THE GANG AT PLAY.
The reasons assigned for the pressing of men who ought never to have
made the acquaintance of the warrant or the hanger were often as
far-fetched as they are amusing. "You have no right to press a person
of my distinction!" warmly protested an individual of the superior type
when pounced upon by the gang. "Lor love yer! that's the wery reason
we're a-pressin' of your worship," replied the grinning minions of the
service. "We've such a set of black-guards aboard the tender yonder, we
wants a toff like you to learn 'em manners."
The quixotic idea of inculcating manners by means of the press infected
others besides the gangsman. In a Navy whose officers not only plumed
themselves on representing the _ne plus ultra_ of etiquette, but
demanded that all who approached them should do so without sin either
of omission or commission, the idea was universal. Pride of service and
pride of self entered into its composition in about equal proportions;
hence the sailing-master who neglected to salute the flag, or who
through ignorance, crass stupidity, or malice aforethought flew
prohibited colours, was no more liable to be taught an exemplary lesson
than the bum-boatman who sauced the officer of the watch when detected
in the act of smuggling spirits or women into one of His Majesty's
ships.
For all such offenders the autocracy of the quarter-deck, from the rigid
commander down to the very young gentleman newly joined, kept a jealous
lookout, and many are the instances of punishment, swift and implacable,
following the offence. Insulted dignity could of course take it out of
the disrespectful fore-mastman with the rattan, the cat or the irons;
but for the ill-mannered outsider, whether pertaining to sea or land,
the recognised corrective was His Majesty's press. A solitary exception
is found in the case of Henry Crabb of Chatham, a boatman who rejoiced
in incurable lameness; rejoiced because, although there were many
cripples on board the Queen's ships in his day, his infirmity was such
as to leave him at liberty to ply for hire "when other men durst not for
feare of being Imprest." He was an impudent, over-reaching knave, and
Capt. Balchen, of the _Adventure_ man-o'-war, whose wife had suffered
much from the fellow's abusive tongue and extortionate propensities,
finding himself unable to press him, brought him to the capstan and
there gave him "eleven lashes with a Catt of Nine Tailes." [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1466--Capt. Balchen, 10 March 1703-4.]
A letter written in the early forties-a letter as breezy as the sea from
which it was penned--gives us a striking picture of the old-time naval
officer as a teacher of deportment. Cruising far down-Channel, Capt.
Brett, of the _Anglesea_ man-o'-war, there fell in with a ship whose
character puzzled him sorely. He consequently gave chase, but the wind
falling light and night coming on, he lost her. Early next morning, as
luck would have it, he picked her up again, and having now a "pretty
breeze," he succeeded in drawing within range of her about two o'clock
in the afternoon, when he fired a shot to bring her to. The strange sail
doubtless feared that she was about to lose her hands, for instead of
obeying the summons she trained her stern-chasers on the _Anglesea_ and
for an hour and a half blazed away at her as fast as she could load.
"They put a large marlinespike into one of their guns," the indignant
captain tells us, "which struck the carriage of the chase gun upon our
forecastle, dented it near two inches, then broke asunder and wounded
one of the men in the leg, and had it come a yard higher, must
infallibly have killed two or three. By all this behaviour I concluded
she must be an English vessel taken by the Spaniards. However, when we
came within a cable's length of him he brought to, so we run close under
his stern in order to shoot a little berth to leeward of him, and at the
same time bid them hoist their boats out. Our people, as is customary
upon such occasions, were then all up upon the gunhill and in the
shrouds, looking at him. Just as we came under his quarter he pointed a
gun that was sticking out a little abaft his main-shrouds right at us,
and put the match to it, but it happened very luckily that the gun
blew. A fellow that was standing on the quarter-deck then took up a
blunderbuss and presented it, which by its not going off must have
missed fire. As it was almost impossible, they being stripp'd and
bareheaded, besides having their faces besmeared with powder, for us
to judge them by their looks, I concluded they must be a Parcell of
Light-headed Frenchmen run mad, and thinking it by no means prudent to
let them kill my men in such a ridiculous manner, I ordered the marines,
who were standing upon the quarter-deck with their musquets shoulder'd,
to fire upon them. As soon as they saw the musquets presented they
fell flat upon the decks and by that means saved themselves from being
kill'd. Some of our people at the same time fired a 9-pounder right into
his quarter, upon which they immediately submitted. I own I never was
more surprised in all my life to find that she was an English vessel,
tho' my surprise was lessened a good deal when I came to see the master
and all his fighting men so drunk as to be scarce capable of giving a
rational answer to any question that was asked them. I was very glad to
find that none of them were hurt; _but I found out the man who presented
the blunderbuss, and upon his behaving saucily when I taxed him with
it, I took him out of the vessel._" [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
1. 1479--Capt. Brett, 17 April 1743. The captain's use of gender is
philologically instructive. Not till later times, it seems, did ships
lose the character of a "strong man armed" and take on, uniformly, the
attributes of the skittish female.]
[Illustration: SAILORS CAROUSING. From the mezzotint after J. Ibbetson.]
So abhorrent a condiment was "sauce" to the naval palate, whether
of officer or impress agent, that its use invariably brought its own
punishment with it. "You are no gentleman!" said Gangsman Dibell to one
Hartnell, a currier who accidentally jostled him whilst he was drinking
in a Poole taproom. "No, nor you neither!" replied Hartnell. The
retort cost him a most disagreeable experience. Dibell and his comrades
collared him and dragged him off to the rendezvous, where he was locked
up in the black-hole till the next day. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
1. 580--Inquiry into the Conduct of the Impress Officers at Poole, 13
Aug. 1804.]
At Waterford Capt. Price went one better than this, for a man who was
totally unfit for the service having one day shown him some trifling
disrespect, the choleric old martinet promptly set the gang upon him and
had him conveyed on board the tender, "where," says Lieut. Collingwood,
writing a month later, "he has been eating the king's victuals ever
since." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1501--Lieut. Collingwood, 18
March 1781.] Punishment enough, surely!
One night at Londonderry, as Lieut. Watson was making his way down to
the quay for the purpose of boarding the _Hope_ tender, of which he was
commander, he accidentally ran against a couple of strangers.
"Hallo! my lads," cried he, "who and what are you?"
"I am what I am," replied one of them, insolently.
The lieutenant, who had been dining, fired up at this and demanded to
know if language such as that was proper to be addressed to a king's
officer.
"As you please," said he of the insolent tongue. "If you like it better,
I'll say I'm a piece of a man."
"So I see by your want of manners," retorted the lieutenant. "Come along
with me, my brave piece! I know those who will make a whole man of you
before they're done."
With that he seized the fellow, meaning to take him to his boat, which
lay near by, but the pressed man, watching his chance, tripped him up
and made off. Next day there was a sequel. The lieutenant "was taken
possession of by the Civil Power" on a charge of assault. [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1531--Lieut. Watson, 27 Oct. 1804.]
Another officer who met with base ingratitude from a pressed man whose
manners he attempted to reform was Capt. Bethel of the _Phoenix_. At the
Nore he was once grossly abused by the crew of a Customs-House boat,
and in retaliation took one of their number and carried him to sea.
Peremptory orders reaching him at one of the Scottish ports, however, he
discharged the man and paid his passage south. He was immediately sued
for false imprisonment and cast in heavy damages. [Footnote: _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 1493--Capt. Bethel, 29 Aug. 1762.]
Capt. Brereton, of the _Falmouth_, was "had" in similar fashion by the
master of an East-Indiaman whom he pressed at Manilla because of his
insolence, and who afterwards, by a successful suit at law, let him
in for 400 Pounds damages and costs. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
1494--Capt. Brereton, 18 Oct. 1765.]
This was turning the tables of etiquette on its professors with a
vengeance.
Such costly lessons in the art of politeness, however, did not in
the least abash the naval officer or deter him from the continued
inculcation of manners. Young fellows idly roystering on the river could
not be permitted to miscall with impunity the gorgeous admiral
passing in his twelve-oared barge, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
1. 577--Admiral the Marquis of Carmarthen, 24 June 1710.] nor irate
shipmasters who flouted the impress service of the Crown as a "pitiful"
thing and its officers as "little scandalous creatures," be allowed to
go scot-free. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2379--Capt. Robinson,
21 Feb. 1725-6.] At whatever cost, the dignity of the service must be
maintained.
Nowhere did the use of invective attain such extraordinary perfection as
amongst those who plied their vocations on the country's busy waterways.
Here "sauce" was reduced to a science and vituperation to a fine art.
Thames watermen and Tyne keelmen in particular acquired an astounding
proficiency in the choice and application of abusive epithets, but of
the two the keelman carried off the palm. The wherryman, it is true,
possessed a ripe vocabulary, but the fact that it embraced only a single
dialect seriously handicapped him in his race with the keelman, who
had no less than three to draw upon, all equally prolific. Between
"keelish," "coblish" and "sheelish," the respective dialects of the
north-country keelman, pilot and tradesman, he had at his command a
source of supply unrivalled in vituperative richness, abundance and
variety. With these at his tongue's end none could touch, much less
outdo him in power and scope of abusive description. He became in
consequence of these superior advantages so "insupportably impudent"
that the only known cure for his complaint was to follow the
prescription of Capt. Atkins of the _Panther_, and "take him as fast
as you could ketch him"; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1438--Capt.
Atkins, 23 Dec. 1720.] but even this drastic method of curbing his
tongue was robbed of much of its efficacy by the jealous care with which
he was "protected."
Failure to amain, that is, to douse your topsail or dip your colours
when you meet with a ship of war--the marine equivalent for raising
one's hat--constituted a gross contempt of the king's service. The
custom was very ancient, King John having instituted it in the second
year of his reign. At that time, and indeed for long after, the salute
was obligatory, its omission entailing heavy penalties; [Footnote: A
copy of the original proclamation may be seen in Lansdowne MSS., clxxi,
f. 218, where it is also summarised in the following terms: _"Anno 2
regni Johannis regis: Frends not amaining at the j sumons but resisting
the King his lieutenant, the L. Admirall or his lieutenant, to lose the
ship and goods, & theire bodies to be imprisoned."_] but with the advent
of the century of pressing another means of inspiring respect for the
flag, now exacted as a courtesy rather than a right, came into vogue.
The offending vessel paid for its omission in men.
If you were anything but a king's ship, and flew a flag that only
king's ships were entitled to fly, you were guilty, in the eyes of every
right-seeing naval officer, of another piece of ill manners so gross
as to be deserving of the severest punishment the press was capable of
inflicting upon you. You might fly the "flag and Jack white, with a red
cross (commonly called St. George's cross) passing quite through the
same"; likewise the "ensign red, with the cross in a canton of white
at the upper corner thereof, next to the staff"; but if you presumed to
display His Majesty's Jack, commonly called the Union Jack, or any
other of the various flags of command flown by ships of war or
vessels employed in the naval service, swift retribution overtook
you. Similarly, the inadvertent hoisting of your colours "wrong end
uppermost," or in any other manner deemed inconsistent with the dignity
of the service which permitted you to fly them, laid you open
to reprisals of the most summary nature. Before you realised the
heinousness of your offence, a gang boarded you and your best man or
men were gone beyond recall. The joy of waterside weddings--occasions
prolific in the display of wrong colours--was often turned into sorrow
in this way.
Inability to do the things you professed to do involved grave risk of
making intimate acquaintance with the gang. If, for example, you were
a skipper and navigated your vessel more like a 'prentice than a master
hand, some one belonging to you was bound, in waters swarming with ships
of war, to pay the piper sooner or later. "A few days ago," writes Capt.
Archer of the _Isis_, "a ship called the _Jane_, Stewart master, ran
on board of us in a most lubberly manner--for which, as is customary
on such occasions, I took four of his people." [Footnote: _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 1448--Capt. Archer, 17 May 1795.]
Ability to handle a musical instrument sometimes proved as fatal to
one's liberty as inability to handle a ship. Queen Anne was directly
responsible for this. Almost immediately after her accession she signed
a warrant authorising the pressing of "drummers, fife and haut boys for
sea and land." [Footnote: _Home Office Military Entry Books_, clxviii,
f. 406.] Though the authorisation was only temporary, the practice
thus set up continued long after its origin had been relegated to the
scrap-heap of memory, and not only continued, but was interpreted in a
sense much broader than its royal originator ever intended it should
be. This tendency to take an ell in lieu of the stipulated inch was
illustrated as early as 1705, when Lieut. Thomson, belonging to the
_Lickfield_, chancing to meet one Richard Bullard, fiddler, "persuaded
him to go as far as Woolwich with him, to play a tune or two to him
and some friends who had a mind to dance, saying he would pay him for
it"--which he did, when tired of dancing, by handing him over to the
press-gang. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1467--Capt. Byron, 13 July
1705.]
In 1781, again, a "stout lad of 17" was pressed at Waterford because,
as a piper, he was considered likely to be "useful in amusing the
new-raised men"; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1501--Lieut.
Collingwood, 18 March 1781.] and as late as 1807 a gang at Portsmouth,
acting under orders from Capt. Sir Robert Bromley, took one Madden,
a blind man, because of his "qualification of playing on the Irish
bagpipes." His affliction saved him. He was discharged, and the amount
of his pay and victualling was deducted from Sir Robert's wages as
a caution to him to be more careful in future. [Footnote: _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 1544--Capt. Sir Robert Bromley, 1 Dec. 1808.]
Perhaps the oddest reasons ever adduced in justification of specific
acts of pressing were those put forward in the cases of James Baily, a
Gosport ferry-man who was pressed on account of his "great inactivity,"
and of John Conyear, exempt passenger on the packet-boat plying between
Dartmouth and Poole, subjected to the same process because, as the
officer responsible ingenuously put it when called to book for the act,
if Conyear had not been on board, "another would, who might have been a
proper person to serve His Majesty." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
1. 1451--Capt. Argles, 4 May 1807; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2485--Capt.
Scott, 13 March 1780.]
An ironical interest attaches to the pressing of John Hagin, a youth
of nineteen who cherished an ambition to go a-whaling. Tramping the
riverside at Hull one day in search of a ship, he accidentally met one
of the lieutenants employed in the local impress service, and mistaking
him for the master of a Greenland ship, stepped up to him and asked him
for a berth. "Berth?" said the obliging officer. "Come this way;" and
he conducted the unsuspecting youth to the rendezvous. [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1455--Capt. Ackton, 23 March 1814.]
Before you took a voyage for the benefit of your health in those days it
was always advisable to satisfy yourself as to the nature of the cargo
the vessel carried or intended to carry, otherwise you were liable to
be let in for a longer voyage than health demanded. Richard Gooding of
Bawdsey, in the county of Suffolk, a twenty-one-year-old yeoman who knew
nothing of the iniquities practised in ships, in an evil hour acted on
the advice of his apothecary and ran across to Holland for the sake of
his health, which the infirmities of youth appear to have undermined.
All went well until, on the return trip, just before Bawdsey Ferry hove
in sight, down swooped a revenue cutter's boat with an urgent request
that the master should open up his hatches and disclose what his hold
contained. He demurred, alleging that it held nothing of interest
to revenue men; but on their going below to see for themselves they
discovered an appreciable quantity of gin. Thereupon the master wickedly
declared Gooding to be the culprit, and he was pressed on suspicion of
attempting to run a cargo of spirits. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
1530--Capt. Broughton, 20 April 1803, and enclosure.]
Into the operations of the gang this element of suspicion entered very
largely, especially in the pressing of supposed sailors. To carry about
on your person any of the well-known marks of the seafaring man was to
invite certain disaster. When pressed, like so many others, because
he was "in appearance very much like a sailor," John Teede protested
vehemently that he had never been to sea in his life, and that all who
said he had were unmitigated liars. "Strip him," said the officer, who
had a short way with such cases. In a twinkling Teede's shirt was over
his head and the sailor stood revealed. Devices emblematic of love and
the sea covered both arms from shoulder to wrist. "You and I will lovers
die, eh?" said the officer, with a twinkle, as he spelt out one of
the amatory inscriptions. "Just so, John! I'll see to that. Next man!"
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1522--Description of a Person calling
himself John Teede, 28 Dec. 1799.]
Bow-legged men ran the gravest of risks in this respect, and the goose
of many a tailor was effectually cooked because of the damning fact,
which no protestations of innocence of the sea could mitigate, that long
confinement to the board had warped his legs into a fatal resemblance to
those of a typical Jack-tar. Harwich once had a mayor who, after vowing
that he would "never be guilty of saying there was no law for pressing
sailors," as a convincing proof that he knew what was what, and was
willing to provide it to the best of his ability, straightway sent out
and pressed--a tailor! [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1436--Capt.
Allen, 26 March 1706.]
The itinerant Jewish peddler who hawked his wares about the country
suffered grievously on this account. However indisputably Hebraic his
name, his accent and his nose might be, those evidences of nationality
were Anglicised, so to speak, by the fact that his legs were the legs of
a sailor, and the bandy appendages so characteristic of his race sooner
or later brought the gang down upon him in full cry and landed him in
the fleet.
In the year 1780 the fishing town of Cromer was thrown into a state of
acute excitement by the behaviour of a casual stranger--a great, bearded
man of foreign aspect who, taking a lodging in the place, resorted daily
to the beach, where he walked the sands "at low water mark," now writing
with great assiduity in a book, again gesticulating wildly to the sea
and the cliffs, whence the suspicious townsfolk, then all unused to
"visitors" and their eccentricities, watched his antics in wonder and
consternation. The principal inhabitants of the place, alarmed by his
vagaries, constituted themselves a committee of safety, and with the
parson at their head went down to interview him; and when, in response
to their none too polite inquiries, he flatly refused to give any
account of himself, they by common consent voted him a spy and a public
menace, telling each other that he was undoubtedly engaged in drawing
plans of the coast in order to facilitate' the landing of some enemy;
for did not the legend run:--
"He who would Old England win,
Must at Weybourn Hope begin?"
and was not the "Hoop," as it was called locally, only a few miles to
the northward? No time was to be lost. Post-haste they dispatched a
messenger to Lieut. Brace at Yarmouth, begging him, if he would save his
country from imminent danger, to lose not a moment in sending his gang
to seize the suspect and nip his fell design in the bud. With this
alarming request Brace promptly complied, and the stranger was dragged
away to Yarmouth. Arraigned before the mayor, he with difficulty
succeeded in convincing that functionary that he was nothing more
dangerous than a stray agriculturist whom the Empress Catherine had
sent over from Russia to study the English method of growing-turnips!
[Footnote: _State Papers_, Russia, cv.--Lieut. Brace, 18 Aug. 1780.]
The unhandsome treatment meted out to the inoffensive Russian is of a
piece with the whole aspect of pressing by instigation, of which it is
at once a specimen and a phase. The incentive here was suspicion; but in
the fertile field of instigation motives flourished in forms as varied
as the weaknesses of human nature.
Thomas Onions, respectable burgess of Bridgnorth, engaged in working
a trow from that place to Bristol, fell under suspicion owing to the
mysterious disappearance of a portion of the cargo, which consisted of
china. The rest of the crew being metaphorically as well as literally in
the same boat, the consignee's agent, on the trow's arrival at Bristol,
hinted at a more than alliterative connection between china and chests,
which he was proceeding to search when Onions objected, very rightly
urging that he had no warrant. "Is it a warrant you're wanting?"
demanded the baffled agent. "Very well, we'll see if we cannot find
one." With that he stepped ashore and hurried to the rendezvous, where
he knew the officers, and within the hour the gang added Onions to the
impress stock-pot. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1542--Memorial of
the Inhabitants and Burgesses of Bridgnorth, 12 March 1808.]
Much the same motive led to the pressing of Charles M'Donald, a
north-country youth of education and property. His mother wished him to
enter the army, but his guardians, piqued by her insistence, "had him
kidnapped on board the impress tender at Shields, under pretence of
sending him on a visit." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1537--Capt.
Bland, 29 Nov. 1806, and enclosure.]
An "independent fortune of fourteen hundred pounds," bequeathed to him
by his "Aunt Elizabeth," was instrumental in launching John Stillwell of
Clerkenwell upon a similar career. His step-mother and uncle desired
to retain possession of the money, of which they were trustees; so they
suborned the gang and the young man disappeared. [Footnote: _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 1539--Capt. Burton, 25 April 1806, and enclosure.]
A more legitimate pastime of the gang was the pressing of incorrigible
sons. George Clark of Birmingham and William Barnicle of Margate, the
one a notorious thief, the other the despair of his family because of
his drunken habits, were two out of many shipped abroad by this cheap
but effectual means, the instigator of the gang being in each case
the lad's own father. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1537--Jeremiah
Clark, 30 July 1806; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1547--Lieut. Dawe, 4 Sept.
1809.] The distracting problem, "What to do with our sons?" was in this
way amazingly simplified.
In thus utilising the gang as a means of retaliating upon those who
incurred their displeasure, both naval officers and private individuals,
had they been arraigned for the offence, could have pleaded in
justification of their conduct the example of no less exalted a body
than the Admiralty itself. The case of the bachelor seamen of Dover,
pressed because of an official animus against that town, was as
notorious as their Lordships' futile attempt to teach the Brighton
fishermen respect for their betters, or their later orders to Capt.
Culverhouse, of the Liverpool rendezvous, instructing him "to take all
opportunities of impressing seafaring men belonging to the Isle of
Man," as a punishment for the "extreme ill-conduct of the people of that
Island to His Majesty's Officers on the Impress Service." [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 3. 148--Admiralty Minutes, 11 Oct. 1803.] The
Admiralty method of paying out anyone against whom you cherished a
grudge possessed advantages which strongly commended it to the splenetic
and the vindictive. For suppose you lay in wait for your enemy and
beat or otherwise maltreated him: the chances were that he would either
punish you himself or invoke the law to do it for him; while if you
removed him by means of the garrot, the knife or the poisoned glass, no
matter how discreetly the deed was done the hangman was pretty sure to
get you sooner or later. But the gang--it was as safe as an epidemic!
The fact was not lost upon the community. People in almost every station
of life appreciated it at its true worth, and, encouraged by the example
of the Admiralty, availed themselves of the gang as the handiest,
speediest and safest of mediums for wiping out old scores.
On shipboard, where life was more cramped and men consequently came
into sharper contact than on shore, resentments were struck from daily
intercourse like sparks from steel. Like sparks some died, impotent to
harm their object; but others, cherished in bitterness of spirit through
many a lonely watch, flashed into malicious action with that hoped-for
opportunity, the coming of the gang. John Gray, carpenter of a merchant
ship, in a moment of anger threatened to cut the skipper down with an
axe. This happened under a West-Indian sun. Months afterwards, as the
ship swung lazily into Bristol river and the gang came aboard, the
skipper found his opportunity. Beckoning to the impress officer, he
pointed to John Gray and said: "Take that man!" [Footnote: _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 1542--Capt. Barker, 22 June 1808, and enclosure.] Gray never
again lifted an axe on board a merchant vessel.
Certain amenities which once passed between the master and the mate of
the _Lady Shore_ serve to throw an even broader light upon the origin
of quarrels at sea and the methods of settling them then in vogue. The
_Lady Shore_ was on the passage home from Quebec when the master one day
gave certain sailing directions which the mate, who was a sober, careful
seaman, thought fit to disregard on the ground that the safety of the
ship would be endangered if he followed them. The master, an irascible,
drunken brute, at this flew into a passion and sought to ingraft his
ideas of seamanship upon the mate through the medium of a handspike,
with which he caught him a savage blow "just above the eye, cutting him
about three inches in length." It was in mid-ocean that this lesson in
navigation was administered. By the time Scilly shoved its nose above
the horizon the skipper's "down" on the mate had reached an acute stage.
His resentment of the latter's being the better seaman had now deepened
into hatred, and to this, as the voyage neared its end, was added
growing fear of prosecution. At this juncture a man-o'-war hove in
sight and signalled an inspection of hands. "Get your chest on deck, Mr.
Mate," cried the exultant skipper. "You are too much master here. It is
time for us to part." Taken out of the ship as a pressed man, the mate
was ultimately discharged by order of the Admiralty; but the skipper
had his revenge. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 583--Matthew Gill to
Admiral Moorsom, 15 Jan. 1813.]
A riot that occurred at King's Lynn in the year '55 affords a striking
instance of the retaliatory use of the gang on shore. In the course of
the disturbance mud and stones were thrown at the magistrates, who
had come out to do what they could to quell it. Angered by so gross
an indignity, they supplied the gang with information that led to the
pressing of some sixty persons concerned in the tumult, but as these
consisted mainly of "vagrants, gipsies, parish charges, maimed, halt and
idiots," the magisterial resentment caused greater rejoicings at
Lynn than it did at Spithead, where the sweepings of the borough were
eventually deposited. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 920--Admiral Sir
Edward Hawke, 8 June 1755.]
There is a decided smack of the modern about the use the gang was put to
by the journeymen coopers of Bristol. Considering themselves underpaid,
they threatened to go on strike unless the masters raised their wages.
In this they were not entirely unanimous, however. One of their number
stood out, refusing to join the combine; whereupon the rest summoned
the gang and had the "blackleg" pressed for his contumacy. [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1542--Capt. Barker, 20 Aug. 1808, and enclosure.]
In pressing William Taylor of Broadstairs the gang nipped in the bud
as tender a romance as ever flourished in the shelter of the Kentish
cliffs, which is saying not a little. Taylor was only a poor fisherman,
and when he dared to make love to the pretty daughter of the Ramsgate
Harbour-Master, that exalted individual, who entertained for the girl
social ambitions in which fishermen's shacks had no place, resented
his advances as insufferable impertinence. A word to Lieut. Leary, his
friend at the local rendezvous, did the rest. Taylor disappeared, and
though he was afterwards discharged from His Majesty's ship Utrecht on
the score of his holding a Sea-Fencible's ticket, the remedy had worked
its cure and the Harbour-Master was thenceforth free to marry his
daughter where he would. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1450--Capt.
Austen, 23 Sept. 1803.]
So natural is the transition from love to hate that no apology is needed
for introducing here the story of Sam Burrows, the ex-beadle of Chester
who fell a victim to the harsher in much the same manner as Taylor did
to the gentler passion. Burrows' evil genius was one Rev. Lucius Carey,
an Irish clergyman--whether Anglican or Roman we know not, nor does it
matter--who had contracted the unclerical habit of carrying pistols and
too much liquor. In this condition he was found late one night knocking
in a very violent manner at the door of the "Pied Bull," and swearing
that, while none should keep him out, any who refused to assist him
in breaking in should be shot down forthwith. Burrows, the ex-beadle,
happened to be passing at the moment. He seized the drunken cleric and
with the assistance of James Howell, one of the city watchmen, forcibly
removed him to the watch-house, whence he was next day taken before the
mayor and bound over to appear at the Sessions. Now it happened that
certain members of the local press-gang were Carey's boon companions, so
no sooner did he leave the presence of the mayor than he looked them up.
That same evening Burrows was missing. Carey had found him a "hard bed,"
otherwise a berth on board a man-o'-war. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
1. 1532--Capt Birchall, 17 July 1804, and enclosures.]
In the columns of the _Westminster Journal_, under date of both May
1743, we read of a sailor who, dying at Ringsend, was brought to
Irishtown church-yard, near Dublin, for burial. "When they laid him on
the ground," the narrative continues, "the coffin was observed to stir,
on which he was taken up, and by giving him some nourishment he came
to himself, and is likely to do well." Whether this sailor was ever
pressed, either before or after his abortive decease, we are not
informed; but there is on record at least one well-authenticated
instance of that calamity overtaking a person who had passed the bourne
whence none is supposed to return.
In the year 1723 a young lad whose name has not been preserved, but who
was at the time apprentice to a master sailmaker in London, set out from
that city to visit his people, living at Sandwich. He appears to have
travelled afoot, for, getting a "lift" on the road, he was carried into
Deal, where he arrived late at night, and having no money was glad to
share a bed with a seafaring man, the boatswain of an Indiaman then in
the Downs. From this circumstance sprang the events which here follow.
Along in the small hours of the night the lad awoke, and finding the
room stuffy and day on the point of breaking, he rose and dressed,
purposing to see the town in the cool of the morning. The catch of
the door, however, refused to yield under his hand, and while he was
endeavouring to undo it the noise he made awakened the boatswain, who
told him that if he looked in his breeches pocket he would find a knife
there with which he could lift the latch. Acting on this hint, the
lad succeeded in opening the door, and thereupon went downstairs in
accordance with his original intention. When he returned some half-hour
later, as he did for the purpose of restoring the knife, which he
had thoughtlessly slipped into his pocket, the bed was empty and the
boatswain gone. Of this he thought nothing. The boatswain had talked, he
remembered, of going off to his ship at an early hour, in order, as he
had said, to call the hands for the washing down of the decks. The
lad accordingly left the house and went his way to Sandwich, where, as
already stated, his people lived.
Meantime the old inn at Deal, and indeed the whole town, was thrown into
a state of violent commotion by a most shocking discovery. Going about
their morning duties at the inn, the maids had come to the bed in which
the boatswain and the apprentice had slept, and to their horror found
it saturated with blood. Drops of blood, together with marks of
blood-stained hands and feet, were further discovered on the floor and
the door of the chamber, down the stairs, and along the passage leading
to the street, whence they could be distinctly traced to the waterside,
not so very far away. Imagination, working upon these ghastly survivals
of the hours of darkness, quickly reconstructed the crime which it was
evident had been committed. The boatswain was known to have had money
on him; but the youth, it was recalled, had begged his bed. It was
therefore plain to the meanest understanding that the youth had murdered
the boatswain for his money and thrown the body into the sea.
At once that terrible precursor of judgment to come, the hue and cry was
raised, and that night the footsore apprentice lay in Sandwich jail, a
more than suspected felon, for his speedy capture had supplied what
was taken to be conclusive evidence of his guilt. In his pocket they
discovered the boatswain's knife, and both it and the lad's clothing
were stained with blood. Asked whose blood it was, and how it came
there, he made no answer. Asked was it the boatswain's knife, he
answered, "Yes, it was," and therewith held his peace. In face of such
evidence, and such an admission, he stood prejudged. His trial at the
Assizes was a mere formality. The jury quickly found him guilty, and
sentence of death was passed upon him.
The day of execution came. Up to this point Fate had set her face
steadfastly against our apprentice lad; but now, in the very hour
and article of death, she suddenly relented and smiled upon him. The
dislocating "drop" was in those days unknown. When you were hanged,
you were hanged from a cart, which was suddenly whisked from under you,
leaving you dangling in mid-air like a kind of death-fruit nearly, but
not quite, ready to fall. Much depended on the executioner, and that
grim functionary was in this case a raw hand, unused to his work, who
bungled the job. The knot was ill-adjusted, the rope too long, the
convict tall and lank. This last circumstance was no fault of the
executioner's, but it helped. When they turned him off, the lad's feet
swept the ground, and his friends, gathering round him like guardian
angels, bore him up. Cut down at the end of a tense half-hour, he was
hurried away to a surgeon's and there copiously bled. And being young
and virile, he revived.
Trudging to Portsmouth some little time after, with the intention of for
ever leaving a country to which he was legally dead, he fell in with one
of the numerous press-gangs frequenting that road, and was sent on board
a man-o'-war. There, in course of time, he rose to be master's mate, and
in that capacity, whilst on the West-India station, was transferred to
another ship. On this ship he met the surprise of his life--if life can
be said to hold further surprises for one who has died and lived again.
As he stepped on deck the first person he met was his old bed-fellow,
the boatswain.
The explanation of the amazing series of events which led up to this
amazing meeting is very simple. On the evening of that fateful night at
Deal the boatswain, who had been ailing, was let blood. In his sleep the
bandage slipped and the wound reopened. Discovering his condition when
awakened by the apprentice, he rose and left the house, intending to
have the wound re-dressed by the barber-surgeon who had inflicted it,
with more effect than discretion, some hours earlier. At the very door
of the inn, however, he ran into the arms of a press-gang, by whom
he was instantly seized and hurried on board ship. [Footnote: Watts,
_Remarkable Events in the History of Man_, 1825.]