WHOM THE GANG MIGHT TAKE.
In theory an authority for the taking of seafaring men only, the
press-warrant was in practice invested with all the force of a Writ
of Quo Warranto requiring every able-bodied male adult to show by what
right he remained at large. The difference between the theory and the
practice of pressing was consequently as wide as the poles.
While the primary and ostensible objective of the impress remained
always what it had been from the outset, the seaman who had few if any
land-ties except those of blood or sex, from this root principle
there sprang up a very Upas tree of pretension, whose noxious branches
overspread practically every section of the community. Hence the
press-gang, the embodiment of this pretension, eventually threw aside
ostence and took its pick of all who came its way, let their occupation
or position be what it might. It was no duty of the gangsman to employ
his hanger in splitting hairs. "First catch your man," was for him the
greatest of all the commandments. Discrimination was for his masters.
The weeding out could be done when the pressing was over.
The classes hardest hit by this lamentable want of discrimination were
the classes engaged in trade. "Mr. Coventry," wrote Pepys some four
years after the Restoration, "showed how the medium of the men the King
hath one year with another employed in his navy since his coming, hath
not been above 3000 men, or at most 4000; and now having occasion for
30,000, the remaining 26,000 _must be found out of the Trade of the
Nation_." Naturally. Where a nation of shopkeepers was concerned it
could hardly have been otherwise. They who go down to the sea in ships
and do business in great waters, returning laden with the spoils of the
commercial world, have perforce to render tribute unto Caesar; but Mr.
Commissioner Coventry little guessed, when he enunciated his corollary
with such nice precision, to what it was destined to lead in the next
hundred years or so.
Under the merciless exactions of the press-gang Trade did not, however,
prove the submissive thing that was wont to stand at its doors and cry:
"Will you buy? will you buy?" or to bow prospective customers into its
rich emporiums with unctuous rubbing of hands and sauve words.
Trade knew its power and determined to use it. "Look you! my Lords
Commissioners," cried Trade, truculently cocking its hat in the face of
Admiralty, "I have had enough. You have taken my butcher, my baker, my
candlestick-maker, nor have you spared that worthy youth, the 'prentice
who was to have wed my daughter. My coachman, the driver of my gilded
chariot, goes in fear of you, and as for my sedan-chair man, he is no
more found. My colliers, draymen, watermen, the carpenters who build my
ships and the mariners who sail them, the ablest of these my necessary
helpers sling their hammocks in your fleet. You have crippled the
printing of my Bible and the brewing of my Beer, and I can bear no more.
Protect me from my arch-enemy the foreigner if you must and will, but
not, my Lords Commissioners, by such monstrous personal methods as
these." "Your servant!" said Admiralty, obsequious before the only power
it feared--"your servant to command!" and straightway set about finding
a remedy for the evils Trade complained of.
Now, to attain this end, so desirable if Trade were to be placated, it
was necessary to define with precision either whom the gang might take,
or whom it might not take; and here Admiralty, though notoriously a body
without a brain, achieved a stroke of genius, for it brought down both
birds with a single stone. Postulating first of all the old _lex sine
lege_ fiction that every native-born Briton and every British male
subject born abroad was legally pressable, it laid it down as a logical
sequence that no man, whatever his vocation or station in life,
was lawfully exempt; that exemption was in consequence an official
indulgence and not a right; and that apart from such indulgence every
man, unless idiotic, blind, lame, maimed or otherwise physically unfit,
was not only liable to be pressed, but could be legally pressed for
the king's service at sea. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law
Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 26; and _Admiralty Records_ 1.
581--Admiral Berkeley, 14 Feb. 1805, well express the official view.]
Having thus cleared the ground root and branch, Admiralty magnanimously
proceeded to frame a category of persons whom, as an act of grace and a
concession to Trade, it was willing to protect from assault and capture
by its emissary the press-gang.
These exemptions from the wholesale incidence of the impress were not
granted all at once. Embodied from time to time in Acts of Parliament
and so-called acts of official grace--slowly and painfully wrung from a
reluctant Admiralty by the persistent demands and ever-growing power of
Trade--they spread themselves over the entire century of struggle for
the mastery of the sea, from which they were a reaction, and, touching
the lives of the common people in a hundred and one intimate points and
interests, culminated at length in the abolition of that most odious
system of oppression from which they had sprung, and in a charter
of liberties before which the famous charter of King John sinks into
insignificance.
[Illustration: THE PRESS-GANG SEIZING A VICTIM.]
As a matter of policy the foreigner had first place in the list of
exemptions. He could volunteer if he chose, [Footnote: Strenuous efforts
were made in 1709 to induce the "Poor Palatines"--seven thousand of them
encamped at Blackheath, and two thousand in Sir John Parson's brewhouse
at Camberwell--to enter for the navy. But the "thing was New to them to
go aboard a Man of Warr," so they declined the invitation, "having the
Notion of being sent to Carolina."--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1437--Letters
of Capt. Aston.] but he must not be pressed. [Footnote: 13 George II.
cap. 17.] To deprive him of his right in this respect was to invite
unpleasant diplomatic complications, of which England had already
too many on her hands. Trade, too, looked upon the foreigner as her
perquisite, and Trade must be indulged. Moreover, he fostered mutiny in
the fleet, where he was prone to "fly in the face" of authority and to
refuse to work, much less fight, for an alien people. If, however, he
served on board British merchant ships for two years, or if he married
in England, he at once lost caste, since he then became a naturalised
British subject and was liable to have even his honeymoon curtailed by
a visit from the press-gang. Such, in fact, was the fate of one William
Castle of Bristol in 1806. Pressed there in that year on his return
from the West Indies, he was discharged as a person of alien birth; but
having immediately afterwards committed the indiscretion of taking a
Bristol woman to wife, he was again pressed, this time within three
weeks of his wedding-day, and kept by express order of Admiralty.
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1537--Capt. Barker, 23 July 1806.]
For some years after the passing of the Act exempting the foreigner,
his rights appear to have been generally, though by no means universally
respected. "Discharge him if not married or settled in England," was the
usual order when he chanced to be taken by the gang. With the turn of
the century, however, a reaction set in. Pressed men claiming to be
of alien birth were thenceforth only liberated "if unfit for service."
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2733--Capt. Young, 11 March 1756,
endorsement, and numerous instances.] For this untoward change the
foreigner could blame none but himself. When taxed with having an
English wife, he could seldom or never be induced to admit the soft
impeachment. Consequently, whenever he was taken by the gang he was
assumed, in the absence of proof to the contrary, to have committed
the fatal act of naturalisation. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
581--Admiral Phillip, 26 Feb. 1805.] Alien seamen in distress through
shipwreck or other accidental causes, formed a humane exception to this
unwritten law.
The negro was never reckoned an alien. Looked upon as a proprietary
subject of the Crown, and having no one in particular to speak up for
or defend him, he "shared the same fate as the free-born white man."
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 482--Admiral Lord Colvill, 29 Oct.
1762.] Many blacks, picked up in the West Indies or on the American
coast "without hurting commerce," were to be found on board our ships
of war, where, when not incapacitated by climatic conditions, they
made active, alert seamen and "generally imagined themselves free."
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 585--Admiral Donnelly, 22 Feb. 1815.]
Their point of view, poor fellows, was doubtless a strictly comparative
one.
Theoretically exempt by virtue of his calling, whatever that might be,
the landsman was in reality scarcely less marked down by the gang than
his unfortunate brother the seafaring man; for notwithstanding all its
professions to the contrary, Admiralty could not afford to ignore
the potentialities of the reserve the landsman represented. Hence no
occupation, no property qualification, could or did protect him. As
early as 1705 old Justice, in his treatise on sea law, deplores bitterly
the "barbarous custom of pressing promiscuously landsmen and seamen,"
and declares that the gang, in its purblind zeal, "hurried away
tradesmen from their houses, 'prentices and journeymen from their
masters' shops, and even housekeepers (householders) too." By 1744
the practice had become confirmed. In that year Capt. Innes, of His
Majesty's armed sloop the _Hind_, applied to the Lords Commissioners for
"Twenty Landsmen from Twenty to Twenty-five years of Age." The Admiralty
order, "Let the Regulating Captains send them as he desires," [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1983--Capt. Innes, 3 May 1744, and endorsement.]
leaves no room for doubt as to the class of men provided. They were
pressed men, not volunteers.
Nor is this a solitary instance of a practice that was rapidly growing
to large proportions. Many a landsman, in the years that followed,
shared the fate of the Irish "country farmer" who went into Waterford
to sell his corn, and was there pressed and sent on board the tender; of
James Whitefoot, the Bristol glover, "a timid, unformed young man, the
comfort and support of his parents," who, although he had "never seen
a ship in his life," was yet pressed whilst "passing to follow his
business," which knew him no more; and of Winstanley, the London
butcher, who served for upwards of sixteen years as a pressed man.
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1501--Capt. Bligh, 16 May 1781.
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1531--Duchess of Gordon, 14 Feb. 1804. _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 584--Humble Petition of Betsey Winstanley, 2 Sept. 1814.]
Wilkes' historic barber would have entered upon the same enforced career
had not that astute Alderman discovered, to the astonishment of the
nation at large, that a warrant which authorised the pressing of seamen
did not necessarily authorise the pressing of a city tonsor.
Amongst landsmen the harvester, as a worker of vital utility to the
country, enjoyed a degree of exemption accorded to few. Impress officers
had particular instructions concerning him. They were to delete him from
the category of those who might be taken. Armed with a certificate from
the minister and churchwardens of his parish, this migratory farm-hand,
provided always he were not a sailor masquerading in that disguise,
could traverse the length and breadth of the land to all intents and
purposes a free man. To him, as well as to the grower of corn who
depended so largely upon his aid in getting his crop, the concession
proved an inestimable boon. There were violations of the harvester's
status, it is true; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Memorial of
Sir William Oglander, Bart., July 1796.] but these were too infrequent
to affect seriously the industry he represented.
So far as the press was concerned, the harvester was better off than the
gentleman, for while the former could dress as he pleased, the latter
was often obliged to dress as he could, and in this lay an element of
danger. So long as his clothes were as good as the blood he boasted, and
he wore them with an aplomb suggestive of position and influence, the
gentleman was safe; but let his pretensions to gentility lie more in the
past than in the suit on his back, and woe betide him! In spite of his
protestations the gang took him, and he was lucky indeed if, like the
gentleman who narrates his experience in the _Review_ for the both of
February 1706, he was able to convince his captors that he was foreign
born by "talking Latin and Greek."
To the people at large, whether landsmen or seafarers, the Act exempting
from the press every male under eighteen and over fifty-five years of
age would have brought a sorely needed relief had not Admiralty been a
past-master in the subtle art of outwitting the law. In this instance
a simple regulation did the trick. Every man or boy who claimed the
benefit of the age-limit when pressed, was required to prove his claim
ere he could obtain his discharge. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7.
300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 43: "It is incumbent on those
who claim to be exempted to prove the facts."] The impossibility of any
general compliance with such a demand on the part of persons often as
ignorant of birth certificates as they were of the sea, practically
wiped the exemption off the slate.
In the eyes of the Regulating Captain no man was older than he looked,
no lad as young as he avowed. Hence thousands of pressed men over
fifty-five, who did not look the age they could not prove, figured on
the books of the fleet with boys whose precocity of appearance gave
the lie to their assertions. George Stephens, son of a clerk in the
Transport Office, suffered impressment when barely thirteen; and the son
of a corporal in Lord Elkinton's regiment, one Alexander M'Donald,
was listed in the same manner while still "under the age of twelve."
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 583--Vice-Admiral Hunter, 10 May
1813. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1503--Capt. Butchart, 22 Jan. 1782, and
enclosure.] The gang did not pause by the way to discuss such questions.
Apprentices fell into a double category--those bound to the sea, those
apprenticed on land. Nominally, the sea apprentice was protected from
the impress for a term of three years from the date of his indentures,
provided he had not used the sea before; [Footnote: 2 & 3 Anne, cap. 6,
re-affirmed 13 George II. cap. 17.] while the land apprentice enjoyed
immunity under the minimum age-limit of eighteen years. The proviso in
the first case, however, left open a loop-hole the impress officer was
never slow to take advantage of; and the minimum age-limit, as we have
just seen, had little if any existence in fact. Apprentices pressed
after the three years' exemption had expired were never given up, nor
could their masters successfully claim them in law. They dropped like
ripe fruit into the lap of Admiralty. On the other hand, apprentices
pressed within the three years' exemption period were generally
discharged, for if they were not, they could be freed by a writ of
Habeas Corpus, or else the masters could maintain an action for damages
against the Admiralty. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law
Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 25.] 'Prentices who "eloped" or ran
away from their masters, and then entered voluntarily, could not be
reclaimed by any known process at law if they were over eighteen years
of age. On the whole, the position of the apprentice, whether by land or
sea, was highly anomalous and uncertain. Often taken by the gang in the
hurry of visiting a ship, or in the scurry of a hot press on shore, he
was in effect the shuttlecock of the service, to-day singing merrily
at his capstan or bench, to-morrow bewailing his hard fate on board a
man-o'-war.
When it came to the exemption of seamen, Admiralty found itself on the
horns of a dilemma. Both the Navy and the merchant service depended in a
very large degree upon the seaman who knew the ropes--who could take his
turn at the wheel, scud aloft without going through the lubber-hole, and
act promptly and sailorly in emergency. To take wholesale such men
as these, while it would enormously enhance the effectiveness of His
Majesty's ships of war, must inevitably cripple sea-borne trade. It was
therefore necessary, for the well-being of both services, to discover
the golden mean. According to statute law [Footnote: 13 George II. cap.
17.] every person using the sea, of what age soever he might be, was
exempt from the impress for two years from the time of his first making
the venture. The concession did not greatly improve the situation from
a trade point of view. It merely touched the fringe of the problem, and
Trade was insistent.
A further concession was accordingly made. All masters, mates,
boatswains and carpenters of vessels of fifty tons and upwards were
exempted from the impress on condition of their going before a Justice
of the Peace and making oath to their several qualifications. This
affidavit, coupled with a succinct description of the deponent,
constituted the holder's "protection" and shielded him, or was supposed
to shield him, from molestation by the gang. Masters and mates of
colliers, and of vessels laid up for the winter, came under this head;
but masters or mates of vessels detected in running dutiable goods, or
caught harbouring deserters from the fleet, could be summarily dealt
with notwithstanding their protections. The same fate befell the mate or
apprentice who was lent by one ship to another.
In addition to the executive of the vessel, as defined in the foregoing
paragraph, it was of course necessary to extend protection to as many
of her "hands", as were essential to her safe and efficient working. How
many were really required for this purpose was, however, a moot point on
which ship-masters and naval officers rarely saw eye to eye; and since
the arbiter in all such disputes was the "quarter-deck gentlemen," the
decision seldom if ever went in favour of the master.
The importance of the coal trade won for colliers an early concession,
which left no room for differences of opinion. Every vessel employed
in that trade was entitled to carry one exempt able-bodied man for each
hundred units of her registered tonnage, provided it did not exceed
three hundred. The penalty for pressing such men was 10 Pounds for each
man taken. [Footnote: 2 & 3 Anne, cap. 6.]
On the coasts of Scotland commanders of warships whose carpenters had
run or broken their leave, and who perhaps were left, like Capt. Gage of
the _Otter_ sloop, "without so much as a Gimblett on board," [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1829-Capt. Gage, 29 Sept. 1742.] might press
shipwrights from the yards on shore to fill the vacancy, and suffer no
untoward consequences; but south of the Tweed this mode of collecting
"chips" was viewed with disfavour. There, although ship-carpenters,
sailmakers and men employed in rope-walks were by a stretch of the
official imagination reckoned as persons using the sea, and although
they were generally acknowledged to be no less indispensable to the
complete economy of a ship than the able-bodied seaman, legal questions
of an extremely embarrassing nature nevertheless cropped up when the
scene of their activities underwent too sudden and violent a change.
The pressing of such artificers consequently met with little official
encouragement. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers'
Opinions, 1778-83, No. 2.]
Where the Admiralty scored, in the matter of ship protections, and
scored heavily, was when the protected person went ashore. For when on
shore the protected master, mate, boatswain, carpenter, apprentice
or seaman no longer enjoyed protection unless he was there "on ship's
duty." The rule was most rigorously, not to say arbitrarily, enforced.
Thus at Plymouth, in the year 1746, a seaman who protested in broken
English that he had come ashore to "look after his master's _sheep_" was
pressed because the naval officer who met and questioned him "imagined
sheep to have no affinity with a ship!" [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
1. 2381--Capt. John Roberts, 11 July 1746. Capt. Roberts was a very
downright individual, and years before the characteristic had got him
into hot water. The occasion was when, in 1712, an Admiralty letter,
addressed to him at Harwich and containing important instructions, by
some mischance went astray and Roberts accused the Clerk of the Check of
having appropriated it. The latter called him a liar, whereupon Roberts
"gave him a slap in the face and bid him learn more manners." For this
exhibition of temper he was superseded and kept on the half-pay list
for some six years. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt. Brand, 8 March
1711-12. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2378, section 11, Admiralty note.]
Any mate who failed to register his name at the rendezvous, as soon as
his ship arrived in port, did so at his peril. Without that formality he
was "not entitled to liberty." So strict was the rule that when William
Tassell, mate of the _Elizabeth_ ketch, was caught drinking in a Lynn
alehouse one night at ten o'clock, after having obtained "leave to run
about the town" until eight only, he was immediately pressed and
kept, the Admiralty refusing to declare the act irregular. [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1546--Capt. Bowyer, 25 July 1809, and enclosure.]
In many ports it was customary for sailors to sleep ashore while
their ships lay at the quay or at moorings. The proceeding was highly
dangerous. No sailor ever courted sleep in such circumstances, even
though armed with a "line from the master setting forth his business,"
without grave risk of waking to find himself in the bilboes. The Mayor
of Poole once refused to "back" press-warrants for local use unless
protected men belonging to trading vessels of the port were granted the
privilege of lodging ashore. "Certainly not!" retorted the Admiralty.
"We cannot grant Poole an indulgence _that other towns do not enjoy_."
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2485--Capt. Scott, 4 Jan. 1780, and
endorsement.]
In spite of the risk involved, the sailor slept ashore and--if he
survived the night--tried to steal back to his ship in the grey of the
morning. Now and then, by a run of luck, he made his offing in safety;
but more frequently he met the fate of John White of Bristol, who was
taken by the gang when only "about ninety yards from his vessel."
The only exceptions to this stringent rule were certain classes of
men engaged in the Greenland and South Seas whale fisheries. Skilled
harpooners, linesmen and boat-steerers, on their return from a whaling
cruise, could obtain from any Collector of Customs, for sufficient bond
put in, a protection from the impress which no Admiralty regulation,
however sweeping, could invalidate or override. Safeguarded by this
document, they were at liberty to live and work ashore, or to sail in
the coal trade, until such time as they should be required to proceed
on another whaling voyage. If, however, they took service on board any
vessel other than a collier, they forfeited their protections and could
be "legally detained." [Footnote: 13 George II. cap. 28. _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 14 March 1756. _Admiralty Records_ 7.
300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 42.]
In one ironic respect the gang strongly resembled a boomerang. So
thoroughly and impartially did it do its work that it recoiled upon
those who used it. The evil was one of long standing. Pepys complained
of it bitterly in his day, asserting that owing to its prevalence
letters could neither be received nor sent, and that the departmental
machinery for victualling and arming the fleet was like to be undone.
With the growth of pressing the imposition was carried to absurd
lengths. The crews of the impress tenders, engaged in conveying pressed
men to the fleet, could not "proceed down" without falling victims to
the very service they were employed in. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
1. 1486--Capt. Baird, 27 Feb. 1755, and numerous instances.] To check
this egregious robbing of Peter to pay Paul, both the Navy Board and the
Government were obliged to "protect" their own sea-going hirelings, and
even then the protections were not always effective.
Between the extremes represented by the landsman who enjoyed nominal
exemption and the seaman who enjoyed none, there existed a middle or
amphibious class of persons who lived exclusively on neither land
nor water, but habitually used both in the pursuit of their various
callings. These were the wherry or watermen, the lightermen, bargemen,
keelmen, trowmen and canal-boat dwellers frequenting mainly the inland
waterways of the country.
In the reign of Richard II. the jurisdiction of Admirals was denned as
extending, in a certain particular, to the "main stream of great rivers
nigh the sea." [Footnote: 15 Richard II. cap. 2.] Had the same line of
demarcation been observed in the pressing of those whose occupations lay
upon rivers, there would have been little cause for outcry or complaint.
But the Admiralty, the successors of the ancient "Guardians of the Sea"
whose powers were so clearly limited by the Ricardian statute, gradually
extended the old-time jurisdiction until, for the purposes of the
impress, it included all waterways, whether "nigh the sea" or inland,
natural or artificial, whereon it was possible for craft to navigate.
All persons working upon or habitually using such waterways were
regarded as "using the sea," and later warrants expressly authorised the
gangs to take as many of them as they should be able, not excepting even
the ferryman. The extension was one of tremendous consequence, since
it swept into the Navy thousands of men who, like the Ely and Cambridge
bargemen, were "hardy, strong fellows, who never failed to make good
seamen." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1486--Capt. Baird, 29 April
1755.]
Amongst these denizens of the country's waterways the position of the
Thames wherryman was peculiar in that from very early times he had been
exempt from the ordinary incidence of the press on condition of
his periodically supplying from his own numbers a certain quota of
able-bodied men for the use of the fleet. The rule applied to all
watermen using the river between Gravesend and Windsor, and members
of the fraternity who "withdrew and hid themselves" at the time of the
making of such levies, were liable to be imprisoned for two years and
"banished any more to row for a year and a day." [Footnote: 2 & 3 Philip
and Mary, cap. 16.] The exemption he otherwise enjoyed appears to have
conduced not a little to the waterman's proverbial joviality. As a
youth he spent his leisure in "dancing and carolling," thus earning the
familiar sobriquet of "the jolly young waterman." Even so, his tenure of
happiness was anything but secure. With the naval officer and the gang
he was no favourite, and few opportunities of dashing his happiness were
allowed to pass unimproved. In the person of John Golden, however,
they caught a Tartar. To the dismay of the Admiralty and the officer
responsible for pressing him, he proved to be one of my Lord Mayor's
bargemen. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2733-Capt. Young, 7 March
1756.]
Apart from the watermen of the Thames, the purchase of immunity from the
press by periodic levies met with little favour, and though the levy was
in many cases reluctantly adopted, it was only because it entailed the
lesser of two evils. The basis of such levies varied from one man in ten
to one in five--a percentage which the Admiralty considered a "matter
of no distress"; and the penalty for refusing to entertain them was
wholesale pressing.
The Tyne keelmen, while ostensibly consenting to buy immunity on this
basis, seldom levied the quota upon themselves. By offering bounties
they drew the price of their freedom to work in the keels from outside
sources. Lord Thurlow confessed that he did not know what "working in
the keels" meant. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 299--Law Officers'
Opinions, 1752-77, No. 70.] There were' few in the fleet who could have
enlightened him of their own experience. The keelmen kept their ranks as
far as possible intact. In this they were materially aided by the Mayor
and Corporation of Newcastle, who held a "Grand Protection" of the
Admiralty, and in return for this exceptional mark of their Lordships'
favour did all they could to further the pressing of persons less
essential to the trade of the town and river than were their own
keelmen.
On the rivers Severn and Wye there was plying in 1806 a flotilla of
ninety-eight trows, ranging in capacity from sixty to one hundred and
thirty tons, and employing five hundred and eighty-eight men, of whom
practically all enjoyed exemption from the press. It being a time of
exceptional stress for men, the Admiralty considered this proportion
excessive, and Capt. Barker, at that time regulating the press at
Bristol, was ordered to negotiate terms. He proposed a contribution of
trowmen on the basis of one in every ten, coupling the suggestion with a
thinly veiled threat that if it were not complied with he would set
his gangs to work and take all he could get. The Association of Severn
Traders, finding themselves thus placed between the devil and the deep
sea, agreed to the proposal with a reluctance they in vain endeavoured
to hide under ardent protestations of loyalty. [Footnote: _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 1537--Capt. Barker, 24 April and 9 May 1806, and enclosure.]
In the three hundred "flats" engaged in carrying salt, coals and other
commodities between Nantwich and Liverpool there were employed, in
1795, some nine hundred men who had up to that time largely escaped
the attentions of the gang. In that year, however, an arrangement was
entered into, under duress of the usual threat, to the effect that they
should contribute one man in six, or at the least one man in nine,
in return for exemption to be granted to the remainder. [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 578--Admiral Pringle, Report on Rendezvous, 2
April 1795.]
Turf-boats plying on the Blackwater and the Shannon seem to have enjoyed
no special concessions. The men working them were pressed when-ever they
could be laid hold of, and if they were not always kept, their discharge
was due to reasons of physical unfitness rather than to any acknowledged
right to labour unmolested. Ireland's contribution to the fleet, apart
from the notoriously disaffected, was of too much consequence to be
played with; for the Irishman was essentially a good-natured soul,
and when his native indolence and slowness of movement had been duly
corrected by a judicious use of the rattan and the rope's-end, his
services were highly esteemed in His Majesty's ships of war.
In the category of exemptions the fisheries occupied a place entirely
their own. They were carefully fostered, but indifferently protected.
Previous to the year 1729 the most important concession granted to those
engaged in the taking of fish was the establishing of two extra "Fishe
Dayes" in the week. The provision was embodied in a statute of 1563,
whereby the people were required, under a penalty of, 3 Pounds for each
omission, "or els three monethes close Imprisonment without Baile or
Maineprise," to eat fish, to the total exclusion of meat, on Fridays and
Saturdays, and to content themselves with "one dish of flesh to three
dishes of fish" on Wednesdays. [Footnote: 5 Elizabeth, cap. 5.] The
enactment had no religious significance whatever; but in order to avoid
any suspicion of Popish tendencies it was deemed advisable, by those
responsible for the measure, to saddle it with a rider to the effect
that all persons teaching, preaching or proclaiming the eating of fish,
as enjoined by the Act, to be of "necessitee for the saving of the soule
of man," should be punished as "spreaders of fause newes." The true
significance of the measure lay in this. The abolition of Romish
fast-days had resulted, since the Reformation, in an enormous falling
off in the consumption of fish, and this decrease had in turn played
havoc with the fisheries. Now the fisheries were in reality the national
incubator for seamen, and Cecil, Elizabeth's astute Secretary of
State, perceiving in their decadence a grave menace to the manning of
prospective fleets, determined, for that reason if for no other, to
reanimate the dying industry. The Act in question was the practical
outcome of his deliberations. [Footnote: _State Papers Domestic_,
Elizabeth, vol. xxvii. Nos. 71 and 72, comprising Cecil's original
memoranda.]
An enactment which combined so happily the interests of the fisher
classes with those of national defence could not but be productive
of far-reaching consequences. The fishing industry not only throve
exceedingly because of it, it in time became, as Cecil clearly foresaw
it would become, a nursery for seamen and a feeder of the fleet as
unrivalled for the excellence of its material as it was inexhaustible in
its resources. Its prosperity was in fact its curse. Few exemptions were
granted it. Adventurers after whale and cod had special concessions,
suited to the peculiar conditions of their calling; but with these
exceptions craft of every description employed in the taking or the
carrying of fish, for a very protracted period enjoyed only such
exemptions as were grudgingly extended to sea-going craft in general.
The source of supply represented by the leviathan industry was too
valuable to be lightly restricted.
On the other hand, it was too important to be lightly depleted.
Therefore under Cecil's Act establishing extra "Fishe Dayes," no
fisherman "using or haunting the sea" could be pressed off-hand to serve
in the Queen's Navy. The "taker," as the press-master was at that time
called, was obliged to carry his warrant to the Justices inhabiting
the place or places where it was proposed that the fishermen should be
pressed, and of these Justices any two were empowered to "choose
out such nomber of hable men" as the warrant specified. In this way
originated the "backing" or endorsing of warrants by the civil power. At
first obligatory only as regards the pressing of fishermen, it came to
be regarded in time as an essential preliminary to all pressing done on
land.
No further provision of a special nature would appear to have been made
for the protecting of fisher folk from the press until the year 1729,
when an exemption was granted which covered the master, one apprentice,
one seaman and one landsman for each vessel. [Footnote: 2 George n. cap.
15.] In 1801, however, a sweeping change was inaugurated. A statute
of that date provided that no person engaged in the taking, curing or
selling of fish should be impressed. [Footnote: 41 George in. cap. 21.]
The exemption came too late to prove substantially beneficial to an
industry which had suffered incalculable injury from the then recent
wars. The press-gang was already nearing its last days.
Prior to the Act of 1801 persons whose sole occupation was "to
pick oysters and mussels at low water" were accounted fishermen and
habitually pressed as "using the sea."
The position of the smaller fry of fishermen is thrown into vivid relief
by an official communique of 1709 as opposed to an incident of later
date. "These poor people," runs the note, which was addressed to a naval
commander who had pressed a fisherman out of a boat of less than three
tons, "have been always protected for the support of their indigent
families, and therefore they must not Be taken into the service
unless there is a pressing occasion, _and then they will be all forced
thereinto_." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.2377--Capt. Robinson, 4
Feb. 1708-9, and endorsement.] Captain Boscawen, writing from the Nore
in 1745, supplies the antithesis. He had been instructed to procure half
a dozen fishing smacks, each of not less than sixty tons burden, for
transport purposes. None were to be had. "The reason the fishermen give
for not employing vessels of that size," he states, in explanation of
the fact, "is that all the young men are pressed, and that the old men
and boys are not able to work them." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
1481--Capt. Boscawen, 23 Dec. 1745.]
Conditions such as these in time taught the fisherman wisdom, and he
awoke to the fact that exemption for a consideration, as in the case of
workers on rivers and canals, was preferable to paying through the
nose. The Admiralty was never averse from driving a bargain of this
description. It saved much distress, much bad blood, much good money.
In this way Worthing fishermen bought exemption in 1780. The fishery of
that town was then in its infancy, the people engaged in it "very poor
and needy." They employed only sixteen boats. Yet they found it cheaper
to contribute five men to the Navy, at a cost of 40 Pounds in
bounties, than to entertain the gang. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
1446--Capt. Alms, 2 Jan. 1780.]
The Orkney fisherman bought his freedom, both on his fishing-grounds and
when carrying his catch to market, on similar terms; but being a person
of frugal turn of mind, he gradually developed the habit of withholding
his stipulated quota. The unexpected arrival in his midst of an armed
smack, followed by a spell of vigorous pressing, taught him that to
be penny-wise is sometimes to be pound-foolish. [Footnote: _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 2740--Lieut. Abbs, 11 May 1798, and Admiralty note.]
On the Scottish coasts fishermen and ferrymen--the latter a numerous
class on that deeply indented seaboard--offered up one man in every five
or six on the altar of protection. The sacrifice distressed them less
than indiscriminate pressing. A prosperous people, they chose out those
of their number who could best be spared, supporting the families thus
left destitute by common subscription. Buss fishermen, who followed
the migratory herring; from fishing-ground to fishing-ground, were
in another category. Their contribution, when on the Scottish coast,
figured out at a man per buss, but as they were for some inscrutable
reason called upon to pay similar tribute on other parts of the coast,
they cannot be said to have escaped any too lightly. Neither did the
four hundred fishing-boats composing the Isle of Man fleet. Their crews
were obliged to surrender one man in every seven. [Footnote: _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 579--Admiral Pringle, Report on Rendezvous, 2 April 1795;
Admiral Philip, Report on Rendezvous, 1 Aug. 1801.]
Opinions as to the value of material drawn from these sources differed
widely. The buss fisherman was on all hands acknowledged to be a
seasoned sailor; but when it came to those employed in smaller craft, it
was held that heaving at the capstan for a matter of only six or seven
weeks in the year could never convert raw lads into useful seamen, even
though they continued that healthful form of exercise all their lives.
This was the view entertained by the masters of fishing-smacks smarting
from loss of "hands." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1497--Thomas
Hurry, master, 3 March 1777.]
Admiralty saw things in quite another light. "What you admit," said
their Lordships, expressing the counter-view, "it is our business to
prevent. We will therefore take these lads, who are admittedly of no
service to you save for hauling in your nets or getting your anchors,
and will make of them what you, on your own showing, can never
make--able seamen.": The argument, backed as it was by the strong arm of
the press-gang, was unanswerable.
The fact that the fisherman passed much of his time on shore did not
free him from the press any more than it freed the waterman, or the
worker in keel or trow. In his main vocation he "used the sea," and that
was enough. For the use of the sea was the rule and standard by which
every man's liability to the press was supposed to be measured and
determined.
Except in the case of masters, mates and apprentices to the sea, whose
affidavits or indentures constituted their respective safeguards against
the press, every person exempt from that infliction, whether by statute
law or Admiralty indulgence, was required to have in his possession an
official voucher setting forth the fact and ground of his exemption.
This document was ironically termed his "protection."
Admiralty protections were issued under the hand of the Lord High
Admiral; ordinary protections, by departments and persons who possessed
either delegated or vested powers of issue. Thus each Trinity House
protected its own pilots; the Customs protected whale fishermen and
apprentices to the sea; impress officers protected seamen temporarily
lent to ships in lieu of men taken out of them by the gangs. Some
protections were issued for a limited period and lapsed when that period
expired; others were of perpetual "force," unless invalidated by some
irregular acton the part of the holder. No protection was good unless
it bore a minute description of the person to whom it applied, and all
protections had to be carried on the person and produced upon demand.
Thomas Moverty was pressed out of a wherry in the Thames owing to his
having changed his clothes and left his protection at home; and
John Scott of Mistley, in Suffolk, was taken whilst working in his
shirtsleeves, though his protection lay in the pocket of his jacket,
only a few yards away. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1479--Capt.
Bridges, 11 August 1743. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1531--Capt. Ballard, 15
March 1804, and enclosure.]
The most trifling irregularity in the protection itself, or the
slightest discrepancy between the personal appearance of the bearer and
the written description of him, was enough to convert the protection
into so much waste paper and the bearer into a naval seaman.
North-country apprentices, whose indentures bore a 14s. stamp in
accordance with Scottish law, were pressed because that document did not
bear a 15s. stamp according to English law. A seaman was in one instance
described in his protection as "smooth-faced," that is, beardless. The
impress officer scrutinised him closely. "Aha!" said he, "you are not
smooth-faced. You are pockmarked"; and he pressed the poor fellow for
that reason.
To be over-protected was as bad as having no protection at all.
Thomas Letting, a collier's man, and John Anthony of the merchant ship
_Providence_, learnt this fact to their cost when they were taken out
of their respective ships for having each two protections. In short,
the slightest pretext served. If a protection had but a few more days to
run; if the name, date, place or other essential particular showed
signs of "coaxing," that is, of having been "on purpose rubbed out" or
altered; if a man's description did not figure in his protection, or
if it figured on the back instead of in the margin, or in the margin
instead of on the back; if his face wore a ruddy rather than a pale
look, if his hair were red when it ought to have been brown, if he
proved to be "tall and remarkable thin" when he should have been
middle-sized and thick-set--in any of these, as in a hundred and one
similar cases, the bearer of the protection paid the penalty for what
the impress officer regarded as a "hoodwinking attempt" to cheat the
King's service of an eligible man.
Notwithstanding the fact that the impress officer regarded every
pressable man as a person who made it his chief business in life
to defraud the Navy of his services on the "miserable plea of a
protection," it by no means followed that his zeal in pressing him
on that account had in every case the countenance or met with the
unqualified approval of the Admiralty. Thousands of men and boys taken
in this irresponsible fashion obtained their discharge, though with
more or less difficulty and delay, when the facts of the case were
laid before the naval authorities; and in general it may be said, that
although the Lords Commissioners were only too ready to wink at any
colourable excuse whereby another physical unit might be added to the
fleet, they nevertheless laid it down as a rule, inviolable at least
on paper, "never to press any man from protections," since it brought
"great trouble and clamour upon them." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
3. 50--Admiralty Minutes, 26 Feb. 1744-5.] To assert that the rule was
generally obeyed would be to turn the truth into a lie. On the contrary,
it was almost universally disregarded. Both officers and gangs traversed
it on every possible occasion, leaving the justice or injustice of the
act to the arbitrament of the higher tribunal. Zeal for the service was
no crime, and to release a man was always so much easier than to catch
him.
"Pressing from protections," as the phrase ran in the service, did
not therefore mean that the Admiralty over-rode its own protections
at pleasure. It merely signified that on occasion more than ordinarily
stringent measures were adopted for the holding-up and examining of
all protected persons, or of as many of them as could be got at by the
gangs, to the end that all false or fraudulent vouchers might be weeded
out and the dishonest bearers of them consigned to another place. And
yet there were times when "pressing from protections" had its plenary
significance too.
Lovers of prints who are familiar with Hogarth's "Stage Coach; or,
a Country Inn Yard," date 1747, will readily recall the two
"outsides"--the one a down-in-the-mouth soldier, the other a jolly
Jack-tar on whose bundle may be read the word "Centurion." Now the
_Centurion_ was Anson's flag-ship, and in this print Hogarth has
incidentally recorded the fact that her crew, on their return from that
famous voyage round the world, were awarded life-protections from the
press. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Capt. Anson, 24 July
1744.]
The life-protection was an indulgence extended to few. Samuel Davidson
of Newcastle, sailor, aged fifty, who had "served for nine years during
the late wars," in 1777 made bold to plead that fact as a reason why he
should be freed from the attentions of the press-gang for the rest of
his life. But the Lords Commissioners refused to admit the plea "unless
he was in a position not inferior to that of chief mate." On the other
hand, Henry Love of Hastings, who had merely served in a single Dutch
expedition, but had the promise of Pitt and Dundas that both he and
those who volunteered with him should never be pressed, was immediately
discharged when that calamity befell him. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
1. 1449--Capt. Columbine, 21 July 1800.]
The granting of extraordinary protections was thus something entirely
erratic and not to be counted upon. Captain Balchen in 1708 had special
protections for ten of his ship's company whom he desired to bring to
London as witnesses in a suit then pending against him; but the building
of the three earlier Eddystone lighthouses was allowed to be seriously
impeded by the pressing of the unprotected workmen when on shore at
Plymouth, and the keepers of the first erection of that name were once
carried off bag and baggage by the gang.
Smeaton, who built the third Eddystone, protected his men by means of
silver badges, and his storeboat enjoyed similar immunity--presumably
with the consent of Admiralty--by reason of a picture of the lighthouse
painted on her sail. Other great constructors, as well as rich
mercantile firms, bought protection at a price. They supplied a
stipulated number of men for the fleet, and found the arrangement a
highly convenient one for ridding themselves of those who were useless
to them or had incurred their displeasure. [Footnote: _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 583--Admiral Thornborough, 30 Nov. 1813.]
Private protections, of which great numbers saw the light, were in no
case worth the paper they were written on. Joseph Bettesworth of Ryde,
Isle of Wight, Attorney-at-Law and Lord of the Manor of Ashey and Ryde,
by virtue of an ancient privilege pertaining to that Manor and confirmed
by royal Letters Patent, in 1790 protected some twenty seafaring men to
work his "Antient Ferry or Passage for the Wafting of Passengers to and
from Ride, Portsmouth and Gosport, in a smack of about 14 tons, and a
wherry." The regulating captain at the last-named place asked what he
should do about it. "Press every man as soon as possible," replied their
Lordships. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1506--Capt. John Bligh,
June 1790, and enclosure.]