AT GRIPS WITH THE GANG.
When all avenues of escape were cut off and the sailor found himself
face to face with the gang and imminent capture, he either surrendered
his liberty at the word of command or staked it on the issue of a fight.
His choice of the latter alternative was the proverbial turning of
the worm, but of a worm that was no mean adversary. Fear of the gang,
supposing him to entertain any, was thrown to the winds. Fear of
the consequences--the clink, or maybe the gallows for a last
land-fall--which had restrained him in less critical moments when he had
both room to run and opportunity, sat lightly on him now. In red realism
there flashed through his brain the example of some doughty sailor, the
hero of many an anchor-watch and forecastle yarn, who had fought the
gang to its last man and yet come off victor. The swift vision fired
his blood and nerved his arm, and under its obsession he stood up to his
would-be captors with all the dogged pluck for which he was famous when
facing the enemy at sea.
In contests of this description the weapon perhaps counted for as much
as the man who wielded it, and as its nature depended largely upon
circumstances and surroundings, the range of choice was generally
wide enough to please the most elective taste. Pressing consequently
introduced the gangsman to some strange weapons.
Trim, the Poole sailor whose capture is narrated in the foregoing
chapter, defended himself with a red-hot poker. In what may be termed
domestic as opposed to public pressing, the use of this homely utensil
as an impromptu liberty-preserver was not at all uncommon. Hot or cold,
it proved a formidable weapon in the hands of a determined man, more
especially when, as was at that time very commonly the case, it belonged
to the ponderous cobiron or knobbed variety.
Another weapon of recognised utility, particularly in the vicinity
of docks, careening-stations and ship-yards, was the humble tar-mop.
Consisting of a wooden handle some five or six feet in length, though of
no great diameter, terminating in a ball of spun-yarn forming the actual
mop, this implement, when new, was comparatively harmless. No serious
blow could then be dealt with it; but once it had been used for "paying"
a vessel's bottom and sides it underwent a change that rendered it
truly formidable. The ball of ravellings forming the mop became then
thoroughly, charged with tar or pitch and dried in a rough mass scarcely
less heavy than lead. In this condition it was capable of inflicting
a terrible blow, and many were the tussels decided by it. A remarkable
instance of its effective use occurred at Ipswich in 1703, when a gang
from the _Solebay_, rowing up the Orwell from Harwich, attempted to
press the men engaged in re-paying a collier. They were immediately
"struck down with Pitch-Mopps, to the great Peril of their Lives."
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1436--Capt. Aldred, 6 Jan. 1702-3.]
The weapon to which the sailor was most partial, however, was the
familiar capstan-bar. In it, as in its fellow the handspike, he found
a whole armament. Its availability, whether on shipboard or at the
waterside, its rough-and-ready nature, and above all its heft and
general capacity for dealing a knock-down blow without inflicting
necessarily fatal injuries, adapted it exactly to the sailor's
requirements, defensive or the reverse. It was with a capstan-bar that
Paul Jones, when hard pressed by a gang on board his ship at Liverpool,
was reputed to have stretched three of his assailants dead on deck.
Every sailor had heard of that glorious achievement and applauded it,
the killing perhaps grudgingly excepted.
So, too, did he applaud the hardihood of William Bingham, that far-famed
north-country sailor who, adopting pistols as his weapon, negligently
stuck a brace of them in his belt and walked the streets of Newcastle in
open defiance of the gangs, none of which durst lay a hand on him till
the unlucky day when, in a moment of criminal carelessness that could
never be forgiven, he left his weapons at home and was haled to the
press-room fighting, all too late, like a fiend incarnate.
Not to enlarge on the endless variety of chance weapons, there remained
those good old-standers the musket, the cutlass and the knife, each of
which, in the sailor's grasp, played its part in the rough-and-tumble of
pressing, and played it well. A case in point, familiar to every seaman,
was the last fight put up by that famous Plymouth sailor, Emanuel
Herbert, another fatalist who, like Bingham, believed in having two
strings to his bow. He accordingly provided himself with both fuzee
and hanger, and with these comforting bed-fellows retired to rest in an
upper chamber of the public-house where he lodged, easy in the knowledge
that whatever happened the door of his crib commanded the stairs. From
this stronghold the gang invited him to come down. He returned the
compliment by inviting them up, assuring them that he had a warm welcome
in store for the first who should favour him with a visit. The ambiguity
of the invitation appears to have been thrown away upon the gang, for
"three of my people," says the officer who led them, "rushed up, and the
gun missing fire, he immediately run one of them through the body
with the hanger"--a mode of welcoming his visitors which resulted in
Herbert's shifting his lodgings to Exeter jail, and in the wounded man's
speedy death. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1473--Capt. Brown, 4
July 1727.]
Here was a serious contingency indeed; but whatever deterrent effect the
fatal issue of this affair, as of many similar ones, may have had upon
the sailor's use of lethal weapons when attacked by the gang, that
effect was largely, if not altogether, neutralised by the upshot of the
famous Broadfoot case, which, occurring some sixteen years later, gave
the scales of justice a decided turn in the sailor's favour and robbed
the killing of a gangsman of its only terror, the shadow of the gallows.
The incident in question opened in Bristol river, with the boarding of
a merchant-man by a tender's gang. As they came over the side Broadfoot
met them, blunderbuss in hand. Being there to guard the ship, he bade
them begone, and upon their disregarding the order, and closing in upon
him with evident intent to take him, he clapped the blunderbuss, which
was heavily charged with swanshot, to his shoulder and let fly into
the midst of them. One of their number, Calahan by name, fell mortally
wounded, and Broadfoot was in due course indicted for wilful murder.
[Footnote: _Westminster Journal_, 30 April 1743.] How he was found not
guilty on the ground that a warrant directed to the lieutenant gave
the gang no power to take him, and that he was therefore justified in
defending himself, was well known to every sailor in the kingdom. No
jury thereafter ever found him guilty of a capital felony if by chance
he killed a gangsman in self-defence. The worst he had to fear was a
verdict of manslaughter--a circumstance that proved highly inspiriting
to him in his frequent scraps with the gang.
There was another aspect of the case, however, that came home to the
sailor rather more intimately than the risk of being called upon to "do
time" under conditions scarcely worse than those he habitually endured
at sea. Suppose, instead of his killing the gangsman, the gangsman
killed him? He recalled a case he had heard much palaver about. An able
seaman, a perfect Tom Bowling of a fellow, brought to at an alehouse in
the Borough--the old "Bull's Head" it was--having a mind to lie snug
for a while, 'tween voyages. However, one day, being three sheets in
the wind or thereabouts, he risked a run and was made a prize of, worse
luck, by a press-gang that engaged him. Their boat lay at Battle Bridge
in the Narrow Passage, and while they were bearing down upon her, with
the sailor-chap in tow, what should Jack do but out with his knife and
slip it into one of the gangers. 'Twas nothing much, a waistcoat wound
at most, but the ganger resented the liberty, and swearing that no man
should tap his claret for nix, he ups with his cudgel and fetches Jack
a clip beside the head that lost him the number of his mess, for soon
after he was discharged dead along of having his head broke. [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1486--Lieut. Slyford, 24 Nov. 1755. "Discharged
dead," abbreviated to "DD," the regulation entry in the muster books
against the names of persons deceased.]
Risks of this sort raised grave issues for the sailor--issues to be well
considered of in those serious moments that came to the most reckless on
the wings of the wind or the lift of the waves at sea, what time drink
and the gang were remote factors in the problem of life. But ashore! Ah!
that was another matter. Life ashore was far too crowded, far too sweet
for serious reflections. The absorbing business of pleasure left little
room for thought, and the thoughts that came to the sailor later, when
he had had his fling and was again afoot in search of a ship, decidedly
favoured the killing of a gangsman, if need be, rather than the loss of
his own life or of a berth. The prevalence of these sentiments rendered
the taking of the sailor a dangerous business, particularly when he
consorted in bands.
In that part of the west country traversed by the great roads from
Bristol to Liverpool, and having Stourbridge as its approximate centre,
ambulatory bands proved very formidable. The presence of the rendezvous
at Stourbridge accounted for this. Seamen travelled in strength because
they feared it. Two gangs were stationed there under Capt. Beecher, and
news of the approach of a large party of seamen from the south having
one day been brought in, he at once made preparations for intercepting
them. Lieut. Barnsley and his gang marched direct to Hoobrook, a couple
of miles south of Kidderminster, a point the seamen had perforce to
pass. His instructions were to wait there, picking up in the meantime
such of the sailor party as lagged behind from footsoreness or fatigue,
till joined by Lieut. Birchall and the other gang, when the two were to
unite forces and press the main body. Through unforeseen circumstances,
however, the plan miscarried. Birchall, who had taken a circuitous
route, arrived late, whilst the band of sailors arrived early. They
numbered, moreover, forty-six as against eleven gangsmen and two
officers. Four to one was a temptation the sailors could not resist.
They attacked the gangs with such ferocity that out of the thirteen only
one man returned to the rendezvous with a whole skin. Luckily, there
were no casualties on this occasion; but a few days later, while two of
Barnsley's gangsmen were out on duty some little distance from the town,
they were suddenly attacked by a couple of sailors, presumably members
of the same band, who left one of them dead in the road. [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1501--Capt. Beecher, 12 July and 4 Aug. 1781.]
Owing to its close proximity to the Thames, that remote suburb of
eighteenth century London known as Stepney Fields was much frequented
by armed bands of the above description, who successfully resisted all
attempts to take them. The master-at-arms of the _Chatham_ man-o'-war,
chancing once to pass that way, came in for exceedingly rough usage at
their hands, and when next day a lieutenant from the same ship
appeared upon the scene with a gang at his back and tried to press the
ringleaders in that affair, they "swore by God he should not, and if he
offered to lay hands on them, they would cut him down." With this threat
they drew their cutlasses, slashed savagely at the lieutenant, and
"made off through the Mobb which had gathered round them." [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2579--Capt. Townshend, 21 April 1743.]
A spot not many miles distant from Stepney Fields was the scene of a
singular fray many years later. His Majesty's ship _Squirrel_ happened
at the time to be lying in Longreach, and her commander, Capt. Brawn,
one day received intelligence that a number of sailors were to be met
with in the town of Barking. He at once dispatched his 1st and 2nd
lieutenants with a contingent of twenty-five men and several petty
officers, to rout them out and take them. They reached Barking about
nine o'clock in the evening, the month being July, and were not long in
securing several of the skulkers, who with many of the male inhabitants
of the place were at that hour congregated in public-houses,
unsuspicious of danger. The sudden appearance in their midst of so
large an armed force, however, coupled with the outcry and confusion
inseparable from the pressing of a number of men, alarmed the townsfolk,
who poured into the streets, rescued the pressed men, and would have
inflicted summary punishment upon the intruders had not the senior
officer, seeing his party hopelessly outnumbered, tactfully drawn off
his force. This he did in good order and without serious hurt; but just
as he and his men were congratulating themselves upon their escape, they
were suddenly ambushed, at a point where their road ran between high
banks, by a "large concourse of Irish haymakers, to the number of at
least five hundred men, all armed with sabres [Footnote: So in
the original, but "sabres" is perhaps an error for "scythes."] and
pitchforks," who with wild cries and all the Irishman's native love of
a shindy fell upon the unfortunate gangsmen and gave them a "most severe
beating." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1529--Capt. Brawn, 3 July
1803.]
Attacks on the gang, made with deliberate intent to rescue pressed men
from its custody, were by no means confined to Barking. The informer
throve in the land, but notwithstanding his hostile activity the sailor
everywhere had friends who possessed at least one cardinal virtue. They
seldom hung back when he was in danger, or hesitated to strike a blow in
his defence.
There came into Limehouse Hole, on a certain day in the summer of 1709,
a vessel called the _Martin_ galley. How many men were in her we do not
learn; but whatever their number, there was amongst them one man who
had either a special dread of the press or some more than usually urgent
occasion for wishing to avoid it. Watching his opportunity, he slipped
into one of the galley's boats, sculled her rapidly to land, and there
leapt out--just as a press-gang hove in sight ahead! It was a dramatic
moment. The sailor, tacking at sight of the enemy, ran swiftly along
the river-bank, but was almost immediately overtaken, knocked down, and
thrown into the press-boat, which lay near by. "This gather'd a Mob,"
says the narrator of the incident, "who Pelted the Boat and Gang by
throwing Stones and Dirt from the Shoar, and being Pursued also by the
Galley's men, who brought Cutlasses in the Boat with them to rescue
their Prest Man, the Gang was at last forc'd to betake themselves to a
Corn-lighter, where they might stand upon their Defence. The Galley's
men could not get aboard, but lay with their Boat along the side of the
Lighter, where they endeavouring to force in, and the Gang to keep them
out, the Boat of a sudden oversett and some of the Men therein were
Drown'd. Three of the Press-Gang were forc'd likewise into the Water,
whereof 'tis said one is Drown'd and the other two in Irons in the New
Prison. The remaining part of the Gang leapt into a Wherry, the Galley's
men pursuing them, but, not gaining upon them, they gave over the
Pursuit." The pressed man all this while was laughing in his sleeve. "He
lay on the other side of the Lighter, in the Tender's boat, whence he
made his escape." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1437--Capt. Aston,
10 Aug. 1709.]
In their efforts to restore the freedom of the pressed man, the sailor's
friends did not confine their attention exclusively to the gang. When
they turned out in vindication of those rights which the sailor did not
possess, they not infrequently found their diversion in wrecking the
gang's headquarters or in making a determined, though generally futile,
onslaught upon the tender. Respectable people, who had no particular
reason to favour the sailor's cause, viewed these ebullitions of mingled
rage and mischief with dismay, stigmatising those who so lightheartedly
participated in them as the "lower classes" and the "mob."
Few towns in the kingdom boasted--or reprobated, as the case might be--a
more erratically festive mob than Leith. As far back as 1709 Bailie
Cockburn had advised the inhabitants of that burgh to "oppose any
impressor," and seizing the occasion of the "Impressure of an Apprentice
Boy," had set them an example by arresting the pinnace of Her Majesty's
ship _Rye_, together with her whole crew, thirteen in number, and
keeping them in close confinement till the lad was given up. [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2448--Capt. Shale, 4 Jan. 1708-9.] The worthy
Bailie was in due time gathered unto his fathers, and with the growth of
the century gangs came and went in endless succession, but neither the
precept nor the example was ever forgotten in Leith. Much pressing was
done there, but it was done almost entirely upon the water. To transfer
the scene of action to the strand meant certain tumult, for there the
whim of the mob was law. Now it pulled the gang-officer's house about
his ears because he dared to press a shipwright; again, it stoned the
gang viciously because they rescued some seamen from a wreck--and kept
them. Between whiles it amused itself by cutting down the rendezvous
flag-staff; and if nothing better offered, it split up into component
parts, each of which became a greater terror than the whole. One
night, when the watch had been set and all was quiet, a party of
this description, only three in number, approached the rendezvous
and respectfully requested leave to drink a last dram with some
newly pressed men who were then in the cage, their quondam shipmates.
Suspecting no ulterior design, the guard incautiously admitted them,
whereupon they dashed a quantity of spirits on the fire, set the place
in a blaze, and carried off the pressed men amid the hullabaloo that
followed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1516-9--Letters of Capt.
Brenton, 1797-8; Lieut. Pierie, 2 Feb. 1798.]
If Leith did this sort of thing well, Greenock, her commercial rival on
the Clyde, did it very much better; for where the Leith mob was but a
sporadic thing, erupting from its slummy fastnesses only in response to
rumour of chance amusement to be had or mischief to be done, Greenock
held her mob always in hand, a perpetual menace to the gangsman did he
dare to disregard the Clydeside ordinance in respect to pressing. That
ordinance restricted pressing exclusively to the water; but it went
further, for it laid it down as an inviolable rule that members of
certain trades should not be pressed at all.
It was with the Trades that the ordinance originated. There was little
or no Greenock apart from the Trades. The will of the Trades was
supreme. The coopers, carpenters, riggers, caulkers and seamen of
the town ruled the burgh. Assembled in public meeting, they resolved
unanimously "to stand by and support each other" in the event of a
press; and having come to this decision they indited a trite letter
to the magistrates, intimating in unequivocal terms that "if they
countenanced the press, they must abide by the consequences," for once
the Trades took the matter in hand "they could not say where they would
stop." With the worthy burgesses laying down the law in this fashion, it
is little wonder that the gangs "seldom dared to press ashore," or that
they should have been able to take "only two coopers in ten months."
For the Trades were as good as their word. The moment a case of
prohibited pressing became known they took action. Alexander Weir,
member of the Shipwrights' Society, was taken whilst returning from his
"lawful employ," and immediately his mates, to the number of between
three and four hundred, downed tools and marched to the rendezvous,
where they peremptorily demanded his release. Have him they would, and
if the gang-officer did not see fit to comply with their demand, not
only should he never press another man in Greenock, but they would seize
one of the armed vessels in the river, lay her alongside the tender,
where Weir was confined, and take him out of her by force. Brenton was
regulating captain there at the time, and to pacify the mob he promised
to release the man--and broke his word. Thereupon the people "became
very riotous and proceeded to burn everything that came in their way.
About twelve o'clock they hauled one of the boats belonging to the
rendezvous upon the Square and put her into the fire, but by the timely
assistance of the officers and gangs, supported by the magistrates and a
body of the Fencibles, the boat was recovered, though much damaged, and
several of the ringleaders taken up and sent to prison." The affair did
not end without bloodshed. "Lieut. Harrison, in defending himself, was
under the necessity of running one of the rioters through the ribs."
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1508--Letters of Capt. Brenton, 1793.]
Though Bailie Cockburn once "arrested" the pinnace of a man-o'-war at
Leith, the attempted burning of the Greenock press-boat is worthy of
more than passing note as the only instance of that form of retaliation
to be met with in the history of home pressing. In the American
colonies, on the other hand, it was a common feature of demonstrations
against the gang. Boston was specially notorious for that form of
reprisal, and Governor Shirley, in one of his masterly dispatches,
narrates at length, and with no little humour, how the mob on one
occasion burnt with great éclat what they believed to be the press-boat,
only to discover, when it was reduced to ashes, that it belonged to
one of their own ringleaders. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
38l8--Shirley to the Admiralty, 1 Dec. 1747.]
The threat of the Greenock artificers to lay alongside the tender and
take out their man by force of arms was one for which there existed
abundant, if by no means encouraging precedent. Long before, as early,
indeed, as 1742, the keelmen frequenting Sunderland had set them an
example in that respect by endeavouring, some hundreds strong, to haul
the tender ashore--an attempt coupled with threats so dire that the
officer in command trembled in his shoes lest he and his men should all
"be made sacrifices of." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt.
Allen, 13 March 1741-2.] Nothing so dreadful happened, however, for
the attempt, like that made at Shoreham a few years later, when there
"appear'd in Sight, from towards Brighthelmstone, about two or three
Hundred Men arm'd with different Weapons, who came with an Intent to
Attack the _Dispatch_ sloop," failed ignominiously, the attackers being
routed on both occasions by a timely use of swivel guns and musketry.
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1482--Lieut. Barnsley, 25 March 1746.]
Similar disaster overtook the organisers of the Tooley Street affair,
of which one Taylor, lieutenant to Capt. William Boys of the _Royal
Sovereign_, was the active cause. At the "Spread-Eagle" in Tooley Street
he and his gang one evening pressed a privateersman--an insult keenly
resented by the master of the ship. He accordingly sent off to the
tender, whither the pressed man had been conveyed for security's sake,
two wherries filled with armed seamen of the most piratical type. The
fierce fight that ensued had a dramatic finish. "Two Pistols we took
from them," says the narrator of the incident, in his quaint old style,
"and three Cutlasses, and Six Men; but one of the Men took the Red Hott
Poker out of the Fire, and our Men, having the Cutlasses, Cutt him and
Kill'd him in Defence of themselves." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
1488--Lieut. Taylor, 1 April 1757.]
In attacks of this nature the fact that the tender was afloat told
heavily in her favour, for unless temporarily hung up upon a mud-bank by
the fall of the tide, she could only be got at by means of boats. With
the rendezvous ashore the case was altogether different. Here you had a
building in a public street, flaunting its purpose provocatively in
your very face, and having a rear to guard as well as a front. For these
reasons attacks on the rendezvous were generally attended with a greater
measure of success than similar attempts directed against the tenders.
The face of a pressed man had only to show itself at one of the stoutly
barred windows, and immediately a crowd gathered. To the prisoner behind
the bars this crowd was friendly, commiserating or chaffing him by
turns; but to the gangsmen responsible for his being there it was
invariably and uncompromisingly hostile, so much so that it needed only
a carelessly uttered threat, or a thoughtlessly lifted hand, to fan
the smouldering fires of hatred into a blaze. When this occurred, as
it often did, things happened. Paving-stones hurtled through the
curse-laden air, the windows flew in fragments, the door, assailed by
overwhelming numbers, crashed in, and despite the stoutest resistance
the gang could offer the pressed man was hustled out and carried off in
triumph.
The year 1755 witnessed a remarkable attack of this description upon the
rendezvous at Deal, where a band of twenty-seven armed men made a sudden
descent upon that obnoxious centre of activity and cut up the gang
most grievously. As all wore masks and had their faces blackened,
identification was out of the question. A reward of 200 Pounds, offered
for proof of complicity in the outrage, elicited no information, and as
a matter of fact its perpetrators were never discovered.
In Capt. McCleverty's time the gang at Waterford was once very roughly
handled whilst taking in a pressed man, and Mr. Mayor Alcock came
hurrying down to learn what was amiss. He found the rendezvous beset by
an angry and dangerous gathering. "Sir," said he to the captain, "have
you no powder or shot in the house?" McCleverty assured him that he had.
"Then, sir," cried the mayor, raising his voice so that all might hear,
"do you make use of it, and I will support you." The crowd understood
that argument and immediately dispersed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
1. 1500--Deposition of Lieut. M Kellop, 1780.]
Had the Admiralty reasoned in similar terms with those who beat its
gangsmen, converted its rendezvous into match-wood and carried off its
pressed men, it would have quickly made itself as heartily feared as it
was already hated; but in seeking to shore up an odious cause by
pacific methods it laid its motives open to the gravest misconstruction.
Prudence was construed into timidity, and with every abstention from
lead the sailor's mobbish friends grew more daring and outrageous.
One night in the winter of 1780, whilst Capt. Worth of the Liverpool
rendezvous sat lamenting the temporary dearth of seamen, Lieut. Haygarth
came rushing in with a rare piece of news. On the road from Lancaster,
it was reported, there was a whole coach-load of sailors. The chance
was too good to be lost, and instant steps were taken to intercept
the travellers. The gangs turned out, fully armed, and took up their
position at a strategic point, just outside the town, commanding the
road by which the sailors had to pass. By and by along came the coach,
the horses weary, the occupants nodding or asleep. In a trice they were
surrounded. Some of the gangsmen sprang at the horses' heads, others
threw themselves upon the drowsy passengers. Shouts, curses and the
thud of blows broke the silence of the night. Then the coach rumbled on
again, empty. Its late occupants, fifteen in number, sulkily followed on
foot, surrounded by their captors, who, as soon as the town was reached,
locked them into the press-room for the rest of the night, it being the
captain's intention to put them on board the tender in the Mersey at
break of day.
In this, however, he was frustrated by a remarkable development in the
situation. Unknown to him, the coach-load of seamen had been designed
for the _Stag_ privateer, a vessel just on the point of sailing. News
of their capture reaching the ship soon after their arrival in the town,
Spence, her 1st lieutenant, at once roused out all his available men,
armed them, to the number of eighty, with cutlass and pistol, and led
them ashore. There all was quiet, favouring their design. The hour was
still early, and the silent, swift march through the deserted streets
attracted no attention and excited no alarm. At the rendezvous the
opposition of the weary sentinels counted for little. It was quickly
brushed aside, the strong-room door gave way beneath a few well-directed
blows, and by the time Liverpool went to breakfast the _Stag_
privateer was standing out to sea, her crew not only complete, but ably
supplemented by eight additional occupants of the press-room who had
never, so far as is known, travelled in that commodious vehicle, the
Lancaster coach. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7, 300--Law Officers'
Opinions, 1778-83, No. 19.]
The neighbouring city of Chester in 1803 matched this exploit by another
of great audacity. Chester had long been noted for its hostility to the
gang, and the fact that the local volunteer corps--the Royal Chester
Artillery--was composed mainly of ropemakers, riggers, shipwrights and
sailmakers who had enlisted for the sole purpose of evading the press,
did not tend to allay existing friction. Hence, when Capt. Birchall
brought over a gang from Liverpool because he could not form one in
Chester itself, and when he further signalised his arrival by pressing
Daniel Jackson, a well-known volunteer, matters at once came to an ugly
head. The day happened to be a field-day, and as Birchall crossed the
market square to wait upon the magistrates at the City Hall, he was
"given to understand what might be expected in the evening," for one of
the artillerymen, striking his piece, called out to his fellows:
"Now for a running ball! There he goes!" with hissing, booing and
execrations. At seven o'clock one of the gang rushed into the captain's
lodgings with disquieting news. The volunteers were attacking the
rendezvous. He hurried out, but by the time he arrived on the scene the
mischief was already done. The enraged volunteers, after first driving
the gang into the City Hall, had torn down the rendezvous colours and
staff, and broken open the city jail and rescued their comrade, whom
they were then in the act of carrying shoulder-high through the streets,
the centre of a howling mob that even the magistrates feared to face. By
request Birchall and his gang returned to Liverpool, counting themselves
lucky to have escaped the "running ball" they had been threatened
with earlier in the day. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1529--Capt.
Birchall, 29 Dec. 1803.]
Another town that gave the gang a hot reception was Whitby. As in the
case of Chester the gang there was an importation, having been brought
in from Tyneside by Lieuts. Atkinson and Oakes. As at Chester, too, a
place of rendezvous had been procured with difficulty, for at first
no landlord could be found courageous enough to let a house for so
dangerous a purpose. At length, however, one Cooper was prevailed upon
to take the risk, and the flag was hung out. This would seem to have
been the only provocative act of which the gang was guilty. It sufficed.
Anticipation did the rest; for just as in some individuals gratitude
consists in a lively sense of favours to come, so the resentment of mobs
sometimes avenges a wrong before it has been inflicted.
On Saturday the 23rd of February 1793, at the hour of half-past seven
in the evening, a mob of a thousand persons, of whom many were women,
suddenly appeared before the rendezvous. The first intimation of what
was about to happen came in the shape of a furious volley of brickbats
and stones, which instantly demolished every window in the house, to
the utter consternation of its inmates. Worse, however, was in store
for them. An attempt to rush the place was temporarily frustrated by the
determined opposition of the gang, who, fearing that all in the house
would be murdered, succeeded in holding the mob at bay for an hour and
a half; but at nine o'clock, several of the gangsmen having been in the
meantime struck down and incapacitated by stones, which were rained
upon the devoted building without cessation, the door at length gave way
before an onslaught with capstan-bars, and the mob swarmed in unchecked.
A scene of indescribable confusion and fury ensued. Savagely assaulted
and mercilessly beaten, the gangsmen and the unfortunate landlord were
thrown into the street more dead than alive, every article of furniture
on the premises was reduced to fragments, and when the mob at length
drew off, hoarsely jubilant over the destruction it had wrought, nothing
remained of His Majesty's rendezvous save bare walls and gaping windows.
Even these were more than the townsfolk could endure the sight of. Next
evening they reappeared upon the scene, intending to finish what they
had begun by pulling the house down or burning it to ashes; but the
timely arrival of troops frustrating their design, they regretfully
dispersed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2739--Lieut. Atkinson, 26
Feb. and 27 June 1793.]
Out at sea the sailor, if he could not set the tune by running away from
the gang, played up to it with great heartiness. To sink the press-boat
was his first aim. With this end in view he held stolidly on his course,
if under weigh, betraying his intention by no sign till the boat,
manoeuvring to get alongside of him, was in the right position for him
to strike. Then, all of a sudden, he showed his hand. Clapping his helm
hard over, he dexterously ran the boat down, leaving the struggling
gangsmen to make what shift they could for their lives. Many a knight
of the hanger was sent to Davy Jones in this summary fashion, unloved in
life and cursed in the article of death.
The attempt to best the gang by a master-stroke of this description was
not, it need hardly be said, attended with uniform success. A miss of an
inch or two, and the boat was safe astern, pulling like mad to recover
lost ground. In these circumstances the sailor recalled how he had once
seen a block fall from aloft and smash a shipmate's head, and from this
he argued that if a suitable object such as a heavy round-shot, or,
better still, the ship's grindstone, were deftly dropped over the side
at the psychological moment, it must either have a somewhat similar
effect upon the gangsmen below or sink the boat by knocking a hole in
her bottom. The case of the _John and Elizabeth_ of Sunderland, that
redoubtable Holland pink whose people were "resolved sooner to dye
than to be impressed," affords an admirable example of the successful
application of this theory.
As the _John and Elizabeth_ was running into Sunderland harbour one
afternoon in February 1742, three press-boats, hidden under cover of
the pier-head, suddenly darted out as she surged past that point and
attempted to board her. They met with a remarkable repulse. For ten
minutes, according to the official account of the affair, the air
was filled with grindstones, four-pound shot, iron crows, handspikes,
capstan-bars, boat-hooks, billets of wood and imprecations, and when it
cleared there was not in any of the boats a man who did not bear upon
his person some bloody trace of that terrible fusillade. They sheered
off, but in the excitement of the moment and the mortification of
defeat Midshipmen Clapp and Danton drew their pistols and fired into the
jeering crew ranged along the vessel's gunwhale, "not knowing," as they
afterwards pleaded, "that there was any balls in the pistols." Evidence
to the contrary was quickly forthcoming. A man fell dead on the pink's
deck, and before morning the two middies were safe under lock and key in
that "dismal hole," Durham jail. It was a notable victory for the sailor
and applied mechanics. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt.
Allen, 13 March 1741-2, and enclosure.]
The affair of the _King William_ Indiaman, a ship whose people kept
the united boats'-crews of two men-of-war at bay for nearly twenty-four
hours, carried the sailor's resistance to the press an appreciable step
further and developed some surprising tactics. Between three and four
o'clock in the afternoon of a day in September 1742, two ships came into
the Downs in close order. They had been expected earlier in the day, and
both the _Shrewsbury_ frigate and the _Shark_ sloop were on the lookout
for them. A shot from the former brought the headmost to an anchor, but
the second, the _King William_, hauled her wind and stood away close to
the Goodwins, out of range of the frigate's guns. Here, the tide being
spent and the wind veering ahead, she was obliged to anchor, and the
warships' boats were at once manned and dispatched to press her men.
Against this eventuality the latter appear to have been primed "with
Dutch courage," as the saying went, the manner of which was to broach
a cask of rum and drink your fill. On the approach of the press-boats
pandemonium broke loose. The maddened crew, brandishing their cutlasses
and shouting defiance, assailed the on-coming boats with every
description of missile they could lay hands on, not excepting that most
dangerous of all casual ammunition, broken bottles. The _Shrewsbury's_
mate fell, seriously wounded, and finding themselves unable to face
the terrible hail of missiles, the boats drew off. Night now came on,
rendering further attempts temporarily impossible--a respite of which
the Indiaman's crew availed themselves to confine the master and break
open the arms-chest, which he had taken the precaution to nail down.
With morning the boats returned to the attack. Three times they
attempted to board, and as often were they repulsed by pistol and
musketry fire. Upon this the _Shark_, acting under peremptory orders
from the _Shrewsbury_, ran down to within half-gunshot of the Indiaman
and fired a broadside into her, immediately afterwards repeating the
dose on finding her still defiant. The ship then submitted and all
her men were pressed save two. They had been killed by the _Shark's_
gun-fire. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1829--Capt. Goddard, 22
Sept. and 16 Oct., and his Deposition, 19 Oct. 1742.]
With the appearance of the gang on the deck of his ship there was
ushered in the last stage but one of the sailor's resistance to the
press afloat. How, when this happened, all hands were mustered and the
protected sheep separated from the unprotected goats, has been fully
described in a previous chapter. These preliminaries at an end, "Now, my
lads," said the gang officer, addressing the pressable contingent in the
terms of his instructions, "I must tell you that you are at liberty, if
you so choose, to enter His Majesty's service as volunteers. If you
come in in that way, you will each receive the bounty now being paid,
together with two months' advance wages before you go to sea. But if
you don't choose to enter volunteerly, then I must take you against your
wills"
It was a hard saying, and many an old shellback--ay! and young one
too--spat viciously when he heard it. Conceive the situation! Here were
these poor fellows returning from a voyage which perhaps had cut them
off from home and kindred, from all the ordinary comforts and pleasures
of life, for months or maybe years; here were they, with the familiar
cliffs and downs under their hungry eyes, suddenly confronted with an
alternative of the cruellest description, a Hobson's choice that
left them no option but to submit or fight. It was a heartbreaking
predicament for men, and more especially for sailor-men, to be placed
in, and if they sometimes rose to the occasion like men and did their
best to heave the gang bodily into the sea, or to drive them out of
the ship with such weapons as their hard situation and the sailor's
Providence threw in their way--if they did these things in the gang's
despite, they must surely be judged as outraged husbands, fathers and
lovers rather than as disloyal subjects of an exacting king. They would
have made but sorry man-o'-war's-men had they entertained the gang in
any other way.
Opposed to the service cutlass, the sailor's emergency weapon was but a
poor tool to stake his liberty upon, and even though the numerical
odds chanced to be in his favour he often learnt, in the course of his
pitched battles with the gang, that the edge of a hanger is sharper
than the corresponding part of a handspike. Lucky for him if, with his
shipmates, he could then retreat to close quarters below or between
decks, there to make a final stand for his brief spell of liberty
ashore. This was his last ditch. Beyond it lay only surrender or death.
The death of the sailor at the hands of the gang introduces us to a
phase of pressing technically known as the accidental, wherein the
accidents were of three kinds--casual, unavoidable, and "disagreeable."
The casual accident was one that could be neither foreseen nor averted,
as when Capt. Argles, returning to England on the breaking up of the
Limerick rendezvous in 1814, was captured by an American privateer "well
up the Bristol Channel," a place where no one ever dreamed of falling
in with such an enemy. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1455--Capt.
Argles, 17 Aug. 1814.]
To the unavoidable accident every impress officer and agent was liable
in the execution of his duty. It could thus be foreseen in the abstract,
though not in the instance. Hence it could not be avoided. Wounds given
and received in the heat and turmoil of pressing came under this head,
provided they did not prove fatal.
The accident "disagreeable" was peculiar to pressing. It consisted in
the killing of a man, by whatever means and in whatever manner, whilst
endeavouring to press him, and the immediate effect of the act, which
was common enough, was to set up a remarkable contradiction in terms.
The man killed was not the victim of the accident. The victim was the
officer or gangsman who was responsible for striking him off the roll
of His Majesty's pressable subjects, and who thus let himself in for the
consequences, more or less disagreeable, which inevitably followed.
While it was naturally the ambition of every officer engaged in pressing
"to do the business without any disagreeable accident ensuing," he
preferred, did fate ordain it otherwise, that the accident should
happen at sea rather than on land, since it was on land that the most
disagreeable consequences accrued to the unfortunate victim. These
embraced flight and prolonged expatriation, or, in the alternative,
arrest, preliminary detention in one of His Majesty's prisons, and
subsequent trial at the Assizes. What the ultimate punishment might be
was a minor, though still ponderable consideration, since, where naval
officers or agents were concerned, the law was singularly capricious.
[Footnote: As in Lacie's case, 25 Elizabeth, where a mortal wound having
been inflicted at sea, whereof the party died on land, the prisoner was
acquitted because neither the Admiralty nor a jury could inquire of
it.] At sea, on the other hand, the conditions which on land rendered
accidents of this nature so uniformly disagreeable, were almost entirely
reversed. How and why this was so can be best explained by stating a
case.
The accident in point occurred in the year 1755, and is associated with
the illustrious name of Rodney. The Seven Years War was at the time
looming in the near future, and England's secret complicity in the
causes of that tremendous struggle rendered necessary the placing of her
Navy upon a footing adequate to the demands which it was foreseen would
be very shortly made upon it. In common with a hundred other naval
officers, Rodney, who was then in command of the _Prince George_
guardship at Portsmouth, had orders to proceed without loss of time
to the raising of men. One of his lieutenants was accordingly sent to
London, that happy hunting-ground of the impress officer, while two
others, with picked crews at their backs, were put in charge of tenders
to intercept homeward-bounds. This was near the end of May.
[Illustration: ANNE MILLS. Who served on board the _Maidstone_
in 1740.]
On the 1st of June, in the early morning, one of these tenders--the
_Princess Augusta_, Lieut. Sax commander--fell in, off Portland Bill,
with the _Britannia_, a Leghorn trader of considerable force. In
response to a shot fired as an intimation that she was expected to
lay-to and receive a gang on board, the master, hailing, desired
permission to retain his crew intact till he should have passed that
dangerous piece of navigation known as the Race. To this reasonable
request Sax acceded and the ship held on her course, closely followed by
the tender. By the time the Race was passed, however, the merchant-man's
crew had come to a resolution. They should not be pressed by "such
a pimping vessel" as the _Princess Augusta_. Accordingly, they first
deprived the master of the command, and then, when again hailed by the
tender, "swore they would lose their lives sooner than bring too." The
Channel at this time swarmed with tenders, and to Sax's hint that they
might just as well give in then and there as be pressed later on, they
replied with defiant huzzas and the discharge of one of their maindeck
guns. The tender was immediately laid alongside, but on the gang's
attempting to board they encountered a resistance so fierce that Sax,
thinking to bring the infuriated crew to their senses, ordered his
people to fire upon them. Ralph Sturdy and John Debusk, armed with
harpoons, and John Wilson, who had requisitioned the cook's spit as
a weapon, fell dead before that volley. The rest, submitting without
further ado, were at once confined below.
Now, three questions of moment are raised by this accident: What became
of the ship? what was done with the dead men? and what punishment was
meted out to the lieutenant and his gang? The crew once secured
under hatches, the safety of the ship became of course the first
consideration. It was assured by a simple expedient. The gang remained
on board and worked the vessel into Portsmouth harbour, where, after her
hands had been taken out--Rodney the receiver--"men in lieu" were put
on board, as explained in our chapter on pressing afloat, and with this
make-shift crew she was navigated to her destination, in this instance
the port of London.
As persons killed at sea, the three sailors who lay dead on the
ship's deck did not come within the jurisdiction of the coroner. That
official's cognisance of such matters extended only to high-water mark
when the tide was at flood, or to low-water mark when it was at ebb.
Beyond those limits, seawards, all acts of violence done in great ships,
and resulting in mayhem or the death of a man, fell within the sole
purview and jurisdiction of the Station Admiral, who on this occasion
happened to be Sir Edward Hawke, commander of the White Squadron at
Portsmouth. Now Sir Edward was not less keenly alive to the importance
of keeping such cases hidden from the public eye than were the Lords
Commissioners. Hence he immediately gave orders that the bodies of the
dead men should be taken "without St. Helens" and there committed to the
deep. Instead of going to feed the Navy, the three sailors thus went to
feed the fishes, and another stain on the service was washed out with a
commendable absence of publicity and fuss.
There still remained the lieutenant and his gang to be dealt with and
brought to what, by another singular perversion of terms, was called
justice. On shore, notwithstanding the lenient view taken of such
accidents, an indictment of manslaughter, if not of murder, would have
assuredly followed the offence; and though in the circumstances it is
doubtful whether any jury would have found the culprits guilty of
the capital crime, yet the alternative verdict, with its consequent
imprisonment and disgrace, held out anything but a rosy prospect to the
young officer who had still his second "swab" to win. That was where the
advantage of accidents at sea came in. On shore the judiciary, however
kindly disposed to the naval service, were painfully disinterested. At
sea the scales of justice were held, none too meticulously, by brother
officers who had the service at heart. Under the judicious direction of
Admiral Osborn, who in the meantime had succeeded Sir Edward Hawke in
the Portsmouth command, Lieut. Sax and his gang were consequently
called upon to face no ordeal more terrible than an "inquiry into their
proceedings and behaviour." Needless to say, they were unanimously
exonerated, the court holding that the discharge of their duty fully
justified them in the discharge of their muskets. [Footnote: _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 5925--Minutes at a Court-Martial held on board H.M.S.
_Prince George_ at Portsmouth, 14 Nov. 1755. Precedent for the procedure
in this case is found in _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers'
Opinions, 1733-56, No. 27.] When such disagreeable accidents had to
be investigated, the disagreeable business was done--to purloin an apt
phrase of Coke's--"without prying into them with eagles' eyes."
But it is time to leave the trail of blood and turn to a more agreeable
phase of pressing.