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.