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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 <DW25>
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  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 <DW64> 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 <DW36> 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 <DW40> 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
<DW36>s 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 <DW36>s. 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 <DW36>s 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,  <DW64>s 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,

<DW64>s 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,
    <DW64>s not exempt, landsmen theoretically only,
    harvesters were exempt if holding a certificate,
    gentlemen exempt if dressed as such,
    only those proved to be between eighteen and fifty-five,
    the position of apprentices was uncertain,
    to press merchant seamen was resented by trade,
    masters, mates, boatswains, and carpenters were exempt,
    colliers were exempt up to a certain proportion,
    ship protections did not count on shore,
    mate was not entitled to liberty unless registered at the
      rendezvous,
    harpooners were protected out of season on land or on colliers,
    the press-gang preyed upon its fellows,
    watermen, bargemen, and canal boat-dwellers were considered to use
      the see,
    Thames watermen and some others exempt if certain quota of men
      supplied,
    large numbers pressed from Ireland,
    fishermen indifferently protected, but fisheries fostered,
    all protected persons bound to carry their protection on them,
    an error in protection invalidated it,
    protections often disregarded,
    special protections,
  its activities afloat,
    the merchant seamen the principal quest,
    the chain of sea-gangs,
    the outer rings, frigates pressing for their own crews and armed
      sloops as tenders to ships of the line, and the vessels employed
      by regulating captains at the large ports,
    the inner ring of boat-gangs in harbour or on rivers;
     their methods.,
    methods of pressing at sea,
    complications arising from pressing at sea,
    their varied success.,
    and the right to search foreign vessels for English seamen,
    and convoys,
    and privateers,
    and smugglers,
    smuggling by,
    and ships in quarantine,
    and transports,
    and cartel ships,
    and pilots,
  how it was evaded,
    in the ship, with her or from her,
    or a combination,
    hiding on board from,
    evasions assisted by the skipper,
    and men in lieu and foreigners in emergency crews,
    pilots and fisherman taken by, when acting as emergency men,
    evaded by desertion from the ship,
    evaded by hiding on land and changing quarters,
    Cornwall dangerous for,
    safe retreats from,
    empowered to take Severn and Wye trow-men,
    unsuccessful efforts of,
    evaded by borrowed, forged, and American protections and by
      disguises,
  what it did ashore,
    the sailor betrayed by marked characteristics;
    sailors outnumbered on shore by the gang,
    its object the pressing of sailors who escaped the seagangs,
    its London rendezvous and taverns used.
    the inland distribution of,
    the class of places selected for operations of,
    the land-gangs necessarily ambulatory,
    its resting and refreshment places chosen for purposes of capture,
       the methods adopted,
    a hot press at Brighton,
    a ruse at Portsmouth,
    how the sailors' liking for drink was turned to account,
    the amount of violence used,
    outside assistance to,
    rivalry between gangs,
    assisted by mayors and county magistrates,
    assisted by the military,
    townsmen who sided with the sailors against,
    brutal behaviour of, at Poole,
    resisted at Deal and Dover,
    forcible entry by, illegal,
    magistrates consign vagabonds and disorderly persons to,
  how it was resisted,
    various weapons used against,
    gangs-men killed by sailors resisting them,
    sailors killed by gangsmen,
    by armed bands of seamen,
    by the populace in attempting to impress,
    pressed-men recaptured from,
    tenders attacked,
    rendezvous attacked,
    press-boats attacked and sunk,
    resistance when the press-gang had come abroad,
    the hardship of impressment on arrival from long voyage,
    the only means of resistance,
    a sailor's death in such case "accidental," casual, unavoidable,
       or disagreeable,
    a case in point,
  at play,
    humorous reason given for impressing a person,
    inculcating manners by means of the press,
    the respect due to naval officers,
    the outsider liable to be pressed for breach of naval etiquette,
      rudeness to the press-gang treated the same way,
    damages from officers for wrongful impressment, failure to dip the
        flag, or flying an unauthorised flag, might lead to pressing
        from that crew,
    unseamanlike management of a ship laid the crew open to pressing,
    pipers and fiddlers, etc., impressed,
      ridiculous reasons given for impressing,
    unsuspecting passenger in a smuggler declared owner of contraband
       and pressed,
    tattoo marks and bandy legs lead to pressing,
    any eccentricity sufficient to ensure the attention of the
       press-gang,
    used by trustees to keep heirs from their money, and by parents to
       rid them of incorrigible sons,
    used for purposes of retaliation,
    used by strikers to get rid of a "blackleg."
    used by stern parent to part his daughter and her lover,
    a drunken cleric's revenge by means of,
    by pressing a sailor, causes his late bedfellow to be hanged as
       his murderer,
  and women,
    of women and sailors in general,
    lack of sentiment in gangsmen,
    women impressed by,
    women masquerading as men to go to sea,
    women in the gang,
    the hardship brought on women by the gang,
    fostered vice and bred paupers,
    women who released sailors from the press-gang,
    the devotion of Richard Parker's wife,
  In the clutch of,
    the press-room, what it was; strongly built and small as it might
       be, could hold any number,
    Bristol gaol and Gloucester Castle used as press-rooms,
    inadequate precautions for retaining pressed men on the road,
  regulations for rendezvous,
    victualling in the press-room,
    regulating or examining for fitness for service,
    fabricated ailments and defects,
    dispatching pressed men to the fleet,
    tenders hired for transport of pressed men,
    comfort and health of pressed men on tenders,
    the victualling of pressed men on tenders,
    prevention of escape,
    an attempt to escape-with the Tasker tender escapes from,
    The Union tender cut out from the Tyne by the pressed men,
    various excitements aboard
    a final examination,
    petitions,
    substitutes,
  How the gang went out,
    causes of withdrawal of press-gang,
    the increasingly bad quality of the product,
    the spirit of restlessness and mutiny engendered,
    the injury to trade,
    only continued so long by the apathy of the people,
    the cost of impressing,

Press-Gang, or Love in Low Life, The,

Press warrants, forged,

Presting, the original term and its meaning,

Prest money,

Price, Capt,

Prince George guardship at Portsmouth,

Princess Augusta, a letter of marque,

Princess Augusta tender,

Princess Louisa, H.M.S,

Privateers, loss of seamen by, pressing from,
  recapture of pressed crew of,

Prize money,

Profane abuse of crews by officers,

Protections, for masters, mates, boatswains, and carpenters, worthless,
if the holder were ashore,  bound to be always carried,
  slightest error in description invalidated,
  were often disregarded,
  special,
  for men in lieu,
  for crews of convoys and privateers expired on arrival in home waters,
  lent, bought, and exchanged,
  American,

Provisions in the Navy,

Quarantine,

Queensferry, the press-gang at,

Quota men,

"R" for "run" in ships' books to denote deserter,

Raleigh, Sir Walter,

Ramsgate, the press-gang at,

Reading, the press-gang at,

Registration of seamen,

Regulating, i.e. examination of pressed-men for fitness, ailments and
defects fabricated or assumed,

Regulating captains, character of a,

Repulse, H.M.S.,

Rendezvous, attacked,  regulations of,

Rescue of pressed men from the gang,

Reunion, H.M.S.,

Rhode Island,

Rice,

Richard II,

Richards, John, midshipman,

Richardson, Lieut,

Right of search,

Roberts, Capt. John,

Rochester, the press-gang at,

Rodney, Admiral Lord,

Roebuck, H.M.S.,

Romsey, the press-gang at,

Routh, Capt,

_Royal Sovereign_, H.M.S.,

_Ruby_ gunship,

Rudsdale, Lieut.,

Rum,

_Rupert_, H.M.S.,

Russia, impressment in,

Russian Navy,

Ryde, the Lord of the Manor, claimed the privilege of private
protections for his ferrymen to Portsmouth and Gosport, the press-gang
at,

_Rye_, H.M.S.,

Rye, the press-gang at,


Sailor, the word disfavoured by Navy Board, a creature of
contradictions,

St. Ives, safe from the press-gang,

St. Lawrence River, deserters in,

St. Vincent, Earl of. See Jervis, J,

Salisbury, the press-gang at,

Sanders, Joseph,

_Sandwich_, H.M.S., flag-ship at the Nore,

Sax, Lieut,

_Scipio_, H.M.S.,

Scott, John, pressed when his protection was lying in his coat beside
him,

Scottish fishermen,

_Seahorse_, H.M.S.,

"Serving out slops,"

Severn trow-men, exempted from impress by 10% levy, Court of Exchequer
rules the reverse,

Seymour, Lieut.,

Sham gangs,

_Shandois_ sloop,

_Shannon_, H.M.S.,

Shannon, men working turf boats on, not exempt,

_Shark_, sloop,

"She" applied to a ship, a recent use,

Sheerness, crimpage at,

Shields, press-gang at,

Ships, impressment of,

Shipwrights in Scotch yards could be pressed as carpenters on warships,

Shirley, Governor,

Shoreham, the press-gang at,

_Shrewsbury_, H.M.S.,

Shrewsbury, sham gangs at,

Sloper, Major-General,

Smeaton, John,

Smugglers, crew of, pressed, unsuspecting passenger declared owner and
pressed,

_Solebay_, H.M.S.,

Southampton, the press-gang at,

Southey, Robt, _English Eclogues_,

_Southsea Castle_, H.M.S.,

Spithead, crimpage at, an entrepot for pressed men,

_Spy_ sloop of war,

_Squirrel_, H.M.S.,

_Stag_, H.M.S.,

_Stag_ privateer,

Stangate Creek, the fray at,

Stephens, George, impressed at thirteen,

Stephenson, George,

Stepney Fields, press-gang at,

Stillwell, John,

Stourbridge, the press-gang at,

Strike-me-blind. See Rice,

Sturdy, Ralph, shot by the pressgang on the _Britannia_,

Sunderland, press-gang at,

Surgeons,

Swansea,


Tailors pressed on account of bandy legs,

Talbot, Mary Anne,

_Tasker_ tender,

Tassell, William, a protected mate, pressed ashore,

Taunton, Denny-Bowl quarry, near--three girls as sham gang, the
press-gang at,

Taylor, Lieut,

Taylor, William,

Teede, John, undone by tattoo marks,

Tenders, attacked,  hired for transport of pressed men,
  the health and comfort of pressed men on,
  their victualling,
  attempts to escape from and with,

Thames, press-gang on the, wherrymen exempted by levy of one in five,

_Thetis_, H.M.S.,

Thomson, Lieut,

Thurlow, Lord,

Ticket men. See Men in lieu,

Tobacco,

Trading classes the greatest sufferers from impressment, not without
resentment,  various trades gradually exempted,

Tramps. See Vagabonds,

Transports,

Travelling, cost of,

_Trial and Life of Richard Parker_,

Trim, William,

Trinity House,

_Triton_ brig,

_Triton_, Indiaman,

Turning over of crews,

Tyne keelman exempt from impress by levy--the men supplied being
obtained by them by bounties,


_Union_ tender,

_Utrecht_, H.M.S.,


Vagabonds handed over to the press-gang,

_Vanguard_, H.M.S.,

Vernon, Admiral,

Victualling in the press-room,

Virginia,


Wages due to sailors to date of impressment,

Walbeoff, Capt,

Ward, Ned, _Wooden World Dissected_,

Waterford, press-gang at,

Watermen's language,

Watson, Lieut,

Watts, John, punished with 170 lashes,

Weapons used against the press-gang,

Weir, Alexander,

Wellington, Duke of,

Whalers, some of crew of, exempt from impressment,

Whitby, the press-gang at,

White, John, pressed at Bristol ninety yards from his vessel,

Whitefoot, James, impressed at Bristol,

Whitworth, Charles, Envoy to Russia,

"Widows' men."

Williams, John,

_Willing Traveller_ smuggler,

Wilson, John, shot by the press-gang on the _Britannia_,

_Winchelsea_, H.M.S.,

Winstanley, London butcher, served as pressed man 16 years,

_Wolf_ armed sloop,

Women and the Press-gang, See also under Press-gang, "The Press-gang and
Women."

_Wooden World Dissected_. See Ward, Ned,

Wool, illegal export of,

Worth, Capt,

Worthing fishermen,

Wye trow-men exempted from impress by 10% levy,

Court of Exchequer rules the reverse,

Yarmouth Roads, the press-gang in,

"Yellow Admirals."

Yorke, Sol. Gen,

Young, Admiral, his torpedo,








End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore, by
John R. Hutchinson

*** 