rarely returned empty-handed.
+
+On these excursions the favourite resting-place was some secluded
+nook overlooking the point of crossing of two or more highroads; the
+favourite place of refreshment, some busy wayside alehouse. Both were
+good to rest or refresh in, for at both the chances of effecting a
+capture were far more numerous than on the open road.
+
+The object of the gang in taking the road was not, however, so much
+what could be picked up by chance in the course of a day's march, as the
+execution of some preconcerted design upon a particular person or place.
+This brings us to the methods of pressing commonly adopted, which may be
+roughly summarised under the three heads of surprise, violence and the
+hunt. Frequently all three were combined; but as in the case of gangs
+operating on the waters of rivers or harbours, the essential element
+in all pre-arranged raids, attacks and predatory expeditions was the
+first-named element, surprise. In this respect the gangsmen were genuine
+"Peep-o'-Day Boys." The siege of Brighton is a notable case in point.
+
+The inhabitants of Brighton, better known in the days of the press-gang
+as Brighthelmstone, consisted largely of fisher-folk in respect to
+whom the Admiralty had been guilty of one of its rare oversights. For
+generations no call was made upon them to serve the king at sea.
+This accidental immunity in course of time came to be regarded by
+the Brighton fisherman as his birthright, and the misconception bred
+consequences. For one thing, it made him intolerably saucy. He boasted
+that no impress officer had power to take him, and he backed up the
+boast by openly insulting, and on more than one occasion violently
+assaulting the king's uniform. With all this he was a hardy, long-lived,
+lusty fellow, and as his numbers were never thinned by that active
+corrector of an excessive birth-rate, the press-gang, he speedily
+overstocked the town. An energetic worker while his two great harvests
+of herring and mackerel held out, he was at other times indolent, lazy
+and careless of the fact that his numerous progeny burdened the rates.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Admiral Berkeley, Report on
+Rendezvous, 31 Dec. 1804.] These unpleasing circumstances having been
+duly reported to the Admiralty, their Lordships decided that what the
+Brighton fisherman required to correct his lax principles and stiffen
+his backbone was a good hot press. They accordingly issued orders for an
+early raid to be made upon that promising nursery of man-o'-war's-men.
+
+The orders, which were of course secret, bore date the 3rd of July 1779,
+and were directed to Capt. Alms, who, as regulating officer at Shoreham,
+was likewise in charge of the gang at Newhaven under Lieut. Bradley, and
+of the gang at Littlehampton under Lieut. Breedon. At Shoreham there was
+also a tender, manned by an able crew. With these three gangs and the
+tender's crew at his back, Alms determined to lay siege to Brighton
+and teach the fishermen there a lesson they should not soon forget. But
+first, in order to render the success of the project doubly sure, he
+enlisted the aid of Major-General Sloper, Commandant at Lewes, who
+readily consented to lend a company of soldiers to assist in the
+execution of the design.
+
+These preparations were some little time in the making, and it was not
+until the Thursday immediately preceding the 24th of July that all was
+in readiness. On the night of that day, by preconcerted arrangement,
+the allied forces took the road--for the Littlehampton gang, a matter
+of some twenty miles--and at the first flush of dawn united on the
+outskirts of the sleeping town, where the soldiers were without loss of
+time so disposed as to cut off every avenue of escape. This done,
+the gangs split up and by devious ways, but with all expedition,
+concentrated their strength upon the quay, expecting to find there a
+large number of men making ready for the day's fishing. To their intense
+chagrin the quay was deserted. The night had been a tempestuous one,
+with heavy rain, and though the unfortunate gangsmen were soaked to the
+skin, the fishermen all lay dry in bed. Hearing the wind and rain, not a
+man turned out.
+
+By this time the few people who were abroad on necessary occasions
+had raised the alarm, and on every hand were heard loud cries of
+"Press-gang!" and the hurried barricading of doors. For ten hours "every
+man kept himself locked up and bolted." For ten hours Alms waited in
+vain upon the local Justice of the Peace for power to break and enter
+the fishermen's cottages. His repeated requests being refused, he was at
+length "under the necessity of quitting the town with only one man." So
+ended the siege of Brighton; but Bradley, on his way back to Newhaven,
+fell in with a gang of smugglers, of whom he pressed five. Brighton did
+not soon forget the terrors of that rain-swept morning. For many a long
+day her people were "very shy, and cautious of appearing in public." The
+salutary effects of the raid, however, did not extend to the fishermen
+it was intended to benefit. They became more insolent than ever, and a
+few years later marked their resentment of the attempt to press them by
+administering a sound thrashing to Mr. Midshipman Sealy, of the Shoreham
+rendezvous, whom they one day caught unawares. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1445-46--Letters of Capt. Alms.]
+
+The surprise tactics of the gang of course varied according to
+circumstances, and the form they took was sometimes highly ingenious.
+A not uncommon stratagem was the impersonation of a recruiting party
+beating up for volunteers. With cockades in their hats, drums rolling
+and fifes shrilling, the gangsmen, who of course had their arms
+concealed, marched ostentatiously through the high-street of some
+sizable country town and so into the market-place. Since nobody had
+anything to fear from a harmless recruiting party, people turned out in
+strength to see the sight and listen to the music. When they had in this
+way drawn as many as they could into the open, the gangsmen suddenly
+threw off their disguise and seized every pressable person they could
+lay hands on. Market-day was ill-adapted to these tactics. It brought
+too big a crowd together.
+
+A similar ruse was once practised with great success upon the
+inhabitants of Portsmouth by Capt. Bowen of the _Dreadnought_, in
+connection with a general press which the Admiralty had secretly ordered
+to be made in and about that town. Dockyard towns were not as a rule
+considered good pressing-grounds because of the drain of men set up by
+the ships of war fitting out there; but Bowen had certainly no reason to
+subscribe to that opinion. Late on the night of the 8th of March 1803,
+he landed a company of marines at Gosport for the purpose, as it was
+given out, of suppressing a mutiny at Fort Monckton. The news spread
+rapidly, drawing crowds of people from their homes in anticipation of
+an exciting scrimmage. This gave Bowen the opportunity he counted upon.
+When the throngs had crossed Haslar Bridge he posted marines at the
+bridge-end, and as the disappointed people came pouring back the
+"jollies" pressed every man in the crowd. Five hundred are said to have
+been taken on this occasion, but as the nature of the service forbade
+discrimination at the moment of pressing, nearly one-half were next
+day discharged as unfit or exempt. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1057--Admiral Milbanke, 9 March 1803.]
+
+Sometimes, though not often, it was the gang that was surprised. All
+hands would perhaps be snug in bed after a long and trying day, when
+suddenly a thunderous knocking at the rendezvous door, and stentorian
+cries of: "Turn out! turn out there!" coupled with epithets here
+unproducible, would bring every man of them into the street in the turn
+of a handspike, half-dressed but fully armed and awake to the fact that
+a party of belated seamen was coming down the road. The sailors were
+perhaps more road-weary than the gangsmen, and provided none of them
+succeeded in slipping away in the darkness, or made a successful
+resistance, in half-an-hour's time or less the whole party would be safe
+under lock and key, cursing luck for a scurvy trickster in delivering
+them over to the gang.
+
+The sailor's well-known partiality for drink was constantly turned to
+account by the astute gangsman. If a sailor himself, he laid aside his
+hanger or cudgel and played the game of "What ho! shipmate" at the
+cost of a can or two of flip, gently guiding his boon companion to
+the rendezvous when he had got him sufficiently corned. Failing these
+tactics, he adopted others equally effective. At Liverpool, where the
+seafaring element was always a large one, it was a common practice for
+the gangs to lie low for a time, thus inducing the sailor to believe
+himself safe from molestation. He immediately indulged in a desperate
+drinking bout and so put himself entirely in their power. Whether
+rolling about the town "very much in liquor," or "snugly moored in Sot's
+Bay," he was an easy victim.
+
+Another ineradicable weakness that often landed the sailor in the
+press-room was his propensity to indulge in "swank." Two jolly tars, who
+were fully protected and consequently believed themselves immune from
+the press, once bought a four-wheeled post-chaise and hired a painter
+in Long Acre to ornament it with anchors, masts, cannon and a variety
+of other objects emblematic of the sea. In this ornate vehicle they set
+out, behind six horses, with the intention of posting down to Alnwick,
+where their sweethearts lived. So impatient were they to get over the
+road that they could not be prevailed upon, at any of the numerous inns
+where they pulled up for refreshment, to stop long enough to have the
+wheels properly greased, crying out at the delay: "Avast there! she's
+had tar enough," and so on again. Just as they were making a triumphal
+entry into Newcastle-upon-Tyne the wheels took fire, and the chaise,
+saturated with the liquor they had spilt in the course of their mad
+drive, burst into flames fore and aft. The sailors bellowed lustily for
+help, whereupon the spectators ran to their assistance and by swamping
+the ship with buckets of water succeeded in putting out the fire. Now it
+happened that in the crowd drawn together by such an unusual occurrence
+there was an impress officer who was greatly shocked by the exhibition.
+He considered that the sailors had been guilty of unseemly behaviour,
+and on that ground had them pressed. Notwithstanding their protections
+they were kept.
+
+In his efforts to swell the returns of pressed men the gangsman was
+supposed--we may even go so far as to say enjoined--to use no more
+violence than was absolutely necessary to attain his end. The question
+of force thus resolved itself into one of the degree of resistance he
+encountered. Needless to say, he did not always knock a man down before
+bidding him stand in the king's name. Recourse to measures so extreme
+was not always necessary. Every sailor had not the pluck to fight, and
+even when he had both the pluck and the good-will, hard drinking, weary
+days of tramping, or long abstinence from food had perhaps sapped his
+strength, leaving him in no fit condition to hold his own in a scrap
+with the well-fed gangsman. The latter consequently had it pretty much
+his own way. A firm hand on the shoulder, or at the most a short, sharp
+tussle, and the man was his. But there were exceptions to this easy
+rule, as we shall see in our next chapter.
+
+Hunting the sailor was largely a matter of information, and
+unfortunately for his chances of escape informers were seldom wanting.
+Everywhere it was a game at hide-and-seek. Constables had orders to
+report him. Chapmen, drovers and soldiers, persons who were much on
+the road, kept a bright lookout for him. The crimp, habitually given to
+underhand practices, turned informer when prices for seamen ruled low
+in the service he usually catered for. His mistress loved him as long
+as his money lasted; when he had no more to throw away upon her she
+perfidiously betrayed him. And for all this there was a reason as
+simple as casting up the number of shillings in the pound. No matter how
+penniless the sailor himself might be, he was always worth that sum at
+the rendezvous. Twenty shillings was the reward paid for information
+leading to his apprehension as a straggler or a skulker, and it was
+largely on the strength of such informations, and often under the
+personal guidance of such detestable informers, that the gang went
+a-hunting.
+
+Apart from greed of gain, the motive most commonly underlying
+informations was either jealousy or spite. Women were the greatest
+sinners in the first respect. Let the sailorman concealed by a woman
+only so much as look with favour upon another, and his fate was sealed.
+She gave him away, or, what was more profitable, sold him without
+regret. There were as good fish in the sea as ever came out. Perhaps
+better.
+
+On the wings of spite and malice the escapades of youth often came home
+to roost after many years. Men who had run away to sea as lads, but had
+afterwards married and settled down, were informed on by evil-disposed
+persons who bore them some grudge, and torn from their families as
+having used the sea. Stephen Kemp, of Warbelton in Sussex, one of the
+many who suffered this fate, had indeed used the sea, but only for a
+single night on board a fishing-boat. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1445--Capt. Alms, 9 June 1777.]
+
+In face of these infamies it is good to read of how they dealt with
+informers at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There the role was one fraught with
+peculiar danger. Rewards were paid by the Collector of Customs, and when
+a Newcastle man went to the Customs-House to claim the price of some
+sailor's betrayal, the people set upon him and incontinently broke his
+head. One notorious receiver of such rewards was "nearly murther'd."
+Thereafter informers had to be paid in private places for fear of the
+mob, and so many persons fell under suspicion of playing the dastardly
+game that the regulating captain was besieged by applicants for
+"certificates of innocency." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1497--Letters of Capt. Bover, 1777.]
+
+
+ [Illustration: ONE OF THE RAREST OF PRESS-GANG RECORDS.
+A play-bill announcing the suspension of the Gang's operations on
+"Play Nights"; in the collection of Mr. A. M. Broadley, by whose kind
+permission it is reproduced.]
+
+
+Informations not infrequently took the form of anonymous communications
+addressed by the same hand to two different gangs at one and the same
+time, and when this was the case, and both gangs sallied forth in quest
+of the skulker, a collision was pretty sure to follow. Sometimes the
+encounter resolved itself into a running fight, in the course of which
+the poor sailor, who formed the bone of contention, was pressed and
+re-pressed several times over between his hiding-place and one or other
+of the rendezvous.
+
+Rivalry between gangs engaged in ordinary pressing led to many a
+stirring encounter and bloody fracas. A gang sent out by H.M.S. _Thetis_
+was once attacked, while prowling about the waterside slums of Deptford,
+by "three or four different gangs, to the number of thirty men."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1502--Capt. Butcher, 29 Oct. 1782.]
+There was a greater demand for bandages than for sailors in Deptford
+during the rest of the night.
+
+The most extraordinary affair of this description to be met with in the
+annals of pressing is perhaps one that occurred early in the reign
+of Queen Anne. Amongst the men-of-war then lying at Spithead were the
+_Dorsetshire_, Capt. Butler commander, and the _Medway_. Hearing that
+some sailors were in hiding at a place a little distance beyond Gosport,
+Capt. Butler dispatched his 1st and 2nd lieutenants, in charge of thirty
+of his best men, with instructions to take them and bring them on board.
+It so happened that a strong gang was at the same time on shore from
+the _Medway_, presumably on the same errand, and this party the
+Dorsetshires, returning to their ship with the seamen they had taken,
+found posted in the Gosport road for the avowed purpose of re-pressing
+the pressed men. By a timely detour, however, they reached the waterside
+"without any mischief done."
+
+Meanwhile, a rumour had somehow reached the ears of Capt. Butler to the
+effect that a fight was in progress and his 1st lieutenant killed. He
+immediately took boat and hurried over to Gosport, where, to his relief,
+he found his people all safe in their boats, but on the Point, to use
+his own graphic words, "severall hundred People, some with drawn Swords,
+some with Spitts, others with Clubbs, Staves & Stretchers. Some cry'd
+'One & All!' others cry'd 'Medways!' and some again swearing, cursing &
+banning that they would knock my People's Brains out. Off I went with my
+Barge to the Longboat," continues the gallant captain, "commanding them
+to weigh their grappling & goe with me aboard. In the meantime off
+came about twelve Boats full with the _Medway's_ men to lay my
+Longboat aboard, who surrounded us with Swords, Clubbs, Staves & divers
+Instruments, & nothing would do but all our Brains must be Knock't
+out. Finding how I defended the Longboat, they then undertook to attack
+myselfe and people, One of their Boats came upon the stern and made
+severall Blows at my Coxwain, and if it had not been for the Resolution
+I had taken to endure all these Abuses, I had Kill'd all those men with
+my own Hand; but this Boat in particular stuck close to me with only six
+men, and I kept a very good Eye upon her. All this time we were rowing
+out of the Harbour with these Boats about us as far as Portsmouth Point,
+my Coxwain wounded, myselfe and People dangerously assaulted with Stones
+which they brought from the Beech & threw at us, and as their Boats
+drop'd off I took my opportunity & seized ye Boat with the Six Men
+that had so attack'd me, and have secured them in Irons." With this
+the incident practically ended; for although the Medways retaliated
+by seizing and carrying off the _Dorsetshire's_ coxwain and a crew
+who ventured ashore next day with letters, the latter were speedily
+released; but for a week Capt. Butler--fiery old Trojan! who could have
+slain a whole boat's-crew with his own hand--remained a close prisoner
+on board his ship. "Should I but put my foot ashoar," we hear him
+growl, "I am murther'd that minute." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1467--Capt. Butler, 1 June 1705.]
+
+With certain exceptions presently to be noted, every man's hand was
+against the fugitive sailor, and this being so it followed as a matter
+of course that in his inveterate pursuit of him the gangsman found more
+honourable allies than that nefarious person, the man-selling informer.
+The class whom the sailor himself, in his contempt of the good feeding
+he never shared, nicknamed "big-bellied placemen"--the pompous mayors,
+the portly aldermen and the county magistrate who knew a good horse
+or hound but precious little law, were almost to a man the gangsman's
+coadjutors. Lavishly wined and dined at Admiralty expense, they urbanely
+"backed" the regulating captain's warrants, consistently winked at his
+glaring infractions of law and order, and with the most commendable
+loyalty imaginable did all in their power to forward His Majesty's
+service. Even the military, if rightly approached on their pinnacle
+of lofty superiority, now and then condescended to lend the gangsman
+a hand. Did not Sloper, Major-General and Commandant at Lewes, throw a
+whole company into the siege of Brighton?
+
+These post-prandial concessions on the part of bigwigs desirous of
+currying favour in high places on the whole told heavily against the
+sorely harassed object of the gangsman's quest, rendering it,
+amongst other things, extremely unsafe for him to indulge in those
+unconventional outbursts which, under happier conditions, so uniformly
+marked his jovial moods. At the playhouse, for example, he could not
+heave empty bottles or similar tokens of appreciation upon the stage
+without grave risk of incurring the fate that overtook Steven David,
+Samuel Jenkins and Thomas Williams, three sailors of Falmouth town who,
+merely because they adopted so unusual a mode of applauding a favourite,
+were by magisterial order handed over to Lieut. Box of H.M.S. _Blonde_,
+with a peremptory request that they should be transferred forthwith to
+that floating stage where the only recognised "turns" were those of
+the cat and the capstan. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1537--Capt.
+Ballard, 13 Dec. 1806.]
+
+Luckily for the sailor and those of other callings who shared his
+liability to the press, the civil authorities did not range themselves
+on the gangsman's side with complete unanimity. Local considerations of
+trade, coupled with some faint conception of the hideous injustice the
+seafaring classes groaned under, and groaned in vain, here and there
+outweighed patriotism and dinners. Little by little a cantankerous
+spirit of opposition got abroad, and every now and then, at this point
+or at that, some mayor or alderman, obsessed by this spirit beyond his
+fellows and his time, seized such opportunities as office threw in his
+way to mark his disapproval of the wrongs the sailor suffered. Had this
+attitude been more general, or more consistent in itself, the press-gang
+would not have endured for a day.
+
+The role of Richard Yea and Nay was, however, the favourite one with
+urban authorities. Towns at first not "inclinable to allow a pressing,"
+afterwards relented and took the gang to their bosom, or entertained it
+gladly for a time, only to cast it out with contumely. A lieutenant who
+was sent to Newcastle to press in 1702 found "no manner of encouragement
+there"; yet seventy-five years later the Tyneside city, thanks to the
+loyal co-operation of a long succession of mayors, and of such men as
+George Stephenson, sometime Deputy-Master of the Trinity House, had
+become one of the riskiest in the kingdom for the seafaring man who
+was a stranger within her gates. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1498--Capt. Bover, 11 Aug. 1778.]
+
+The attitude of Poole differed in some respects from that of other
+towns. Her mayors and magistrates, while they did not actually oppose
+the pressing of seamen within the borough, would neither back the
+warrants nor lend the gangs their countenance. The reason advanced for
+this disloyal attitude was of the absurdest nature. Poole held that
+in order to press twenty men you were not at liberty to kill the
+twenty-first. That, in fact, was what had happened on board the _Maria_
+brig as she came into port there, deeply laden with fish from the Banks,
+and the corporation very foolishly never forgot the trivial incident.
+
+It did not, of course, follow that the Poole sailor enjoyed freedom from
+the press. Far from it. What he did enjoy was a reputation that, if not
+all his own, was yet sufficiently so to be shared by few. Bred in
+that roughest of all schools, the Newfoundland cod fishery, he was an
+exceptionally tough nut to crack.
+
+ "If Poole were a fish pool
+   And the men of Poole fish,
+   There'd be a pool for the devil
+   And fish for his dish,"
+
+was how the old jibe ran, and in this estimate of the Poole man's
+character the gangs fully concurred. They knew him well and liked him
+little, so when bent on pressing him they adopted no squeamish measures,
+but very wisely "trusted to the strength of their right arms for it."
+Some of their attempts to take him make strange reading.
+
+About eight o'clock on a certain winter's evening, Regulating Captain
+Walbeoff, accompanied by Lieut. Osmer, a midshipman and eight gangsmen,
+broke into the house of William Trim, a seafaring native of the place
+whom they knew to be at home and had resolved to press. Alarmed by the
+forcing of the door, and only too well aware of what it portended,
+Trim made for the stairs, where, turning upon his pursuers, he struck
+repeatedly and savagely at the midshipman, who headed them, with a
+red-hot poker which he had snatched out of the fire at the moment of his
+flight. He was, however, quickly overpowered, disarmed and dragged back
+into the lower room, where his captors threw him violently to the floor
+and with their hangers took effective measures to prevent his escape or
+further opposition. His sister happened to be in the house, and whilst
+this was going on the lieutenant brutally assaulted her, presumably
+because she wished to go to her brother's assistance. Meanwhile Trim's
+father, a man near seventy years of age, who lived only a stone's-throw
+away, hearing the uproar, and being told the gang had come for his
+son, ran to the house with the intention, as he afterwards declared, of
+persuading him to go quietly. Seeing him stretched upon the floor, he
+stooped to lift him to his feet, when one of the gang attacked him and
+stabbed him in the back. He fell bleeding beside the younger man,
+and was there beaten by a number of the gangsmen whilst the remainder
+dragged his son off to the press-room, whence he was in due course
+dispatched to the fleet at Spithead. The date of this brutal episode is
+1804; the manner of it, "nothing more than what usually happened on
+such occasions" in the town of Poole. [Footnote _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+580--Admiral Phillip, Inquiry into the Conduct of the Impress Officers
+at Poole, 13 Aug. 1804.]
+
+For this deplorable state of things Poole had none but herself to
+thank. Had she, instead of merely refusing to back the warrants, taken
+effective measures to rid herself of the gang, that mischievous
+body would have soon left her in peace. Rochester wore the jewel of
+consistency in this respect. When Lieut. Brenton pressed a youth there
+who "appeared to be a seafaring man," but turned out to be an exempt
+city apprentice, he was promptly arrested and deprived of his sword, the
+mayor making no bones of telling him that his warrant was "useless
+in Rochester." With this broad hint he was discharged; but the people
+proved less lenient than the mayor, for they set about him and beat
+him unmercifully. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 301--Law Officers'
+Opinions, 1784-92, No. 42: Deposition of Lieut. Brenton.]
+
+Save on a single occasion, already incidentally referred to, civic
+Liverpool treated the gang with uniform kindness. In 1745, at a time
+when the rebels were reported to be within only four miles of the
+city, the mayor refused to back warrants for the pressing of sailors
+to protect the shipping in the river. His reason was a cogent one. The
+captains of the _Southsea Castle_, the _Mercury_ and the _Loo_, three
+ships of war then in the Mersey, had just recently "manned their boats
+with marines and impressed from the shore near fifty men," and the
+seafaring element of the town, always a formidable one, was up in arms
+because of it. This so intimidated the mayor that he dared not sanction
+further raids "for fear of being murder'd." [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1440--Letters of Capt. Amherst, Dec. 1745.] His dread of
+the armed sailor was not shared by Henry Alcock, sometime mayor of
+Waterford. That gentleman "often headed the press-gangs" in person.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Capt. Bennett, 13 Nov. 1780.]
+
+Deal objected to the press for reasons extending back to the reign of
+King John. As a member of the Cinque Ports that town had constantly
+supplied the kings and queens of the realm, from the time of Magna
+Charta downwards, with great numbers of able and sufficient seamen who,
+according to the ancient custom of the Five Ports, had been impressed
+and raised by the mayor and magistrates of the town, acting under orders
+from the Lord Warden, and not by irresponsible gangs from without. It
+was to these, and not to the press as such, that Deal objected. The
+introduction of gangs in her opinion bred disorder. Great disturbances,
+breaches of the peace, riots, tumults and even bloodshed attended their
+steps and made their presence in any peaceably disposed community highly
+undesirable. Within the memory of living man even, Deal had obliged no
+less than four hundred seamen to go on board the ships of the fleet, and
+she desired no more of those strangers who recently, incited by Admiral
+the Marquis of Carmarthen, had gone a-pressing in her streets and
+grievously wounded divers persons. [Footnote: _State Papers Domestic_,
+Anne, xxxvi: No. 24: Petition of the Mayor, Jurats and Commonalty of the
+Free Town and Borough of Deal.]
+
+In this commonsense view of the case Deal was ably supported by Dover,
+the premier Cinque Port. Dover, it is true, so far as we know never
+embodied her objections to the press in any humble petition to the
+Queen's Majesty. She chose instead a directer method, for when the
+lieutenant of the _Devonshire_ impressed six men belonging to a
+brigantine from Carolina in her streets, and attempted to carry them
+beyond the limits of the borough, "many people of Dover, in company with
+the Mayor thereof, assembled themselves together and would not permit
+the lieutenant to bring them away." The action angered the Lords
+Commissioners, who resolved to teach Dover a lesson. Orders were
+accordingly sent down to Capt. Dent, whose ship the _Shrewsbury_
+man-o'-war was then in the Downs, directing him to send a gang ashore
+and press the first six good seamen they should meet with, taking care,
+however, since their Lordships did not wish to be too hard upon the
+town, that the men so pressed were bachelors and not householders.
+Lieut. O'Brien was entrusted with this delicate punitive mission.
+He returned on board after a campaign of only a few hours' duration,
+triumphantly bearing with him the stipulated hostages for Dover's future
+good behaviour--"six very good seamen, natives and inhabitants, and five
+of them bachelors." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1696--Capt. Dent,
+24 Aug. 1743.] The sixth was of course a householder, a circumstance
+that made the town's punishment all the severer.
+
+Its effects were less salutary than the Admiralty had anticipated. True,
+both Dover and Deal thereafter withdrew their opposition to the press so
+far as to admit the gang within their borders; but they kept a watchful
+eye upon its doings, and every now and then the old spirit flamed out
+again at white heat, consuming the bonds of some poor devil who, like
+Alexander Hart, freeman of Dover, had been irregularly taken. On this
+occasion the mayor, backed by a posse of constables, himself broke open
+the press-room door. A similar incident, occurring a little later in the
+same year, so incensed Capt. Ball, who aptly enough was at the time
+in command of the _Nemesis_, that he roundly swore "to impress every
+seafaring man in Dover and make them repent of their impudence."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 301--Law Officers' Opinions, 1784-92,
+No. 44; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1507--Capt. Ball, 15 April 1791.]
+
+Where the magistrate had it most in his power to make or mar the
+fugitive sailor's chances was in connection with the familiar fiction
+that the Englishman's house is his castle. To hide a sailor was to steal
+the king's chattel--penalty, 5 Pounds forfeited to the parish; and if
+you were guilty of such a theft, or were with good reason suspected of
+being guilty, you found yourself in much the same case as the ordinary
+thief or the receiver of stolen goods. A search warrant could be sworn
+out before a magistrate, and your house ransacked from cellar to garret.
+Without such warrant, however, it could not be lawfully entered. In the
+heat of pressing forcible entry was nevertheless not unusual, and many
+an impress officer found himself involved in actions for trespass or
+damages in consequence of his own indiscretion or the excessive zeal of
+his gang. The defence set up by Lieut. Doyle, of Dublin, that the "Panel
+of the Door was Broke by Accident," would not go down in a court of law,
+however avidly it might be swallowed by the Board of Admiralty.
+
+More than this. The magistrate was by law empowered to seize all
+straggling seamen and landsmen and hand them over to the gangs for
+consignment to the fleet. The vagabond, as the unfortunate tramp of
+those days was commonly called, had thus a bad time of it. For him all
+roads led to Spithead. The same was true of persons who made themselves
+a public nuisance in other ways. By express magisterial order many
+answering to that description followed Francis Juniper of Cuckfield, "a
+very drunken, troublesome fellow, without a coat to his back," who
+was sent away lest he should become "chargeable to the parish." The
+magistrate in this way conferred a double benefit upon his country. He
+defended it against itself whilst helping it to defend itself against
+the French. Still, the latter benefit was not always above suspicion.
+The "ignorant zeal of simple justices," we are told, often impelled them
+to hand over to the gangs men whom "any old woman could see with half
+an eye to be properer objects of pity and charity than fit to serve His
+Majesty."
+
+"Send your myrmidons," was a form of summons familiar to every gang
+officer. As its tone implies, its source was magisterial, and when the
+officer received it he hastened with his gang to the Petty Sessions, the
+Assizes or the prison, and there took over, as an unearned increment of
+His Majesty's fleet, the person of some misdemeanant willing to exchange
+bridewell for the briny, or the manacled body of some convicted felon
+who preferred to swing in a hammock at sea rather than on the gallows
+ashore.
+
+A strangely assorted crew it was, this overflow of the jails that
+clanked slowly seawards, marshalled by the gang. Reprieves and
+commutations, if by no means universal in a confirmed hanging age,
+were yet common enough to invest it with an appalling sameness that
+was nevertheless an appalling variety. Able seamen sentenced for
+horse-stealing or rioting, town dwellers raided out of night-houses,
+impostors who simulated fits or played the maimed soldier, fishermen in
+the illicit brandy and tobacco line, gentlemen of the road, makers of
+"flash" notes and false coin, stealers of sheep, assaulters of women,
+pickpockets and murderers in one unmitigated throng went the way of the
+fleet and there sank their vices, their roguery, their crimes and their
+identity in the number of a mess.
+
+Boys were in that flock of jail-birds too--youths barely in their teens,
+guilty of such heinous offences as throwing stones at people who passed
+in boats upon the river, or of "playing during divine service on Sunday"
+and remaining impenitent and obdurate when confronted with all the
+"terrific apparatus of fetters, chains and dark cells" pertaining to
+a well-equipped city jail. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1534,
+1545--Capt. Barker, 1 March 1805, 20 Aug. 1809, and numerous instances.]
+The turning over of such young reprobates to the gang was one of the
+pleasing duties of the magistrate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+AT GRIPS WITH THE GANG.
+
+
+
+When all avenues of escape were cut off and the sailor found himself
+face to face with the gang and imminent capture, he either surrendered
+his liberty at the word of command or staked it on the issue of a fight.
+
+His choice of the latter alternative was the proverbial turning of
+the worm, but of a worm that was no mean adversary. Fear of the gang,
+supposing him to entertain any, was thrown to the winds. Fear of
+the consequences--the clink, or maybe the gallows for a last
+land-fall--which had restrained him in less critical moments when he had
+both room to run and opportunity, sat lightly on him now. In red realism
+there flashed through his brain the example of some doughty sailor, the
+hero of many an anchor-watch and forecastle yarn, who had fought the
+gang to its last man and yet come off victor. The swift vision fired
+his blood and nerved his arm, and under its obsession he stood up to his
+would-be captors with all the dogged pluck for which he was famous when
+facing the enemy at sea.
+
+In contests of this description the weapon perhaps counted for as much
+as the man who wielded it, and as its nature depended largely upon
+circumstances and surroundings, the range of choice was generally
+wide enough to please the most elective taste. Pressing consequently
+introduced the gangsman to some strange weapons.
+
+Trim, the Poole sailor whose capture is narrated in the foregoing
+chapter, defended himself with a red-hot poker. In what may be termed
+domestic as opposed to public pressing, the use of this homely utensil
+as an impromptu liberty-preserver was not at all uncommon. Hot or cold,
+it proved a formidable weapon in the hands of a determined man, more
+especially when, as was at that time very commonly the case, it belonged
+to the ponderous cobiron or knobbed variety.
+
+Another weapon of recognised utility, particularly in the vicinity
+of docks, careening-stations and ship-yards, was the humble tar-mop.
+Consisting of a wooden handle some five or six feet in length, though of
+no great diameter, terminating in a ball of spun-yarn forming the actual
+mop, this implement, when new, was comparatively harmless. No serious
+blow could then be dealt with it; but once it had been used for "paying"
+a vessel's bottom and sides it underwent a change that rendered it
+truly formidable. The ball of ravellings forming the mop became then
+thoroughly, charged with tar or pitch and dried in a rough mass scarcely
+less heavy than lead. In this condition it was capable of inflicting
+a terrible blow, and many were the tussels decided by it. A remarkable
+instance of its effective use occurred at Ipswich in 1703, when a gang
+from the _Solebay_, rowing up the Orwell from Harwich, attempted to
+press the men engaged in re-paying a collier. They were immediately
+"struck down with Pitch-Mopps, to the great Peril of their Lives."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1436--Capt. Aldred, 6 Jan. 1702-3.]
+
+The weapon to which the sailor was most partial, however, was the
+familiar capstan-bar. In it, as in its fellow the handspike, he found
+a whole armament. Its availability, whether on shipboard or at the
+waterside, its rough-and-ready nature, and above all its heft and
+general capacity for dealing a knock-down blow without inflicting
+necessarily fatal injuries, adapted it exactly to the sailor's
+requirements, defensive or the reverse. It was with a capstan-bar that
+Paul Jones, when hard pressed by a gang on board his ship at Liverpool,
+was reputed to have stretched three of his assailants dead on deck.
+Every sailor had heard of that glorious achievement and applauded it,
+the killing perhaps grudgingly excepted.
+
+So, too, did he applaud the hardihood of William Bingham, that far-famed
+north-country sailor who, adopting pistols as his weapon, negligently
+stuck a brace of them in his belt and walked the streets of Newcastle in
+open defiance of the gangs, none of which durst lay a hand on him till
+the unlucky day when, in a moment of criminal carelessness that could
+never be forgiven, he left his weapons at home and was haled to the
+press-room fighting, all too late, like a fiend incarnate.
+
+Not to enlarge on the endless variety of chance weapons, there remained
+those good old-standers the musket, the cutlass and the knife, each of
+which, in the sailor's grasp, played its part in the rough-and-tumble of
+pressing, and played it well. A case in point, familiar to every seaman,
+was the last fight put up by that famous Plymouth sailor, Emanuel
+Herbert, another fatalist who, like Bingham, believed in having two
+strings to his bow. He accordingly provided himself with both fuzee
+and hanger, and with these comforting bed-fellows retired to rest in an
+upper chamber of the public-house where he lodged, easy in the knowledge
+that whatever happened the door of his crib commanded the stairs. From
+this stronghold the gang invited him to come down. He returned the
+compliment by inviting them up, assuring them that he had a warm welcome
+in store for the first who should favour him with a visit. The ambiguity
+of the invitation appears to have been thrown away upon the gang, for
+"three of my people," says the officer who led them, "rushed up, and the
+gun missing fire, he immediately run one of them through the body
+with the hanger"--a mode of welcoming his visitors which resulted in
+Herbert's shifting his lodgings to Exeter jail, and in the wounded man's
+speedy death. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1473--Capt. Brown, 4
+July 1727.]
+
+Here was a serious contingency indeed; but whatever deterrent effect the
+fatal issue of this affair, as of many similar ones, may have had upon
+the sailor's use of lethal weapons when attacked by the gang, that
+effect was largely, if not altogether, neutralised by the upshot of the
+famous Broadfoot case, which, occurring some sixteen years later, gave
+the scales of justice a decided turn in the sailor's favour and robbed
+the killing of a gangsman of its only terror, the shadow of the gallows.
+The incident in question opened in Bristol river, with the boarding of
+a merchant-man by a tender's gang. As they came over the side Broadfoot
+met them, blunderbuss in hand. Being there to guard the ship, he bade
+them begone, and upon their disregarding the order, and closing in upon
+him with evident intent to take him, he clapped the blunderbuss, which
+was heavily charged with swanshot, to his shoulder and let fly into
+the midst of them. One of their number, Calahan by name, fell mortally
+wounded, and Broadfoot was in due course indicted for wilful murder.
+[Footnote: _Westminster Journal_, 30 April 1743.] How he was found not
+guilty on the ground that a warrant directed to the lieutenant gave
+the gang no power to take him, and that he was therefore justified in
+defending himself, was well known to every sailor in the kingdom. No
+jury thereafter ever found him guilty of a capital felony if by chance
+he killed a gangsman in self-defence. The worst he had to fear was a
+verdict of manslaughter--a circumstance that proved highly inspiriting
+to him in his frequent scraps with the gang.
+
+There was another aspect of the case, however, that came home to the
+sailor rather more intimately than the risk of being called upon to "do
+time" under conditions scarcely worse than those he habitually endured
+at sea. Suppose, instead of his killing the gangsman, the gangsman
+killed him? He recalled a case he had heard much palaver about. An able
+seaman, a perfect Tom Bowling of a fellow, brought to at an alehouse in
+the Borough--the old "Bull's Head" it was--having a mind to lie snug
+for a while, 'tween voyages. However, one day, being three sheets in
+the wind or thereabouts, he risked a run and was made a prize of, worse
+luck, by a press-gang that engaged him. Their boat lay at Battle Bridge
+in the Narrow Passage, and while they were bearing down upon her, with
+the sailor-chap in tow, what should Jack do but out with his knife and
+slip it into one of the gangers. 'Twas nothing much, a waistcoat wound
+at most, but the ganger resented the liberty, and swearing that no man
+should tap his claret for nix, he ups with his cudgel and fetches Jack
+a clip beside the head that lost him the number of his mess, for soon
+after he was discharged dead along of having his head broke. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1486--Lieut. Slyford, 24 Nov. 1755. "Discharged
+dead," abbreviated to "DD," the regulation entry in the muster books
+against the names of persons deceased.]
+
+Risks of this sort raised grave issues for the sailor--issues to be well
+considered of in those serious moments that came to the most reckless on
+the wings of the wind or the lift of the waves at sea, what time drink
+and the gang were remote factors in the problem of life. But ashore! Ah!
+that was another matter. Life ashore was far too crowded, far too sweet
+for serious reflections. The absorbing business of pleasure left little
+room for thought, and the thoughts that came to the sailor later, when
+he had had his fling and was again afoot in search of a ship, decidedly
+favoured the killing of a gangsman, if need be, rather than the loss of
+his own life or of a berth. The prevalence of these sentiments rendered
+the taking of the sailor a dangerous business, particularly when he
+consorted in bands.
+
+In that part of the west country traversed by the great roads from
+Bristol to Liverpool, and having Stourbridge as its approximate centre,
+ambulatory bands proved very formidable. The presence of the rendezvous
+at Stourbridge accounted for this. Seamen travelled in strength because
+they feared it. Two gangs were stationed there under Capt. Beecher, and
+news of the approach of a large party of seamen from the south having
+one day been brought in, he at once made preparations for intercepting
+them. Lieut. Barnsley and his gang marched direct to Hoobrook, a couple
+of miles south of Kidderminster, a point the seamen had perforce to
+pass. His instructions were to wait there, picking up in the meantime
+such of the sailor party as lagged behind from footsoreness or fatigue,
+till joined by Lieut. Birchall and the other gang, when the two were to
+unite forces and press the main body. Through unforeseen circumstances,
+however, the plan miscarried. Birchall, who had taken a circuitous
+route, arrived late, whilst the band of sailors arrived early. They
+numbered, moreover, forty-six as against eleven gangsmen and two
+officers. Four to one was a temptation the sailors could not resist.
+They attacked the gangs with such ferocity that out of the thirteen only
+one man returned to the rendezvous with a whole skin. Luckily, there
+were no casualties on this occasion; but a few days later, while two of
+Barnsley's gangsmen were out on duty some little distance from the town,
+they were suddenly attacked by a couple of sailors, presumably members
+of the same band, who left one of them dead in the road. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1501--Capt. Beecher, 12 July and 4 Aug. 1781.]
+
+Owing to its close proximity to the Thames, that remote suburb of
+eighteenth century London known as Stepney Fields was much frequented
+by armed bands of the above description, who successfully resisted all
+attempts to take them. The master-at-arms of the _Chatham_ man-o'-war,
+chancing once to pass that way, came in for exceedingly rough usage at
+their hands, and when next day a lieutenant from the same ship
+appeared upon the scene with a gang at his back and tried to press the
+ringleaders in that affair, they "swore by God he should not, and if he
+offered to lay hands on them, they would cut him down." With this threat
+they drew their cutlasses, slashed savagely at the lieutenant, and
+"made off through the Mobb which had gathered round them." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2579--Capt. Townshend, 21 April 1743.]
+
+A spot not many miles distant from Stepney Fields was the scene of a
+singular fray many years later. His Majesty's ship _Squirrel_ happened
+at the time to be lying in Longreach, and her commander, Capt. Brawn,
+one day received intelligence that a number of sailors were to be met
+with in the town of Barking. He at once dispatched his 1st and 2nd
+lieutenants with a contingent of twenty-five men and several petty
+officers, to rout them out and take them. They reached Barking about
+nine o'clock in the evening, the month being July, and were not long in
+securing several of the skulkers, who with many of the male inhabitants
+of the place were at that hour congregated in public-houses,
+unsuspicious of danger. The sudden appearance in their midst of so
+large an armed force, however, coupled with the outcry and confusion
+inseparable from the pressing of a number of men, alarmed the townsfolk,
+who poured into the streets, rescued the pressed men, and would have
+inflicted summary punishment upon the intruders had not the senior
+officer, seeing his party hopelessly outnumbered, tactfully drawn off
+his force. This he did in good order and without serious hurt; but just
+as he and his men were congratulating themselves upon their escape, they
+were suddenly ambushed, at a point where their road ran between high
+banks, by a "large concourse of Irish haymakers, to the number of at
+least five hundred men, all armed with sabres [Footnote: So in
+the original, but "sabres" is perhaps an error for "scythes."] and
+pitchforks," who with wild cries and all the Irishman's native love of
+a shindy fell upon the unfortunate gangsmen and gave them a "most severe
+beating." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1529--Capt. Brawn, 3 July
+1803.]
+
+Attacks on the gang, made with deliberate intent to rescue pressed men
+from its custody, were by no means confined to Barking. The informer
+throve in the land, but notwithstanding his hostile activity the sailor
+everywhere had friends who possessed at least one cardinal virtue. They
+seldom hung back when he was in danger, or hesitated to strike a blow in
+his defence.
+
+There came into Limehouse Hole, on a certain day in the summer of 1709,
+a vessel called the _Martin_ galley. How many men were in her we do not
+learn; but whatever their number, there was amongst them one man who
+had either a special dread of the press or some more than usually urgent
+occasion for wishing to avoid it. Watching his opportunity, he slipped
+into one of the galley's boats, sculled her rapidly to land, and there
+leapt out--just as a press-gang hove in sight ahead! It was a dramatic
+moment. The sailor, tacking at sight of the enemy, ran swiftly along
+the river-bank, but was almost immediately overtaken, knocked down, and
+thrown into the press-boat, which lay near by. "This gather'd a Mob,"
+says the narrator of the incident, "who Pelted the Boat and Gang by
+throwing Stones and Dirt from the Shoar, and being Pursued also by the
+Galley's men, who brought Cutlasses in the Boat with them to rescue
+their Prest Man, the Gang was at last forc'd to betake themselves to a
+Corn-lighter, where they might stand upon their Defence. The Galley's
+men could not get aboard, but lay with their Boat along the side of the
+Lighter, where they endeavouring to force in, and the Gang to keep them
+out, the Boat of a sudden oversett and some of the Men therein were
+Drown'd. Three of the Press-Gang were forc'd likewise into the Water,
+whereof 'tis said one is Drown'd and the other two in Irons in the New
+Prison. The remaining part of the Gang leapt into a Wherry, the Galley's
+men pursuing them, but, not gaining upon them, they gave over the
+Pursuit." The pressed man all this while was laughing in his sleeve. "He
+lay on the other side of the Lighter, in the Tender's boat, whence he
+made his escape." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1437--Capt. Aston,
+10 Aug. 1709.]
+
+In their efforts to restore the freedom of the pressed man, the sailor's
+friends did not confine their attention exclusively to the gang. When
+they turned out in vindication of those rights which the sailor did not
+possess, they not infrequently found their diversion in wrecking the
+gang's headquarters or in making a determined, though generally futile,
+onslaught upon the tender. Respectable people, who had no particular
+reason to favour the sailor's cause, viewed these ebullitions of mingled
+rage and mischief with dismay, stigmatising those who so lightheartedly
+participated in them as the "lower classes" and the "mob."
+
+Few towns in the kingdom boasted--or reprobated, as the case might be--a
+more erratically festive mob than Leith. As far back as 1709 Bailie
+Cockburn had advised the inhabitants of that burgh to "oppose any
+impressor," and seizing the occasion of the "Impressure of an Apprentice
+Boy," had set them an example by arresting the pinnace of Her Majesty's
+ship _Rye_, together with her whole crew, thirteen in number, and
+keeping them in close confinement till the lad was given up. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2448--Capt. Shale, 4 Jan. 1708-9.] The worthy
+Bailie was in due time gathered unto his fathers, and with the growth of
+the century gangs came and went in endless succession, but neither the
+precept nor the example was ever forgotten in Leith. Much pressing was
+done there, but it was done almost entirely upon the water. To transfer
+the scene of action to the strand meant certain tumult, for there the
+whim of the mob was law. Now it pulled the gang-officer's house about
+his ears because he dared to press a shipwright; again, it stoned the
+gang viciously because they rescued some seamen from a wreck--and kept
+them. Between whiles it amused itself by cutting down the rendezvous
+flag-staff; and if nothing better offered, it split up into component
+parts, each of which became a greater terror than the whole. One
+night, when the watch had been set and all was quiet, a party of
+this description, only three in number, approached the rendezvous
+and respectfully requested leave to drink a last dram with some
+newly pressed men who were then in the cage, their quondam shipmates.
+Suspecting no ulterior design, the guard incautiously admitted them,
+whereupon they dashed a quantity of spirits on the fire, set the place
+in a blaze, and carried off the pressed men amid the hullabaloo that
+followed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1516-9--Letters of Capt.
+Brenton, 1797-8; Lieut. Pierie, 2 Feb. 1798.]
+
+If Leith did this sort of thing well, Greenock, her commercial rival on
+the Clyde, did it very much better; for where the Leith mob was but a
+sporadic thing, erupting from its slummy fastnesses only in response to
+rumour of chance amusement to be had or mischief to be done, Greenock
+held her mob always in hand, a perpetual menace to the gangsman did he
+dare to disregard the Clydeside ordinance in respect to pressing. That
+ordinance restricted pressing exclusively to the water; but it went
+further, for it laid it down as an inviolable rule that members of
+certain trades should not be pressed at all.
+
+It was with the Trades that the ordinance originated. There was little
+or no Greenock apart from the Trades. The will of the Trades was
+supreme. The coopers, carpenters, riggers, caulkers and seamen of
+the town ruled the burgh. Assembled in public meeting, they resolved
+unanimously "to stand by and support each other" in the event of a
+press; and having come to this decision they indited a trite letter
+to the magistrates, intimating in unequivocal terms that "if they
+countenanced the press, they must abide by the consequences," for once
+the Trades took the matter in hand "they could not say where they would
+stop." With the worthy burgesses laying down the law in this fashion, it
+is little wonder that the gangs "seldom dared to press ashore," or that
+they should have been able to take "only two coopers in ten months."
+
+For the Trades were as good as their word. The moment a case of
+prohibited pressing became known they took action. Alexander Weir,
+member of the Shipwrights' Society, was taken whilst returning from his
+"lawful employ," and immediately his mates, to the number of between
+three and four hundred, downed tools and marched to the rendezvous,
+where they peremptorily demanded his release. Have him they would, and
+if the gang-officer did not see fit to comply with their demand, not
+only should he never press another man in Greenock, but they would seize
+one of the armed vessels in the river, lay her alongside the tender,
+where Weir was confined, and take him out of her by force. Brenton was
+regulating captain there at the time, and to pacify the mob he promised
+to release the man--and broke his word. Thereupon the people "became
+very riotous and proceeded to burn everything that came in their way.
+About twelve o'clock they hauled one of the boats belonging to the
+rendezvous upon the Square and put her into the fire, but by the timely
+assistance of the officers and gangs, supported by the magistrates and a
+body of the Fencibles, the boat was recovered, though much damaged, and
+several of the ringleaders taken up and sent to prison." The affair did
+not end without bloodshed. "Lieut. Harrison, in defending himself, was
+under the necessity of running one of the rioters through the ribs."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1508--Letters of Capt. Brenton, 1793.]
+
+Though Bailie Cockburn once "arrested" the pinnace of a man-o'-war at
+Leith, the attempted burning of the Greenock press-boat is worthy of
+more than passing note as the only instance of that form of retaliation
+to be met with in the history of home pressing. In the American
+colonies, on the other hand, it was a common feature of demonstrations
+against the gang. Boston was specially notorious for that form of
+reprisal, and Governor Shirley, in one of his masterly dispatches,
+narrates at length, and with no little humour, how the mob on one
+occasion burnt with great eclat what they believed to be the press-boat,
+only to discover, when it was reduced to ashes, that it belonged to
+one of their own ringleaders. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+38l8--Shirley to the Admiralty, 1 Dec. 1747.]
+
+The threat of the Greenock artificers to lay alongside the tender and
+take out their man by force of arms was one for which there existed
+abundant, if by no means encouraging precedent. Long before, as early,
+indeed, as 1742, the keelmen frequenting Sunderland had set them an
+example in that respect by endeavouring, some hundreds strong, to haul
+the tender ashore--an attempt coupled with threats so dire that the
+officer in command trembled in his shoes lest he and his men should all
+"be made sacrifices of." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt.
+Allen, 13 March 1741-2.] Nothing so dreadful happened, however, for
+the attempt, like that made at Shoreham a few years later, when there
+"appear'd in Sight, from towards Brighthelmstone, about two or three
+Hundred Men arm'd with different Weapons, who came with an Intent to
+Attack the _Dispatch_ sloop," failed ignominiously, the attackers being
+routed on both occasions by a timely use of swivel guns and musketry.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1482--Lieut. Barnsley, 25 March 1746.]
+
+Similar disaster overtook the organisers of the Tooley Street affair,
+of which one Taylor, lieutenant to Capt. William Boys of the _Royal
+Sovereign_, was the active cause. At the "Spread-Eagle" in Tooley Street
+he and his gang one evening pressed a privateersman--an insult keenly
+resented by the master of the ship. He accordingly sent off to the
+tender, whither the pressed man had been conveyed for security's sake,
+two wherries filled with armed seamen of the most piratical type. The
+fierce fight that ensued had a dramatic finish. "Two Pistols we took
+from them," says the narrator of the incident, in his quaint old style,
+"and three Cutlasses, and Six Men; but one of the Men took the Red Hott
+Poker out of the Fire, and our Men, having the Cutlasses, Cutt him and
+Kill'd him in Defence of themselves." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1488--Lieut. Taylor, 1 April 1757.]
+
+In attacks of this nature the fact that the tender was afloat told
+heavily in her favour, for unless temporarily hung up upon a mud-bank by
+the fall of the tide, she could only be got at by means of boats. With
+the rendezvous ashore the case was altogether different. Here you had a
+building in a public street, flaunting its purpose provocatively in
+your very face, and having a rear to guard as well as a front. For these
+reasons attacks on the rendezvous were generally attended with a greater
+measure of success than similar attempts directed against the tenders.
+The face of a pressed man had only to show itself at one of the stoutly
+barred windows, and immediately a crowd gathered. To the prisoner behind
+the bars this crowd was friendly, commiserating or chaffing him by
+turns; but to the gangsmen responsible for his being there it was
+invariably and uncompromisingly hostile, so much so that it needed only
+a carelessly uttered threat, or a thoughtlessly lifted hand, to fan
+the smouldering fires of hatred into a blaze. When this occurred, as
+it often did, things happened. Paving-stones hurtled through the
+curse-laden air, the windows flew in fragments, the door, assailed by
+overwhelming numbers, crashed in, and despite the stoutest resistance
+the gang could offer the pressed man was hustled out and carried off in
+triumph.
+
+The year 1755 witnessed a remarkable attack of this description upon the
+rendezvous at Deal, where a band of twenty-seven armed men made a sudden
+descent upon that obnoxious centre of activity and cut up the gang
+most grievously. As all wore masks and had their faces blackened,
+identification was out of the question. A reward of 200 Pounds, offered
+for proof of complicity in the outrage, elicited no information, and as
+a matter of fact its perpetrators were never discovered.
+
+In Capt. McCleverty's time the gang at Waterford was once very roughly
+handled whilst taking in a pressed man, and Mr. Mayor Alcock came
+hurrying down to learn what was amiss. He found the rendezvous beset by
+an angry and dangerous gathering. "Sir," said he to the captain, "have
+you no powder or shot in the house?" McCleverty assured him that he had.
+"Then, sir," cried the mayor, raising his voice so that all might hear,
+"do you make use of it, and I will support you." The crowd understood
+that argument and immediately dispersed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1500--Deposition of Lieut. M Kellop, 1780.]
+
+Had the Admiralty reasoned in similar terms with those who beat its
+gangsmen, converted its rendezvous into match-wood and carried off its
+pressed men, it would have quickly made itself as heartily feared as it
+was already hated; but in seeking to shore up an odious cause by
+pacific methods it laid its motives open to the gravest misconstruction.
+Prudence was construed into timidity, and with every abstention from
+lead the sailor's mobbish friends grew more daring and outrageous.
+
+One night in the winter of 1780, whilst Capt. Worth of the Liverpool
+rendezvous sat lamenting the temporary dearth of seamen, Lieut. Haygarth
+came rushing in with a rare piece of news. On the road from Lancaster,
+it was reported, there was a whole coach-load of sailors. The chance
+was too good to be lost, and instant steps were taken to intercept
+the travellers. The gangs turned out, fully armed, and took up their
+position at a strategic point, just outside the town, commanding the
+road by which the sailors had to pass. By and by along came the coach,
+the horses weary, the occupants nodding or asleep. In a trice they were
+surrounded. Some of the gangsmen sprang at the horses' heads, others
+threw themselves upon the drowsy passengers. Shouts, curses and the
+thud of blows broke the silence of the night. Then the coach rumbled on
+again, empty. Its late occupants, fifteen in number, sulkily followed on
+foot, surrounded by their captors, who, as soon as the town was reached,
+locked them into the press-room for the rest of the night, it being the
+captain's intention to put them on board the tender in the Mersey at
+break of day.
+
+In this, however, he was frustrated by a remarkable development in the
+situation. Unknown to him, the coach-load of seamen had been designed
+for the _Stag_ privateer, a vessel just on the point of sailing. News
+of their capture reaching the ship soon after their arrival in the town,
+Spence, her 1st lieutenant, at once roused out all his available men,
+armed them, to the number of eighty, with cutlass and pistol, and led
+them ashore. There all was quiet, favouring their design. The hour was
+still early, and the silent, swift march through the deserted streets
+attracted no attention and excited no alarm. At the rendezvous the
+opposition of the weary sentinels counted for little. It was quickly
+brushed aside, the strong-room door gave way beneath a few well-directed
+blows, and by the time Liverpool went to breakfast the _Stag_
+privateer was standing out to sea, her crew not only complete, but ably
+supplemented by eight additional occupants of the press-room who had
+never, so far as is known, travelled in that commodious vehicle, the
+Lancaster coach. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7, 300--Law Officers'
+Opinions, 1778-83, No. 19.]
+
+The neighbouring city of Chester in 1803 matched this exploit by another
+of great audacity. Chester had long been noted for its hostility to the
+gang, and the fact that the local volunteer corps--the Royal Chester
+Artillery--was composed mainly of ropemakers, riggers, shipwrights and
+sailmakers who had enlisted for the sole purpose of evading the press,
+did not tend to allay existing friction. Hence, when Capt. Birchall
+brought over a gang from Liverpool because he could not form one in
+Chester itself, and when he further signalised his arrival by pressing
+Daniel Jackson, a well-known volunteer, matters at once came to an ugly
+head. The day happened to be a field-day, and as Birchall crossed the
+market square to wait upon the magistrates at the City Hall, he was
+"given to understand what might be expected in the evening," for one of
+the artillerymen, striking his piece, called out to his fellows:
+"Now for a running ball! There he goes!" with hissing, booing and
+execrations. At seven o'clock one of the gang rushed into the captain's
+lodgings with disquieting news. The volunteers were attacking the
+rendezvous. He hurried out, but by the time he arrived on the scene the
+mischief was already done. The enraged volunteers, after first driving
+the gang into the City Hall, had torn down the rendezvous colours and
+staff, and broken open the city jail and rescued their comrade, whom
+they were then in the act of carrying shoulder-high through the streets,
+the centre of a howling mob that even the magistrates feared to face. By
+request Birchall and his gang returned to Liverpool, counting themselves
+lucky to have escaped the "running ball" they had been threatened
+with earlier in the day. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1529--Capt.
+Birchall, 29 Dec. 1803.]
+
+Another town that gave the gang a hot reception was Whitby. As in the
+case of Chester the gang there was an importation, having been brought
+in from Tyneside by Lieuts. Atkinson and Oakes. As at Chester, too, a
+place of rendezvous had been procured with difficulty, for at first
+no landlord could be found courageous enough to let a house for so
+dangerous a purpose. At length, however, one Cooper was prevailed upon
+to take the risk, and the flag was hung out. This would seem to have
+been the only provocative act of which the gang was guilty. It sufficed.
+Anticipation did the rest; for just as in some individuals gratitude
+consists in a lively sense of favours to come, so the resentment of mobs
+sometimes avenges a wrong before it has been inflicted.
+
+On Saturday the 23rd of February 1793, at the hour of half-past seven
+in the evening, a mob of a thousand persons, of whom many were women,
+suddenly appeared before the rendezvous. The first intimation of what
+was about to happen came in the shape of a furious volley of brickbats
+and stones, which instantly demolished every window in the house, to
+the utter consternation of its inmates. Worse, however, was in store
+for them. An attempt to rush the place was temporarily frustrated by the
+determined opposition of the gang, who, fearing that all in the house
+would be murdered, succeeded in holding the mob at bay for an hour and
+a half; but at nine o'clock, several of the gangsmen having been in the
+meantime struck down and incapacitated by stones, which were rained
+upon the devoted building without cessation, the door at length gave way
+before an onslaught with capstan-bars, and the mob swarmed in unchecked.
+A scene of indescribable confusion and fury ensued. Savagely assaulted
+and mercilessly beaten, the gangsmen and the unfortunate landlord were
+thrown into the street more dead than alive, every article of furniture
+on the premises was reduced to fragments, and when the mob at length
+drew off, hoarsely jubilant over the destruction it had wrought, nothing
+remained of His Majesty's rendezvous save bare walls and gaping windows.
+Even these were more than the townsfolk could endure the sight of. Next
+evening they reappeared upon the scene, intending to finish what they
+had begun by pulling the house down or burning it to ashes; but the
+timely arrival of troops frustrating their design, they regretfully
+dispersed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2739--Lieut. Atkinson, 26
+Feb. and 27 June 1793.]
+
+Out at sea the sailor, if he could not set the tune by running away from
+the gang, played up to it with great heartiness. To sink the press-boat
+was his first aim. With this end in view he held stolidly on his course,
+if under weigh, betraying his intention by no sign till the boat,
+manoeuvring to get alongside of him, was in the right position for him
+to strike. Then, all of a sudden, he showed his hand. Clapping his helm
+hard over, he dexterously ran the boat down, leaving the struggling
+gangsmen to make what shift they could for their lives. Many a knight
+of the hanger was sent to Davy Jones in this summary fashion, unloved in
+life and cursed in the article of death.
+
+The attempt to best the gang by a master-stroke of this description was
+not, it need hardly be said, attended with uniform success. A miss of an
+inch or two, and the boat was safe astern, pulling like mad to recover
+lost ground. In these circumstances the sailor recalled how he had once
+seen a block fall from aloft and smash a shipmate's head, and from this
+he argued that if a suitable object such as a heavy round-shot, or,
+better still, the ship's grindstone, were deftly dropped over the side
+at the psychological moment, it must either have a somewhat similar
+effect upon the gangsmen below or sink the boat by knocking a hole in
+her bottom. The case of the _John and Elizabeth_ of Sunderland, that
+redoubtable Holland pink whose people were "resolved sooner to dye
+than to be impressed," affords an admirable example of the successful
+application of this theory.
+
+As the _John and Elizabeth_ was running into Sunderland harbour one
+afternoon in February 1742, three press-boats, hidden under cover of
+the pier-head, suddenly darted out as she surged past that point and
+attempted to board her. They met with a remarkable repulse. For ten
+minutes, according to the official account of the affair, the air
+was filled with grindstones, four-pound shot, iron crows, handspikes,
+capstan-bars, boat-hooks, billets of wood and imprecations, and when it
+cleared there was not in any of the boats a man who did not bear upon
+his person some bloody trace of that terrible fusillade. They sheered
+off, but in the excitement of the moment and the mortification of
+defeat Midshipmen Clapp and Danton drew their pistols and fired into the
+jeering crew ranged along the vessel's gunwhale, "not knowing," as they
+afterwards pleaded, "that there was any balls in the pistols." Evidence
+to the contrary was quickly forthcoming. A man fell dead on the pink's
+deck, and before morning the two middies were safe under lock and key in
+that "dismal hole," Durham jail. It was a notable victory for the sailor
+and applied mechanics. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt.
+Allen, 13 March 1741-2, and enclosure.]
+
+The affair of the _King William_ Indiaman, a ship whose people kept
+the united boats'-crews of two men-of-war at bay for nearly twenty-four
+hours, carried the sailor's resistance to the press an appreciable step
+further and developed some surprising tactics. Between three and four
+o'clock in the afternoon of a day in September 1742, two ships came into
+the Downs in close order. They had been expected earlier in the day, and
+both the _Shrewsbury_ frigate and the _Shark_ sloop were on the lookout
+for them. A shot from the former brought the headmost to an anchor, but
+the second, the _King William_, hauled her wind and stood away close to
+the Goodwins, out of range of the frigate's guns. Here, the tide being
+spent and the wind veering ahead, she was obliged to anchor, and the
+warships' boats were at once manned and dispatched to press her men.
+Against this eventuality the latter appear to have been primed "with
+Dutch courage," as the saying went, the manner of which was to broach
+a cask of rum and drink your fill. On the approach of the press-boats
+pandemonium broke loose. The maddened crew, brandishing their cutlasses
+and shouting defiance, assailed the on-coming boats with every
+description of missile they could lay hands on, not excepting that most
+dangerous of all casual ammunition, broken bottles. The _Shrewsbury's_
+mate fell, seriously wounded, and finding themselves unable to face
+the terrible hail of missiles, the boats drew off. Night now came on,
+rendering further attempts temporarily impossible--a respite of which
+the Indiaman's crew availed themselves to confine the master and break
+open the arms-chest, which he had taken the precaution to nail down.
+With morning the boats returned to the attack. Three times they
+attempted to board, and as often were they repulsed by pistol and
+musketry fire. Upon this the _Shark_, acting under peremptory orders
+from the _Shrewsbury_, ran down to within half-gunshot of the Indiaman
+and fired a broadside into her, immediately afterwards repeating the
+dose on finding her still defiant. The ship then submitted and all
+her men were pressed save two. They had been killed by the _Shark's_
+gun-fire. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1829--Capt. Goddard, 22
+Sept. and 16 Oct., and his Deposition, 19 Oct. 1742.]
+
+With the appearance of the gang on the deck of his ship there was
+ushered in the last stage but one of the sailor's resistance to the
+press afloat. How, when this happened, all hands were mustered and the
+protected sheep separated from the unprotected goats, has been fully
+described in a previous chapter. These preliminaries at an end, "Now, my
+lads," said the gang officer, addressing the pressable contingent in the
+terms of his instructions, "I must tell you that you are at liberty, if
+you so choose, to enter His Majesty's service as volunteers. If you
+come in in that way, you will each receive the bounty now being paid,
+together with two months' advance wages before you go to sea. But if
+you don't choose to enter volunteerly, then I must take you against your
+wills"
+
+It was a hard saying, and many an old shellback--ay! and young one
+too--spat viciously when he heard it. Conceive the situation! Here were
+these poor fellows returning from a voyage which perhaps had cut them
+off from home and kindred, from all the ordinary comforts and pleasures
+of life, for months or maybe years; here were they, with the familiar
+cliffs and downs under their hungry eyes, suddenly confronted with an
+alternative of the cruellest description, a Hobson's choice that
+left them no option but to submit or fight. It was a heartbreaking
+predicament for men, and more especially for sailor-men, to be placed
+in, and if they sometimes rose to the occasion like men and did their
+best to heave the gang bodily into the sea, or to drive them out of
+the ship with such weapons as their hard situation and the sailor's
+Providence threw in their way--if they did these things in the gang's
+despite, they must surely be judged as outraged husbands, fathers and
+lovers rather than as disloyal subjects of an exacting king. They would
+have made but sorry man-o'-war's-men had they entertained the gang in
+any other way.
+
+Opposed to the service cutlass, the sailor's emergency weapon was but a
+poor tool to stake his liberty upon, and even though the numerical
+odds chanced to be in his favour he often learnt, in the course of his
+pitched battles with the gang, that the edge of a hanger is sharper
+than the corresponding part of a handspike. Lucky for him if, with his
+shipmates, he could then retreat to close quarters below or between
+decks, there to make a final stand for his brief spell of liberty
+ashore. This was his last ditch. Beyond it lay only surrender or death.
+
+The death of the sailor at the hands of the gang introduces us to a
+phase of pressing technically known as the accidental, wherein the
+accidents were of three kinds--casual, unavoidable, and "disagreeable."
+
+The casual accident was one that could be neither foreseen nor averted,
+as when Capt. Argles, returning to England on the breaking up of the
+Limerick rendezvous in 1814, was captured by an American privateer "well
+up the Bristol Channel," a place where no one ever dreamed of falling
+in with such an enemy. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1455--Capt.
+Argles, 17 Aug. 1814.]
+
+To the unavoidable accident every impress officer and agent was liable
+in the execution of his duty. It could thus be foreseen in the abstract,
+though not in the instance. Hence it could not be avoided. Wounds given
+and received in the heat and turmoil of pressing came under this head,
+provided they did not prove fatal.
+
+The accident "disagreeable" was peculiar to pressing. It consisted in
+the killing of a man, by whatever means and in whatever manner, whilst
+endeavouring to press him, and the immediate effect of the act, which
+was common enough, was to set up a remarkable contradiction in terms.
+The man killed was not the victim of the accident. The victim was the
+officer or gangsman who was responsible for striking him off the roll
+of His Majesty's pressable subjects, and who thus let himself in for the
+consequences, more or less disagreeable, which inevitably followed.
+
+While it was naturally the ambition of every officer engaged in pressing
+"to do the business without any disagreeable accident ensuing," he
+preferred, did fate ordain it otherwise, that the accident should
+happen at sea rather than on land, since it was on land that the most
+disagreeable consequences accrued to the unfortunate victim. These
+embraced flight and prolonged expatriation, or, in the alternative,
+arrest, preliminary detention in one of His Majesty's prisons, and
+subsequent trial at the Assizes. What the ultimate punishment might be
+was a minor, though still ponderable consideration, since, where naval
+officers or agents were concerned, the law was singularly capricious.
+[Footnote: As in Lacie's case, 25 Elizabeth, where a mortal wound having
+been inflicted at sea, whereof the party died on land, the prisoner was
+acquitted because neither the Admiralty nor a jury could inquire of
+it.] At sea, on the other hand, the conditions which on land rendered
+accidents of this nature so uniformly disagreeable, were almost entirely
+reversed. How and why this was so can be best explained by stating a
+case.
+
+The accident in point occurred in the year 1755, and is associated with
+the illustrious name of Rodney. The Seven Years War was at the time
+looming in the near future, and England's secret complicity in the
+causes of that tremendous struggle rendered necessary the placing of her
+Navy upon a footing adequate to the demands which it was foreseen would
+be very shortly made upon it. In common with a hundred other naval
+officers, Rodney, who was then in command of the _Prince George_
+guardship at Portsmouth, had orders to proceed without loss of time
+to the raising of men. One of his lieutenants was accordingly sent to
+London, that happy hunting-ground of the impress officer, while two
+others, with picked crews at their backs, were put in charge of tenders
+to intercept homeward-bounds. This was near the end of May.
+
+ [Illustration: ANNE MILLS. Who served on board the _Maidstone_
+in 1740.]
+
+On the 1st of June, in the early morning, one of these tenders--the
+_Princess Augusta_, Lieut. Sax commander--fell in, off Portland Bill,
+with the _Britannia_, a Leghorn trader of considerable force. In
+response to a shot fired as an intimation that she was expected to
+lay-to and receive a gang on board, the master, hailing, desired
+permission to retain his crew intact till he should have passed that
+dangerous piece of navigation known as the Race. To this reasonable
+request Sax acceded and the ship held on her course, closely followed by
+the tender. By the time the Race was passed, however, the merchant-man's
+crew had come to a resolution. They should not be pressed by "such
+a pimping vessel" as the _Princess Augusta_. Accordingly, they first
+deprived the master of the command, and then, when again hailed by the
+tender, "swore they would lose their lives sooner than bring too." The
+Channel at this time swarmed with tenders, and to Sax's hint that they
+might just as well give in then and there as be pressed later on, they
+replied with defiant huzzas and the discharge of one of their maindeck
+guns. The tender was immediately laid alongside, but on the gang's
+attempting to board they encountered a resistance so fierce that Sax,
+thinking to bring the infuriated crew to their senses, ordered his
+people to fire upon them. Ralph Sturdy and John Debusk, armed with
+harpoons, and John Wilson, who had requisitioned the cook's spit as
+a weapon, fell dead before that volley. The rest, submitting without
+further ado, were at once confined below.
+
+Now, three questions of moment are raised by this accident: What became
+of the ship? what was done with the dead men? and what punishment was
+meted out to the lieutenant and his gang? The crew once secured
+under hatches, the safety of the ship became of course the first
+consideration. It was assured by a simple expedient. The gang remained
+on board and worked the vessel into Portsmouth harbour, where, after her
+hands had been taken out--Rodney the receiver--"men in lieu" were put
+on board, as explained in our chapter on pressing afloat, and with this
+make-shift crew she was navigated to her destination, in this instance
+the port of London.
+
+As persons killed at sea, the three sailors who lay dead on the
+ship's deck did not come within the jurisdiction of the coroner. That
+official's cognisance of such matters extended only to high-water mark
+when the tide was at flood, or to low-water mark when it was at ebb.
+Beyond those limits, seawards, all acts of violence done in great ships,
+and resulting in mayhem or the death of a man, fell within the sole
+purview and jurisdiction of the Station Admiral, who on this occasion
+happened to be Sir Edward Hawke, commander of the White Squadron at
+Portsmouth. Now Sir Edward was not less keenly alive to the importance
+of keeping such cases hidden from the public eye than were the Lords
+Commissioners. Hence he immediately gave orders that the bodies of the
+dead men should be taken "without St. Helens" and there committed to the
+deep. Instead of going to feed the Navy, the three sailors thus went to
+feed the fishes, and another stain on the service was washed out with a
+commendable absence of publicity and fuss.
+
+There still remained the lieutenant and his gang to be dealt with and
+brought to what, by another singular perversion of terms, was called
+justice. On shore, notwithstanding the lenient view taken of such
+accidents, an indictment of manslaughter, if not of murder, would have
+assuredly followed the offence; and though in the circumstances it is
+doubtful whether any jury would have found the culprits guilty of
+the capital crime, yet the alternative verdict, with its consequent
+imprisonment and disgrace, held out anything but a rosy prospect to the
+young officer who had still his second "swab" to win. That was where the
+advantage of accidents at sea came in. On shore the judiciary, however
+kindly disposed to the naval service, were painfully disinterested. At
+sea the scales of justice were held, none too meticulously, by brother
+officers who had the service at heart. Under the judicious direction of
+Admiral Osborn, who in the meantime had succeeded Sir Edward Hawke in
+the Portsmouth command, Lieut. Sax and his gang were consequently
+called upon to face no ordeal more terrible than an "inquiry into their
+proceedings and behaviour." Needless to say, they were unanimously
+exonerated, the court holding that the discharge of their duty fully
+justified them in the discharge of their muskets. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 5925--Minutes at a Court-Martial held on board H.M.S.
+_Prince George_ at Portsmouth, 14 Nov. 1755. Precedent for the procedure
+in this case is found in _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers'
+Opinions, 1733-56, No. 27.] When such disagreeable accidents had to
+be investigated, the disagreeable business was done--to purloin an apt
+phrase of Coke's--"without prying into them with eagles' eyes."
+
+But it is time to leave the trail of blood and turn to a more agreeable
+phase of pressing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE GANG AT PLAY.
+
+
+
+The reasons assigned for the pressing of men who ought never to have
+made the acquaintance of the warrant or the hanger were often as
+far-fetched as they are amusing. "You have no right to press a person
+of my distinction!" warmly protested an individual of the superior type
+when pounced upon by the gang. "Lor love yer! that's the wery reason
+we're a-pressin' of your worship," replied the grinning minions of the
+service. "We've such a set of black-guards aboard the tender yonder, we
+wants a toff like you to learn 'em manners."
+
+The quixotic idea of inculcating manners by means of the press infected
+others besides the gangsman. In a Navy whose officers not only plumed
+themselves on representing the _ne plus ultra_ of etiquette, but
+demanded that all who approached them should do so without sin either
+of omission or commission, the idea was universal. Pride of service and
+pride of self entered into its composition in about equal proportions;
+hence the sailing-master who neglected to salute the flag, or who
+through ignorance, crass stupidity, or malice aforethought flew
+prohibited colours, was no more liable to be taught an exemplary lesson
+than the bum-boatman who sauced the officer of the watch when detected
+in the act of smuggling spirits or women into one of His Majesty's
+ships.
+
+For all such offenders the autocracy of the quarter-deck, from the rigid
+commander down to the very young gentleman newly joined, kept a jealous
+lookout, and many are the instances of punishment, swift and implacable,
+following the offence. Insulted dignity could of course take it out of
+the disrespectful fore-mastman with the rattan, the cat or the irons;
+but for the ill-mannered outsider, whether pertaining to sea or land,
+the recognised corrective was His Majesty's press. A solitary exception
+is found in the case of Henry Crabb of Chatham, a boatman who rejoiced
+in incurable lameness; rejoiced because, although there were many
+cripples on board the Queen's ships in his day, his infirmity was such
+as to leave him at liberty to ply for hire "when other men durst not for
+feare of being Imprest." He was an impudent, over-reaching knave, and
+Capt. Balchen, of the _Adventure_ man-o'-war, whose wife had suffered
+much from the fellow's abusive tongue and extortionate propensities,
+finding himself unable to press him, brought him to the capstan and
+there gave him "eleven lashes with a Catt of Nine Tailes." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1466--Capt. Balchen, 10 March 1703-4.]
+
+A letter written in the early forties-a letter as breezy as the sea from
+which it was penned--gives us a striking picture of the old-time naval
+officer as a teacher of deportment. Cruising far down-Channel, Capt.
+Brett, of the _Anglesea_ man-o'-war, there fell in with a ship whose
+character puzzled him sorely. He consequently gave chase, but the wind
+falling light and night coming on, he lost her. Early next morning, as
+luck would have it, he picked her up again, and having now a "pretty
+breeze," he succeeded in drawing within range of her about two o'clock
+in the afternoon, when he fired a shot to bring her to. The strange sail
+doubtless feared that she was about to lose her hands, for instead of
+obeying the summons she trained her stern-chasers on the _Anglesea_ and
+for an hour and a half blazed away at her as fast as she could load.
+"They put a large marlinespike into one of their guns," the indignant
+captain tells us, "which struck the carriage of the chase gun upon our
+forecastle, dented it near two inches, then broke asunder and wounded
+one of the men in the leg, and had it come a yard higher, must
+infallibly have killed two or three. By all this behaviour I concluded
+she must be an English vessel taken by the Spaniards. However, when we
+came within a cable's length of him he brought to, so we run close under
+his stern in order to shoot a little berth to leeward of him, and at the
+same time bid them hoist their boats out. Our people, as is customary
+upon such occasions, were then all up upon the gunhill and in the
+shrouds, looking at him. Just as we came under his quarter he pointed a
+gun that was sticking out a little abaft his main-shrouds right at us,
+and put the match to it, but it happened very luckily that the gun
+blew. A fellow that was standing on the quarter-deck then took up a
+blunderbuss and presented it, which by its not going off must have
+missed fire. As it was almost impossible, they being stripp'd and
+bareheaded, besides having their faces besmeared with powder, for us
+to judge them by their looks, I concluded they must be a Parcell of
+Light-headed Frenchmen run mad, and thinking it by no means prudent to
+let them kill my men in such a ridiculous manner, I ordered the marines,
+who were standing upon the quarter-deck with their musquets shoulder'd,
+to fire upon them. As soon as they saw the musquets presented they
+fell flat upon the decks and by that means saved themselves from being
+kill'd. Some of our people at the same time fired a 9-pounder right into
+his quarter, upon which they immediately submitted. I own I never was
+more surprised in all my life to find that she was an English vessel,
+tho' my surprise was lessened a good deal when I came to see the master
+and all his fighting men so drunk as to be scarce capable of giving a
+rational answer to any question that was asked them. I was very glad to
+find that none of them were hurt; _but I found out the man who presented
+the blunderbuss, and upon his behaving saucily when I taxed him with
+it, I took him out of the vessel._" [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1479--Capt. Brett, 17 April 1743. The captain's use of gender is
+philologically instructive. Not till later times, it seems, did ships
+lose the character of a "strong man armed" and take on, uniformly, the
+attributes of the skittish female.]
+
+ [Illustration: SAILORS CAROUSING. From the mezzotint after J. Ibbetson.]
+
+So abhorrent a condiment was "sauce" to the naval palate, whether
+of officer or impress agent, that its use invariably brought its own
+punishment with it. "You are no gentleman!" said Gangsman Dibell to one
+Hartnell, a currier who accidentally jostled him whilst he was drinking
+in a Poole taproom. "No, nor you neither!" replied Hartnell. The
+retort cost him a most disagreeable experience. Dibell and his comrades
+collared him and dragged him off to the rendezvous, where he was locked
+up in the black-hole till the next day. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 580--Inquiry into the Conduct of the Impress Officers at Poole, 13
+Aug. 1804.]
+
+At Waterford Capt. Price went one better than this, for a man who was
+totally unfit for the service having one day shown him some trifling
+disrespect, the choleric old martinet promptly set the gang upon him and
+had him conveyed on board the tender, "where," says Lieut. Collingwood,
+writing a month later, "he has been eating the king's victuals ever
+since." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1501--Lieut. Collingwood, 18
+March 1781.] Punishment enough, surely!
+
+One night at Londonderry, as Lieut. Watson was making his way down to
+the quay for the purpose of boarding the _Hope_ tender, of which he was
+commander, he accidentally ran against a couple of strangers.
+
+"Hallo! my lads," cried he, "who and what are you?"
+
+"I am what I am," replied one of them, insolently.
+
+The lieutenant, who had been dining, fired up at this and demanded to
+know if language such as that was proper to be addressed to a king's
+officer.
+
+"As you please," said he of the insolent tongue. "If you like it better,
+I'll say I'm a piece of a man."
+
+"So I see by your want of manners," retorted the lieutenant. "Come along
+with me, my brave piece! I know those who will make a whole man of you
+before they're done."
+
+With that he seized the fellow, meaning to take him to his boat, which
+lay near by, but the pressed man, watching his chance, tripped him up
+and made off. Next day there was a sequel. The lieutenant "was taken
+possession of by the Civil Power" on a charge of assault. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1531--Lieut. Watson, 27 Oct. 1804.]
+
+Another officer who met with base ingratitude from a pressed man whose
+manners he attempted to reform was Capt. Bethel of the _Phoenix_. At the
+Nore he was once grossly abused by the crew of a Customs-House boat,
+and in retaliation took one of their number and carried him to sea.
+Peremptory orders reaching him at one of the Scottish ports, however, he
+discharged the man and paid his passage south. He was immediately sued
+for false imprisonment and cast in heavy damages. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1493--Capt. Bethel, 29 Aug. 1762.]
+
+Capt. Brereton, of the _Falmouth_, was "had" in similar fashion by the
+master of an East-Indiaman whom he pressed at Manilla because of his
+insolence, and who afterwards, by a successful suit at law, let him
+in for 400 Pounds damages and costs. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1494--Capt. Brereton, 18 Oct. 1765.]
+
+This was turning the tables of etiquette on its professors with a
+vengeance.
+
+Such costly lessons in the art of politeness, however, did not in
+the least abash the naval officer or deter him from the continued
+inculcation of manners. Young fellows idly roystering on the river could
+not be permitted to miscall with impunity the gorgeous admiral
+passing in his twelve-oared barge, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 577--Admiral the Marquis of Carmarthen, 24 June 1710.] nor irate
+shipmasters who flouted the impress service of the Crown as a "pitiful"
+thing and its officers as "little scandalous creatures," be allowed to
+go scot-free. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2379--Capt. Robinson,
+21 Feb. 1725-6.] At whatever cost, the dignity of the service must be
+maintained.
+
+Nowhere did the use of invective attain such extraordinary perfection as
+amongst those who plied their vocations on the country's busy waterways.
+Here "sauce" was reduced to a science and vituperation to a fine art.
+Thames watermen and Tyne keelmen in particular acquired an astounding
+proficiency in the choice and application of abusive epithets, but of
+the two the keelman carried off the palm. The wherryman, it is true,
+possessed a ripe vocabulary, but the fact that it embraced only a single
+dialect seriously handicapped him in his race with the keelman, who
+had no less than three to draw upon, all equally prolific. Between
+"keelish," "coblish" and "sheelish," the respective dialects of the
+north-country keelman, pilot and tradesman, he had at his command a
+source of supply unrivalled in vituperative richness, abundance and
+variety. With these at his tongue's end none could touch, much less
+outdo him in power and scope of abusive description. He became in
+consequence of these superior advantages so "insupportably impudent"
+that the only known cure for his complaint was to follow the
+prescription of Capt. Atkins of the _Panther_, and "take him as fast
+as you could ketch him"; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1438--Capt.
+Atkins, 23 Dec. 1720.] but even this drastic method of curbing his
+tongue was robbed of much of its efficacy by the jealous care with which
+he was "protected."
+
+Failure to amain, that is, to douse your topsail or dip your colours
+when you meet with a ship of war--the marine equivalent for raising
+one's hat--constituted a gross contempt of the king's service. The
+custom was very ancient, King John having instituted it in the second
+year of his reign. At that time, and indeed for long after, the salute
+was obligatory, its omission entailing heavy penalties; [Footnote: A
+copy of the original proclamation may be seen in Lansdowne MSS., clxxi,
+f. 218, where it is also summarised in the following terms: _"Anno 2
+regni Johannis regis: Frends not amaining at the j sumons but resisting
+the King his lieutenant, the L. Admirall or his lieutenant, to lose the
+ship and goods, & theire bodies to be imprisoned."_] but with the advent
+of the century of pressing another means of inspiring respect for the
+flag, now exacted as a courtesy rather than a right, came into vogue.
+The offending vessel paid for its omission in men.
+
+If you were anything but a king's ship, and flew a flag that only
+king's ships were entitled to fly, you were guilty, in the eyes of every
+right-seeing naval officer, of another piece of ill manners so gross
+as to be deserving of the severest punishment the press was capable of
+inflicting upon you. You might fly the "flag and Jack white, with a red
+cross (commonly called St. George's cross) passing quite through the
+same"; likewise the "ensign red, with the cross in a canton of white
+at the upper corner thereof, next to the staff"; but if you presumed to
+display His Majesty's Jack, commonly called the Union Jack, or any
+other of the various flags of command flown by ships of war or
+vessels employed in the naval service, swift retribution overtook
+you. Similarly, the inadvertent hoisting of your colours "wrong end
+uppermost," or in any other manner deemed inconsistent with the dignity
+of the service which permitted you to fly them, laid you open
+to reprisals of the most summary nature. Before you realised the
+heinousness of your offence, a gang boarded you and your best man or
+men were gone beyond recall. The joy of waterside weddings--occasions
+prolific in the display of wrong colours--was often turned into sorrow
+in this way.
+
+Inability to do the things you professed to do involved grave risk of
+making intimate acquaintance with the gang. If, for example, you were
+a skipper and navigated your vessel more like a 'prentice than a master
+hand, some one belonging to you was bound, in waters swarming with ships
+of war, to pay the piper sooner or later. "A few days ago," writes Capt.
+Archer of the _Isis_, "a ship called the _Jane_, Stewart master, ran
+on board of us in a most lubberly manner--for which, as is customary
+on such occasions, I took four of his people." [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1448--Capt. Archer, 17 May 1795.]
+
+Ability to handle a musical instrument sometimes proved as fatal to
+one's liberty as inability to handle a ship. Queen Anne was directly
+responsible for this. Almost immediately after her accession she signed
+a warrant authorising the pressing of "drummers, fife and haut boys for
+sea and land." [Footnote: _Home Office Military Entry Books_, clxviii,
+f. 406.] Though the authorisation was only temporary, the practice
+thus set up continued long after its origin had been relegated to the
+scrap-heap of memory, and not only continued, but was interpreted in a
+sense much broader than its royal originator ever intended it should
+be. This tendency to take an ell in lieu of the stipulated inch was
+illustrated as early as 1705, when Lieut. Thomson, belonging to the
+_Lickfield_, chancing to meet one Richard Bullard, fiddler, "persuaded
+him to go as far as Woolwich with him, to play a tune or two to him
+and some friends who had a mind to dance, saying he would pay him for
+it"--which he did, when tired of dancing, by handing him over to the
+press-gang. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1467--Capt. Byron, 13 July
+1705.]
+
+In 1781, again, a "stout lad of 17" was pressed at Waterford because,
+as a piper, he was considered likely to be "useful in amusing the
+new-raised men"; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1501--Lieut.
+Collingwood, 18 March 1781.] and as late as 1807 a gang at Portsmouth,
+acting under orders from Capt. Sir Robert Bromley, took one Madden,
+a blind man, because of his "qualification of playing on the Irish
+bagpipes." His affliction saved him. He was discharged, and the amount
+of his pay and victualling was deducted from Sir Robert's wages as
+a caution to him to be more careful in future. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1544--Capt. Sir Robert Bromley, 1 Dec. 1808.]
+
+Perhaps the oddest reasons ever adduced in justification of specific
+acts of pressing were those put forward in the cases of James Baily, a
+Gosport ferry-man who was pressed on account of his "great inactivity,"
+and of John Conyear, exempt passenger on the packet-boat plying between
+Dartmouth and Poole, subjected to the same process because, as the
+officer responsible ingenuously put it when called to book for the act,
+if Conyear had not been on board, "another would, who might have been a
+proper person to serve His Majesty." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1451--Capt. Argles, 4 May 1807; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2485--Capt.
+Scott, 13 March 1780.]
+
+An ironical interest attaches to the pressing of John Hagin, a youth
+of nineteen who cherished an ambition to go a-whaling. Tramping the
+riverside at Hull one day in search of a ship, he accidentally met one
+of the lieutenants employed in the local impress service, and mistaking
+him for the master of a Greenland ship, stepped up to him and asked him
+for a berth. "Berth?" said the obliging officer. "Come this way;" and
+he conducted the unsuspecting youth to the rendezvous. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1455--Capt. Ackton, 23 March 1814.]
+
+Before you took a voyage for the benefit of your health in those days it
+was always advisable to satisfy yourself as to the nature of the cargo
+the vessel carried or intended to carry, otherwise you were liable to
+be let in for a longer voyage than health demanded. Richard Gooding of
+Bawdsey, in the county of Suffolk, a twenty-one-year-old yeoman who knew
+nothing of the iniquities practised in ships, in an evil hour acted on
+the advice of his apothecary and ran across to Holland for the sake of
+his health, which the infirmities of youth appear to have undermined.
+All went well until, on the return trip, just before Bawdsey Ferry hove
+in sight, down swooped a revenue cutter's boat with an urgent request
+that the master should open up his hatches and disclose what his hold
+contained. He demurred, alleging that it held nothing of interest
+to revenue men; but on their going below to see for themselves they
+discovered an appreciable quantity of gin. Thereupon the master wickedly
+declared Gooding to be the culprit, and he was pressed on suspicion of
+attempting to run a cargo of spirits. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1530--Capt. Broughton, 20 April 1803, and enclosure.]
+
+Into the operations of the gang this element of suspicion entered very
+largely, especially in the pressing of supposed sailors. To carry about
+on your person any of the well-known marks of the seafaring man was to
+invite certain disaster. When pressed, like so many others, because
+he was "in appearance very much like a sailor," John Teede protested
+vehemently that he had never been to sea in his life, and that all who
+said he had were unmitigated liars. "Strip him," said the officer, who
+had a short way with such cases. In a twinkling Teede's shirt was over
+his head and the sailor stood revealed. Devices emblematic of love and
+the sea covered both arms from shoulder to wrist. "You and I will lovers
+die, eh?" said the officer, with a twinkle, as he spelt out one of
+the amatory inscriptions. "Just so, John! I'll see to that. Next man!"
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1522--Description of a Person calling
+himself John Teede, 28 Dec. 1799.]
+
+Bow-legged men ran the gravest of risks in this respect, and the goose
+of many a tailor was effectually cooked because of the damning fact,
+which no protestations of innocence of the sea could mitigate, that long
+confinement to the board had warped his legs into a fatal resemblance to
+those of a typical Jack-tar. Harwich once had a mayor who, after vowing
+that he would "never be guilty of saying there was no law for pressing
+sailors," as a convincing proof that he knew what was what, and was
+willing to provide it to the best of his ability, straightway sent out
+and pressed--a tailor! [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1436--Capt.
+Allen, 26 March 1706.]
+
+The itinerant Jewish peddler who hawked his wares about the country
+suffered grievously on this account. However indisputably Hebraic his
+name, his accent and his nose might be, those evidences of nationality
+were Anglicised, so to speak, by the fact that his legs were the legs of
+a sailor, and the bandy appendages so characteristic of his race sooner
+or later brought the gang down upon him in full cry and landed him in
+the fleet.
+
+In the year 1780 the fishing town of Cromer was thrown into a state of
+acute excitement by the behaviour of a casual stranger--a great, bearded
+man of foreign aspect who, taking a lodging in the place, resorted daily
+to the beach, where he walked the sands "at low water mark," now writing
+with great assiduity in a book, again gesticulating wildly to the sea
+and the cliffs, whence the suspicious townsfolk, then all unused to
+"visitors" and their eccentricities, watched his antics in wonder and
+consternation. The principal inhabitants of the place, alarmed by his
+vagaries, constituted themselves a committee of safety, and with the
+parson at their head went down to interview him; and when, in response
+to their none too polite inquiries, he flatly refused to give any
+account of himself, they by common consent voted him a spy and a public
+menace, telling each other that he was undoubtedly engaged in drawing
+plans of the coast in order to facilitate' the landing of some enemy;
+for did not the legend run:--
+
+   "He who would Old England win,
+   Must at Weybourn Hope begin?"
+
+and was not the "Hoop," as it was called locally, only a few miles to
+the northward? No time was to be lost. Post-haste they dispatched a
+messenger to Lieut. Brace at Yarmouth, begging him, if he would save his
+country from imminent danger, to lose not a moment in sending his gang
+to seize the suspect and nip his fell design in the bud. With this
+alarming request Brace promptly complied, and the stranger was dragged
+away to Yarmouth. Arraigned before the mayor, he with difficulty
+succeeded in convincing that functionary that he was nothing more
+dangerous than a stray agriculturist whom the Empress Catherine had
+sent over from Russia to study the English method of growing-turnips!
+[Footnote: _State Papers_, Russia, cv.--Lieut. Brace, 18 Aug. 1780.]
+
+The unhandsome treatment meted out to the inoffensive Russian is of a
+piece with the whole aspect of pressing by instigation, of which it is
+at once a specimen and a phase. The incentive here was suspicion; but in
+the fertile field of instigation motives flourished in forms as varied
+as the weaknesses of human nature.
+
+Thomas Onions, respectable burgess of Bridgnorth, engaged in working
+a trow from that place to Bristol, fell under suspicion owing to the
+mysterious disappearance of a portion of the cargo, which consisted of
+china. The rest of the crew being metaphorically as well as literally in
+the same boat, the consignee's agent, on the trow's arrival at Bristol,
+hinted at a more than alliterative connection between china and chests,
+which he was proceeding to search when Onions objected, very rightly
+urging that he had no warrant. "Is it a warrant you're wanting?"
+demanded the baffled agent. "Very well, we'll see if we cannot find
+one." With that he stepped ashore and hurried to the rendezvous, where
+he knew the officers, and within the hour the gang added Onions to the
+impress stock-pot. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1542--Memorial of
+the Inhabitants and Burgesses of Bridgnorth, 12 March 1808.]
+
+Much the same motive led to the pressing of Charles M'Donald, a
+north-country youth of education and property. His mother wished him to
+enter the army, but his guardians, piqued by her insistence, "had him
+kidnapped on board the impress tender at Shields, under pretence of
+sending him on a visit." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1537--Capt.
+Bland, 29 Nov. 1806, and enclosure.]
+
+An "independent fortune of fourteen hundred pounds," bequeathed to him
+by his "Aunt Elizabeth," was instrumental in launching John Stillwell of
+Clerkenwell upon a similar career. His step-mother and uncle desired
+to retain possession of the money, of which they were trustees; so they
+suborned the gang and the young man disappeared. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1539--Capt. Burton, 25 April 1806, and enclosure.]
+
+A more legitimate pastime of the gang was the pressing of incorrigible
+sons. George Clark of Birmingham and William Barnicle of Margate, the
+one a notorious thief, the other the despair of his family because of
+his drunken habits, were two out of many shipped abroad by this cheap
+but effectual means, the instigator of the gang being in each case
+the lad's own father. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1537--Jeremiah
+Clark, 30 July 1806; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1547--Lieut. Dawe, 4 Sept.
+1809.] The distracting problem, "What to do with our sons?" was in this
+way amazingly simplified.
+
+In thus utilising the gang as a means of retaliating upon those who
+incurred their displeasure, both naval officers and private individuals,
+had they been arraigned for the offence, could have pleaded in
+justification of their conduct the example of no less exalted a body
+than the Admiralty itself. The case of the bachelor seamen of Dover,
+pressed because of an official animus against that town, was as
+notorious as their Lordships' futile attempt to teach the Brighton
+fishermen respect for their betters, or their later orders to Capt.
+Culverhouse, of the Liverpool rendezvous, instructing him "to take all
+opportunities of impressing seafaring men belonging to the Isle of
+Man," as a punishment for the "extreme ill-conduct of the people of that
+Island to His Majesty's Officers on the Impress Service." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 3. 148--Admiralty Minutes, 11 Oct. 1803.] The
+Admiralty method of paying out anyone against whom you cherished a
+grudge possessed advantages which strongly commended it to the splenetic
+and the vindictive. For suppose you lay in wait for your enemy and
+beat or otherwise maltreated him: the chances were that he would either
+punish you himself or invoke the law to do it for him; while if you
+removed him by means of the garrot, the knife or the poisoned glass, no
+matter how discreetly the deed was done the hangman was pretty sure to
+get you sooner or later. But the gang--it was as safe as an epidemic!
+The fact was not lost upon the community. People in almost every station
+of life appreciated it at its true worth, and, encouraged by the example
+of the Admiralty, availed themselves of the gang as the handiest,
+speediest and safest of mediums for wiping out old scores.
+
+On shipboard, where life was more cramped and men consequently came
+into sharper contact than on shore, resentments were struck from daily
+intercourse like sparks from steel. Like sparks some died, impotent to
+harm their object; but others, cherished in bitterness of spirit through
+many a lonely watch, flashed into malicious action with that hoped-for
+opportunity, the coming of the gang. John Gray, carpenter of a merchant
+ship, in a moment of anger threatened to cut the skipper down with an
+axe. This happened under a West-Indian sun. Months afterwards, as the
+ship swung lazily into Bristol river and the gang came aboard, the
+skipper found his opportunity. Beckoning to the impress officer, he
+pointed to John Gray and said: "Take that man!" [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1542--Capt. Barker, 22 June 1808, and enclosure.] Gray never
+again lifted an axe on board a merchant vessel.
+
+Certain amenities which once passed between the master and the mate of
+the _Lady Shore_ serve to throw an even broader light upon the origin
+of quarrels at sea and the methods of settling them then in vogue. The
+_Lady Shore_ was on the passage home from Quebec when the master one day
+gave certain sailing directions which the mate, who was a sober, careful
+seaman, thought fit to disregard on the ground that the safety of the
+ship would be endangered if he followed them. The master, an irascible,
+drunken brute, at this flew into a passion and sought to ingraft his
+ideas of seamanship upon the mate through the medium of a handspike,
+with which he caught him a savage blow "just above the eye, cutting him
+about three inches in length." It was in mid-ocean that this lesson in
+navigation was administered. By the time Scilly shoved its nose above
+the horizon the skipper's "down" on the mate had reached an acute stage.
+His resentment of the latter's being the better seaman had now deepened
+into hatred, and to this, as the voyage neared its end, was added
+growing fear of prosecution. At this juncture a man-o'-war hove in
+sight and signalled an inspection of hands. "Get your chest on deck, Mr.
+Mate," cried the exultant skipper. "You are too much master here. It is
+time for us to part." Taken out of the ship as a pressed man, the mate
+was ultimately discharged by order of the Admiralty; but the skipper
+had his revenge. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 583--Matthew Gill to
+Admiral Moorsom, 15 Jan. 1813.]
+
+A riot that occurred at King's Lynn in the year '55 affords a striking
+instance of the retaliatory use of the gang on shore. In the course of
+the disturbance mud and stones were thrown at the magistrates, who
+had come out to do what they could to quell it. Angered by so gross
+an indignity, they supplied the gang with information that led to the
+pressing of some sixty persons concerned in the tumult, but as these
+consisted mainly of "vagrants, gipsies, parish charges, maimed, halt and
+idiots," the magisterial resentment caused greater rejoicings at
+Lynn than it did at Spithead, where the sweepings of the borough were
+eventually deposited. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 920--Admiral Sir
+Edward Hawke, 8 June 1755.]
+
+There is a decided smack of the modern about the use the gang was put to
+by the journeymen coopers of Bristol. Considering themselves underpaid,
+they threatened to go on strike unless the masters raised their wages.
+In this they were not entirely unanimous, however. One of their number
+stood out, refusing to join the combine; whereupon the rest summoned
+the gang and had the "blackleg" pressed for his contumacy. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1542--Capt. Barker, 20 Aug. 1808, and enclosure.]
+
+In pressing William Taylor of Broadstairs the gang nipped in the bud
+as tender a romance as ever flourished in the shelter of the Kentish
+cliffs, which is saying not a little. Taylor was only a poor fisherman,
+and when he dared to make love to the pretty daughter of the Ramsgate
+Harbour-Master, that exalted individual, who entertained for the girl
+social ambitions in which fishermen's shacks had no place, resented
+his advances as insufferable impertinence. A word to Lieut. Leary, his
+friend at the local rendezvous, did the rest. Taylor disappeared, and
+though he was afterwards discharged from His Majesty's ship Utrecht on
+the score of his holding a Sea-Fencible's ticket, the remedy had worked
+its cure and the Harbour-Master was thenceforth free to marry his
+daughter where he would. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1450--Capt.
+Austen, 23 Sept. 1803.]
+
+So natural is the transition from love to hate that no apology is needed
+for introducing here the story of Sam Burrows, the ex-beadle of Chester
+who fell a victim to the harsher in much the same manner as Taylor did
+to the gentler passion. Burrows' evil genius was one Rev. Lucius Carey,
+an Irish clergyman--whether Anglican or Roman we know not, nor does it
+matter--who had contracted the unclerical habit of carrying pistols and
+too much liquor. In this condition he was found late one night knocking
+in a very violent manner at the door of the "Pied Bull," and swearing
+that, while none should keep him out, any who refused to assist him
+in breaking in should be shot down forthwith. Burrows, the ex-beadle,
+happened to be passing at the moment. He seized the drunken cleric and
+with the assistance of James Howell, one of the city watchmen, forcibly
+removed him to the watch-house, whence he was next day taken before the
+mayor and bound over to appear at the Sessions. Now it happened that
+certain members of the local press-gang were Carey's boon companions, so
+no sooner did he leave the presence of the mayor than he looked them up.
+That same evening Burrows was missing. Carey had found him a "hard bed,"
+otherwise a berth on board a man-o'-war. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1532--Capt Birchall, 17 July 1804, and enclosures.]
+
+In the columns of the _Westminster Journal_, under date of both May
+1743, we read of a sailor who, dying at Ringsend, was brought to
+Irishtown church-yard, near Dublin, for burial. "When they laid him on
+the ground," the narrative continues, "the coffin was observed to stir,
+on which he was taken up, and by giving him some nourishment he came
+to himself, and is likely to do well." Whether this sailor was ever
+pressed, either before or after his abortive decease, we are not
+informed; but there is on record at least one well-authenticated
+instance of that calamity overtaking a person who had passed the bourne
+whence none is supposed to return.
+
+In the year 1723 a young lad whose name has not been preserved, but who
+was at the time apprentice to a master sailmaker in London, set out from
+that city to visit his people, living at Sandwich. He appears to have
+travelled afoot, for, getting a "lift" on the road, he was carried into
+Deal, where he arrived late at night, and having no money was glad to
+share a bed with a seafaring man, the boatswain of an Indiaman then in
+the Downs. From this circumstance sprang the events which here follow.
+Along in the small hours of the night the lad awoke, and finding the
+room stuffy and day on the point of breaking, he rose and dressed,
+purposing to see the town in the cool of the morning. The catch of
+the door, however, refused to yield under his hand, and while he was
+endeavouring to undo it the noise he made awakened the boatswain, who
+told him that if he looked in his breeches pocket he would find a knife
+there with which he could lift the latch. Acting on this hint, the
+lad succeeded in opening the door, and thereupon went downstairs in
+accordance with his original intention. When he returned some half-hour
+later, as he did for the purpose of restoring the knife, which he
+had thoughtlessly slipped into his pocket, the bed was empty and the
+boatswain gone. Of this he thought nothing. The boatswain had talked, he
+remembered, of going off to his ship at an early hour, in order, as he
+had said, to call the hands for the washing down of the decks. The
+lad accordingly left the house and went his way to Sandwich, where, as
+already stated, his people lived.
+
+Meantime the old inn at Deal, and indeed the whole town, was thrown into
+a state of violent commotion by a most shocking discovery. Going about
+their morning duties at the inn, the maids had come to the bed in which
+the boatswain and the apprentice had slept, and to their horror found
+it saturated with blood. Drops of blood, together with marks of
+blood-stained hands and feet, were further discovered on the floor and
+the door of the chamber, down the stairs, and along the passage leading
+to the street, whence they could be distinctly traced to the waterside,
+not so very far away. Imagination, working upon these ghastly survivals
+of the hours of darkness, quickly reconstructed the crime which it was
+evident had been committed. The boatswain was known to have had money
+on him; but the youth, it was recalled, had begged his bed. It was
+therefore plain to the meanest understanding that the youth had murdered
+the boatswain for his money and thrown the body into the sea.
+
+At once that terrible precursor of judgment to come, the hue and cry was
+raised, and that night the footsore apprentice lay in Sandwich jail, a
+more than suspected felon, for his speedy capture had supplied what
+was taken to be conclusive evidence of his guilt. In his pocket they
+discovered the boatswain's knife, and both it and the lad's clothing
+were stained with blood. Asked whose blood it was, and how it came
+there, he made no answer. Asked was it the boatswain's knife, he
+answered, "Yes, it was," and therewith held his peace. In face of such
+evidence, and such an admission, he stood prejudged. His trial at the
+Assizes was a mere formality. The jury quickly found him guilty, and
+sentence of death was passed upon him.
+
+The day of execution came. Up to this point Fate had set her face
+steadfastly against our apprentice lad; but now, in the very hour
+and article of death, she suddenly relented and smiled upon him. The
+dislocating "drop" was in those days unknown. When you were hanged,
+you were hanged from a cart, which was suddenly whisked from under you,
+leaving you dangling in mid-air like a kind of death-fruit nearly, but
+not quite, ready to fall. Much depended on the executioner, and that
+grim functionary was in this case a raw hand, unused to his work, who
+bungled the job. The knot was ill-adjusted, the rope too long, the
+convict tall and lank. This last circumstance was no fault of the
+executioner's, but it helped. When they turned him off, the lad's feet
+swept the ground, and his friends, gathering round him like guardian
+angels, bore him up. Cut down at the end of a tense half-hour, he was
+hurried away to a surgeon's and there copiously bled. And being young
+and virile, he revived.
+
+Trudging to Portsmouth some little time after, with the intention of for
+ever leaving a country to which he was legally dead, he fell in with one
+of the numerous press-gangs frequenting that road, and was sent on board
+a man-o'-war. There, in course of time, he rose to be master's mate, and
+in that capacity, whilst on the West-India station, was transferred to
+another ship. On this ship he met the surprise of his life--if life can
+be said to hold further surprises for one who has died and lived again.
+As he stepped on deck the first person he met was his old bed-fellow,
+the boatswain.
+
+The explanation of the amazing series of events which led up to this
+amazing meeting is very simple. On the evening of that fateful night at
+Deal the boatswain, who had been ailing, was let blood. In his sleep the
+bandage slipped and the wound reopened. Discovering his condition when
+awakened by the apprentice, he rose and left the house, intending to
+have the wound re-dressed by the barber-surgeon who had inflicted it,
+with more effect than discretion, some hours earlier. At the very door
+of the inn, however, he ran into the arms of a press-gang, by whom
+he was instantly seized and hurried on board ship. [Footnote: Watts,
+_Remarkable Events in the History of Man_, 1825.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+WOMEN AND THE PRESS-GANG.
+
+
+
+The medieval writer who declared women to be "capable of disturbing the
+air and exciting tempests" was not indulging a mere quip at the expense
+of that limited storm area, his own domestic circle. He expressed
+what in his day, and indeed for long after, was a cardinal article of
+belief--that if you were so ill-advised as to take a woman to sea, she
+would surely upset the weather and play the mischief with the ship.
+
+To this ungallant superstition none subscribed more heartily than the
+sailor, though always, be it understood, with a mental reservation.
+Unlike many landsmen who held a similar belief, he limited the malign
+influence of the sex strictly to the high-seas, where, for that reason,
+he vastly preferred woman's room to her company; but once he was safe
+in port, woman in his opinion ceased to be dangerous, and he then vastly
+preferred her company to her room.
+
+For her companionship he had neither far to seek nor long to wait. It
+was a case of
+
+   "Deal, Dover and Harwich,
+   The devil gave his daughter in marriage."
+
+All naval seaports were full of women, and to prevent the supply from
+running short thoughtful parish officials--church-wardens and other
+well-meaning but sadly misguided people--added constantly to the number
+by consigning to such doubtful reformatories the undesirable females of
+their respective petty jurisdictions. The practice of admitting women
+on board the ships of the fleet, too--a practice as old as the Navy
+itself--though always forbidden, was universally connived at and tacitly
+sanctioned. Before the anchor of the returning man-of-war was let go a
+flotilla of boats surrounded her, deeply laden with pitiful creatures
+ready to sell themselves for a song and the chance of robbing their
+sailor lovers. No sooner did the boats lay alongside than the last
+vestige of Jack's superstitious dread of the malevolent sex went by the
+board, and discipline with it. Like monkeys the sailors swarmed into
+the boats, where each selected a mate, redeemed her from the grasping
+boatman's hands with money or blows according to the state of his
+finances or temper, and so brought his prize, save the mark! in triumph
+to the gangway. It was a point of honour, not to say of policy, with
+these poor creatures to supply their respective "husbands," as they
+termed them, with a drop of good-cheer; so at the gangway they were
+searched for concealed liquor. This was the only formality observed on
+such occasions, and as it was enforced in the most perfunctory manner
+imaginable, there was always plenty of drink going. Decency there was
+none. The couples passed below and the hell of the besotted broke loose
+between decks, where the orgies indulged in would have beggared the pen
+of a Balzac. [Footnote: Statement of Certain Immoral Practices, 1822.]
+
+During the earlier decades of the century these conditions, monstrous
+though they were, passed almost unchallenged, but as time wore on and
+their pernicious effects upon the _morale_ of the fleet became more and
+more appalling, the service produced men who contended strenuously, and
+in the end successfully, with a custom that, to say the least of it, did
+violence to every notion of decency and clean living. In 1746 the ship's
+company of the _Sunderland_ complained bitterly because not even their
+wives were "suffer'd to come aboard to see them." [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1482--Capt. Brett, 22 Feb. 1745-6.] It was a sign of the
+times. By the year '78 the practice had been fined down to a point
+where, if a wherry with a woman in it were seen hovering in a suspicious
+manner about a ship of war, the boatman was immediately pressed and the
+woman turned on shore. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1498--Capt.
+Boteler, 18 April 1778.] Another twenty years, and the example of such
+men as Jervis, Nelson and Collingwood laid the evil for good and all.
+The seamen of the fleet themselves pronounced its requiescat when,
+drawing up certain "Rules and Orders" for their own guidance during the
+mutiny of '97, they ordained that "no woman shall be permitted to go
+on shore from any ship, but as many come in as pleases." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--A Detail of the Proceedings on Board the
+_Queen Charlotte_ in the Year 1797.]
+
+An unforeseen consequence of thus suppressing the sailor's impromptu
+liaisons was an alarming increase in the number of desertions. On shore
+love laughs at locksmiths; on shipboard it derided the boatswain's mate.
+To run and get caught meant at the worst "only a whipping bout," and,
+the sailor's hide being as tough as his heart was tender, he ran and
+took the consequences with all a sailor's stoicism. In this respect he
+was perhaps not singular. The woman in the case so often counts for more
+than the punishment she brings.
+
+Few of those who deserted their ships for amatory reasons had the
+luck--viewing the escapade from the sailor's standpoint--that attended
+the schoolmaster of the _Princess Louisa_. Going ashore at Plymouth to
+fetch his chest from the London wagon, he succumbed to the blandishments
+of an itinerant fiddler's wife, whom he chanced to meet in the husband's
+temporary absence, and was in consequence "no more heard of." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1478--Capt. Boys, 5 April 1742.]
+
+Had it always been a case of the travelling woman, the sailor's flight
+in response to the voice of the charmer would seldom have landed him in
+the cells or exposed his back to the caress of the ship's cat. Where he
+was handicapped in his love flights was this. The haunt or home of his
+seducer was generally known to one or other of his officers, and when
+this was not the case there were often other women who gladly gave
+him away. "Captain Barrington, Sir," writes "Nancy of Deptford" to the
+commander of a man-o'-war in the Thames, "there is a Desarter of yours
+at the upper water Gate. Lives at the sine of the mantion house. He is
+an Irishman, gose by the name of Youe (Hugh) MackMullins, and is trying
+to Ruing a Wido and three Children, for he has Insenuated into the Old
+Woman's faver so far that she must Sartingly come to poverty, and you
+by Sarching the Cook's will find what I have related to be true and much
+oblidge the hole parrish of St. Pickles Deptford." [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1495--Capt. Barrington, 22 Oct. 1771, enclosure.]
+
+A favourite resort of the amatory tar was that extra-parochial spot
+known as the Liberty of the Fleet, where the nuptial knot could be tied
+without the irksome formalities of banns or licence. The fact strongly
+commended it to the sailor and brought him to the precinct in great
+numbers.
+
+"I remember once on a time," says Keith, the notorious Fleet parson, "I
+was at a public-house at Ratcliffe, which was then full of Sailors and
+their Girls. There was fiddling, piping, jigging and eating. At length
+one of the Tars starts up and says: 'Damn ye, Jack! I'll be married just
+now; I will have my partner.' The joke took, and in less than two hours
+Ten Couples set out for the Flete. They returned in Coaches, five Women
+in each Coach; the Tars, some running before, some riding on the Coach
+Box, and others behind. The Cavalcade being over, the Couples went up
+into an upper Room, where they concluded the evening with great Jollity.
+The landlord said it was a common thing, when a Fleet comes in, to have
+2 or 3 Hundred Marriages in a week's time among the Sailors." [Footnote:
+Keith, Observations on the Act for Preventing Clandestine Marriages,
+1753.]
+
+In the "Press-Gang, or Love in Low Life," a play produced at Covent
+Garden Theatre in 1755, Trueblue is pressed, not in, but out of the
+arms of his tearful Nancy. The situation is distressingly typical. The
+sailor's happiness was the gangsman's opportunity, however Nancy might
+suffer in consequence.
+
+For the average gangsman was as void of sentiment as an Admiralty
+warrant, pressing you with equal avidity and absence of feeling whether
+he caught you returning from a festival or a funeral. To this callosity
+of nature it was due that William Castle, a foreign denizen of Bristol
+who had the hardihood to incur the marital tie there, was called
+upon, as related elsewhere, to serve at sea in the very heyday of his
+honeymoon. Similarly, if four seamen belonging to the _Dundee_ Greenland
+whaler had not stolen ashore one night at Shields "to see some women,"
+they would probably have gone down to their graves, seawards or
+landwards, under the pleasing illusion that the ganger was a man of like
+indulgent passions with themselves. The negation of love, as exemplified
+in that unsentimental individual, was thus brought home to many a
+seafaring man, long debarred from the society of the gentler sex,
+with startling abruptness and force. The pitiful case of the "Maidens
+Pressed," whose names are enrolled in the pages of Camden Hotten,
+[Footnote: Hotten, List of Persons of Quality, etc., who Went from
+England to the American Plantations.] is in no way connected with
+pressing for naval purposes. Those unfortunates were not victims of the
+gangsman's notorious hardness of heart, but of their own misdeeds. Like
+the female disciples of the "diving hand" stated by Lutterell [Footnote:
+Lutterell, Historical Relation of State Affairs, 12 March 1706.] to have
+been "sent away to follow the army," they were one and all criminals of
+the Moll Flanders type who "left their country for their country's good"
+under compulsion that differed widely, both in form and purpose, from
+that described in these pages.
+
+To assert, however, that women were never pressed, in the enigmatic
+sense of their being taken by the gang for the manning of the fleet,
+would be to do violence to the truth as we find it in naval and other
+records. As a matter of fact, the direct contrary was the case, and
+there were in the kingdom few gangs of which, at one time or another
+in their career, it could not be said, as Southey said of the gang at
+Bristol, that "they pressed a woman."
+
+The incident alluded to will be familiar to all who know the poet as
+distinguished from the Bard of Avon. It is found in the second "English
+Eclogue," under the caption of the "Grandmother's Tale," and has to do
+with the escapade, long famous in the more humorous annals of Southey's
+native city, of blear-eyed Moll, a collier's wife, a great, ugly
+creature whose voice was as gruff as a mastiff's bark, and who wore
+habitually a man's hat and coat, so that at a few yards' distance you
+were at a loss to know whether she was man or woman.
+
+   "There was a merry story told of her,
+   How when the press-gang came to take her husband
+   As they were both in bed, she heard them coming,
+   Drest John up in her nightcap, and herself
+   Put on his clothes and went before the captain."
+
+A case of pressing on all-fours with this is said to have once occurred
+at Portsmouth. A number of sailors, alarmed by the rumoured approach of
+a gang while they were a-fairing, took it into their heads, so the story
+goes, to effect a partial exchange of clothing with their sweethearts,
+in the hope that the hasty shifting of garments would deceive the gang
+and so protect them from the press. It did. In their parti-garb make-up
+the women looked more sailorly than the sailors themselves. The gang
+consequently pressed them, and there were hilarious scenes at the
+rendezvous when the fair recruits were "regulated" and the ludicrous
+mistake brought to light.
+
+It was not only on shore, however, or on special occasions such as
+this, that women played the sailor. A naval commander, accounting to
+the Admiralty for his shortness of complement, attributes it mainly to
+sickness, partly to desertion, and incidentally to the discharge of one
+of the ship's company, "who was discovered to be a woman." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1503--Capt. Burney, 15 Feb. 1782.]
+
+His experience is capped by that of the master of the _Edmund and Mary_,
+a vessel engaged in carrying coals to Ipswich. Shrewdly suspecting
+one of his apprentices, a clever, active lad, to be other than what he
+seemed, he taxed him with the deception. Taken unawares, the lad burst
+into womanly tears and confessed himself to be the runaway daughter of
+a north-country widow. Disgrace had driven her to sea. [Footnote: _Naval
+Chronicle_, vol. xxx. 1813, p. 184.]
+
+These instances are far from being unique, for both in the navy and the
+mercantile marine the masquerading of women in male attire was a not
+uncommon occurrence. The incentives to the adoption of a mode of life
+so foreign to all the gentler traditions of the sex were various, though
+not inadequate to so surprising a change. Amongst them unhappiness
+at home, blighted virtue, the secret love of a sailor and an abnormal
+craving for adventure and the romantic life were perhaps the most
+common and the most powerful. The question of clothing presented little
+difficulty. Sailors' slops could be procured almost anywhere, and no
+questions asked. The effectual concealment of sex was not so easy, and
+when we consider the necessarily intimate relations subsisting between
+the members of a ship's crew, the narrowness of their environment, the
+danger of unconscious betrayal and the risks of accidental discovery,
+the wonder is that any woman, however masculine in appearance or skilled
+in the arts of deception, could ever have played so unnatural a part for
+any length of time without detection. The secret of her success perhaps
+lay mainly in two assisting circumstances. In theory there were no women
+at sea, and despite his occasional vices the sailor was of all men the
+most unsophisticated and simple-minded.
+
+Conspicuous among women who threw the dust of successful deception in
+the eyes of masters and shipmates is Mary Anne Talbot. Taking to the sea
+as a girl in order to "follow the fortunes" of a young naval officer for
+whom she had conceived a violent but unrequited affection, she was known
+afloat as John Taylor. In stature tall, angular and singularly lacking
+in the physical graces so characteristic of the average woman,
+she passed for years as a true shellback, her sex unsuspected and
+unquestioned. Accident at length revealed her secret. Wounded in an
+engagement, she was admitted to hospital in consequence of a shattered
+knee, and under the operating knife the identity of John Taylor merged
+into that of Mary Anne Talbot. [Footnote: Times, 4 Nov. 1799.]
+
+It is said, perhaps none too kindly or truthfully, that the lady doctor
+of the present day no sooner sets up in practice than she incontinently
+marries the medical man around the corner, and in many instances the
+sailor-girl of former days brought her career on the ocean wave to an
+equally romantic conclusion. However skilled in the art of navigation
+she might become, she experienced a constitutional difficulty in
+steering clear of matrimony. Maybe she steered for it.
+
+A romance of this description that occasioned no little stir in its day
+is associated with a name at one time famous in the West-India trade.
+Through bankruptcy the name suffered eclipse, and the unfortunate
+possessor of it retired to a remote neighbourhood, taking with him his
+two daughters, his sole remaining family. There he presently sank under
+his misfortunes. Left alone in the world, with scarce a penny-piece to
+call their own, the daughters resolved on a daring departure from the
+conventional paths of poverty.
+
+Making their way to Portsmouth, they there dressed themselves as sailors
+and in that capacity entered on board a man-o'-war bound for the West
+Indies. At the first reduction of Curacoa, in 1798, as in subsequent
+naval engagements, both acquitted themselves like men. No suspicion of
+the part they were playing, and playing with such success, appears to
+have been aroused till a year or two later, when one of them, in a brush
+with the enemy, was wounded in the side. The surgeon's report terminated
+her career as a seaman.
+
+ [Illustration: MARY ANNE TALBOT.]
+
+
+ Meanwhile the other sister contracted tropical fever, and whilst
+lying ill was visited by one of the junior officers of the ship.
+Believing herself to be dying, she told him her secret, doubtless with
+a view to averting its discovery after death. He confessed that the news
+was no surprise to him. In fact, not only had he suspected her sex, he
+had so far persuaded himself of the truth of his suspicions as to fall
+in love with one of his own crew. The tonic effect of such avowals is
+well known. The fever-stricken patient recovered, and on the return of
+the ship to home waters the officer in question made his late foremast
+hand his wife. [Footnote: Naval Chronicle, vol. viii. 1802, p. 60.]
+
+Of all the veracious yarns that are told of girl-sailors, there is
+perhaps none more remarkable than the story of Rebecca Anne Johnson, the
+girl-sailor of Whitby. One night a hundred and some odd years ago a Mrs.
+Lesley, who kept the "Bull" inn in Halfmoon Alley, Bishopsgate Street,
+found at her door a handsome sailor-lad begging for food. He had eaten
+nothing for four and twenty hours, he declared, and when plied with
+supper and questions by the kind-hearted but inquisitive old lady, he
+explained that he was an apprentice to the sea, and had run from
+his ship at Woolwich because of the mate's unduly basting him with a
+rope's-end. "What! you a 'prentice?" cried the landlady; and turning his
+face to the light, she subjected him to a scrutiny that read him through
+and through.
+
+Next day, at his own request, he was taken before the Lord Mayor, to
+whom he told his story. That he was a girl he freely admitted, and he
+accounted for his appearing in sailor rig by asserting that a brutal
+father had apprenticed him to the sea in his thirteenth year. More
+astounding still, the same unnatural parent had actually bound her, the
+sailor-girl's, mother, apprentice to the sea, and in that capacity
+she was not only pressed into the navy, but killed at the battle of
+Copenhagen, up to which time, though she had followed the sea for many
+years and borne this child in the meantime, her sex had never once been
+called in question. [Footnote: _Naval Chronicle_, vol. xx. 1808, p.
+293.]
+
+While woman was thus invading man's province at sea, that universal
+feeder of the Navy, the pressgang, made little or no appeal to her as
+a sphere of activity. On Portland Island, it is true, Lieut. McKey, who
+commanded both the Sea-Fencibles and the press-gang there, rated his
+daughter as a midshipman; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral
+Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 15 April 1805] but with this exception
+no woman is known to have added the hanger to her adornment. The three
+merry maids of Taunton, who as gangsmen put the Denny Bowl quarrymen to
+rout, were of course impostors.
+
+But if the ganger's life was not for woman, there was ample compensation
+for its loss in the wider activities the gang opened up for her. The
+gangsman was nothing if not practical. He took the poetic dictum that
+"men must work and women must weep"--a conception in his opinion too
+sentimentally onesided to be tolerated as one of the eternal verities of
+human existence--and improved upon it. By virtue of the rough-and-ready
+authority vested in him he abolished the distinction between toil and
+tears, decreeing instead that women should suffer both.
+
+"M'Gugan's wife?" growled Capt. Brenton, gang-master at Greenock, when
+the corporation of that town ventured to point out to him that
+M'Gugan's wife and children must inevitably come to want unless
+their bread-winner, recently pressed, were forthwith restored to
+them,--"_M'Gugan's wife is as able to get her bread as any woman in the
+town!_" [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1511--Capt. Brenton, 15 Jan.
+1795.]
+
+For two hundred and fifty years, off and on--ever since, in fact, the
+press-masters of bluff King Hal denuded the Dorset coast of fishermen
+and drove the starving women of that region to sea in quest of food
+[Footnote: _State Papers Domestic, Henry VIII_.: Lord Russell to the
+Privy Council, 22 Aug. 1545.]--the press-gang had been laboriously
+teaching English housewives this very lesson, the simple economic truth
+that if they wanted bread for themselves and their families while their
+husbands were fagging for their country at sea, they must turn to and
+work for it. Yet in face of this fact here was M'Gugan's wife trying to
+shirk the common lot. It was monstrous!
+
+M'Gugan's wife ought really to have known better. The simplest
+calculation, had she cared to make it, would have shown her the utter
+futility of hoping to live on the munificent wage which a grateful
+country allowed to M'Gugan, less certain deductions for M'Gugan's slops
+and contingent sick-benefit, in return for his aid in protecting it from
+its enemies; and almost any parish official could have told her, what
+she ought in reason to have known already, that she was no longer merely
+M'Gugan's wife, dependent upon his exertions for the bread she ate, but
+a Daughter of the State and own sister to thousands of women to whom the
+gang in its passage brought toil and poverty, tears and shame--not, mark
+you, the shame of labour, if there be such a thing, but the bedraggled,
+gin-sodden shame of the street, or, in the scarce less dreadful
+alternative, the shame of the goodwife of the ballad who lamented her
+husband's absence because, worse luck, sundry of her bairns "were gotten
+quhan he was awa'."
+
+Lamentable as this state of things undoubtedly was, it was nevertheless
+one of the inevitables of pressing. You could not take forcibly one
+hundred husbands and fathers out of a community of five hundred souls,
+and pay that hundred husbands and fathers the barest pittance instead of
+a living wage, without condemning one hundred wives and mothers to hard
+labour on behalf of the three hundred children who hungered. Out of
+this hundred wives and mothers a certain percentage, again, lacked the
+ability to work, while a certain other percentage lacked the will. These
+recruited the ranks of the outcast, or with their families burdened
+the parish. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Memorial of the
+Churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor of the Parish of Portsmouth,
+3 Dec 1793, and numerous instances.] The direct social and economic
+outcome of this mode of manning the Navy, coupled with the payment of
+a starvation wage, was thus threefold. It reversed the natural
+sex-incidence of labour; it fostered vice; it bred paupers. The first
+was a calamity personal to those who suffered it. The other two were
+national in their calamitous effects.
+
+In that great diurnal of the eighteenth-century navy, the Captains'
+Letters and Admirals' Dispatches, no volume can be opened without
+striking the broad trail of destitution, misery and heart-break, to
+mention no worse consequences, left by the gang. At nearly every turn of
+the page, indeed, we come upon recitals or petitions recalling vividly
+the exclamation involuntarily let fall by Pepys the tender-hearted when,
+standing over against the Tower late one summer's night, he watched
+by moonlight the pressed men sent away: "Lord! how some poor women did
+cry."
+
+A hundred years later and their heritors in sorrow are crying still. Now
+it is a bed-ridden mother bewailing her only son, "the principal prop
+and stay of her old age"; again a wife, left destitute "with three
+hopeful babes, and pregnant." And here, bringing up the rear of the sad
+procession--lending to it, moreover, a touch of humour in itself not far
+removed from tears--comes Lachlan M'Quarry. The gang have him, and amid
+the Stirling hills, where he was late an indweller, a motley gathering
+of kinsfolk mourn his loss--"me, his wife, two Small helpless Children,
+an Aged Mother who is Blind, an Aged Man who is lame and unfit for work,
+his father in Law, and a sister Insane, with his Mother in Law who is
+Infirm." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1454--The Humble Petition of
+Jullions Thomson, Spouse to Lachlan M'Quarry, 2 May 1812.] The fact
+is attested by the minister and elders of the parish, being otherwise
+unbelievable; and Lachlan is doubtless proportionately grieved to find
+himself at sea. Men whose wives "divorced" them through the medium of
+the gang--a not uncommon practice--experienced a similar grief.
+
+Besides the regular employment it so generously provided for wives
+bereft of their lawful support, the press-gang found for the women of
+the land many an odd job that bore no direct relation to the earning of
+their bread. When the mob demolished the Whitby rendezvous in '93, it
+was the industrious fishwives of the town who collected the stones
+used as ammunition on that occasion; and when, again, Lieut. M'Kenzie
+unwisely impressed an able seaman in the house of Joseph Hook,
+inn-keeper at Pill, it was none other than "Mrs. Hook, her daughter and
+female servant" who fell upon him and tore his uniform in shreds, thus
+facilitating the pressed man's escape "through a back way." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1534--Lieut. M'Kenzie, 20 Oct. 1805.]
+
+The good people of Sunderland at one time indulged themselves in the
+use of a peculiar catch-phrase. Whenever any feat of more than ordinary
+daring came under their observation, they spoke of it as "a case of
+Dryden's sister." The saying originated in this way. The Sunderland gang
+pressed the mate of a vessel, one Michael Dryden, and confined him in
+the tender's hold. One night Dryden's sister, having in vain bribed the
+lieutenant in command to let him go, at the risk of her life smuggled
+some carpenter's tools on board under the very muzzles of the sentinel's
+muskets, and with these her brother and fifteen other men cut their way
+to freedom. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2740--Lieut. Atkinson, 24
+June and 10 July 1798.]
+
+A tender lying in King Road, at the entrance to Bristol River, was the
+scene of another episode of the "Dryden's sister" type. Going ashore
+one morning, the lieutenant in command fell from the bank and broke
+his sword. It was an ill omen, for in his absence the hard fate of the
+twenty pressed men who lay in the tender's hold, "all handcuft to each
+other," made an irresistible appeal to two women, pressed men's wives,
+who had been with singular lack of caution admitted on board. Whilst the
+younger and prettier of the two cajoled the sentinel from his post, the
+elder and uglier secured an axe and a hatchet and passed them unobserved
+through the scuttle to the prisoners below, who on their part made such
+good use of them that when at length the lieutenant returned he found
+the cage empty and the birds flown. The shackles strewing the press-room
+bore eloquent testimony to the manner of their flight. The irons had
+been hacked asunder, some of them with as many as "six or seven Cutts."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1490--Capt. Brown, 12 May 1759.]
+
+Never, surely, did the gang provide an odder job for any woman than the
+one it threw in the way of Richard Parker's wife. The story of his part
+in the historic mutiny at the Nore is common knowledge. Her's, being
+less familiar, will bear retelling. But first certain incidents in the
+life of the man himself, some of them hitherto unknown, call for brief
+narration.
+
+Born at Exeter in or about the year 1764, it is not till some nineteen
+years later, or, to be precise, the 5th of May 1783, that Richard Parker
+makes his debut in naval records. On that date he appears on board
+the _Mediator_ tender at Plymouth, in the capacity of a pressed man.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ Ships' Musters, 1. 9307--Muster Book of
+H.M. Tender the _Mediator_.]
+
+The tender carried him to London, where in due course he was delivered
+up to the regulating officers, and by them turned over to the _Ganges_,
+Captain the Honourable James Lutterell. This was prior to the 30th of
+June 1783, the date of his official "appearance" on board that ship.
+On the _Ganges_ he served as a midshipman--a noteworthy fact [Footnote:
+Though one of rare occurrence, Parker's case was not altogether unique;
+for now and then a pressed man by some lucky chance "got his foot on the
+ladder," as Nelson put it, and succeeded in bettering himself. Admiral
+Sir David Mitchell, pressed as the master of a merchantman, is a notable
+example. Admiral Campbell, "Hawke's right hand at Quiberon," who entered
+the service as a substitute for a pressed man, is another; and James
+Clephen, pressed as a sea-going apprentice, became master's-mate of the
+Doris, and taking part in the cutting out of the Chevrette, a corvette
+of twenty guns, from Cameret Bay, in 1801, was for his gallantry on that
+occasion made a lieutenant, fought at Trafalgar and died a captain. On
+the other hand, John Norris, pressed at Gallions Reach out of a collier
+and "ordered to walk the quarter-deck as a midshipman," proved such a
+"laisie, sculking, idle fellow," and so "filled the sloop and men
+with vermin," that his promoter had serious thoughts of "turning him
+ashore."--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1477--Capt. Bruce, undated letter,
+1741.]--till the 4th of September following, when he was discharged to
+the _Bull-Dog_ sloop by order of Admiral Montagu. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ Ships' Musters, 1. 10614--Muster Book of H.M.S. _Ganges_.]
+
+His transfer from the _Bull-Dog_ banished him from the quarter-deck and
+sowed within him the seeds of that discontent which fourteen years later
+made of him, as he himself expressed it, "a scape-goat for the sins of
+many." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5339--Dying Declaration of the
+Late Unfortunate Richard Parker, 28 June 1797.] He was now, for what
+reason we do not learn, rated as an ordinary seaman, and in that
+capacity he served till the 15th of June 1784, when he was discharged
+sick to Haslar Hospital. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ Ships' Musters,
+1. 10420, 10421--Muster Books of H.M. Sloop _Bull-Dog_.]
+
+At this point we lose track of him for a matter of nearly fourteen
+years, but on the 31st of March 1797, the year which brought his period
+of service to so tragic a conclusion, he suddenly reappears at the Leith
+rendezvous as a Quota Man for the county of Perth. Questioned as to his
+past, he told Brenton, then in charge of that rendezvous, "that he had
+been a petty officer or acting lieutenant on board the _Mediator_, Capt.
+James Lutterell, at the taking of five prizes in 1783, when he received
+a very large proportion of prize-money." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1517--Capt. Brenton, 10 June 1797.] The inaccuracies evident on the
+face of this statement are unquestionably due to Brenton's defective
+recollection rather than to Parker's untruthfulness. Brenton wrote his
+report nearly two and a half months after the event.
+
+After a period of detention on board the tender at Leith, Parker, in
+company with other Quota and pressed men, was conveyed to the Nore in
+one of the revenue vessels occasionally utilised for that purpose, and
+there put on board the _Sandwich_, the flag-ship for that division of
+the fleet. At half-past nine on the morning of the 12th of May, upon the
+2nd lieutenant's giving orders to "clear hawse," the ship's company got
+on the booms and gave three cheers, which were at once answered from the
+_Director_. They then reeved yard-ropes as a menace to those of the
+crew who would not join them, and trained the forecastle guns on the
+quarter-deck as a hint to the officers. The latter were presently put
+on shore, and that same day the mutineers unanimously chose Parker to
+be their "President" or leader. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+5339--Court-Martial on Richard Parker: Deposition of Lieut. Justice.]
+The fact that he had been pressed in the first instance, and that
+after having served for a time in the capacity of a "quarter-deck young
+gentleman" he had been unceremoniously derated, singled him out for
+this distinction. There was amongst the mutineers, moreover, no other so
+eligible; for whatever Parker's faults, he was unquestionably a man of
+superior ability and far from inferior attainments.
+
+The reeving of yard-ropes was his idea, though he disclaimed it. An
+extraordinary mixture of tenderness and savagery, he wept when it was
+proposed to fire upon a runaway ship, the _Repulse_, but the next moment
+drove a crowbar into the muzzle of the already heavily shotted gun and
+bade the gunner "send her to hell where she belonged." "I'll make a
+beefsteak of you at the yard-arm" was his favourite threat. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 5339--Court-Martial on Richard Parker:
+Depositions of Capt. John Wood, of H.M. Sloop _Hound_, William
+Livingston, boat-swain of the _Director_, and Thomas Barry, seaman on
+board the _Monmouth._] It was prophetic, for that way, as events quickly
+proved, lay the finish of his own career.
+
+At nine o'clock on the morning of the 30th of June Parker, convicted and
+sentenced to death after a fair trial, stood on the scaffold awaiting
+his now imminent end. The halter, greased to facilitate his passing, was
+already about his neck, and in one of his hands, which had been freed at
+his own request, he held a handkerchief borrowed for the occasion from
+one of the officers of the ship. This he suddenly dropped. It was the
+preconcerted signal, and as the fatal gun boomed out in response to it
+he thrust his hands into his pockets with great rapidity and jumped
+into mid-air, meeting his death without a tremor and with scarce a
+convulsion. Thanks to the clearness of the atmosphere and the facility
+with which the semaphores did their work that morning, the Admiralty
+learnt the news within seven minutes. [Footnote: Trial and Life of
+Richard Parker, Manchester, 1797.] Now comes the woman's part in the
+drama on which the curtain rose with the pressing of Parker in '83, and
+fell, not with his execution at the yard-arm of the _Sandwich_, as one
+would suppose, but four days after that event.
+
+In one of his spells of idleness ashore Parker had married a Scotch
+girl, the daughter of an Aberdeenshire farmer--a tragic figure of a
+woman whose fate it was to be always too late. Hearing that her husband
+had taken the bounty, she set out with all speed for Leith, only to
+learn, upon her arrival there, that he was already on his way to the
+fleet. At Leith she tarried till rumours of his pending trial reached
+the north country. The magistrates would then have put her under arrest,
+designing to examine her, but the Admiralty, to whom Brenton reported
+their intention, vetoed the proceeding as superfluous. The case
+against Parker was already complete. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1517--Capt. Brenton, 15 June 1797, and endorsement.] Left free to follow
+the dictates of her tortured heart, the distracted woman posted south.
+
+Eating his last breakfast in the gun-room of the _Sandwich_, Parker
+talked affectionately of his wife, saying that he had made his will and
+left her a small estate he was heir to. Little did he dream that she was
+then within a few miles of him.
+
+The _Sandwich_ lay that morning above Blackstakes, the headmost ship of
+the fleet, and at the moment when Parker leapt from her cathead scaffold
+a boat containing his wife shot out into the stream. He was run up to
+the yard-arm before her very eyes. She was again too late.
+
+He hung there for an hour. Meantime, with a tenacity of purpose as
+touching as her devotion, the unhappy woman applied to the Admiral
+for the body of her husband. She was denied, and Parker's remains were
+committed to the new naval burial ground, beyond the Red-Barrier Gate
+leading to Minster. The burial took place at noon. By nightfall the
+grief-stricken woman had come to an amazing resolution. _She would steal
+the body_.
+
+Ten o'clock that night found her at the place of interment. Save for the
+presence of the sentinel at the adjoining Barrier Gate, the loneliness
+of the spot favoured her design, but a ten-foot palisade surrounded the
+grounds, and she had neither tools nor helpers. Unexpectedly three women
+came that way. To them she disclosed her purpose, praying them for the
+love of God to help her. Perhaps they were sailors' wives. Anyhow, they
+assented, and the four body-snatchers scaled the fence.
+
+ [Illustration: MARY ANNE TALBOT. Dressed as a sailor.]
+
+
+The absence of tools, as it happened, presented no serious impediment to
+the execution of their design. The grave was a shallow one, the freshly
+turned mould loose and friable. Digging with their hands, they soon
+uncovered the coffin, which they then contrived to raise and hoist over
+the cemetery gates into the roadway, where they sat upon it to conceal
+it from chance passers-by till four o'clock in the morning. It was then
+daylight. The neighbouring drawbridge was let down, and, a fish-cart
+opportunely passing on its way to Rochester, the driver was prevailed
+upon to carry the "lady's box" into that town. A guinea served to allay
+his suspicions.
+
+Three days later a caravan drew up before the "Hoop and Horseshoe"
+tavern, in Queen Street, Little Tower Hill. A woman alighted--furtively,
+for it was now broad daylight, whereas she had planned to arrive while
+it was still dark. A watchman chanced to pass at the moment, and the
+woman's strange behaviour aroused his suspicions. Pulling aside the
+covering of the van, he looked in and saw there the rough coffin
+containing the body of Parker, which the driver of the caravan had
+carried up from Rochester for the sum of six guineas. Later in the
+day the magistrates sitting at Lambeth Street Police Court ordered
+its removal, and it was deposited in the vaults of Whitechapel church.
+[Footnote: Trial and Life of Richard Parker, Manchester, 1797.]
+
+Full confirmation of this extraordinary story, should any doubt it, may
+be found in the registers of the church in question. Amongst the burials
+there we read this entry: "_July, 1797, Richard Parker, Sheerness, Kent,
+age 33. Cause of death, execution. This was Parker, the President of
+the Mutinous Delegates on board the fleet at the Nore. He was hanged
+on board H.M.S._ Sandwich _on the 30th day of June_." [Footnote: Burial
+Registers of St. Mary Matfellon, Whitechapel, 1797.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+IN THE CLUTCH OF THE GANG.
+
+
+
+Once the gang had a man in its power, his immediate destination was
+either the rendezvous press-room or the tender employed as a substitute
+for that indispensable place of detention.
+
+The press-room, lock-up or "shut-up house," as it was variously termed,
+must not be confounded with the press-room at Newgate, where persons
+indicted for felony, and perversely refusing to plead, were pressed
+beneath weights till they complied with that necessary legal formality.
+From that historic cell the rendezvous press-room differed widely, both
+in nature and in use. Here the pressed men were confined pending their
+dispatch to His Majesty's ships. As a matter of course the place was
+strongly built, heavily barred and massively bolted, being in these
+respects merely a commonplace replica of the average bridewell. Where it
+differed from the bridewell was in its walls. Theoretically these were
+elastic. No matter how many they held, there was always room within them
+for more. As late as 1806 the press-room at Bristol consisted of a cell
+only eight feet square, and into this confined space sixteen men were
+frequently packed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral
+Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 14 March 1806.]
+
+Nearly everywhere it was the same gruesome story. The sufferings of
+the pressed man went for nothing so long as the pressed man was kept.
+Provided only the bars were dependable and the bolts staunch, anything
+would do to "clap him up in." The town "cage" came in handy for the
+purpose; and when no other means of securing him could be found, he
+was thrust into the local prison like a common felon, often amidst
+surroundings unspeakably awful.
+
+According to the elder Wesley, no "seat of woe" on this side of the
+Bottomless Pit outrivalled Newgate except one. [Footnote: London
+Chronicle, 6 Jan. 1761.] The exception was Bristol jail. A filthy,
+evil-smelling hole, crowded with distempered prisoners without medical
+care, it was deservedly held in such dread as to "make all seamen fly
+the river" for fear of being pressed and committed to it. For when the
+eight-foot cell at the rendezvous would hold no more, Bristol pressed
+men were turned in here--to come out, if they survived the
+pestilential atmosphere of the place, either fever-stricken or pitiful,
+vermin-covered objects from whom even the hardened gangsman shrank with
+fear and loathing. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1490--Capt. Brown,
+4 Aug. 1759.] Putting humane considerations entirely aside, it is
+well-nigh inconceivable that so costly an asset as the pressed man
+should ever have been exposed to such sanitary risks. The explanation
+doubtless lies in the enormous amount of pressing that was done. The
+number of men taken was in the aggregate so great that a life more or
+less was hardly worth considering.
+
+Of ancient use as a county jail, Gloucester Castle stood far higher in
+the pressed man's esteem as a place of detention than did its sister
+prison on the Avon. The reason is noteworthy. Richard Evans, for many
+years keeper there, possessed a magic palm. Rub it with silver in
+sufficient quantity, and the "street door of the gaol" opened before
+you at noonday, or, when at night all was as quiet as the keeper's
+conscience, a plank vanished from the roof of your cell, and as you
+stood lost in wonder at its disappearance there came snaking down
+through the hole thus providentially formed a rope by the aid of which,
+if you were a sailor or possessed of a sailor's agility and daring, it
+was feasible to make your escape over the ramparts of the castle, though
+they towered "most as high as the Monument." [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1490--Capt. Brown, 28 April and 26 May 1759.]
+
+In the absence of the gang on road or other extraneous duty the
+precautions taken for the safety of pressed men were often very
+inadequate, and this circumstance gave rise to many an impromptu rescue.
+Sometimes the local constable was commandeered as a temporary guard, and
+a story is told of how, the gang having once locked three pressed men
+into the cage at Isleworth and stationed the borough watchman over them,
+one Thomas Purser raised a mob, demolished the door of the cage, and set
+its delighted occupants free amid frenzied shouts of: "Pay away within,
+my lads! and we'll pay away without. Damn the constable! He has no
+warrant." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers' Opinions,
+1733-56, No. 99.]
+
+In strict accordance with the regulations governing, or supposed to
+govern, the keeping of rendezvous, the duration of the pressed man's
+confinement ought never to have exceeded four-and-twenty hours from
+the time of his capture; but as a matter of fact it often extended far
+beyond that limit. Everything depended on the gang. If men were brought
+in quickly, they were as quickly got rid of; but when they dribbled in
+in one's and two's, with perhaps intervals of days when nothing at all
+was doing, weeks sometimes elapsed before a batch of suitable size could
+be made ready and started on its journey to the ships.
+
+All this time the pressed man had to be fed, or, as they said in the
+service, subsisted or victualled, and for this purpose a sum varying
+from sixpence to ninepence a day, according to the cost of provisions,
+was allowed him. On this generous basis he was nourished for a hundred
+years or more, till one day early in the nineteenth century some
+half-score of gaunt, hungry wretches, cooped up for eight weary weeks in
+an East-coast press-room during the rigours of a severe winter, made the
+startling discovery that the time-honoured allowance was insufficient
+to keep soul and body together. They accordingly addressed a petition to
+the Admiralty, setting forth the cause and nature of their sufferings,
+and asking for a "rise." A dozen years earlier the petition would have
+been tossed aside as insolent and unworthy of consideration; but the
+sharp lesson of the Nore mutiny happened to be still fresh in their
+Lordships' memories, so with unprecedented generosity and haste they
+at once augmented the allowance, and that too for the whole kingdom, to
+fifteen-pence a day. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1546--Petition of
+the Pressed Men at King's Lynn, 27 Jan. 1809, and endorsement.]
+
+It was a red-letter day for the pressed man. A single stroke of
+the official pen had raised him from starvation to opulence, and
+thenceforward, when food was cheap and the purchasing power of the penny
+high, he regaled himself daily, as at Limerick in 1814, on such abundant
+fare as a pound of beef, seven and a half pounds of potatoes, a pint of
+milk, a quart of porter, a boiling of greens and a mess of oatmeal; or,
+if he happened to be a Catholic, on fish and butter twice a week instead
+of beef. The quantity of potatoes is worthy of remark. It was peculiar
+to Ireland, where the lower classes never used bread. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1455--Capt. Argles, 1 March 1814.]
+
+Though faring thus sumptuously at his country's expense, the pressed man
+did not always pass the days of his detention in unprofitable idleness.
+There were certain eventualities to be thought of and provided against.
+Sooner or later he must go before the "gent with the swabs" and be
+"regulated," that is to say, stripped to the waist, or further if that
+exacting officer deemed it advisable, and be critically examined for
+physical ailments and bodily defects. In this examination the local
+"saw-bones" would doubtless lend a hand, and to outwit the combined
+skill of both captain and surgeon was a point of honour with the pressed
+man if by any possibility it could be done. With this laudable end in
+view he devoted much of his enforced leisure to the rehearsal of such
+symptoms and the fabrication of such defects as were best calculated to
+make him a free man.
+
+For the sailor to deny his vocation was worse than useless. The ganger's
+shrewd code--"All as says they be land-lubbers when I says they baint,
+be liars, and all liars be seamen"--effectually shut that door in his
+face. There were other openings, it is true, whereby a knowing chap
+might wriggle free, but officers and medicoes were extremely "fly." He
+had not practised his many deceptions upon them through long years
+for nothing. They well knew that on principle he "endeavoured by every
+stratagem in his power to impose"--that he was, in short, a cunning
+cheat whose most serious ailments were to be regarded with the least
+sympathy and the utmost suspicion. Yet in spite of this disquieting fact
+the old hand, whom long practice had made an adept at deception, and
+who, when he was so inclined, could simulate "complaints of a nature
+to baffle the skill of any professional man," [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1540--Capt. Barker, 5 Nov. 1807.] rarely if ever faced
+the ordeal of regulating without "trying it on." Often, indeed, he
+anticipated it. There was nothing like keeping his hand in.
+
+Fits were his great stand-by, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1534--Capt. Barker, 11 Jan. 1805, and many instances.] and the time
+he chose for these convulsive turns was generally night, when he could
+count upon a full house and nothing to detract from the impressiveness
+of the show. Suddenly, at night, then, a weird, horribly inarticulate
+cry is heard issuing from the press-room, and at once all is uproar and
+confusion. Unable to make himself heard, much less to restore order, and
+fearing that murder is being done amongst the pressed men, the sentry
+hastily summons the officer, who rushes down, half-dressed, and hails
+the press-room.
+
+"Hullo! within there. What's wrong?"
+
+Swift silence. Then, "Man in a fit, sir," replies a quavering voice.
+
+"Out with him!" cries the officer.
+
+Immediately, the door being hurriedly unbarred, the "case" is handed out
+by his terrified companions, who are only too glad to be rid of him.
+To all appearances he is in a true epileptic state. In the light of the
+lantern, held conveniently near by one of the gangsmen, who have by this
+time turned out in various stages of undress, his features are seen to
+be strongly convulsed. His breathing is laboured and noisy, his head
+rolls incessantly from side to side. Foam tinged with blood oozes from
+between his gnashing teeth, flecking his lips and beard, and when his
+limbs are raised they fall back as rigid as iron. [Footnote: Almost the
+only symptom of _le grand mal_ which the sailor could not successfully
+counterfeit was the abnormal dilation of the pupils so characteristic of
+that complaint, and this difficulty he overcame by rolling his eyes up
+till the pupils were invisible.]
+
+After surveying him critically for a moment the officer, if he too is
+an old hand, quietly removes the candle from the lantern and with a
+deft turn of his wrist tips the boiling-hot contents of the tallow cup
+surrounding the flaming wick out upon the bare arm or exposed chest of
+the "case." When the fit was genuine, as of course it sometimes was, the
+test had no particular reviving effect; but if the man were shamming, as
+he probably was in spite of the great consistency of his symptoms, the
+chances were that, with all his nerve and foreknowledge of what was
+in store for him, the sudden biting of the fiery liquid into his naked
+flesh would bring him to his feet dancing with pain and cursing and
+banning to the utmost extent of his elastic vocabulary.
+
+When this happened, "Put him back," said the officer. "He'll do, alow or
+aloft."
+
+Going aloft at sea was the true epileptic's chief dread. And with good
+reason, for sooner or later it meant a fall, and death.
+
+In the meantime other enterprising members of the press-room community
+made ready for the scrutiny of the official eye in various ways,
+practising many devices for procuring a temporary disability and a
+permanent discharge. Some, horrible thought! "rubbed themselves with Cow
+Itch and Whipped themselves with Nettles to appear in Scabbs";
+others "burnt themselves with oil of vitriol" to induce symptoms with
+difficulty distinguishable from those of scurvy, that disease of such
+dread omen to the fleet; whilst others emulated the passing of the poor
+consumptive of the canting epitaph, whose "legs it was that carried her
+off." Bad legs, indeed, ran a close race with fits in the pressed man's
+sprint for liberty. They were so easily induced, and so cheaply. The
+industrious application of the smallest copper coin procurable,
+the humble farthing or the halfpenny, speedily converted the most
+insignificant abrasion of the skin into a festering sore. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt. Ambrose, 20 June 1741; _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1544--Capt. Bowyer, 18 Dec. 1808; _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1451--A. Clarke, Examining Surgeon at Dublin, 18 May 1807; _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1517--Letters of Capt. Brenton, March and April 1797, and
+many instances.]
+
+Here and there a man of iron nerve, acting on the common belief that if
+you had lost a finger the Navy would have none of you, adopted a more
+heroic method of shaking off the clutch of the gang. Such a man was
+Samuel Caradine, some time inhabitant of Kendal. Committed to the House
+of Correction there as a preliminary to his being turned over to the
+fleet for crimes that he had done, he expressed a desire to bid farewell
+to his wife. She was sent for, and came, apparently not unprepared; for
+after she had greeted her man through the iron door of his cell, "he put
+his hand underneath, and she, with a mallet and chisel concealed for
+the purpose, struck off a finger and thumb to render him unfit for His
+Majesty's service." [Footnote: _Times_, 3 Nov. 1795.]
+
+A stout-hearted fellow named Browne, who hailed from Chester, would have
+made Caradine a fitting mate. "Being impressed into the sea service, he
+very violently determined, in order to extricate himself therefrom, to
+mutilate the thumb and a finger of his left hand; which he accomplished
+by repeatedly maiming them with an old hatchet that he had obtained
+for that purpose. He was immediately discharged." [Footnote: _Liverpool
+Advertiser_, 6 June 1777.] Such men as these were a substantial loss to
+the service. Fighting a gun shoulder to shoulder, what fearful execution
+would they not have wrought upon the "hereditary enemy"!
+
+It did not always do, however, to presume upon the loss of a forefinger,
+particularly if it were missing from the left hand. Capt. Barker, while
+he was regulating the press at Bristol, once had occasion to send into
+Ilchester for a couple of brace of convicts who had received the royal
+pardon on condition of their serving at sea. Near Shepton Mallet, on the
+return tramp, his gangsmen fell in with a party armed with sticks and
+knives, who "beat and cut them in a very cruel manner." They succeeded,
+however, in taking the ringleader, one Charles Biggen, and brought him
+in; but when Barker would have discharged the fellow because his left
+forefinger was wanting, the Admiralty brushed the customary rule
+aside and ordered him to be kept. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1528--Capt. Barker, 28 July 1803, and endorsement.]
+
+The main considerations entering into the dispatch of pressed men to the
+fleet, when at length their period of detention at headquarters came to
+an end, were economy, speed and safety. Transport was necessarily either
+by land or water, and in the case of seaport, river or canal towns, both
+modes were of course available. Gangs operating at a distance from the
+sea, or remote from a navigable river or canal, were from their very
+situation obliged to send their catch to market either wholly by
+land, or by land and water successively. Land transport, though always
+healthier, and in many instances speedier and cheaper than transport by
+water, was nevertheless much more risky. Pressed men therefore preferred
+it. The risks--rescue and desertion--were all in their favour. Hence,
+when they "offered chearfully to walk up," or down, as the case might
+be, the seeming magnanimity of the offer was never permitted to blind
+those in charge of them to the need for a strong attendant guard.
+[Footnote: In the spring of 1795 a body of Quota Men, some 130 strong,
+voluntarily marched from Liverpool to London, a distance of 182 miles,
+instead of travelling by coach as at first proposed. Though all had
+received the bounty and squandered it in debauchery, not a man deserted;
+and in their case the danger of rescue was of course absent. _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1511--Capt. Bowen, 21 April 1795.] The men would have had
+to walk in any case, for transport by coach, though occasionally
+sanctioned, was an event of rare occurrence. A number procured in
+Berkshire were in 1756 forwarded to London "by the Reading machines,"
+but this was an exceptional indulgence due to the state of their feet,
+which were already "blistered with travelling."
+
+Even with the precaution of a strong guard, there were parts of the
+country through which it was highly imprudent, if not altogether
+impracticable, to venture a party on foot. Of these the thirty-mile
+stretch of road between Kilkenny and Waterford, the nearest seaport,
+perhaps enjoyed the most unenviable reputation. No gang durst traverse
+it; and no body of pressed men, and more particularly of pressed
+Catholics, could ever have been conveyed even for so short a distance
+through a country inhabited by a fanatical and strongly disaffected
+people without courting certain bloodshed. The naval authorities in
+consequence left Kilkenny severely alone. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1529--Capt. Bowen, 12 Oct. 1803.]
+
+The sending of men overland from Appledore to Plymouth, a course
+frequently adopted to avoid the circuitous sea-route, was attended
+with similar risks. The hardy miners and quarrymen of the intervening
+moorlands loved nothing so much as knocking the gangsman on the head.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on
+Rendezvous, 22 Sept. 1805.]
+
+The attenuated neck of land between the Mersey and the Dee had an evil
+reputation for affairs of this description. Men pressed at Chester,
+and sent across the neck to the tenders or ships of war in the Mersey,
+seldom reached their destination unless attended by an exceptionally
+strong escort. The reason is briefly but graphically set forth by Capt.
+Ayscough, who dispatched three such men from Chester, under convoy of
+his entire gang, in 1780. "On the road thither," says he, "about seven
+miles from hence, at a village called Sutton, they were met by upwards
+of one Hundred Arm'd Seamen from Parkgate, belonging to different
+privateers at Liverpool. An Affray ensued, and the three Impress'd men
+were rescued by the Mobb, who Shot one of my Gang through the Body
+and wounded two others." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1446--Capt.
+Ayscough, 17 Nov. 1780.] Parkgate, it will be recalled, was a notorious
+"nest of seamen." The alternative route to Liverpool, by passage-boat
+down the Dee, was both safer and cheaper. To send a pressed man
+that way, accompanied by two of the gang, cost only twelve-and-six.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Admiral Phillip, 14 Sept. 1804.]
+
+Mr. Midshipman Goodave and party, convoying pressed men from Lymington
+to Southampton, once met with an adventure in traversing the New Forest
+which, notwithstanding its tragic sequel, is not without its humorous
+side. They had left the little fishing village of Lepe some miles
+behind, and were just getting well into the Forest, when a cavalcade of
+mounted men, some thirty strong, all muffled in greatgoats and armed to
+the teeth, unexpectedly emerged from the wood and opened fire upon them.
+Believing it to be an attempt at rescue, the gang closed in about
+their prisoners, but when one of these was the first to fall, his arm
+shattered and an ear shot off, the gangsmen, perceiving their mistake,
+broke and fled in all directions. Not far, however. The smugglers, for
+such they were, quickly rounded them up and proceeded, not to shoot
+them, as the would-be fugitives anticipated, but to administer to them
+the "smugglers' oath." This they did by forcing them on their knees
+and compelling them, at the point of the pistol and with horrible
+execrations, to "wish their eyes might drop out if they told their
+officers which way they, the smugglers, were gone." Having extorted this
+unique pledge of secrecy as to their movements, they rode away into the
+Forest, unaware that Mr. Midshipman Goodave, snugly ensconced in the
+neighbouring ditch, had seen and heard all that passed--a piece of
+discretion on his part that later on brought at least one of the
+smugglers into distressing contact with the law. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 18: Informations
+of Shepherd Goodave, 1 Oct. 1779.]
+
+Just as the dangers of the sea sometimes rendered it safer to dispatch
+pressed men from seaport towns by land--as at Exmouth, where the
+entrance to the port was in certain weathers so hazardous as to bottle
+all shipping up, or shut it out, for days together--so the dangers
+peculiar to the land rendered it as often expedient to dispatch them
+from inland towns by water. This was the case at Stourbridge. Handed
+over to contractors responsible for their safe-keeping, the numerous
+seamen taken by the gangs in that town and vicinity were delivered
+on board the tenders in King Road, below Bristol--conveyed thither
+by water, at a cost of half a guinea per head. This sum included
+subsistence, which would appear to have been mainly by water also. To
+Liverpool, the alternative port of delivery, carriage could only be had
+by land, and the risks of land transit in that direction were so great
+as to be considered insuperable, to say nothing of the cost. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Letters of Capt. Beecher, 1780.]
+
+At ports such as Liverpool, Dublin and Hull, where His Majesty's ships
+made frequent calls, the readiest means of disposing of pressed men was
+of course to put them immediately on ship-board; but when no ship was
+thus available, or when, though available, she was bound foreign or
+on other prohibitive service, there was nothing for it, in the case
+of rendezvous lying so far afield as to render land transport
+impracticable, but to forward the harvest of the gangs by water. In
+this way there grew up a system of sea transport that centred from many
+distant and widely separated points of the kingdom upon those great
+entrepots for pressed men, the Hamoaze, Spithead and the Nore.
+
+Now and then, for reasons of economy or expediency, men were shipped
+to these destinations as "passengers" on colliers and merchant vessels,
+their escort consisting of a petty officer and one or more gangsmen,
+according to the number to be safeguarded. Occasionally they had no
+escort at all, the masters being simply bound over to make good all
+losses arising from any cause save death, capture by an enemy's ship or
+the act of God. From King's Lynn to the Nore the rate per head, by this
+means of transport, was 2 Pounds, 15s., including victualling; from
+Hull, 2 Pounds 12s. 6d.; from Newcastle, 10s. 6d. The lower rates for
+the longer runs are explained by the fact that, shipping facilities
+being so much more numerous on the Humber and the Tyne, competition
+reduced the cost of carriage in proportion to its activity. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral Phillip, 3 and 11 Aug. 1801; Admiral
+Pringle, 2 April 1795.]
+
+In spite of every precaution, such serious loss attended the shipping
+of men in this manner as to force the Admiralty back upon its own
+resources. Recourse was accordingly had, in the great majority of cases,
+to that handy auxiliary of the fleet, the hired tender. Tenders fell
+into two categories--cruising tenders, employed exclusively, or almost
+exclusively, in pressing afloat after the manner described in an earlier
+chapter, and tenders used for the double purpose of "keeping" men
+pressed on land and of conveying them to the fleet when their numbers
+grew to such proportions as to make a full and consequently dangerous
+ship. In theory, "any old unmasted hulk, unfit to send to sea, would
+answer to keep pressed men in." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+579--Admiral Pringle, 2 April 1795.] In practice, the contrary was the
+case. Fitness for sea, combined with readiness to slip at short notice,
+was more essential than mere cubic capacity, since transhipment was thus
+avoided and the pressed man deprived of another chance of taking French
+leave.
+
+One all-important consideration, in the case of tenders employed for
+the storing and detention of pressed men prior to their dispatch to the
+fleet, was that the vessel should be able to lie afloat at low
+water; for if the fall of the tide left her high and dry, the risk
+of desertion, as well as of attack from the shore, was enormously
+increased. Whitehaven could make no use of man-storing tenders for this
+reason; and at the important centre of King's Lynn, which was really a
+receiving station for three counties, it was found "requisite to have
+always a vessel below the Deeps to keep pressed men aboard," since their
+escape or rescue by way of the flats was in any anchorage nearer
+the town a foregone conclusion. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1486--Capt. Baird, 27 Feb. 1755.]
+
+On board the tenders the comfort and health of the pressed man were no
+more studied than in the strong-rooms and prisons ashore. A part of the
+hold was required to be roughly but substantially partitioned off for
+his security, and on rare occasions this space was fitted with bunks;
+but as the men usually arrived "all very bare of necessaries"--except
+when pressed afloat, a case we are not now considering--any provision
+for the slinging of hammocks, or the spreading of bedding they did
+not possess, came to be looked upon as a superfluous and uncalled-for
+proceeding. Even the press-room was a rarity, save in tenders that had
+been long in the service. Down in the hold of the vessel, whither the
+men were turned like so many sheep as soon as they arrived on board,
+they perhaps found a rough platform of deal planks provided for them to
+lie on, and from this they were at liberty to extract such sorry comfort
+as they could during the weary days and nights of their incarceration.
+Other conveniences they had none. When this too was absent, as not
+infrequently happened, they were reduced to the necessity of "laying
+about on the Cables and Cask," suffering in consequence "more than
+can well be expressed." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt.
+A'Court, 22 April 1741; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1497--Capt. Bover, 11
+Feb. 1777, and Captains' Letters, _passim_.] It is not too much to say
+that transported convicts had better treatment.
+
+Cooped up for weeks at a stretch in a space invariably crowded to
+excess, deprived almost entirely of light, exercise and fresh air, and
+poisoned with bad water and what Roderick Random so truthfully called
+the "noisome stench of the place," it is hardly surprising that on
+protracted voyages from such distant ports as Limerick or Leith the men
+should have "fallen sick very fast." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1444--Capt. Allen, 4 March 1771, and Captains' Letters, _passim_.]
+Officers were, indeed, charged "to be very careful of the healths of the
+seamen" entrusted to their keeping; yet in spite of this most salutary
+regulation, so hopelessly bad were the conditions under which the men
+were habitually carried, and so slight was the effort made to ameliorate
+them, that few tenders reached their destination without a more or less
+serious outbreak of fever, small-pox or some other equally malignant
+distemper. Upon the fleet the effect was appalling. Sickly tenders could
+not but make sickly ships.
+
+If the material atmosphere of the tender's hold was bad, its moral
+atmosphere was unquestionably worse. Dark deeds were done here at times,
+and no man "peached" upon his fellows. Out of this deplorable state
+of things a remarkable legal proceeding once grew. Murder having
+been committed in the night, and none coming forward to implicate the
+offender, the coroner's jury, instead of returning their verdict against
+some person or persons unknown, found the entire occupants of the
+tender's hold, seventy-two in number, guilty of that crime. A warrant
+was actually issued for their apprehension, though never executed.
+To put the men on their trial was a useless step, since, in the
+circumstances, they would have been most assuredly acquitted. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 20.]
+Just as assuredly any informer in their midst would have been murdered.
+
+The scale of victualling on board the tenders was supposed to be the
+same as on shore. "Full allowance daily" was the rule; and if the copper
+proved too small to serve all at one boiling, there were to be as many
+boilings as should be required to go round. Unhappily for the pressed
+man, there was a weevil in his daily bread. While it was the bounden
+duty of the master of the vessel to feed him properly, and of the
+officers to see that he was properly fed, "officers and masters
+generally understood each other too well in the pursery line."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral M'Bride, 19 March 1795.]
+Rations were consequently short, boilings deficient, and though the
+cabin went well content, the hold was the scene of bitter grumblings.
+
+Nor were these the only disabilities the pressed man laboured under.
+His officers proved a sore trial to him. The Earl of Pembroke, Lord High
+Admiral, foreseeing that this would be the case, directed that he should
+be "used with all possible tenderness and humanity." The order was
+little regarded. The callosity of Smollett's midshipman, who spat in
+the pressed man's face when he dared to complain of his sufferings,
+and roughly bade him die for aught he cared, was characteristic of the
+service. Hence a later regulation, with grim irony, gave directions for
+his burial. He was to be put out of the way, as soon as might be after
+the fatal conditions prevailing on board His Majesty's tenders had done
+their work, with as great a show of decency as could be extracted from
+the sum of ten shillings.
+
+Strictly speaking, it was not in the power of the tender's officers
+to mitigate the hardships of the pressed man's lot to any appreciable
+extent, let them be as humane as they might. For this the pressed man
+himself was largely to blame. An ungrateful rogue, his hide was as
+impervious to kindness as a duck's back to water. Supply him with slops
+[Footnote: The regulations stipulated that slops should be served out
+to all who needed them; but as their acceptance was held to set up a
+contract between the recipient and the Crown, the pressed man was not
+unnaturally averse from drawing upon such a source of supply as long as
+any chance of escape remained to him.] wherewith to cover his nakedness
+or shield him from the cold, and before the Sunday muster came round
+the garments had vanished--not into thin air, indeed, but in tobacco and
+rum, for which forbidden luxuries he invariably bartered them with
+the bumboat women who had the run of the vessel while she remained in
+harbour. Or allow him on deck to take the air and such exercise as could
+be got there, and the moment your back was turned he was away _sans
+conge_. Few of these runaways were as considerate as that Scotch
+humorist, William Ramsay, who was pressed at Leith for beating
+an informer and there put on board the tender. Seizing the first
+opportunity of absconding, "Sir," he wrote to the lieutenant in command,
+"I am so much attached to you for the good usage I have received at your
+hands, that I cannot think of venturing on board your ship again in the
+present state of affairs. I therefore leave this letter at my father's
+to inform you that I intend to slip out of the way." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1524.--Capt. Brenton, 20 Oct. 1800.]
+
+When that clever adventuress, Moll Flanders, found herself booked for
+transportation beyond the seas, her one desire, it will be recalled, was
+"to come back before she went." So it was with the pressed man. The idea
+of escape obsessed him--escape before he should be rated on shipboard
+and sent away to heaven only knew what remote quarter of the globe. It
+was for this reason that irons were so frequently added to his comforts.
+"Safe bind, safe find" was the golden rule on board His Majesty's
+tenders.
+
+How difficult it was for him to carry his cherished design into
+execution, and yet how easy, is brought home to us with surprising force
+by the catastrophe that befell the _Tasker_ tender. On the 23rd of May
+1755 the _Tasker_ sailed out of the Mersey with a full cargo of pressed
+men designed for Spithead. She possessed no press-room, and as the
+men for that reason had the run of the hold, all hatches were securely
+battened down with the exception of the maindeck scuttle, an opening
+so small as to admit of the passage of but one man at a time. Her crew
+numbered thirty-eight, and elaborate precautions were taken for the
+safe-keeping of her restless human freight. So much is evident from the
+disposition of her guard, which was as follows:--
+
+_(a)_ At the open scuttle two sentries, armed with pistol and cutlass.
+Orders, not to let too many men up at once.
+
+_(b)_ On the forecastle two sentries, armed with musket and bayonet.
+Orders, to fire on any pressed man who should attempt to swim away.
+
+_(c)_ On the poop one sentry, similarly armed, and having similar
+orders.
+
+_(d)_ On the quarter-deck, at the entrance to the great cabin, where
+the remaining arms were kept, one sentry, armed with cutlass and pistol.
+Orders, to let no pressed man come upon the quarter-deck.
+
+There were thus six armed sentinels stationed about the ship--ample
+to have nipped in the bud any attempt to seize the vessel, but for two
+serious errors of judgment on the part of the officer responsible for
+their disposition. These were, first, the discretionary power vested
+in the sentries at the scuttle; and, second, the inadequate guard, a
+solitary man, set for the defence of the great cabin and the arms it
+contained. Now let us see how these errors of judgment affected the
+situation.
+
+Either through stupidity, bribery or because they were rapidly making
+an offing, the sentries at the scuttle, as the day wore on, admitted a
+larger number of pressed men to the comparative freedom of the deck
+than was consistent with prudence. The number eventually swelled to
+fourteen--sturdy, determined fellows, the pick of the hold. One of them,
+having a fiddle, struck up a merry tune, the rest fell to dancing, the
+tender's crew who were off duty caught the infection and joined in,
+while the officers stood looking on, tolerantly amused and wholly
+unsuspicious of danger. Suddenly, just when the fun was at its height,
+a splash was heard, a cry of "Man overboard!" ran from lip to lip, and
+officers and crew rushed to the vessel's side. They were there, gazing
+into the sea, for only a minute or two, but by the time they turned
+their faces inboard again the fourteen determined men were masters of
+the ship. In the brief disciplinary interval they had overpowered the
+guard and looted the cabin of its store of arms. That night they carried
+the tender into Redwharf Bay and there bade her adieu. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 920--Admiral Sir Edward Hawke, 3 June 1755, and
+enclosures.] To pursue them in so mountainous a country would have been
+useless; to punish them, even had they been retaken, impossible. As
+unrated men they were neither mutineers nor deserters, [Footnote: By 4 &
+5 Anne, cap. 6, pressed men could be apprehended and tried for desertion
+by virtue of the Queen's shilling having been forced upon them at the
+time they were pressed, but as the use of that coin fell into abeyance,
+so the Act in question became gradually a dead-letter. Hay, Murray,
+Lloyd, Pinfold and Jervis, Law Officers of the Crown, giving an opinion
+on this important point in 1756, held that "pressed men are not subject
+to the Articles (of War) until they are actually rated on board some
+of His Majesty's ships."--_Admiralty Records_ 7. 299--Law Officers'
+Opinions, 1756-77, No. 3, Case 2.] and the seizure of the tender was at
+the worst a bloodless crime in which no one was hurt save an obdurate
+sentry, who was slashed over the head with a cutlass.
+
+The boldness of its inception and the anticlimaxical nature of its
+finish invest another exploit of this description with an interest all
+its own. This was the cutting out of the _Union_ tender from the river
+Tyne on the 12th April 1777. The commander, Lieut. Colville, having that
+day gone on shore for the "benefit of the air," and young Barker, the
+midshipman who was left in charge in his absence, having surreptitiously
+followed suit, the pressed men and volunteers, to the number of about
+forty, taking advantage of the opportunity thus presented, rose and
+seized the vessel, loaded the great guns, and by dint of threatening
+to sink any boat that should attempt to board them kept all comers,
+including the commander himself, at bay till nine o'clock in the
+evening. By that time night had fallen, so, with the wind blowing strong
+off-shore and an ebb-tide running, they cut the cables and stood out to
+sea. For three days nothing was heard of them, and North Shields, the
+scene of the exploit and the home of most of the runaways, was just on
+the point of giving the vessel up for lost when news came that she
+was safe. Influenced by one Benjamin Lamb, a pressed man of more than
+ordinary character, the rest had relinquished their original purpose
+of either crossing over to Holland or running the vessel ashore on
+some unfrequented part of the coast, and had instead carried her into
+Scarborough Bay, doubtless hoping to land there without interference and
+so make their way to Whitby or Hull. In this design, however, they were
+partly frustrated, for, a force having been hastily organised for their
+apprehension, they were waylaid as they came ashore and retaken to the
+number of twenty-two, the rest escaping. Lamb, discharged for his good
+offices in saving the tender, was offered a boatswain's place if he
+would re-enter; but for poor Colville the affair proved disastrous.
+Becoming demented, he attempted to shoot himself and had to be
+superseded. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1497--Capt. Bover, 13
+April 1777, and enclosures.]
+
+All down through the century similar incidents, crowding thick and fast
+one upon another, relieved the humdrum routine of the pressed man's
+passage to the fleet, and either made his miserable life in a measure
+worth living or brought it to a summary conclusion. Of minor incidents,
+all tending to the same happy or unhappy end, there was no lack. Now
+he sweltered beneath a sun so hot as to cause the pitch to boil in the
+seams of the deck above his head; again, as when the _Boneta_ sloop,
+conveying pressed men from Liverpool to the Hamoaze in 1740, encountered
+"Bedds of two or three Acres bigg of Ice & of five or Six foot
+thicknesse, which struck her with such force 'twas enough to drive her
+bows well out," he "almost perished" from cold. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 8 Feb. 1739-40.] To-day it was broad
+farce. He held his sides with laughter to see the lieutenant of the
+tender he was in, mad with rage and drink, chase the steward round and
+round the mainmast with a loaded pistol, whilst the terrified hands,
+fearing for their lives, fled for refuge to the coalhole, the roundtops
+and the shore. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1498--Complaint of the
+Master and Company of H. M. Hired Tender _Speedwell_, 21 Dec. 1778.]
+To-morrow it was tragedy. Some "little dirty privateer" swooped down
+upon him, as in the case of the _Admiral Spry_ tender from Waterford to
+Plymouth, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Dickson, Surveyor of
+Customs at the Cove of Cork, April 1780.] and consigned him to what
+he dreaded infinitely more than any man-o'-war--a French prison; or
+contrary winds, swelling into a sudden gale, drove him a helpless wreck
+on to some treacherous coast, as they drove the _Rich Charlotte_ upon
+the Formby Sands in 1745, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Capt.
+Amherst, 4 Oct. 1745.] and there remorselessly drowned him.
+
+Provided he escaped such untoward accidents as death or capture by the
+enemy, sooner or later the pressed man arrived at the receiving station.
+Here another ordeal awaited him, and here also he made his last bid for
+freedom.
+
+Taking the form of a final survey or regulating, the ordeal the pressed
+man had now to face was no less thoroughgoing than its precursor at the
+rendezvous had in all probability been superficial and ineffective. Eyes
+saw deeper here, wits were sharper, and in this lay at once the pressed
+man's bane and salvation. For if genuinely unfit, the fact was speedily
+demonstrated; whereas if merely shamming, discovery overtook him with
+a certainty that wrote "finis" to his last hope. Nevertheless, for this
+ordeal, as for his earlier regulating at the rendezvous, the sailor who
+knew his book prepared himself with exacting care during the tedium of
+his voyage.
+
+No sooner was he mustered for survey, then, than the most extraordinary,
+impudent and in many instances transparent impostures were sprung upon
+his examiners. Deafness prevailed to an alarming extent, dumbness was by
+no means unknown. Men who fought desperately when the gang took them,
+or who played cards with great assiduity in the tender's hold, developed
+sudden paralysis of the arms. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1464--Capt. Bloyes, Jan. 1702-3; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1470--Capt.
+Bennett, 26 Sept. 1711. An extraordinary instance of this form of
+malingering is cited in the "Naval Sketch-Book," 1826.] Legs which had
+been soundness itself at the rendezvous were now a putrefying mass
+of sores. The itch broke out again, virulent and from all accounts
+incurable. Fits returned with redoubled frequency and violence, the sane
+became demented or idiotic, and the most obviously British, losing the
+use of their mother tongue, swore with many gesticulatory _sacres_ that
+they had no English, as indeed they had none for naval purposes. Looking
+at the miserable, disease-ridden crew, the uninitiated spectator was
+moved to tears of pity. Not so the naval officer. In France, when a
+prisoner of war, learning French there without a master, he had heard a
+saying that he now recalled to some purpose: _Vin de grain est plus doux
+que n'est pas vin de presse_--"Willing duties are sweeter than those
+that are extorted." The punning allusion to the press had tickled his
+fancy and fixed the significant truism in his memory. From it he now
+took his cue and proceeded to man his ship.
+
+So at length the pressed man, in spite of all his ruses and
+protestations, was rated and absorbed into that vast agglomeration
+of men and ships known as the fleet. Here he underwent a speedy
+metamorphosis. It was not that he lost his individuality and became a
+mere unit amongst thousands. Quite the contrary. Friends, creditors
+or next-of-kin, concocting petitions on his behalf, set forth in
+heart-rending terms the many disabilities he suffered from, together
+with many he did not, and prayed, with a fervour often reaching no
+deeper than their pockets, that he might be restored without delay to
+his bereaved and destitute family. Across the bottom right-hand
+corner of these petitions, conveniently upturned for that purpose, the
+Admiralty scrawled its initial order: "Let his case be stated." The
+immediate effect of this expenditure of Admiralty ink was magical. It
+promoted the subject of the petition from the ranks, so to speak, and
+raised him to the dignity of a "State the Case Man."
+
+He now became a person of consequence. The kindliest inquiries were made
+after his health. The state of his eyes, the state of his limbs, the
+state of his digestion were all stated with the utmost minuteness and
+prolixity. Reams of gilt-edged paper were squandered upon him; and
+by the time his case had been duly stated, restated, considered,
+reconsidered and finally decided, the poor fellow had perhaps voyaged
+round the world or by some mischance gone to the next.
+
+In the matter of exacting their pound of flesh the Lords Commissioners
+were veritable Shylocks. Neither supplications nor tears had power to
+move them, and though they sometimes relented, it was invariably for
+reasons of policy and in the best interests of the service. Men clearly
+shown to be protected they released. They could not go back upon their
+word unless some lucky quibble rendered it possible to traverse the
+obligation with honour. Unprotected subjects who were clearly unfit to
+eat the king's victuals they discharged--for substitutes.
+
+ [Illustration: The Press Gang, or English Liberty Displayed.]
+
+The principle underlying their Lordships' gracious acceptance of
+substitutes for pressed men was beautifully simple. If as a pressed
+man you were fit to serve, but unwilling, you were worth at least two
+able-bodied men; if you were unfit, and hence unable to serve, you
+were worth at least one. This simple rule proved a source of great
+encouragement to the gangs, for however bad a man might be he was always
+worth a better.
+
+The extortions to which the Lords Commissioners lent themselves in this
+connection--three, and, as in the case of Joseph Sanders of Bristol,
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1534--Capt. Barker, 4 Jan. 1805,
+and endorsement.] even four able-bodied men being exacted as
+substitutes--could only be termed iniquitous did we not know the
+duplicity, roguery and deep cunning with which they had to cope. Upon
+the poor, indeed, the practice entailed great hardship, particularly
+when the home had to be sacrificed in order to obtain the discharge of
+the bread-winner who had been instrumental in getting it together; but
+to the unscrupulous crimp and the shady attorney the sailor's misfortune
+brought only gain. Buying up "raw boys," or Irishmen who "came over for
+reasons they did not wish known"--rascally persons who could be had for
+a song--they substituted these for seasoned men who had been pressed,
+and immediately, having got the latter in their power, turned them over
+to merchant ships at a handsome profit. At Hull, on the other hand,
+substitutes were sought in open market. The bell-man there cried a
+reward for men to go in that capacity. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1439--George Crowle, Esq., M.P. for Hull, 28 Dec. 1739.]
+
+Even when the pressed man had procured his substitutes and obtained his
+coveted discharge, his liberty was far from assured. In theory exempt
+from the press for a period of at least twelve months, he was in reality
+not only liable to be re-pressed at any moment, but to be subjected to
+that process as often as he chose to free himself and the gang to take
+him. A Liverpool youth named William Crick a lad with expectations to
+the amount of "near 4000 Pounds," was in this way pressed and discharged
+by substitute three times in quick succession. [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 579--Rear-Admiral Child, 8 Aug. 1799.] Intending substitutes
+themselves not infrequently suffered the same fate ere they could carry
+out their intention. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Lieut.
+Leaver, 5 Jan. 1739-40, and numerous instances.]
+
+The discharging of a pressed man whose petition finally succeeded did
+not always prove to be the eminently simple matter it would seem.
+Time and tide waited for no man, least of all for the man who had the
+misfortune to be pressed, and in the interval between his appeal and the
+order for his release his ship, as already hinted, had perhaps put half
+the circumference of the globe between him and home; or when the crucial
+moment arrived, and he was summoned before his commander to learn the
+gratifying Admiralty decision, he made his salute in batches of two,
+three or even four men, each of whom protested vehemently that he was
+the original and only person to whom the order applied. An amusing
+attempt at "coming Cripplegate" in this manner occurred on board the
+_Lennox_ in 1711. A woman, who gave her name as Alice Williams, having
+petitioned for the release of her "brother," one John Williams, a
+pressed man then on board that ship, succeeded in her petition, and
+orders were sent down to the commander, Capt. Bennett, to give the man
+his discharge. He proceeded to do so, but to his amazement discovered,
+first, that he had no less than four John Williamses on board, all
+pressed men; second, that while each of the four claimed to be the
+man in question, three of the number had no sister, while the fourth
+confessed to one whose name was not Alice but "Percilly"; and, after
+long and patient investigation, third, that one of them had a wife named
+Alice, who, he being a foreigner domiciled by marriage, had "tould him
+she would gett him cleare" should he chance to fall into the hands
+of the press-gang. In this she failed, for he was kept. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1470--Capt. Bennett, 2 Dec. 1711.]
+
+Of the pressed man's smiling arrest for debts which he did not owe, and
+of his jocular seizure by sheriffs armed with writs of Habeas Corpus,
+the annals of his incorporation in the fleet furnish many instances.
+Arrest for fictitious debt was specially common. In every seaport
+town attorneys were to be found who made it their regular practice.
+Particularly was this true of Bristol. Good seamen were rarely pressed
+there for whom writs were not immediately issued on the score of
+debts of which they had never heard. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+579--Admiral Philip, 5 Dec. 1801.] To warrant such arrest the debt had
+to exceed twenty pounds, and service, when the pressed man was already
+on shipboard, was by the hands of the Water Bailiff.
+
+The writ of Habeas Corpus was, in effect, the only legal check it
+was possible to oppose to the impudent pretensions and high-handed
+proceedings of the gang. While H.M.S. _Amaranth_ lay in dock in 1804
+and her company were temporarily quartered on a hulk in Long Reach, two
+sheriff's officers, accompanied by a man named Cumberland, a tailor of
+Deptford, boarded the latter and served a writ on a seaman for debt. The
+first lieutenant, who was in charge at the time, refused to let the man
+go, saying he would first send to his captain, then at the dock, for
+orders, which he accordingly did. The intruders thereupon went over
+the side, Cumberland "speaking very insultingly." Just as the messenger
+returned with the captain's answer, however, they again put in an
+appearance, and the lieutenant hailed them and bade them come aboard.
+Cumberland complied. "I have orders from my captain," said the
+lieutenant, stepping up to him, "to press you." He did so, and had it
+not been that a writ of Habeas Corpus was immediately sworn out, the
+Deptford tailor would most certainly have exchanged his needle for a
+marlinespike. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1532--Lieut. Collett, 13
+Feb. 1804.]
+
+Provocative as such redemptive measures were, and designedly so, they
+were as a rule allowed to pass unchallenged. The Lords Commissioners
+regretted the loss of the men, but thought "perhaps it would be as well
+to let them go." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 302--Law Officers'
+Opinions, 1783-95, No. 24.] For this complacent attitude on the part of
+his captors the pressed man had reason to hold the Law Officers of the
+Crown in grateful remembrance. As early as 1755 they gave it as their
+opinion--too little heeded--that to bring any matter connected with
+pressing to judicial trial would be "very imprudent." Later, with the
+lesson of twenty-two years' hard pressing before their eyes, they went
+still further, for they then advised that a subject so contentious,
+not to say so ill-defined in law, should be kept, if not altogether, at
+least as much as possible out of court. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+7. 298--Law Officers' Opinions, 1733-56, No. 99; _Admiralty Records_ 7.
+299--Law Officers' Opinions, 1756-77, No. 70.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+HOW THE GANG WENT OUT.
+
+
+
+Not until the year 1833 did belated Nemesis overtake the press-gang. It
+died the unmourned victim of its own enormities, and the manner of
+its passing forms the by no means least interesting chapter in its
+extraordinary career.
+
+Summarising the causes, direct and indirect, which led to the final
+scrapping of an engine that had been mainly instrumental in manning
+the fleet for a hundred years and more, and without which, whatever its
+imperfections, that fleet could in all human probability never have been
+manned at all, we find them to be substantially these:--
+
+_(a)_ The demoralising effects of long-continued, violent and
+indiscriminate pressing upon the Fleet;
+
+_(b)_ Its injurious and exasperating effects upon Trade;
+
+_(c)_ Its antagonising effect upon the Nation; and
+
+_(d)_ Its enormous cost as compared with recruiting by the good-will of
+the People.
+
+Frederick the Great, it is related, being in one of his grim humours
+after the dearly bought victory of Czaslaw, invited the neighbouring
+peasantry to come and share the spoil of the carcases on the field of
+battle. They responded in great numbers; whereupon he, surrounding
+them, pressed three hundred of the most promising and "cloathed them
+immediately from the dead." [Footnote: _State Papers Foreign,
+Germany,_ vol. cccxl.--Robinson to Hyndford, 31 May 1742.] In this way,
+Ezekiel-like, he retrieved his losses; but to the regiments so completed
+the addition of these resurrection recruits proved demoralising to a
+degree, notwithstanding the Draconic nature of the Prussian discipline.
+In like manner the discipline used in the British fleet, while not less
+drastic, failed conspicuously to counteract the dry-rot introduced and
+fostered by the press-gang. In its efforts to maintain the Navy, indeed,
+that agency came near to proving its ruin.
+
+On the most lenient survey of the recruits it furnished, it cannot be
+denied that they were in the aggregate a desperately poor lot, unfitted
+both physically and morally for the tremendous task of protecting an
+island people from the attacks of powerful sea-going rivals. How bad
+they were, the epithets spontaneously applied to them by the outraged
+commanders upon whom they were foisted abundantly prove. Witness the
+following, taken at random from naval captains' letters extending over a
+hundred years:--
+
+"Blackguards."
+
+"Sorry poor creatures that don't earn half the victuals they eat."
+
+"Sad, thievish creatures."
+
+"Not a rag left but what was of such a nature as had to be destroyed."
+
+"150 on board, the greatest part of them sorry fellows."
+
+"Poor ragged souls, and very small."
+
+"Miserable poor creatures, not a seaman amongst them, and the fleet in
+the same condition."
+
+"Unfit for service, and a nuisance to the ship."
+
+"Never so ill-manned a ship since I have been at sea. The worst set I
+ever saw."
+
+"Twenty-six poor souls, but three of them seamen. Ragged and half dead."
+
+"Landsmen, boys, incurables and cripples. Sad wretches great part of
+them are."
+
+"More fit for an hospital than the sea."
+
+"All the ragg-tagg that can be picked up."
+
+In this last phrase, "All the rag-tag that can be picked up," we have
+the key to the situation; for though orders to press "no aged, diseased
+or infirm persons, nor boys," were sufficiently explicit, yet in
+order to swell the returns, and to appease in some degree the fleet's
+insatiable greed for men, the gangs raked in recruits with a lack of
+discrimination that for the better part of a century made that fleet the
+most gigantic collection of human freaks and derelicts under the sun.
+
+Billingsley, commander of the _Ferme_, receiving seventy pressed men to
+complete his complement in 1708, discovers to his chagrin that thirteen
+are lame in the legs, five lame in the hands, and three almost blind.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1469--Capt. Billingsley, 5 May 1708.]
+Latham, commanding the _Bristol_, on the eve of sailing for the West
+Indies can muster only eighteen seamen amongst sixty-eight pressed men
+that day put on board of him. As for the rest, they are either sick,
+or too old or too young to be of service--"ragged wretches, bad of the
+itch, who have not the least pretensions to eat His Majesty's bread."
+Forty of the number had to be put ashore. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 161--Admiral Watson, 26 Feb. 1754.] Admiral Mostyn, boarding his
+flagship, the _Monarch_, "never in his life saw such a crew," though the
+_Monarch_ had an already sufficiently evil reputation in that respect,
+insomuch that whenever a scarecrow man-o'-war's man was seen ashore the
+derisive cry instantly went up: "There goes a _Monarch_!" So hopelessly
+bad was the company in this instance, it was found impossible to carry
+the ship to sea. "I don't know where they come from," observes the
+Admiral, hot with indignation, "but whoever was the officer who received
+them, he ought to be ashamed, for I never saw such except in the
+condemned hole at Newgate. I was three hours and a half mustering this
+scabby crew, and I should have imagined that the Scum of the Earth
+had been picked up for this ship." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+480--Admiral Mostyn, 1 and 6 April 1755.] The vigorous protest prepares
+us for what Capt. Baird found on board the _Duke_ a few years later.
+The pressed men there exhibited such qualifications for sea duty as
+"fractured thigh-bone, idiocy, strained back and sickly, a discharged
+soldier, gout and sixty years old, rupture, deaf and foolish, fits,
+lame, rheumatic and incontinence of urine." [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1490--Capt. Baird, 22 May 1759.]
+
+That most reprehensible practice, the pressing of cripples for naval
+purposes, would appear to have had its origin in the unauthorised
+extension of an order issued by the Lord High Admiral, in 1704, to the
+effect that in the appointment of cooks to the Navy the Board should
+give preference to persons so afflicted. For the pressing of boys there
+existed even less warrant. Yet the practice was common, so much so that
+when, during the great famine of 1800, large numbers of youths flocked
+into Poole in search of the bread they could not obtain in the country,
+the gangs waylaid them and reaped a rich harvest. Two hundred was the
+toll on this occasion. As all were in a "very starving, ragged, filthy
+condition," the gangsmen stripped them, washed them thoroughly in the
+sea, clad them in second-hand clothing from the quay-side shops, and
+giving each one a knife, a spoon, a comb and a bit of soap, sent them on
+board the tenders contented and happy. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 579--Capt. Boyle, 2 June 1801.] These lads were of course a cut
+above the "scum of the earth" so vigorously denounced by Admiral Mostyn.
+Beginning their career as powder-monkeys, a few years' licking into
+shape transformed them, as a rule, into splendid fighting material.
+
+The utter incapacity of the human refuse dumped into the fleet is justly
+stigmatised by one indignant commander, himself a patient long-sufferer
+in that respect, as a "scandalous abuse of the service." Six of these
+poor wretches had not the strength of one man. They could not be got
+upon deck in the night, or if by dint of the rope's-end they were at
+length routed out of their hammocks, they immediately developed the
+worst symptoms of the "waister"--seasickness and fear of that which
+is high. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt. Billop, 26 Oct.
+1712.] Bruce, encountering dirty weather on the Irish coast, when in
+command of the _Hawke_, out of thirty-two pressed men "could not get
+above seven to go upon a yard to reef his courses," but was obliged to
+order his warrant officers and master aloft on that duty. [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1477--Capt. Bruce, 6 Oct. 1741.] Belitha, of the
+_Scipio_, had but one man aboard him, out of a crew of forty-one, who
+was competent to stand his trick at the wheel; [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 1482--Capt. Belitha, 15 July 1746.] Bethell, of the
+_Phoenix_, had many who had "never seen a gun fired in their lives";
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1490--Capt. Bethell, 21 Aug. 1759.]
+and Adams, of the _Bird-in-hand_, learnt the fallacy of the assertion
+that that _rara avis_ is worth two in the bush. Mustered for drill in
+small-arms, his men "knew no more how to handle them than a child."
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Capt. Adams, 7 Oct. 1744.]
+For all their knowledge of that useful exercise they might have been
+Sea-Fencibles.
+
+Yet while ships were again and again prevented from putting to sea
+because, though their complements were numerically complete, they had
+only one or no seaman on board, and hence were unable to get their
+anchors or make sail; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1478--Capt.
+Boys, 14 April 1742; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1512--Capt. Bayly, 21 July
+1796, and Captains' Letters, _passim_.] while Bennett, of the _Lennox_,
+when applied to by the masters of eight outward-bound East-India ships
+for the loan of two hundred and fifty men to enable them to engage the
+French privateers by whom they were held up in the river of Shannon,
+dared not lend a single hand lest the pressed men, who formed the
+greater part of his crew, should rise and run away with the ship;
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1499--Capt. Bennett, 22 Sept. 1779.]
+Ambrose, of the _Rupert_, cruising off Cape Machichaco with a crew of
+"miserable poor wretches" whom he feared could be of "no manner of use
+or service" to him, after a short but sharp engagement of only an
+hour's duration captured, with the loss of but a single man, the largest
+privateer sailing out of San Sebastian--the _Duke of Vandome_,
+of twenty-six carriage guns and two hundred and two men, of whom
+twenty-nine were killed; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt.
+Ambrose, 7 July and 26 Sept. 1741.] and Capt. Amherst, encountering a
+heavy gale in Barnstable Pool, off Appledore, would have lost his ship,
+the low-waisted, over-masted _Mortar_ sloop, had it not been for
+the nine men he was so lucky as to impress shortly before the gale.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Capt. Amherst, 12 Dec. 1744.]
+Anson regarded pressed men with suspicion. When he sailed on his famous
+voyage round the world his ships contained only sixty-seven; but with
+his complement of five hundred reduced by sickness to two hundred and
+one, he was glad to add forty of those undesirables to their number
+out of the India-men at Wampoo. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+1439--Capt. Anson, 18 Sept. 1740, and 7 Dec. 1742.] These, however, were
+seamen such as the gangs did not often pick up in England, where, as we
+have seen, the able seaman who was not fully protected avoided the press
+as he would a lee shore.
+
+In addition to the sweepings of the roads and slums, there were in His
+Majesty's ships many who trod the decks "wide betwixt the legs, as if
+they had the gyves on." Peculiar to the seafaring man, the tailor and
+the huckstering Jew, the gait of these individuals, who belonged
+mostly to the sailor class, was strongly accentuated by an adventitious
+circumstance having no necessary connection with Israelitish descent,
+the sartorial board or the rolling deep. They were in fact convicts who
+had but recently shed their irons, and who walked wide from force of
+habit. Reasons of policy rather than of mercy explained their presence
+in the fleet. The prisons of the country, numerous and insanitary though
+they were, could neither hold them all nor kill them; America would have
+no more of them; and penal settlements, those later garden cities of
+a harassed government, were as yet undreamt of. In these circumstances
+reprieved and pardoned convicts were bestowed in about equal
+proportions, according to their calling and election, upon the army and
+the navy.
+
+The practice was one of very respectable antiquity and antecedents. By
+a certain provision of the Feudal System a freeman who had committed a
+felony, or become hopelessly involved in debt, might purge himself of
+either by becoming a serf. So, at a later date, persons in the like
+predicament were permitted to exchange their fetters, whether of debt or
+iron, for the dear privilege of "spilling every drop of blood in their
+bodies" [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Petition of the Convicts
+on board the _Stanislaus_ hulk, Woolwich, 18 May 1797.] on behalf of
+the sovereign whose clemency they enjoyed. Broken on the wheel of naval
+discipline, they "did very well in deep water." Nearer land they were
+given, like the jailbirds they were, to "hopping the twig." [Footnote:
+_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2733--Capt. Young, 21 March 1776.]
+
+The insolvent debtor, who in the majority of cases had studied his
+pleasures more than his constitution, was perhaps an even less desirable
+recruit than his cousin the emancipated convict. In his letters to
+the Navy Board, Capt. Aston, R.N., relates how, immediately after the
+passing of the later Act [Footnote: 4 & 5 Anne, cap. 6.] for the
+freeing of such persons from their financial fetters, he "gave constant
+attendance for almost two years at the sittings of the Courts of
+Sessions in London and Surrey," lying in wait there for such debtors
+as should choose the sea. From the Queen's Bench Prison, the Clink,
+Marshalsea, Borough Compter, Poultry Compter, Wood Street Compter,
+Ludgate Prison and the Fleet, he obtained in that time a total of one
+hundred and thirty-two, to whom in every case the prest-shilling was
+paid. They were dear at the price. Bankrupt in pocket, stamina and
+health, they cumbered the ships to the despair of commanders and were
+never so welcome as when they ran away. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 1436--Letters of Capt. Aston, 1704-5.]
+
+The responsibility for jail-bird recruiting did not of course rest with
+the gangs. They saw the shady crew safe on board ship, that was all.
+Yet the odium of the thing was theirs. For not only did association with
+criminals lower the standard of pressing as the gangs practised it,
+it heightened the general disrepute in which they were held. For an
+institution whose hold upon the affections of the people was at the best
+positively negative, this was a serious matter. Every convict whom the
+gang safeguarded consequently drove another nail in the coffin preparing
+for it. The first and most lasting effect of the wholesale pumping
+of sewage into the fleet was to taint the ships with a taint far more
+deadly than mere ineptitude. A spirit of ominous restlessness
+prevailed. Slackness was everywhere observable, coupled with incipient
+insubordination which no discipline, however severe, could eradicate or
+correct. At critical moments the men could with difficulty be held to
+their duty. To hold them to quarters in '97, when engaging the enemy
+off Brest, the rattan and the rope's-end had to be unsparingly used.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Petition of the Company of
+H.M.S. _Nymph_, 1797.] In no circumstances were they to be trusted.
+Given the slightest opening, they "ran" like water from a sieve. To
+counteract these dangerous tendencies the Marines were instituted.
+Drafted into the ships in thousands, they checked in a measure the
+surface symptoms of disaffection, but left the disease itself untouched.
+The fact was generally recognised, and it was no uncommon circumstance,
+when the number of pressed men present in a ship was large in proportion
+to the unpressed element, for both officers and marines to walk the deck
+day and night armed, fearful lest worse things should come upon them.
+[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1499--Capt. Bennett, 22 Sept. 1799,
+and Captains' Letters, _passim_.] What they anticipated was the mutiny
+of individual crews. But a greater calamity than this was in store for
+them.
+
+In the wholesale mutinies at Spithead and the Nore the blow fell with
+appalling suddenness, notwithstanding the fact that in one form or
+another it had been long foreseen. Fifty-five years had elapsed since
+Vernon, scenting danger from the existing mode of manning the fleet, had
+first sounded the alarm. He dreaded, he told the Lords Commissioners
+in so many words, the consequences that must sooner or later ensue
+from adherence to the press. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+578--Vice-Admiral Vernon, 27 Jan. 1742-3.] Though the utterance of one
+gifted with singularly clear prevision, the warning passed unheeded. Had
+it been made public, it would doubtless have met with the derision with
+which the voice of the national prophet is always hailed. Veiled as it
+was in service privacy, it moved their Lordships to neither comment nor
+action. Action, indeed, was out of the question. The Commissioners were
+helpless in the grip of a system from which, so far as human sagacity
+could then perceive, there was no way of escape. Let its issue be what
+it might, they could no more replace or reconstruct it than they could
+build ships of tinsel.
+
+Other warnings were not wanting. For some years before the catastrophic
+happenings of '97 there flowed in upon the Admiralty a thin but steady
+stream of petitions from the seamen of the fleet, each of them a rude
+echo of Vernon's sapient warning. To these, coming as they did from an
+unconsidered source, little if any significance was attached. Beyond the
+most perfunctory inquiry, in no case to be made public, they received
+scant attention. The sailor, it was thought, must have his grievances if
+he would be happy; and petitions were the recognised line for him to air
+them on. They were accordingly relegated to that limbo of distasteful
+and quickly forgotten things, their Lordships' pigeon-holes.
+
+Yet there was amongst these documents at least one which should have
+given the Heads of the Navy pause for serious thought. It was the
+petition of the seamen of H.M.S. _Shannon_, [Footnote: _Admiralty
+Records_ 1. 5125--Petition of the Ship's Company of the _Shannon_, 16
+June 1796.] in which there was conveyed a threat that afterwards, when
+the mutiny at the Nore was at its height, under the leadership of a
+pressed man whose coadjutors were mainly pressed men, came within an
+ace of resolving itself in action. That threat concerned the desperate
+expedient of carrying the revolted ships into an enemy's port, and of
+there delivering them up. Had this been done--and only the Providence
+that watches over the destinies of nations prevented it--the act would
+have brought England to her knees.
+
+At a time like this, when England's worst enemies were emphatically the
+press-gangs which manned her fleet with the riff-raff of the nation and
+thus made national disaster not only possible but hourly imminent, the
+"old stander" and the volunteer were to her Navy what salt is to the
+sea, its perpetual salvation. Such men inculcated an example, created an
+_esprit de corps_, that infected even the vagrant and the jail-bird, to
+say nothing of the better-class seaman, taken mainly by gangs operating
+on the water, who was often content, when brought into contact with
+loyal men, to settle down and do his best for king and country. Amongst
+the pressed men, again, desertion and death made for the survival of the
+fittest, and in this residuum there was not wanting a certain savour.
+Subdued and quickened by man-o'-war discipline, they developed a
+dogged resolution, a super-capacity not altogether incompatible with
+degeneracy; and to crown all, the men who officered the resolute if
+disreputable crew were men in whose blood the salt of centuries tingled,
+men unrivalled for sea-sagacity, initiative and pluck. If they could not
+uphold the honour of the flag with the pressed man's unqualified aid,
+they did what was immeasurably greater. They upheld it in spite of him.
+
+Upon the trade of the nation the injury inflicted by the press-gang is
+rightly summed up in littles. Every able seaman, every callow apprentice
+taken out of or forcibly detained from a merchant vessel was, _ipso
+facto,_ a minute yet irretrievably substantial loss to commerce of one
+kind or another. Trade, it is true, did not succumb in consequence.
+Possessed of marvellous recuperative powers, she did not even languish
+to any perceptible degree. Nevertheless, the detriment was there,
+a steadily cumulative factor, and at the end of any given period of
+pressing the commerce of the nation, emasculated by these continuous if
+infinitesimal abstractions from its vitality, was substantially less in
+bulk, substantially less in pounds sterling, than if it had been allowed
+to run its course unhindered.
+
+British in name, but Teutonic in its resentments, trade came to regard
+these continual "pin-pricks" as an intolerable nuisance. It was not so
+much the loss that aroused her anger as the constant irritation she
+was subjected to. This she keenly resented, and the stream of her
+resentment, joining forces with its confluents the demoralisation of
+the Navy through pressing, the excessive cost of pressing and the
+antagonising effects of pressing upon the nation at large, contributed
+in no small degree to that final supersession of the press-gang which
+was in essence, if not in name, the beginning of Free Trade.
+
+To the people the impress was as an axe laid at the root of the tree.
+There was here no question, as with trade, of the mere loss of hands
+who could be replaced. Attacking the family in the person of its natural
+supporter and protector, the octopus system of which the gangs were the
+tentacles struck at the very foundations of domestic life and brought to
+thousands of households a poverty as bitter and a grief as poignant as
+death.
+
+If the people were slow to anger under the infliction it was because, in
+the first place, the gang had its advocates who, though they could not
+extol its virtues, since it had none, were yet able, and that with no
+small measure of success, to demonstrate to a people as insular in their
+prejudices as in their habitat that, but for the invincible Navy which
+the gang maintained for their protection, the hereditary enemy, the
+detested French, would most surely come and compel them one and all to
+subsist upon a diet of frogs. What could be seriously urged against the
+gang in face of an argument such as that?
+
+Patriotism, moreover, glowed with ardent flame. Fanned to twofold heat
+by natural hatred of the foreigner and his insolent challenge of insular
+superiority, it blinded the people to the truth that liberty of the
+subject is in reality nothing more than freedom from oppression.
+So, with the gang at their very doors, waiting to snatch away their
+husbands, their fathers and their sons, they carolled "Rule Britannia"
+and congratulated themselves on being a free people. The situation was
+unparalleled in its sardonic humour; and, as if this were not enough,
+the "Noodle of Newcastle," perceiving vacuously that something was still
+wanting, supplied the bathetic touch by giving out that the king, God
+bless him! could never prevail upon himself to break through the sacred
+liberties of his people save on the most urgent occasions. [Footnote:
+_Newcastle Papers_--Newcastle to Yorke, 27 Feb. 1749-50.]
+
+The process of correcting the defective vision of the nation was as
+gradual as the acquisition of the sea-power the nation had set as its
+goal, and as painful. In both processes the gang participated largely.
+To the fleet it acted as a rude feeder; to the people as a ruder
+specialist. Wielding the cutlass as its instrument, it slowly and
+painfully hewed away the scales from their eyes until it stood
+visualised for what it really was--the most atrocious agent of
+oppression the world has ever seen. For the operation the people should
+have been grateful. The nature of the thing they had cherished so
+blindly filled them with rage and incited them to violence.
+
+Two events now occurred to seal the fate of the gang and render its
+final supersession a mere matter of time rather than of debate or
+uncertainty. The mutiny at the Nore brought the people face to face with
+the appalling risks attendant on wholesale pressing, while the war with
+America, incurred for the sole purpose of upholding the right to press,
+taught them the lengths to which their rulers were still prepared to go
+in order to enslave them. In the former case their sympathies, though
+with the mutineers, were frozen at the fountain-head by fear of invasion
+and that supposititious diet of frogs. In the latter, as in the ancient
+quarrel between Admiralty and Trade, they went out to the party who not
+only abstained from pressing but paid the higher wages.
+
+While the average cost of 'listing a man "volunteerly" rarely exceeded
+the modest sum of 30s., the expense entailed through recruiting him by
+means of the press-gang ranged from 3s. 9d. per head in 1570 [Footnote:
+_State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth_, vol. lxxiii. f. 38: Estimate of
+Charge for Pressing 400 Mariners, 1570.] to 114 Pounds in 1756. Between
+these extremes his cost fluctuated in the most extraordinary manner.
+At Weymouth, in 1762, it was at least 100 Pounds; at Deal, in 1805, 32
+Pounds odd; at Poole, in the same year, 80 Pounds. [Footnote: _London
+Chronicle_, 16-18 March, 1762; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral
+Berkeley, 14 Feb. and 5 Aug. 1805.] From 1756 the average steadily
+declined until in 1795 it touched its eighteenth century minimum of
+about 6 Pounds. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Average based on
+Admirals' Reports on Rendezvous, 1791-5.] A sharp upward tendency then
+developed, and in the short space of eight years it soared again to 20
+Pounds. It was at this figure that Nelson, perhaps the greatest naval
+authority of his time, put it in 1803. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
+580--Memorandum on the State of the Fleet, 1803.]
+
+Up to this point we have considered only the prime cost of the pressed
+man. A secondary factor must now be introduced, for when you had got
+your man at an initial cost of 20 Pounds--a cost in itself out of all
+proportion to his value--you could never be sure of keeping him. Nelson
+calculated that during the war immediately preceding 1803 forty-two
+thousand seamen deserted from the fleet. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
+1. 580--Memorandum on the State of the Fleet, 1803.] Assuming, with him,
+that every man of this enormous total was either a pressed man or had
+been procured at the cost of a pressed man, the loss entailed upon the
+nation by their desertion represented an outlay of 840,000 Pounds for
+raising them in the first instance, and, in the second, a further outlay
+of 840,000 Pounds for replacing them.
+
+In this estimate there is, however, a substantial error; for,
+approaching the question from another point of view, let us suppose, as
+we may safely do without overstraining the probabilities of the case,
+that out of every three men pressed at least one ran from his rating.
+Now the primary cost of pressing three men on the 20 Pound basis being
+60 Pounds, it follows that in order to obtain their ultimate cost to the
+country we must add to that sum the outlay incurred in pressing another
+man in lieu of the one who ran. The total cost of the three men who
+ultimately remain to the fleet consequently works out at 80 Pounds; the
+cost of each at 26 Pounds, 13s. 4d. Hence Nelson's forty-two thousand
+deserters entailed upon the nation an actual expenditure, not of
+1,680,000 Pounds, but of nearly two and a quarter millions.
+
+Another fact that emerges from a scrutiny of these remarkable figures is
+this. Whenever the number of volunteer additions to the fleet increased,
+the cost of pressing increased in like ratio; whenever the number of
+volunteers declined, the pressed man became proportionally cheaper.
+Periods in which the pressed man was scarce and dear thus synchronise
+with periods when the volunteer was plentiful; but scarcity of
+volunteers, reacting upon the gangs, and conducing to their greater
+activity, brought in pressed men in greater numbers in proportion to
+expenditure and so reduced the cost per head. In this logical though at
+first sight bewildering interrelation of the laws of supply and demand,
+we have in a nutshell the whole case for the cost of pressing as against
+the gang. Taking one year with another the century through, the impress
+service, on a moderate estimate, employed enough able-bodied men to man
+a first-rate ship of the line, and absorbed at least enough money to
+maintain her, while the average number of men raised, taking again one
+year with another, rarely if ever exceeded the number of men engaged in
+obtaining them. With tranquillity at length assured to the country, with
+trade in a state of high prosperity, the shipping tonnage of the nation
+rising by leaps and bounds and the fleet reduced to an inexigent peace
+footing, why incur the ruinous expense of pressing the seaman when, as
+was now the case, he could be had for the asking or the making?
+
+For Peace brought in her train both change and opportunity. The frantic
+dumping of all sorts and conditions of men into the fleet ceased.
+Necessity no longer called for it. No enemy hovered in the offing, to be
+perpetually outmanoeuvred or instantly engaged. Until that enemy could
+renew its strength, or time should call another into being, the mastery
+of the seas, the dear prize of a hundred years of strenuous struggle,
+remained secure. Our ships, maintained nevertheless as efficient
+fighting-machines, became schools of leisure wherein--a thing impossible
+amid the perpetual storm and stress of war--the young blood of
+the nation could be more gradually inured to the sea and tuned to
+fighting-pitch. Science had not yet linked hands with warfare. Steam,
+steel, the ironclad, the super-Dreadnought and the devastating cordite
+gun were still in the womb of the future; but the keels of a newer
+fleet were nevertheless already on the slips, and with the old order the
+press-gang, now for ever obsolete, went the way of all things useless.
+
+Its memory still survives. Those who despair of our military system, or
+of our lack of it, talk of conscription. They alone forget. A people
+who for a hundred years patiently endured conscription in its most cruel
+form will never again suffer it to be lightly inflicted upon them.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+ADMIRAL YOUNG'S TORPEDO
+
+
+DEAR NEPEAN,--I enclose a little project for destroying the Enemy's
+Flatboats if they venture over to our Coast, which you may shew, if you
+please, to your Sea Lords as coming from some anonymous correspondent.
+If they can improve upon it so as to make it useful, I shall be glad
+of it; and if they think it good for nothing, and throw it in the fire,
+there is no harm done. As the conveying an Army must require a very
+great number of Boats, which must be very near each other, if many such
+vessels as I propose should get among them, they must necessarily commit
+great havoc. I cannot ascertain whether the blocks or logs of wood would
+be strong enough to throw the shot without bursting, or whether they
+would not throw the shot though they should burst. I think they would
+not burst, and so do some Officers of Artillery here; but that might
+be ascertained by experiment at any time. This sort of Fire-vessel will
+have the advantage of costing very little; and of being of no service to
+the Enemy should it fall into their hands.
+
+W. YOUNG. LEWES, 14 _Aug_. 1803.
+
+
+ [Illustration: Admiral Young's Torpedo. From the Original Drawing at
+the Public Record Office.]
+
+_Secret_
+
+"The success of an attempt to land an Army on an Enemy's Coast, whose
+Army is prepared to prevent it, will depend in a great degree on the
+regularity of the order in which the Boats, or Vessels, are arranged,
+that carry the Troops on Shore; everything therefore which contributes
+to the breaking of that order will so far contribute to render success
+more doubtful; especially if, in breaking the order, some of the Boats
+or Vessels are destroyed. For this purpose Fireships well managed will
+be found very useful; I should therefore think that, at all the King's
+Ports, and at all places where the Enemy may be expected to attempt
+a landing with Ships of War or other large Vessels, considerable
+quantities of materials for fitting Fireships according to the latest
+method should be kept ready to be put on board any small Vessels on the
+Enemy's approach; but, as such Vessels would have little or no effect
+on Gunboats or Flatboats, machines might be made for the purpose of
+destroying them, by shot, and by explosion. The Shot should be large,
+but as they will require to be thrown but a short distance, and will
+have only thin-sided Vessels to penetrate, Machines strong enough to
+resist the effort of the small quantity of Powder necessary to throw
+them may probably be made of wood; either by making several chambers in
+one thick Block, as No. 1, or one chamber at each end of a log as No.
+2, which may be used either separately, or fastened together. The Vents
+should communicate with each other by means of quick Match, which should
+be very carefully covered to prevent its sustaining damage, or being
+moved by things carried about. Such Machines, properly loaded, may be
+kept in Fishing boats or other small vessels near the parts of the Coast
+where the Enemy may be expected to land; or in secure places, ready to
+be put on board when the Enemy are expected. The Chambers should be cut
+horizontally, and the Machine should be so placed in the Vessel as to
+have them about level with the surface of the water; under the Machine
+should be placed a considerable quantity of Gunpowder; and over it,
+large Stones, and bags of heavy shingle, and the whole may be covered
+with fishing nets, or any articles that may happen to be on board.
+Several fuses, or trains of Match, should communicate with the Machine,
+and with the powder under it, so managed as to ensure those which
+communicate with the Machine taking effect upon the others, that the
+shot may be thrown before the Vessel is blown up. The Match, or Fuses,
+should be carefully concealed to prevent their being seen if the Vessel
+should be boarded.... If these Vessels are placed in the front of the
+Enemy's Line, and not near the extremities of it, it would be scarcely
+possible for them to avoid the effects of the explosion unless, from
+some of them exploding too soon, the whole armament should stop. Every
+Machine would probably sink the Boat on each side of it, and so do
+considerable damage to others with the shot; and would kill and wound
+many men by the explosion and the fall of the stones.... As the success
+of these Vessels will depend entirely upon their not being suspected by
+the Enemy, the utmost secrecy must be observed in preparing the
+Machines and sending them to the places where they are to be kept. A few
+confidential men only should be employed to make them, and they should
+be so covered as to prevent any suspicion of their use, or of what they
+contain."
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+Adams, Capt.,
+
+_Admiral Spry_ tender,
+
+_Adventure_, H.M.S.,
+
+Ages below eighteen and over fifty-five exempt,
+
+Alcock, Henry, Mayor of Waterford,
+
+Alms, Capt.,
+
+_Amaranth_, H.M.S.,
+
+Ambrose, Capt.,
+
+Amherst, Capt,
+
+_Amphitrite_, H.M.S.,
+
+Andover, the press-gang at,
+
+_Anglesea_, H.M.S.,
+
+Anne, Queen, impresses foreign seamen,
+   arms of press-gang under,
+   drummers and fifers pressed for navy in her reign,
+   sailors unwilling to serve,
+
+Anson, Admiral Lord,
+
+Anthony, John, pressed with two protections on him,
+
+Appledore, press-gang at, 72,
+
+Apprentices, exempt from impressment only in some circumstances, in
+North-country pressed because their indentures bore Scotch 14s. stamp
+instead of English 15s.,
+
+Archer, Capt,
+
+Arms of the press-gang,
+
+_Assurance_, H.M.S.,
+
+Aston, Capt,
+
+Atkinson, Lieut.,
+
+Ayscough, Capt.,
+
+Baily, James, a ferryman, pressed for his inactivity,
+
+Baird, Capt,
+
+Balchen, Capt.,
+
+Ball, Capt.,
+
+Banyan days,
+
+Bargemen impressed in thousands,
+
+Barker, Capt., regulating officer at Bristol, midshipman.
+
+Barking, the press-gang at,
+
+Barnicle, William,
+
+Barnsley, Lieut.,
+
+Barrington, Capt.,
+
+Bath, Bristol gang's fruitless attempt at,
+
+Bawdsey,
+
+_Beaufort_, East Indiaman,
+
+Beecher, Capt,
+
+Bennett, Capt,
+
+Bertie, Capt,
+
+Bethell, Capt, paid damages for wrongfully impressing,
+
+Bettesworth, John, claims privilege of granting private protections to
+Ryde and Portsmouth ferrymen,
+
+Biggen, Charles,
+
+Billingsley, Capt.,
+
+Bingham, William,
+
+Birchall, Lieut.,
+
+_Bird-in-hand_, H.M.S.,
+
+Birmingham, sham gangs at,
+
+_Black Book_ of the Admiralty,
+
+Blackstone, Sir W.,
+
+Blackwater, men working turf boats on, not exempt,
+
+_Blanche_, H.M.S.,
+
+Blear-eyed Moll,
+
+_Blonde_, H.M.S.,
+
+Boats for the press-gang,
+
+Boat steerers on whalers exempt from impressment,
+
+Boatswains, conditions of exemption,
+
+_Bonetta_ sloop,
+
+Boscawen, Capt.,
+
+Boston, Mass.,
+
+Bounty system, the,
+
+Bowen, Capt.,
+
+Box, Lieut,
+
+Boys, Capt.,
+
+Brace, Lieut.,
+
+Bradley, Lieut,
+
+Brawn, Capt.,
+
+Breedon, Lieut.,
+
+Brenton, Capt. Jahleel, afterwards Vice-Admiral,
+
+Brenton, E. P., _Naval History_,
+
+Brenton, Lieut,
+
+Brereton, Capt.,
+
+Brett, Capt, 110,
+
+Bridges a favourite haunt of the press-gang,
+
+Brighton, the press-gang at,
+
+Bristol, the press-gang at,
+
+Bristol jail as press-room,
+
+_Bristol_, H.M.S.,
+
+_Britannia_ trading vessel,
+      three of the crew shot in resisting the
+      press-gang, the ship captured and taken to port,
+      the affair not within the coroner's purview, the bodies
+      buried at sea, court-martial acquits officers,
+
+Brixham, the press-gang at,
+
+Broadfoot case, the,
+
+Broadstairs fishermen, the press-gang at, Bromley, Capt. Sir Robert,
+
+Bullard, Richard, a fiddler persuaded to go to Woolwich to play and for
+payment was handed to the gang,
+
+_Bull-Dog_ sloop,
+
+Burchett, Josiah, _Observations on the Navy_,
+
+Burrows, Sam,
+
+Butler, Capt.,
+
+Byron, Lord,
+
+Calahan, a gangsman, killed in attempting an arrest,
+
+Cambridge bargemen, press-gang among,
+
+Campbell, Admiral,
+
+Cape Breton,
+
+Caradine, Samuel,
+
+Carey, Rev. Lucius,
+
+Carmarthen, Admiral the Marquis of,
+
+Carolina,
+
+Carpenters, conditions of exemption, on warships on coast of Scotland
+could be replaced by shipwrights pressed from the yards,
+
+Carrying the ship up,
+
+Cartel ships,
+
+Castle, William, an alien, impressed on his honeymoon,
+
+Castleford, the press-gang at,
+
+Cawsand safe from the press-gang,
+
+Cecil, William, Lord Burleigh,
+
+_Centurion_, H.M.S., Anson's flagship, whose crew on their return had
+life-protection from the press,
+
+Chaplains,
+
+Charles II.,
+
+Chatham, crimpage at,
+
+_Chatham_, H.M.S.,
+
+Chester, the press-gang at
+
+_Chevrette_ corvette,
+
+Clapp, Midshipman,
+
+Clark, George,
+
+Clephen, James,
+
+_Clincher_ gun-brig,
+
+Cockburn, Bailie, of Leith,
+
+Cogbourne's electuary,
+
+Coke, Sir E.,
+
+Collingwood, Admiral Lord, Lieut,
+
+Colvill, Admiral Lord,
+
+Colville, Lieut.,
+
+Convoys,
+
+Conyear, John,
+
+Cooper, Josh,
+
+Cork, crimpage at, the press-gang at,
+
+Comet bomb ship,
+
+Cornwall, the press-gang in,
+
+Coversack, safe from the press-gang,
+
+Coventry, Mr. Commissioner,
+
+Coventry, sham gangs at,
+
+Cowes, press-gang at,
+
+Crabb, Henry,
+
+Crews depleted by the press-gang,
+
+Crick, William,
+
+Crimps, as sham gangsmen,
+
+Cromer, the suspicions of the inhabitants,
+        bring the press-gang,  to take a noted Russian,
+
+Crown Colonies, desertions in,
+
+
+Croydon, the press-gang around,
+
+
+Cruickshank, John, chaplain,
+
+Culverhouse, Capt.,
+
+Customs, Board of,
+
+Dansays, Capt.,
+
+Danton, Midshipman,
+
+Darby, Capt.,
+
+Dartmouth, H.M.S.,
+
+Dartmouth, press-gang at,
+
+Davidson, Samuel, of Newcastle, applies for life protection
+
+"DD," discharged dead, in muster books against names of persons
+deceased,
+
+Deal, press-gang at,
+
+cutters,
+
+Death of sailor in resisting impress, "accidental",
+
+Debusk, John, shot by the press-gang, on the Britannia,
+
+Dent, Capt.,
+
+Deptford, the press-gang at,
+
+Desertion from the Navy,
+
+Devonshire, H.M.S.,
+
+Dipping the flag,
+
+Director, H.M.S.,
+
+Discipline in the Navy,
+
+Disinfecting a ship,
+
+Dispatch sloop,
+
+Dolan, Edward,
+
+Dominion and Laws of the Sea., See Justice, A.,
+
+Dorsetshire, H.M.S.,
+
+Douglas, Capt. Andrew,
+
+Dover, press-gang at,
+
+Downs, crimpage in the,
+
+press-gang in,
+
+Doyle, Lieut,
+
+Dreadnought, H.M.S.,
+
+Drummers pressed for the Navy,
+
+Dryden, Michael, illegally pressed,
+
+Dryden's sister,
+
+Dublin, sham gangs at, the press-gang at,
+
+Duke, H.M.S.,
+
+Duke of Vandome, H.M.S.,
+
+Duncan case, the,
+
+Dundas, Henry,
+
+Dundonald, Lord, Autobiography,
+
+Dunkirk, H.M.S.,
+
+Eccentricity leads to impressment,
+
+Eddystone lighthouse, building delayed through impressment of workmen,
+builders of the third, protected,  keepers at, put inward-bound,
+  ships' crews ashore,
+
+Edinburgh, press-gang at,
+
+Edmund and Mary Collier,
+
+Edward III. on the Navy,
+
+Elizabeth, Queen,
+
+Elizabeth ketch,
+
+Ely bargemen, press-gang among,
+
+Emergency crews of men unfit for pressing supplied to merchant-men by
+the crimps,
+
+Emergency men working on their own account, places of muster for,
+
+English Eclogues. See Southey, R.,
+
+Evading the press-gang. See under Press-gang, How it was evaded.,
+
+Evans, Richard, keeper of Gloucester Castle,
+
+Exemption from impressment,
+  not a right, of foreigners,  negroes not included,
+  of landsmen only theoretical,
+  property no qualification for exemption,
+  of harvesters,
+  of gentlemen, judged by appearances,
+  below 18 and over 55 years,
+  of apprentices dependent on circumstances,
+  of merchant seamen dependent on circumstances,
+  of masters, mates, boatswains, and carpenters dependent on
+    circumstances,
+  of some of crew of whalers,
+  of Thames wherrymen by quota system,
+  of Tyne keelman by the same,
+  of Severn and Wye trow-men by 10% levy,
+  did not extend to turf boats on Shannon and Blackwater,
+  special for four on each fishing vessel, and later for all engaged
+    in taking, curing, and selling fish,
+  of Worthing fishermen for a levy,
+  of Scottish and Manx fishermen, on similar terms,
+  worthless without a document of protection,
+
+Exeter, the press-gang at,
+
+_Falmouth_, H.M.S.,
+
+Falmouth, press-gang at,
+
+Faversham, the press-gang at,
+
+_Ferme_, H.M.S.,
+
+Ferries, a favourite haunt of the press-gang,
+
+_Feversham_, H.M.S.,
+
+Fifers pressed for the Navy,
+
+Fire on ship board,
+
+Fisheries, carefully fostered,
+  three fish days made compulsory,  became a great nursery for seamen,
+  few exemptions granted, at first special concessions only to the
+     whale and cod fisheries,
+  later only such number as the warrant specified might be taken, and
+    these the Justices chose; in 1801 no person employed in taking,
+    curing, or selling fish could be impressed,
+  with their best men impressed, only small smacks could be worked,
+  a quota system preferred by the fishermen of some ports,
+  in Cornwall, the men turned tinners in the off-season,
+
+Flags, flying without authority, omission to dip,
+
+Fleet, Liberty of,
+
+Folkstone market-boats,
+
+Folkstone, press-gang at,
+
+Forcible entry by the press-gang illegal,
+
+Foreigners impressed, theoretically exempt,  married to English wives considered naturalised,
+  in emergency crews,
+
+Frederick the Great,
+
+Freeholders at one time exempt from impressment,
+
+_Fubbs_, H.M.S.,
+
+Gage, Capt.,
+
+_Galloper_, tender to the _Dreadnought_,
+
+_Ganges_, H.M.S.,
+
+Garth, Dr.,
+
+Gaydon, Lieut.,
+
+Gentlemen exempt from the impress, but judged by appearance and manner,
+
+Gibbs, Capt.,
+
+_Glory_, H.M.S.,
+
+Gloucester, the press-gang at,
+
+Gloucester Castle used as press-room, the keeper's magic palm,
+
+Godalming, the press-gang at,
+
+Golden, John, Lord Mayor's bargeman, wrongfully impressed,
+
+Good, James, midshipman,
+
+Goodave, Midshipman,
+
+Gooding, Richard,
+
+Gosport, the press-gang at,
+
+Gravesend, the press-gang at,
+
+Gray, John,
+
+Great Yarmouth, press-gang at,
+
+Greenock, crimpage at, press-gang at,  Trades Guild,
+
+Greenock ferries, the press-gang at,
+
+Greenwich Hospital,
+
+
+Grimsby, the press-gang at,
+
+
+Habeas Corpus, writs of, as means of arresting, and so freeing, pressed
+men for debts not owing,
+
+Half-pay officers, their projects and inventions,
+
+Hamoaze, the, an entrepot for pressed men,
+
+Harpooners exempt from impressment,
+
+Harrison, Lieut.,
+
+Hart, Alexander,
+
+_Harwich_, H.M.S.,
+
+Haverfordwest, press-gang at,
+
+Hawke, Admiral Sir Edward,
+
+_Hawke_, H.M.S.,
+
+Haygarth, Lieut.,
+
+Health and illness,
+
+_Hector_, H.M.S.,
+
+Herbert, Emanuel,
+
+_Hind_ armed sloop,
+
+_Historical Relation of State Affairs_. See Lutterell, N.,
+
+Hogarth's "Stage Coach,"
+
+Hook, Joseph,
+
+_Hope_ tender,
+
+Hotten, J. C., _List of Persons of Quality, etc., who went from England
+to the American Plantations_,
+
+Hull, press-gang at,
+
+Humber, the press-gang on,
+
+Hurst Castle, the press-gang at,
+
+Ilfracombe, the press-gang at,
+
+Impressment. See Pressed labour.,
+
+Informers,
+
+Inland waterways and the gang at one time without the jurisdiction of
+the admirals,
+
+Innes, Capt,
+
+Ipswich, the press-gang at,
+
+_Isis_, H.M.S.,
+
+Isle of Man fishermen,
+
+Jackson, Daniel, pressed from the Chester Volunteers,
+
+Jamaica,
+
+_Jason_, H.M.S.,
+
+Jervis, John, Earl of St. Vincent,
+
+Jews, pressed on account of bandy legs,
+
+_John and Elizabeth_ pink,
+
+John, King, impressment under,
+
+Johnson, Rebecca Anne,
+
+Jones, Paul,
+
+Justice, A., _Dominion and Laws of the Sea_,
+
+Keith, A., parson of the Fleet, _Observations on the Act for Preventing
+Clandestine Marriages_,
+
+Kilkenny, the press-gang at,
+
+King's Lynn, press-gang at,
+
+Kingston, William, case of,
+
+_King William_, Indiaman,
+
+_Lady Shore_, the,
+
+Landsmen exempt only in theory,
+
+Latham, Capt.,
+
+Law officers' opinions on pressing,
+
+Leave, stoppage of,
+
+Leeds, the press-gang at,
+
+Leith, crimpage at, press-gang at,
+
+_Lennox_, H.M.S.,
+
+Letting, John, pressed with two protections on him,
+
+Lewis, Edward, chaplain,
+
+Libraries, ships',
+
+_Lichfield_, H.M.S.,
+
+Licorne, H.M.S.,
+
+Limehouse Hole, the press-gang at,
+
+Lindsay, Admiral the Earl of, _Instructions_,
+
+Linesmen on whalers exempt from impressment,
+
+Liskeard, the press-gang at,
+
+_List of Persons of Quality, etc., who went from England to the American
+Plantations_. See Hotten, J. C.,
+
+_Litchfield_, H.M.S.,
+
+Littlehampton, the press-gang at,
+
+Liverpool, crimpage at, press-gang at,
+
+Lodden Bridge, the press-gang at,
+
+London, the press-gang in,
+
+Londonderry, the press-gang at,
+
+Longcroft, Capt,
+
+_Loo_, H.M.S.,
+
+Love, Henry, gets life protection as promised by Pitt and Dundas,
+
+Lowestoft, the press-gang at,
+
+Lulworth,
+
+Lundy Island, safe from the press-gang,
+       but not to the sailors' liking,
+       crews marooned on,
+
+Lutterell, N., _Historical Relation of State Affairs_, Capt. Hon. Jas.,
+
+Lymington, the press-gang at,
+
+M'Bride, Admiral,
+
+M'Cleverty, Capt.,
+
+M'Donald, Alexander, impressed under the age of twelve, Charles,
+
+M'Gugan's wife,
+
+M'Kenzie, Lieut.,
+
+M'Quarry, Lachlan,
+
+Magna Carta, its provisions contrary to impressment,
+
+Mansfield, Lord,
+
+Margate, the press-gang at,
+
+_Maria_ brig,
+
+Marines,
+
+Marooned crews on Lundy Island,
+
+_Martin_ galley,
+
+_Mary_ smuggler,
+
+Masters, conditions of exemption,
+
+Mastery of the sea, a necessity for England,
+
+Mates, conditions of exemption,
+
+Medway, press-gang on,
+
+_Medway_, H.M.S.,
+
+Men in lieu,
+
+Merchant seamen, conditions of exemption, unprotected when sleeping
+ashore,  the most valuable asset to the Navy,
+
+Merchant service, hard conditions of crews,
+
+_Mercury_, H.M.S.,
+
+Messenger, George,
+
+Mike, James, hanged for desertion,
+
+Moll Flanders,
+
+_Monarch_, H.M.S.,
+
+_Monmouth_, H.M.S.,
+
+_Monumenta Juridica_,
+
+Morals in the Navy, improved by Jervis, Nelson, and Collingwood,
+
+Moriarty, Capt,
+
+_Mortar_ sloop,
+
+Mostyn, Admiral,
+
+_Mediator_ tender,
+
+Mitchell, Admiral Sir D.,
+
+Montagu, Admiral,
+
+Mousehole, safe from the press-gang,
+
+Moverty, Thomas, pressed, not having protection on him,
+
+Nancy of Deptford,
+
+_Naseby_, H.M.S.,
+
+_Nassau_, H.M.S.,
+
+_Naval History_. See Brenton, E. P.,
+
+Navy, the growth of, in 18th century, natural sources of supply of
+crews,  hard conditions of service in,
+  discipline in,
+  provisions in,
+  comforts in,
+
+Negroes not exempt from impressment,
+
+Nelson, Admiral Lord,
+
+_Nemesis_, H.M.S.,
+
+Newcastle-upon-Tyne, press-gang at, grand protection enjoyed by,
+
+New England,
+
+Newgate compared with the press-room,
+
+Newhaven, the press-gang at,
+
+Newland, safe from the press-gang,
+
+Newquay, safe from the press-gang,
+
+Nore, the press-gang at the, the mutiny at,  an entrepot for pressed-men,
+
+_Norfolk_, Indiaman,
+
+Norris, John,
+
+North Forland, press-gang at,
+
+_Nymph_, H.M.S.,
+
+
+Oakley, Lieut.,
+
+Oaks, Lieut.,
+
+O'Brien, Lieut.,
+
+_Observations on Corporeal Punishment, Impressment, etc._ See Penrose,
+Admiral Sir V. C.,
+
+_Observations on the Act for Preventing Clandestine Marriages._ See
+Keith, A.,
+
+_Observations on the Navy._ See Burchett, J.,
+
+Okehampton, the press-gang at,
+
+Onions, Thomas,
+
+_Orford_, H.M.S.,
+
+Orkney fishermen,
+
+Osborne, Admiral,
+
+Osmer, Lieut.,
+
+_Otter_ sloop,
+
+Oyster vessels,
+
+
+_Pallas_, H.M.S.,
+
+Parker, Richard, president of the mutineers at the Nore,
+
+Parkgate, a resort of seamen,
+
+Paying off discharged entire crews,
+
+Paying the shot,
+
+Pay of sailors, deferred,
+
+Pembroke, Earl of, Lord High Admiral,
+
+Penrose, Admiral Sir V. C., _Observations on Corporeal Punishment,
+Impressment, etc._,
+
+Pepys, S.,
+
+Peter the Great, Czar of Russia,
+
+Petitions of seamen of the Fleet and others,
+
+_Phoenix_, H.M.S.,
+
+Pill, a favourite haunt of sailors, and shunned by gangsmen,
+
+Pilots,
+
+Pitt, William,
+
+Plymouth, the press-gang at,
+
+Polpero, safe from the press-gang,
+
+Poole, press-gang at, mayor refuses to back press-warrants,
+
+Popham, Admiral Sir Home, his scheme for coast defence,
+
+Portland Bill, press-gang off,
+
+Portland Island,
+
+Portsmouth, desertions at, the press-gang at,
+
+Post-chaise, sailors in,
+
+Press-boats sunk at sea,
+
+Pressed labour (see also Press-gang), antiquity of,  for civil occupations,
+  for warfare,
+  means of enforcing,
+  contrary to the spirit of Magna Carta,
+  penalties for resistance,
+  derivation of the term,
+  the classes from which drawn,
+  exemptions from,
+  necessity of, in English Navy,
+  its crippling effect on trade,
+
+Press-gang, the why it was a necessity for the Navy,
+  its services not needed by some captains,
+  what it was,
+    the official and the popular views,
+    the class of men it was composed of,
+    its quarters, landsmen joining the land force not to be pressed
+      for sea service,
+    ship-gangs entirely seamen, varying numbers in gang,
+    the officers,
+    the shore service the grave of promotion,
+    general character of officers ashore,
+    duties of the Regulating Captain,
+    pay and road money, etc.,
+    perquisites, peculation, and bribery in the service,
+    sham-gangs,
+    the rendezvous,
+    boat's arms,
+    press warrant,
+  whom the gang might take,
+    primarily those who used the sea,
+    later on trade suffers from the gang,
+    exemption granted as an indulgence,
+    the foreigner first exempted,
+    but not if he had an English wife, and was soon assumed to have
+      one,
+    negroes not exempt, landsmen theoretically only,
+    harvesters were exempt if holding a certificate,
+    gentlemen exempt if dressed as such,
+    only those proved to be between eighteen and fifty-five,
+    the position of apprentices was uncertain,
+    to press merchant seamen was resented by trade,
+    masters, mates, boatswains, and carpenters were exempt,
+    colliers were exempt up to a certain proportion,
+    ship protections did not count on shore,
+    mate was not entitled to liberty unless registered at the
+      rendezvous,
+    harpooners were protected out of season on land or on colliers,
+    the press-gang preyed upon its fellows,
+    watermen, bargemen, and canal boat-dwellers were considered to use
+      the see,
+    Thames watermen and some others exempt if certain quota of men
+      supplied,
+    large numbers pressed from Ireland,
+    fishermen indifferently protected, but fisheries fostered,
+    all protected persons bound to carry their protection on them,
+    an error in protection invalidated it,
+    protections often disregarded,
+    special protections,
+  its activities afloat,
+    the merchant seamen the principal quest,
+    the chain of sea-gangs,
+    the outer rings, frigates pressing for their own crews and armed
+      sloops as tenders to ships of the line, and the vessels employed
+      by regulating captains at the large ports,
+    the inner ring of boat-gangs in harbour or on rivers;
+     their methods.,
+    methods of pressing at sea,
+    complications arising from pressing at sea,
+    their varied success.,
+    and the right to search foreign vessels for English seamen,
+    and convoys,
+    and privateers,
+    and smugglers,
+    smuggling by,
+    and ships in quarantine,
+    and transports,
+    and cartel ships,
+    and pilots,
+  how it was evaded,
+    in the ship, with her or from her,
+    or a combination,
+    hiding on board from,
+    evasions assisted by the skipper,
+    and men in lieu and foreigners in emergency crews,
+    pilots and fisherman taken by, when acting as emergency men,
+    evaded by desertion from the ship,
+    evaded by hiding on land and changing quarters,
+    Cornwall dangerous for,
+    safe retreats from,
+    empowered to take Severn and Wye trow-men,
+    unsuccessful efforts of,
+    evaded by borrowed, forged, and American protections and by
+      disguises,
+  what it did ashore,
+    the sailor betrayed by marked characteristics;
+    sailors outnumbered on shore by the gang,
+    its object the pressing of sailors who escaped the seagangs,
+    its London rendezvous and taverns used.
+    the inland distribution of,
+    the class of places selected for operations of,
+    the land-gangs necessarily ambulatory,
+    its resting and refreshment places chosen for purposes of capture,
+       the methods adopted,
+    a hot press at Brighton,
+    a ruse at Portsmouth,
+    how the sailors' liking for drink was turned to account,
+    the amount of violence used,
+    outside assistance to,
+    rivalry between gangs,
+    assisted by mayors and county magistrates,
+    assisted by the military,
+    townsmen who sided with the sailors against,
+    brutal behaviour of, at Poole,
+    resisted at Deal and Dover,
+    forcible entry by, illegal,
+    magistrates consign vagabonds and disorderly persons to,
+  how it was resisted,
+    various weapons used against,
+    gangs-men killed by sailors resisting them,
+    sailors killed by gangsmen,
+    by armed bands of seamen,
+    by the populace in attempting to impress,
+    pressed-men recaptured from,
+    tenders attacked,
+    rendezvous attacked,
+    press-boats attacked and sunk,
+    resistance when the press-gang had come abroad,
+    the hardship of impressment on arrival from long voyage,
+    the only means of resistance,
+    a sailor's death in such case "accidental," casual, unavoidable,
+       or disagreeable,
+    a case in point,
+  at play,
+    humorous reason given for impressing a person,
+    inculcating manners by means of the press,
+    the respect due to naval officers,
+    the outsider liable to be pressed for breach of naval etiquette,
+      rudeness to the press-gang treated the same way,
+    damages from officers for wrongful impressment, failure to dip the
+        flag, or flying an unauthorised flag, might lead to pressing
+        from that crew,
+    unseamanlike management of a ship laid the crew open to pressing,
+    pipers and fiddlers, etc., impressed,
+      ridiculous reasons given for impressing,
+    unsuspecting passenger in a smuggler declared owner of contraband
+       and pressed,
+    tattoo marks and bandy legs lead to pressing,
+    any eccentricity sufficient to ensure the attention of the
+       press-gang,
+    used by trustees to keep heirs from their money, and by parents to
+       rid them of incorrigible sons,
+    used for purposes of retaliation,
+    used by strikers to get rid of a "blackleg."
+    used by stern parent to part his daughter and her lover,
+    a drunken cleric's revenge by means of,
+    by pressing a sailor, causes his late bedfellow to be hanged as
+       his murderer,
+  and women,
+    of women and sailors in general,
+    lack of sentiment in gangsmen,
+    women impressed by,
+    women masquerading as men to go to sea,
+    women in the gang,
+    the hardship brought on women by the gang,
+    fostered vice and bred paupers,
+    women who released sailors from the press-gang,
+    the devotion of Richard Parker's wife,
+  In the clutch of,
+    the press-room, what it was; strongly built and small as it might
+       be, could hold any number,
+    Bristol gaol and Gloucester Castle used as press-rooms,
+    inadequate precautions for retaining pressed men on the road,
+  regulations for rendezvous,
+    victualling in the press-room,
+    regulating or examining for fitness for service,
+    fabricated ailments and defects,
+    dispatching pressed men to the fleet,
+    tenders hired for transport of pressed men,
+    comfort and health of pressed men on tenders,
+    the victualling of pressed men on tenders,
+    prevention of escape,
+    an attempt to escape-with the Tasker tender escapes from,
+    The Union tender cut out from the Tyne by the pressed men,
+    various excitements aboard
+    a final examination,
+    petitions,
+    substitutes,
+  How the gang went out,
+    causes of withdrawal of press-gang,
+    the increasingly bad quality of the product,
+    the spirit of restlessness and mutiny engendered,
+    the injury to trade,
+    only continued so long by the apathy of the people,
+    the cost of impressing,
+
+Press-Gang, or Love in Low Life, The,
+
+Press warrants, forged,
+
+Presting, the original term and its meaning,
+
+Prest money,
+
+Price, Capt,
+
+Prince George guardship at Portsmouth,
+
+Princess Augusta, a letter of marque,
+
+Princess Augusta tender,
+
+Princess Louisa, H.M.S,
+
+Privateers, loss of seamen by, pressing from,
+  recapture of pressed crew of,
+
+Prize money,
+
+Profane abuse of crews by officers,
+
+Protections, for masters, mates, boatswains, and carpenters, worthless,
+if the holder were ashore,  bound to be always carried,
+  slightest error in description invalidated,
+  were often disregarded,
+  special,
+  for men in lieu,
+  for crews of convoys and privateers expired on arrival in home waters,
+  lent, bought, and exchanged,
+  American,
+
+Provisions in the Navy,
+
+Quarantine,
+
+Queensferry, the press-gang at,
+
+Quota men,
+
+"R" for "run" in ships' books to denote deserter,
+
+Raleigh, Sir Walter,
+
+Ramsgate, the press-gang at,
+
+Reading, the press-gang at,
+
+Registration of seamen,
+
+Regulating, i.e. examination of pressed-men for fitness, ailments and
+defects fabricated or assumed,
+
+Regulating captains, character of a,
+
+Repulse, H.M.S.,
+
+Rendezvous, attacked,  regulations of,
+
+Rescue of pressed men from the gang,
+
+Reunion, H.M.S.,
+
+Rhode Island,
+
+Rice,
+
+Richard II,
+
+Richards, John, midshipman,
+
+Richardson, Lieut,
+
+Right of search,
+
+Roberts, Capt. John,
+
+Rochester, the press-gang at,
+
+Rodney, Admiral Lord,
+
+Roebuck, H.M.S.,
+
+Romsey, the press-gang at,
+
+Routh, Capt,
+
+_Royal Sovereign_, H.M.S.,
+
+_Ruby_ gunship,
+
+Rudsdale, Lieut.,
+
+Rum,
+
+_Rupert_, H.M.S.,
+
+Russia, impressment in,
+
+Russian Navy,
+
+Ryde, the Lord of the Manor, claimed the privilege of private
+protections for his ferrymen to Portsmouth and Gosport, the press-gang
+at,
+
+_Rye_, H.M.S.,
+
+Rye, the press-gang at,
+
+
+Sailor, the word disfavoured by Navy Board, a creature of
+contradictions,
+
+St. Ives, safe from the press-gang,
+
+St. Lawrence River, deserters in,
+
+St. Vincent, Earl of. See Jervis, J,
+
+Salisbury, the press-gang at,
+
+Sanders, Joseph,
+
+_Sandwich_, H.M.S., flag-ship at the Nore,
+
+Sax, Lieut,
+
+_Scipio_, H.M.S.,
+
+Scott, John, pressed when his protection was lying in his coat beside
+him,
+
+Scottish fishermen,
+
+_Seahorse_, H.M.S.,
+
+"Serving out slops,"
+
+Severn trow-men, exempted from impress by 10% levy, Court of Exchequer
+rules the reverse,
+
+Seymour, Lieut.,
+
+Sham gangs,
+
+_Shandois_ sloop,
+
+_Shannon_, H.M.S.,
+
+Shannon, men working turf boats on, not exempt,
+
+_Shark_, sloop,
+
+"She" applied to a ship, a recent use,
+
+Sheerness, crimpage at,
+
+Shields, press-gang at,
+
+Ships, impressment of,
+
+Shipwrights in Scotch yards could be pressed as carpenters on warships,
+
+Shirley, Governor,
+
+Shoreham, the press-gang at,
+
+_Shrewsbury_, H.M.S.,
+
+Shrewsbury, sham gangs at,
+
+Sloper, Major-General,
+
+Smeaton, John,
+
+Smugglers, crew of, pressed, unsuspecting passenger declared owner and
+pressed,
+
+_Solebay_, H.M.S.,
+
+Southampton, the press-gang at,
+
+Southey, Robt, _English Eclogues_,
+
+_Southsea Castle_, H.M.S.,
+
+Spithead, crimpage at, an entrepot for pressed men,
+
+_Spy_ sloop of war,
+
+_Squirrel_, H.M.S.,
+
+_Stag_, H.M.S.,
+
+_Stag_ privateer,
+
+Stangate Creek, the fray at,
+
+Stephens, George, impressed at thirteen,
+
+Stephenson, George,
+
+Stepney Fields, press-gang at,
+
+Stillwell, John,
+
+Stourbridge, the press-gang at,
+
+Strike-me-blind. See Rice,
+
+Sturdy, Ralph, shot by the pressgang on the _Britannia_,
+
+Sunderland, press-gang at,
+
+Surgeons,
+
+Swansea,
+
+
+Tailors pressed on account of bandy legs,
+
+Talbot, Mary Anne,
+
+_Tasker_ tender,
+
+Tassell, William, a protected mate, pressed ashore,
+
+Taunton, Denny-Bowl quarry, near--three girls as sham gang, the
+press-gang at,
+
+Taylor, Lieut,
+
+Taylor, William,
+
+Teede, John, undone by tattoo marks,
+
+Tenders, attacked,  hired for transport of pressed men,
+  the health and comfort of pressed men on,
+  their victualling,
+  attempts to escape from and with,
+
+Thames, press-gang on the, wherrymen exempted by levy of one in five,
+
+_Thetis_, H.M.S.,
+
+Thomson, Lieut,
+
+Thurlow, Lord,
+
+Ticket men. See Men in lieu,
+
+Tobacco,
+
+Trading classes the greatest sufferers from impressment, not without
+resentment,  various trades gradually exempted,
+
+Tramps. See Vagabonds,
+
+Transports,
+
+Travelling, cost of,
+
+_Trial and Life of Richard Parker_,
+
+Trim, William,
+
+Trinity House,
+
+_Triton_ brig,
+
+_Triton_, Indiaman,
+
+Turning over of crews,
+
+Tyne keelman exempt from impress by levy--the men supplied being
+obtained by them by bounties,
+
+
+_Union_ tender,
+
+_Utrecht_, H.M.S.,
+
+
+Vagabonds handed over to the press-gang,
+
+_Vanguard_, H.M.S.,
+
+Vernon, Admiral,
+
+Victualling in the press-room,
+
+Virginia,
+
+
+Wages due to sailors to date of impressment,
+
+Walbeoff, Capt,
+
+Ward, Ned, _Wooden World Dissected_,
+
+Waterford, press-gang at,
+
+Watermen's language,
+
+Watson, Lieut,
+
+Watts, John, punished with 170 lashes,
+
+Weapons used against the press-gang,
+
+Weir, Alexander,
+
+Wellington, Duke of,
+
+Whalers, some of crew of, exempt from impressment,
+
+Whitby, the press-gang at,
+
+White, John, pressed at Bristol ninety yards from his vessel,
+
+Whitefoot, James, impressed at Bristol,
+
+Whitworth, Charles, Envoy to Russia,
+
+"Widows' men."
+
+Williams, John,
+
+_Willing Traveller_ smuggler,
+
+Wilson, John, shot by the press-gang on the _Britannia_,
+
+_Winchelsea_, H.M.S.,
+
+Winstanley, London butcher, served as pressed man 16 years,
+
+_Wolf_ armed sloop,
+
+Women and the Press-gang, See also under Press-gang, "The Press-gang and
+Women."
+
+_Wooden World Dissected_. See Ward, Ned,
+
+Wool, illegal export of,
+
+Worth, Capt,
+
+Worthing fishermen,
+
+Wye trow-men exempted from impress by 10% levy,
+
+Court of Exchequer rules the reverse,
+
+Yarmouth Roads, the press-gang in,
+
+"Yellow Admirals."
+
+Yorke, Sol. Gen,
+
+Young, Admiral, his torpedo,
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore, by
+John R. Hutchinson
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