The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore | Page 5

circumstances demand it, to fight the
king's enemies to the death, be that fate either theirs or his.
By some strange irony of circumstance there happened to be in the
English language a word--"pressed"--which tallied almost exactly in
pronunciation with the old French word prest, so long employed, as we
have seen, to differentiate from his fellows the man who, by the
devious means we have here described, was made "ready" for the sea
service. "Press" means to constrain, to urge with force--definitions
precisely connoting the development and manner of violent enlistment.
Hence, as the change from covert to overt violence grew in strength,
"pressing," in the mouths of the people at large, came to be
synonymous with that most obnoxious, oppressive and fear-inspiring
system of recruiting which, in the course of time, took the place of its
milder and more humane antecedent, "presting." The "prest" man
disappeared, [Footnote: The Law Officers of the Crown retained him,
on paper, until the close of the eighteenth century--an example in which
they were followed by the Admiralty. To admit his disappearance
would have been to knock the bottom out of their case.] and in his stead
there came upon the scene his later substitute the "pressed" man,
"forced," as Pepys so graphically describes his condition, "against all
law to be gone." An odder coincidence than this gradual substitution of
"pressed" for _prest,_ or one more grimly appropriate in its application,
it would surely be impossible to discover in the whose history of
nomenclature.
With the growth of the power and violence of the impress there was
gradually inaugurated another change, which perhaps played a larger
part than any other feature of the system in making it finally obnoxious
to the nation at large--finally, because, as we shall see, the nation long
endured its exactions with pathetic submission and lamentable
indifference. The incidence of pressing was no longer confined, as in its

earlier stages, to the overflow of the populace upon the country's rivers,
and bays, and seas. Gradually, as naval needs grew in volume and
urgency, the press net was cast wider and wider, until at length, during
the great century of struggle, when the system was almost constantly
working at its highest pressure and greatest efficiency, practically every
class of the population of these islands was subjected to its merciless
inroads, if not decimated by its indiscriminate exactions.
On the very threshold of the century we stumble upon an episode
curiously indicative of the set of the tide. Czar Peter of Russia had been
recently in England, acquiring a knowledge of English customs which,
on his return home, he immediately began to put in practice. His navy,
such as it was, was wretchedly manned. [Footnote: The navy got
together by Czar Peter had all but disappeared by the time Catherine II.
came to the throne. "Ichabod" was written over the doors of the Russian
Admiralty. Their ships of war were few in number, unseaworthy,
ill-found, ill-manned. Two thousand able-bodied seamen could with
difficulty be got together in an emergency. The nominal fighting
strength of the fleet stood high, but that strength in reality consisted of
men "one half of whom had never sailed out of the Gulf of Finland,
whilst the other half had never sailed anywhere at all." When the fleet
was ordered to sea, the Admiralty "put soldiers on board, and by calling
them sailors persuaded themselves that they really were so."--_State
Papers, Russia,_ vol. lxxvii.--Macartney, Nov. 16-27, 1766.] Russian
serfs made bad sailors and worse seamen. In the English ships
thronging the quays at Archangel there was, however, plenty of good
stuff-men who could use the sea without being sick, men capable of
carrying a ship to her destination without piling her up on the rocks or
seeking nightly shelter under the land. He accordingly pressed every
ninth man out of those ships.
When news of this high-handed proceeding reached England, it roused
the Queen and her advisers to indignation. Winter though it was, they
lost no time in dispatching Charles Whitworth, a rising diplomat of the
suavest type, as "Envoy Extraordinary to our Good (but naughty)
Brother the Czar of Muscovy," with instructions to demand the release,
immediate and unconditional, of the pressed men. Whitworth found the
Czar at Moscow. The Autocrat of All the Russias listened affably
enough to what he had to say, but refused his demand in terms that left

scant room for doubt as to his sincerity of purpose, and none for
protracted "conversations." "Every Prince," he declared for sole answer,
"can take what he likes out of his own havens." [Footnote: Admiralty
Records 1. 1436--Capt. J. Anderson's letters and enclosures; _State
Papers, Russia_, vol. iv.--Whitworth to Secretary Harley.] The position
thus taken up was unassailable. Centuries of usage hedged the
prerogative in, and Queen