The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore | Page 2

lot mounted up, just in that proportion did his
opposition to the power that sought to take him become the more
determined, strenuous, and undisguised.
Particularly was this true of warlike operations upon the sea, for to the
extraordinary and terrible risks of war were here added the ordinary but
ever-present dangers of wind and wave and storm, sufficient in
themselves to appal the unaccustomed and to antagonise the unwilling.
In face of these superlative risks the difficulty of procuring men was
accentuated a thousand-fold, and with it both the nature and the degree
of the coercive force necessary to be exercised for their procuration.
In these circumstances the Ruling Power had no option but to resort to
more exigent means of attaining its end. In times of peace, working
through myriad hands, it had constructed a thousand monuments of
ornamental or utilitarian industry. These, with the commonweal they
represented, were now threatened and must be protected at all costs.
What more reasonable than to demand of those who had built, or of
their successors in the perpetual inheritance of toil, that they should
protect what they had reared. Hitherto, in most cases, the men required
to meet the national need had submitted at a threat. They had to live,

and coercive toil meant at least a living wage. Now, made rebellious by
a fearful looking forward to the risks they were called upon to incur,
they had to be met by more effective measures. Faced by this
emergency, Power did not mince matters. It laid violent hands upon the
unwilling subject and forced him, nolens volens, to sail its ships, to
man its guns, and to fight its battles by sea as he already, under less
overt compulsion, did its bidding by land.
It is with this phase of pressing--pressing open, violent and
unashamed--that we purpose here to deal, and more particularly with
pressing as it applies to the sea and sailors, to the Navy and the defence
of an Island Kingdom.
At what time the pressing of men for the sea service of the Crown was
first resorted to in these islands it is impossible to determine. There is
evidence, however, that the practice was not only in vogue, but firmly
established as an adjunct of power, as early as the days of the Saxon
kings. It was, in fact, coeval with feudalism, of which it may be
described as a side-issue incidental to a maritime situation; for though
it is impossible to point to any species of fee, as understood of the
tenure of land, under which the holder was liable to render service at
sea, yet it must not be forgotten that the great ports of the kingdom, and
more especially the Cinque Ports, were from time immemorial bound
to find ships for national purposes, whenever called upon to do so, in
return for the peculiar rights and privileges conferred upon them by the
Crown. The supply of ships necessarily involved the supply of men to
sail and fight them, and in this supply, or, rather, in the mode of
obtaining it, we have undoubtedly the origin of the later impress
system.
With the reign of John the practice springs into sudden prominence.
The incessant activities of that uneasy king led to almost incessant
pressing, and at certain crises in his reign commission after commission
is directed, in feverish succession, to the sheriffs of counties and the
bailiffs of seaports throughout the kingdom, straitly enjoining them to
arrest and stay all ships within their respective jurisdictions, and with
the ships the mariners who sail them. [Footnote: By a plausible
euphemism they were said to be "hired." As a matter of fact, both ships
and men were retained during the royal pleasure at rates fixed by
custom.] No exception was taken to these edicts. Long usage rendered

the royal lien indefeasible. [Footnote: In more modern times the
pressing of ships, though still put forward as a prerogative of the
Crown, was confined in the main to unforeseen exigencies of transport.
On the fall of Louisburg in 1760, vessels were pressed at that port in
order to carry the prisoners of war to France (Admiralty Records 1.
1491--Capt. Byron, 17 June 1760); and in 1764, again, we find Capt.
Brereton, of the Falmouth, forcibly impressing the East India ship
Revenge for the purpose of transporting to Fort St. George, in British
India, the company, numbering some four hundred and twenty-one
souls, of the Siam, then recently condemned at Manilla as
unseaworthy.--Admiralty Records 1. 1498--Letters of Capt. Brereton,
1764.]
In the carrying out of the royal commands there was consequently, at
this stage in the development of pressing, little if any resort to direct
coercion. From the very nature of the case the principle of coercion was
there, but it was