[Footnote 60: Written in 1900, (_National_Review_.)]
Of late years great attention has been paid to our naval history,
and many even of its obscure byways have been explored. A general
result of the investigation is that we are enabled to form a high
estimate of the merits of our naval administration in former
centuries. We find that for a long time the navy has possessed an
efficient organisation; that its right position as an element of
the national defences was understood ages ago; and that English
naval officers of a period which is now very remote showed by their
actions that they exactly appreciated and--when necessary--were able
to apply the true principles of maritime warfare. If anyone still
believes that the country has been saved more than once merely
by lucky chances of weather, and that the England of Elizabeth
has been converted into the great oceanic and colonial British
Empire of Victoria in 'a fit of absence of mind,' it will not
be for want of materials with which to form a correct judgment
on these points.
It has been accepted generally that the principal method of manning
our fleet in the past--especially when war threatened to arise--was
to seize and put men on board the ships by force. This has been
taken for granted by many, and it seems to have been assumed that,
in any case, there is no way of either proving it or disproving
it. The truth, however, is that it is possible and--at least as
regards the period of our last great naval war--not difficult to
make sure if it is true or not. Records covering a long succession
of years still exist, and in these can be found the name of nearly
every seaman in the navy and a statement of the conditions on
which he joined it. The exceptions would not amount to more than
a few hundreds out of many tens of thousands of names, and would
be due to the disappearance--in itself very infrequent--of some of
the documents and to occasional, but also very rare, inaccuracies
in the entries.
The historical evidence on which the belief in the prevalence
of impressment as a method of recruiting the navy for more than
a hundred years is based, is limited to contemporary statements
in the English newspapers, and especially in the issues of the
periodical called _The_Naval_Chronicle_, published in 1803,
the first year of the war following the rupture of the Peace
of Amiens. Readers of Captain Mahan's works on Sea-Power will
remember the picture he draws of the activity of the press-gang
in that year, his authority being _The_Naval_Chronicle_. This
evidence will be submitted directly to close examination, and
we shall see what importance ought to be attached to it. In the
great majority of cases, however, the belief above mentioned has
no historical foundation, but is to be traced to the frequency
with which the supposed operations of the press-gang were used
by the authors of naval stories and dramas, and by artists who
took scenes of naval life for their subject. Violent seizure and
abduction lend themselves to effective treatment in literature
and in art, and writers and painters did not neglect what was
so plainly suggested.
A fruitful source of the widespread belief that our navy in the old
days was chiefly manned by recourse to compulsion, is a confusion
between two words of independent origin and different meaning,
which, in ages when exact spelling was not thought indispensable,
came to be written and pronounced alike. During our later great
maritime wars, the official term applied to anyone recruited by
impressment was 'prest-man.' In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and part of the eighteenth century, this term meant
the exact opposite. It meant a man who had voluntarily engaged to
serve, and who had received a sum in advance called 'prest-money.'
'A prest-man,' we are told by that high authority, Professor Sir
J. K. Laughton, 'was really a man who received the prest of 12d.,
as a soldier when enlisted.' In the 'Encyclopædia Metropolitana'
(1845), we find:-- 'Impressing, or, more correctly, impresting,
i.e. paying earnest-money to seamen by the King's Commission to
the Admiralty, is a right of very ancient date, and established
by prescription, though not by statute. Many statutes, however,
imply its existence--one as far back as 2 Richard II, cap. 4.' An
old dictionary of James I's time (1617), called 'The Guide into
the Tongues, by the Industrie, Studie, Labour, and at the Charges
of John Minshew,' gives the following definition:--'Imprest-money.
G. [Gallic or French], Imprest-ànce; _Imprestanza_, from _in_
and _prestare_, to lend or give beforehand.... Presse-money. T.
[Teutonic or German], Soldt, from salz, _salt_. For anciently
agreement or compact between the General and the soldier was
signified by salt.' Minshew also defines the expression 'to presse
souldiers' by the German _soldatenwerben_, and explains that
here the word _werben_ means prepare (_parare_). 'Prest-money,'
he says, 'is so-called of the French word _prest_, i.e. readie,
for that it bindeth those that have received it to be ready at
all times appointed.' In the posthumous work of Stephen Skinner,
'Etymologia Linguæ Anglicanæ' (1671), the author joins together
'press or imprest' as though they were the same, and gives two
definitions, viz.: (1) recruiting by force (_milites_cogere_);
(2) paying soldiers a sum of money and keeping them ready to serve.
Dr. Murray's 'New English Dictionary,' now in course of publication,
gives instances of the confusion between imprest and impress. A
consequence of this confusion has been that many thousands of
seamen who had received an advance of money have been regarded
as carried off to the navy by force. If to this misunderstanding
we add the effect on the popular mind of cleverly written stories
in which the press-gang figured prominently, we can easily see
how the belief in an almost universal adoption of compulsory
recruiting for the navy became general. It should, therefore, be
no matter of surprise when we find that the sensational reports
published in the English newspapers in 1803 were accepted without
question.
Impressment of seamen for the navy has been called 'lawless,' and
sometimes it has been asserted that it was directly contrary to law.
There is, however, no doubt that it was perfectly legal, though its
legality was not based upon any direct statutory authority. Indirect
confirmations of it by statute are numerous. These appear in the
form of exemptions. The law of the land relating to this subject
was that all 'sea-faring' men were liable to impressment unless
specially protected by custom or statute. A consideration of the
long list of exemptions tends to make one believe that in reality
very few people were liable to be impressed. Some were 'protected'
by local custom, some by statute, and some by administrative
order. The number of the last must have been very great. The
'Protection Books' preserved in the Public Record Office form no
inconsiderable section of the Admiralty records. For the period
specially under notice, viz. that beginning with the year 1803,
there are no less than five volumes of 'protections.' Exemptions
by custom probably originated at a very remote date: ferrymen,
for example, being everywhere privileged from impressment. The
crews of colliers seem to have enjoyed the privilege by custom
before it was confirmed by Act of Parliament. The naval historian,
Burchett, writing of 1691, cites a 'Proclamation forbidding pressing
men from colliers.'
Every ship in the coal trade had the following persons protected,
viz. two A.B.'s for every ship of 100 tons, and one for every 50
tons in larger ships. When we come to consider the sensational
statements in _The_Naval_Chronicle_ of 1803, it will be well to
remember what the penalty for infringing the colliers' privilege
was. By the Act 6 & 7 William III, c. 18, sect. 19, 'Any officer
who presumes to impress any of the above shall forfeit to the
master or owner of such vessel £10 for every man so impressed;
and such officer shall be incapable of holding any place, office,
or employment in any of His Majesty's ships of war.' It is not
likely that the least scrupulous naval officer would make himself
liable to professional ruin as well as to a heavy fine. No parish
apprentice could be impressed for the sea service of the Crown
until he arrived at the age of eighteen (2 & 3 Anne, c. 6, sect.
4). Persons voluntarily binding themselves apprentices to sea
service could not be impressed for three years from the date
of their indentures. Besides sect. 15 of the Act of Anne just
quoted, exemptions were granted, before 1803, by 4 Anne, c. 19;
and 13 George II, c. 17. By the Act last mentioned all persons
fifty-five years of age and under eighteen were exempted, and
every foreigner serving in a ship belonging to a British subject,
and also all persons 'of what age soever who shall use the sea'
for two years, to be computed from the time of their first using
it. A customary exemption was extended to the proportion of the
crew of any ship necessary for her safe navigation. In practice
this must have reduced the numbers liable to impressment to small
dimensions.
Even when the Admiralty decided to suspend all administrative
exemptions--or, as the phrase was, 'to press from all
protections'--many persons were still exempted. The customary
and statutory exemptions, of course, were unaffected. On the
5th November 1803 their Lordships informed officers in charge
of rendezvous that it was 'necessary for the speedy manning of
H.M. ships to impress all persons of the denominations exprest
in the press-warrant which you have received from us, without
regard to any protections, excepting, however, all such persons
as are protected pursuant to Acts of Parliament, and all others
who by the printed instructions which accompanied the said warrant
are forbidden to be imprest.' In addition to these a long list
of further exemptions was sent. The last in the list included
the crews of 'ships and vessels bound to foreign parts which
are laden and cleared outwards by the proper officers of H.M.
Customs.' It would seem that there was next to no one left liable
to impressment; and it is not astonishing that the Admiralty, as
shown by its action very shortly afterwards, felt that pressing
seamen was a poor way of manning the fleet.
Though the war which broke out in 1803 was not formally declared
until May, active preparations were begun earlier. The navy had
been greatly reduced since the Peace of Amiens, and as late as
the 2nd December 1802 the House of Commons had voted that '50,000
seamen be employed for the service of the year 1803, including
12,000 marines.' On the 14th March an additional number was voted.
It amounted to 10,000 men, of whom 2400 were to be marines. Much
larger additions were voted a few weeks later. The total increase
was 50,000 men; viz. 39,600 seamen and 10,400 marines. It never
occurred to anyone that forcible recruiting would be necessary
in the case of the marines, though the establishment of the corps
was to be nearly doubled, as it had to be brought up to 22,400
from 12,000. Attention may be specially directed to this point.
The marine formed an integral part of a man-of-war's crew just as
the seamen did. He received no better treatment than the latter;
and as regards pecuniary remuneration, prospects of advancement,
and hope of attaining to the position of warrant officer, was, on
the whole, in a less favourable position. It seems to have been
universally accepted that voluntary enlistment would prove--as,
in fact, it did prove--sufficient in the case of the marines.
What we have got to see is how far it failed in the case of the
seamen, and how far its deficiencies were made up by compulsion.
On the 12th March the Admiralty notified the Board of Ordnance that
twenty-two ships of the line--the names of which were stated--were
'coming forward' for sea. Many of these ships are mentioned in
_The_Naval_Chronicle_ as requiring men, and that journal gives
the names of several others of various classes in the same state.
The number altogether is thirty-one. The aggregate complements,
including marines and boys, of these ships amounted to 17,234.
The number of 'seamen' was 11,861, though this included some of
the officers who were borne on the same muster-list. The total
number of seamen actually required exceeded 11,500. The _Naval_
_Chronicle_ contains a vivid, not to say sensational, account of
the steps taken to raise them. The report from Plymouth, dated
10th March, is as follows: 'Several bodies of Royal Marines in
parties of twelve and fourteen each, with their officers and
naval officers armed, proceeded towards the quays. So secret
were the orders kept that they did not know the nature of the
business on which they were going until they boarded the tier
of colliers at the New Quay, and other gangs the ships in the
Catwater and the Pool, and the gin-shops. A great number of prime
seamen were taken out and sent on board the Admiral's ship. They
also pressed landsmen of all descriptions; and the town looked
as if in a state of siege. At Stonehouse, Mutton Cove, Morris
Town, and in all the receiving and gin-shops at Dock [the present
Devonport] several hundreds of seamen and landsmen were picked
up and sent directly aboard the flag-ship. By the returns last
night it appears that upwards of 400 useful hands were pressed
last night in the Three Towns.... One press-gang entered the
Dock [Devonport] Theatre and cleared the whole gallery except
the women.' The reporter remarks: 'It is said that near 600 men
have been impressed in this neighbourhood.' The number--if
obtained--would not have been sufficient to complete the seamen
in the complements of a couple of line-of-battle ships. Naval
officers who remember the methods of manning ships which lasted
well into the middle of the nineteenth century, and of course long
after recourse to impressment had been given up, will probably
notice the remarkable fact that the reporter makes no mention of
any of the parties whose proceedings he described being engaged
in picking up men who had voluntarily joined ships fitting out,
but had not returned on board on the expiration of the leave
granted them. The description in _The_Naval_Chronicle_ might
be applied to events which--when impressment had ceased for half
a century--occurred over and over again at Portsmouth, Devonport,
and other ports when two or three ships happened to be put in
commission about the same time.
We shall find that the 600 reported as impressed had to be
considerably reduced before long. The reporter afterwards wisely
kept himself from giving figures, except in a single instance
when he states that 'about forty' were taken out of the flotilla
of Plymouth trawlers. Reporting on 11th March he says that 'Last
Thursday and yesterday'--the day of the sensational report above
given--'several useful hands were picked up, mostly seamen, who
were concealed in the different lodgings and were discovered
by their girls.' He adds, 'Several prime seamen were yesterday
taken disguised as labourers in the different marble quarries
round the town.' On 14th October the report is that 'the different
press-gangs, with their officers, literally scoured the country
on the eastern roads and picked up several fine young fellows.'
Here, again, no distinction is drawn between men really impressed
and men who were arrested for being absent beyond the duration of
their leave. We are told next that 'upon a survey of all impressed
men before three captains and three surgeons of the Royal Navy,
such as were deemed unfit for His Majesty's service, as well as
all apprentices, were immediately discharged,' which, no doubt,
greatly diminished the above-mentioned 600.
The reporter at Portsmouth begins his account of the 'press'
at that place by saying, 'They indiscriminately took every man
on board the colliers.' In view of what we know of the heavy
penalties to which officers who pressed more than a certain
proportion of a collier's crew were liable, we may take it that
this statement was made in error. On 14th March it was reported
that 'the constables and gangs from the ships continue very alert
in obtaining seamen, many of whom have been sent on board different
ships in the harbour this day.' We do not hear again from Portsmouth
till May, on the 7th of which month it was reported that 'about 700
men were obtained.' On the 8th the report was that 'on Saturday
afternoon the gates of the town were shut and soldiers placed at
every avenue. Tradesmen were taken from their shops and sent on
board the ships in the harbour or placed in the guard-house for
the night, till they could be examined. If fit for His Majesty's
service they were kept, if in trade set at liberty.' The 'tradesmen,'
then, if really taken, were taken simply to be set free again.
As far as the reports first quoted convey any trustworthy
information, it appears that at Portsmouth and Plymouth during
March, April, and the first week of May, 1340 men were 'picked
up,' and that of these many were immediately discharged. How
many of the 1340 were not really impressed, but were what in
the navy are called 'stragglers,' i.e. men over-staying their
leave of absence, is not indicated.
_The_Times_ of the 11th March 1803, and 9th May 1803, also contained
reports of the impressment operations. It says: 'The returns to
the Admiralty of the seamen impressed (apparently at the Thames
ports) on Tuesday night amounted to 1080, of whom no less than
two-thirds are considered prime hands. At Portsmouth, Portsea,
Gosport, and Cowes a general press took place the same night....
Upwards of 600 seamen were collected in consequence of the
promptitude of the measures adopted.' It was added that the
Government 'relied upon increasing our naval forces with 10,000
seamen, either volunteers or impressed men, in less than a
fortnight.' The figures show us how small a proportion of the
10,000 was even alleged to be made up of impressed men. A later
_Times_ report is that: 'The impress on Saturday, both above and
below the bridge, was the hottest that has been for some time.
The boats belonging to the ships at Deptford were particularly
active, and it is supposed they obtained upwards of 200 men.' _The_
_Times_ reports thus account for 1280 men over and above the
1340 stated to have been impressed at Plymouth and Portsmouth,
thus making a grand total of 2620. It will be proved by official
figures directly that the last number was an over-estimate.
Before going farther, attention may be called to one or two points
in connection with the above reports. The increase in the number
of seamen voted by Parliament in March was 7600. The reports of
the impressment operations only came down to May. It was not
till the 11th June that Parliament voted a further addition to the
navy of 32,000 seamen. Yet whilst the latter great increase was
being obtained--for obtained it was--the reporters are virtually
silent as to the action of the press-gang. We must ask ourselves,
if we could get 32,000 additional seamen with so little recourse
to impressment that the operations called for no special notice,
how was it that compulsion was necessary when only 7600 men were
wanted? The question is all the more pertinent when we recall
the state of affairs in the early part of 1803.
The navy had been greatly reduced in the year before, the men
voted having diminished from 100,000 to 56,000. What became of
the 44,000 men not required, of whom about 35,000 must have been
of the seaman class and have been discharged from the service?
There was a further reduction of 6000, to take effect in the
beginning of 1803. Sir Sydney Smith, at that time a Member of
Parliament, in the debate of the 2nd December 1802, 'expressed
considerable regret at the great reductions which were suddenly
made, both in the King's dockyards and in the navy in general.
A prodigious number of men,' he said, 'had been thus reduced
to the utmost poverty and distress.' He stated that he 'knew,
from his own experience, that what was called an ordinary seaman
could hardly find employment at present, either in the King's or
in the merchants' service.' The increase of the fleet in March
must have seemed a godsend to thousands of men-of-war's men. If
there was any holding back on their part, it was due, no doubt,
to an expectation--which the sequel showed to be well founded--that
a bounty would be given to men joining the navy.
The muster-book of a man-of-war is the official list of her crew.
It contains the name of every officer and man in the complement.
Primarily it was an account-book, as it contains entries of the
payments made to each person whose name appears in it. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century it was usual to make out
a fresh muster-book every two months, though that period was
not always exactly adhered to. Each new book was a copy of the
preceding one, with the addition of the names of persons who had
joined the ship since the closing of the latter. Until the ship
was paid off and thus put out of commission--or, in the case of a
very long commission, until 'new books' were ordered to be opened
so as to escape the inconveniences due to the repetition of large
numbers of entries--the name of every man that had belonged to her
remained on the list, his disposal--if no longer in the ship--being
noted in the proper column. One column was headed 'Whence, and
whether prest or not?' In this was noted his former ship, or the
fact of his being entered direct from the shore, which answered
to the question 'Whence?' There is reason to believe that the
muster-book being, as above said, primarily an account-book, the
words 'whether prest or not' were originally placed at the head
of the column so that it might be noted against each man entered
whether he had been paid 'prest-money' or not. However this may
be, the column at the beginning of the nineteenth century was
used for a record of the circumstances of the man's entering the
ship, whether he had been transferred from another, had joined
as a volunteer from the shore, or had been impressed.
I have examined the muster-book of every ship mentioned in the
Admiralty letter to the Board of Ordnance above referred to,
and also of the ships mentioned in _The_Naval_Chronicle_ as
fitting out in the early part of 1803. There are altogether
thirty-three ships; but two of them, the _Utrecht_ and the
_Gelykheid_, were used as temporary receiving ships for newly
raised men.[61] The names on their lists are, therefore, merely
those of men who were passed on to other ships, in whose muster-books
they appeared again. There remained thirty-one ships which, as
far as could be ascertained, account for the additional force
which the Government had decided to put in commission, more than
two-thirds of them being ships of the line. As already stated,
their total complements amounted to 17,234, and the number of the
'blue-jackets' of full age to at least 11,500. The muster-books
appear to have been kept with great care. The only exception
seems to be that of the _Victory_, in which there is some reason
to think the number of men noted as 'prest' has been over-stated
owing to an error in copying the earlier book. Ships in 1803
did not get their full crews at once, any more than they did
half a century later. I have, therefore, thought it necessary
to take the muster-books for the months in which the crews had
been brought up to completion.
[Footnote 61: The words 'recruit' and 'enlist,' except as regards
marines, are unknown in the navy, in which they are replaced by
'raise' and 'enter.']
An examination of the books would be likely to dispel many
misconceptions about the old navy. Not only is it noted against
each man's name whether he was 'pressed' or a volunteer, it is
also noted if he was put on board ship as an alternative to
imprisonment on shore, this being indicated by the words 'civil
power,' an expression still used in the navy, but with a different
meaning. The percentage of men thus 'raised' was small. Sometimes
there is a note stating that the man had been allowed to enter
from the '----shire Militia.' A rare note is 'Brought on board
by soldiers,' which most likely indicated that the man had been
recaptured when attempting to desert. It is sometimes asserted
that many men who volunteered did so only to escape impressment.
This may be so; but it should be said that there are frequent
notations against the names of 'prest' men that they afterwards
volunteered. This shows the care that was taken to ascertain the
real conditions on which a man entered the service. For the purposes
of this inquiry all these men have been considered as impressed,
and they have not been counted amongst the volunteers. It is,
perhaps, permissible to set off against such men the number of
those who allowed themselves to be impressed to escape inconveniences
likely to be encountered if they remained at home. Of two John
Westlakes, ordinary seamen of the _Boadicea_, one--John (I.)--was
'prest,' but was afterwards 'taken out of the ship for a debt
of twenty pounds'; which shows that he had preferred to trust
himself to the press-gang rather than to his creditors. Without
being unduly imaginative, we may suppose that in 1803 there were
heroes who preferred being 'carried off' to defend their country
afloat to meeting the liabilities of putative paternity in their
native villages.
The muster-books examined cover several months, during which
many 'prest' men were discharged and some managed to desert,
so that the total was never present at anyone time. That total
amounts to 1782. It is certain that even this is larger than
the reality, because it has been found impossible--without an
excessive expenditure of time and labour--to trace the cases
of men being sent from one ship to another, and thus appearing
twice over, or oftener, as 'prest' men. As an example of this
the _Minotaur_ may be cited. Out of twenty names on one page of
her muster-book thirteen are those of 'prest' men discharged to
other ships. The discharges from the _Victory_ were numerous; and
the _Ardent_, which was employed in keeping up communication with
the ships off Brest, passed men on to the latter when required. I
have, however, made no deductions from the 'prest' total to meet
these cases. We can see that not more than 1782 men, and probably
considerably fewer, were impressed to meet the increase of the
navy during the greater part of 1803. Admitting that there were
cases of impressment from merchant vessels abroad to complete
the crews of our men-of-war in distant waters, the total number
impressed--including these latter--could not have exceeded greatly
the figures first given. We know that owing to the reduction of
1802, as stated by Sir Sydney Smith, the seamen were looking
for ships rather than the ships for seamen. It seems justifiable
to infer that the whole number of impressed men on any particular
day did not exceed, almost certainly did not amount to, 2000. If
they had been spread over the whole navy they would not have made
2 per cent. of the united complements of the ships; and, as it was,
did not equal one-nineteenth of the 39,600 seamen ('blue-jackets')
raised to complete the navy to the establishment sanctioned by
Parliament. A system under which more than 37,000 volunteers
come forward to serve and less than 2000 men are obtained by
compulsion cannot be properly called compulsory.
The Plymouth reporter of _The_Naval_Chronicle_ does not give
many details of the volunteering for the navy in 1803, though
he alludes to it in fluent terms more than once. On the 11th
October, however, he reports that, 'So many volunteer seamen
have arrived here this last week that upwards of £4000 bounty is
to be paid them afloat by the Paying Commissioner, Rear-Admiral
Dacres.' At the time the bounty was £2 10s. for an A.B., £1 10s.
for an ordinary seaman, and £1 for a landsman. Taking only £4000
as the full amount paid, and assuming that the three classes were
equally represented, three men were obtained for every £5, or
2400 in all, a number raised in about a week, that may be compared
with that given as resulting from impressment. In reality, the
number of volunteers must have been larger, because the A.B.'s
were fewer than the other classes.
Some people may be astonished because the practice of impressment,
which had proved to be so utterly inefficient, was not at once
and formally given up. No astonishment will be felt by those
who are conversant with the habits of Government Departments. In
every country public officials evince great and, indeed, almost
invincible reluctance to give up anything, whether it be a material
object or an administrative process, which they have once possessed
or conducted. One has only to stroll through the arsenals of the
world, or glance at the mooring-grounds of the maritime states,
to see to what an extent the passion for retaining the obsolete
and useless holds dominion over the official mind. A thing may
be known to be valueless--its retention may be proved to be
mischievous--yet proposals to abandon it will be opposed and
defeated. It is doubtful if any male human being over forty was
ever converted to a new faith of any kind. The public has to
wait until the generation of administrative Conservatives has
either passed away or been outnumbered by those acquainted only
with newer methods. Then the change is made; the certainty,
nevertheless, being that the new men in their turn will resist
improvements as obstinately and in exactly the same way as their
predecessors.
To be just to the Board of Admiralty of 1803, it must be admitted
that some of its members seem to have lost faith in the efficacy of
impressment as a system of manning the navy. The Lords Commissioners
of that date could hardly--all of them, at any rate--have been so
thoroughly destitute of humour as not to suspect that seizing
a few score of men here and a few there when tens of thousands
were needed, was a very insufficient compensation for the large
correspondence necessitated by adherence to the system (and still
in existence). Their Lordships actively bombarded the Home Office
with letters pointing out, for example, that a number of British
seamen at Guernsey 'appeared to have repaired to that island with
a view to avoid being pressed'; that they were 'of opinion that
it would be highly proper that the sea-faring men (in Jersey as
well as Guernsey), not natives nor settled inhabitants, should
be impressed'; that when the captain of H.M.S. _Aigle_ had landed
at Portland 'for the purpose of raising men' some resistance
had 'been made by the sailors'; and dealing with other subjects
connected with the system. A complaint sent to the War Department
was that 'amongst a number of men lately impressed (at Leith)
there were eight or ten shipwrights who were sea-faring men, and
had been claimed as belonging to a Volunteer Artillery Corps.'
We may suspect that there was some discussion at Whitehall as to
the wisdom of retaining a plan which caused so much inconvenience
and had such poor results. The conclusion seems to have been to
submit it to a searching test. The coasts of the United Kingdom
were studded with stations--thirty-seven generally, but the number
varied--for the entry of seamen. The ordinary official description
of these--as shown by entries in the muster-books--was 'rendezvous';
but other terms were used. It has often been thought that they were
simply impressment offices. The fact is that many more men were
raised at these places by volunteering than by impressment. The
rendezvous, as a rule, were in charge of captains or commanders,
some few being entrusted to lieutenants. The men attached to each
were styled its 'gang,' a word which conveys no discredit in
nautical language. On 5th November 1803 the Admiralty sent to
the officers in charge of rendezvous the communication already
mentioned--to press men 'without regard to any protections,'--the
exceptions, indeed, being so many that the officers must have
wondered who could legitimately be taken.
The order at first sight appeared sweeping enough. It contained
the following words: 'Whereas we think fit that a general press
from all protections as above mentioned shall commence at London
and in the neighbourhood thereof on the night of Monday next,
the 7th instant, you are therefore (after taking the proper
preparatory measures with all possible secrecy) hereby required
to impress and to give orders to the lieutenants under your command
to impress all persons of the above-mentioned denominations (except
as before excepted) and continue to do so until you receive orders
from us to the contrary.' As it was addressed to officers in
all parts of the United Kingdom, the 'general press' was not
confined to London and its neighbourhood, though it was to begin
in the capital.
Though returns of the numbers impressed have not been discovered,
we have strong evidence that this 'general press,' notwithstanding
the secrecy with which it had been arranged, was a failure. On
the 6th December 1803, just a month after it had been tried, the
Admiralty formulated the following conclusion: 'On a consideration
of the expense attending the service of raising men on shore for
His Majesty's Fleet comparatively with the number procured, as
well as from other circumstances, there is reason to believe that
either proper exertions have not been made by some of the officers
employed on that service, or that there have been great abuses
and mismanagement in the expenditure of the public money.' This
means that it was now seen that impressment, though of little
use in obtaining men for the navy, was a very costly arrangement.
The Lords of the Admiralty accordingly ordered that 'the several
places of rendezvous should be visited and the conduct of the
officers employed in carrying out the above-mentioned service
should be inquired into on the spot.' Rear-Admiral Arthur Phillip,
the celebrated first Governor of New South Wales, was ordered
to make the inquiry. This was the last duty in which that
distinguished officer was employed, and his having been selected
for it appears to have been unknown to all his biographers.
It is not surprising that after this the proceedings of the
press-gang occupy scarcely any space in our naval history. Such
references to them as there are will be found in the writings
of the novelist and the dramatist. Probably individual cases
of impressment occurred till nearly the end of the Great War;
but they could not have been many. Compulsory service most
unnecessarily caused--not much, but still some--unjustifiable
personal hardship. It tended to stir up a feeling hostile to
the navy. It required to work it machinery costly out of all
proportion to the results obtained. Indeed, it failed completely
to effect what had been expected of it. In the great days of old
our fleet, after all, was manned, not by impressed men, but by
volunteers. It was largely due to that that we became masters
of the sea.