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diff --git a/old/7pgaa10.txt b/old/7pgaa10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6056a94 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/7pgaa10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11088 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore +by John R. Hutchinson + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore + +Author: John R. Hutchinson + +Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6766] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on January 24, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE PRESS-GANG AFLOAT AND ASHORE *** + + + + +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, THE PRESS-GANG AFLOAT AND ASHORE *** + +This file should be named 7pgaa10.txt or 7pgaa10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7pgaa11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7pgaa10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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Hutchinson + +Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6766] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on January 24, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: iso-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE PRESS-GANG AFLOAT AND ASHORE *** + + + + +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 +_prêt_, 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 rôle. + +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 rôle 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 mêlée +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 entrepôts 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 viséd 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 éclat 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 Curaçoa, 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 entrepôts 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 congé_. 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 _sacrés_ 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 entrepôt 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 entrepôt 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 entrepôt 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, THE PRESS-GANG AFLOAT AND ASHORE *** + +This file should be named 8pgaa10.txt or 8pgaa10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8pgaa11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8pgaa10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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