The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore | Page 9

recruit by the slack of his ragged
breeches, remarked to his grinning messmates as he dangled the
disreputable object before their eyes: "'Ere's a lubber as cost a guinea a
pound!" He was not far out in his estimate.
As in the case of the good old method of recruiting by beat of drum and
the lure of the king's shilling, system after system thus failed to draw
into its net, however speciously that net was spread, either the class or
the number of men whose services it was desired to requisition. And
whilst these futilities were working out their own condemnation the
stormcloud of necessity grew bigger and bigger on the national horizon.
Let trade suffer as it might, there was nothing for it but to discard all
new-fangled notions and to revert to the system which the usage of
ages had sanctioned. The return was imperative. Failing what Junius
stigmatised as the "spur of the Press," the right men in the right
numbers were not to be procured. The wisdom of the nation was at
fault. It could find no other way.
There were, moreover, other reasons why the press-gang was to the
Navy an indispensable appendage--reasons perhaps of little moment
singly, but of tremendous weight in the scale of naval necessity when
lumped together and taken in the aggregate.
Of these the most prominent was that fatal flaw in naval administration
which Nelson was in the habit of anathematising as the "Infernal
System." Due partly to lack of foresight and false economy at
Whitehall, partly to the character of the sailor himself, it resolved itself
into this, that whenever a ship was paid off and put out of commission,
all on board of her, excepting only her captain and her lieutenants,
ceased to be officially connected with the Navy. Now, as ships were for
various reasons constantly going out of commission, and as the paying
off of a first-second-or third-rate automatically discharged from their
country's employ a body of men many hundreds in number, the

"lowering" effects of such a system, working year in, year out, upon a
fleet always in chronic difficulties for men, may be more readily
imagined than described.
To a certain limited extent the loss to the service was minimised by a
process called "turning over"; that is to say, the company of a ship
paying off was turned over bodily, or as nearly intact as it was possible
to preserve it, to another ship which at the moment chanced to be ready,
or making ready, for sea. Or it might be that the commander of a ship
paying off, transferred to another ship fitting out, carried the best men
of his late command, commonly known as "old standers," along with
him.
Unfortunately, the occasion of fitting out did not always coincide with
the occasion of paying off; and although turnovers were frequently
made by Admiralty order, there were serious obstacles in the way of
their becoming general. Once the men were paid off, the Admiralty had
no further hold upon them. By a stretch of authority they might, it is
true, be confined to quarters or on board a guardship; but if in these
circumstances they rose in a body and got ashore, they could neither be
retaken nor punished as deserters, but--to use the good old service
term--had to be "rose" again by means of the press-gang. Turnovers,
accordingly, depended mainly upon two closely related circumstances:
the goodwill of the men, and the popularity of commanders. A captain
who was notorious for his use of the lash or the irons, or who was
reputed unlucky, rarely if ever got a turnover except by the adoption of
the most stringent measures. One who, on the other hand, treated his
men with common humanity, who bested the enemy in fair fight and
sent rich prizes into port, never wanted for "followers," and rarely, if
ever, had recourse to the gang. [Footnote: In his Autobiography Lord
Dundonald asserts that he was only once obliged to resort to
pressing--a statement so remarkable, considering the times he lived in,
as to call for explanation. The occasion was when, returning from a
year's "exile in a tub," a converted collier that "sailed like a hay-stack,"
he fitted out the Pallas at Portsmouth and could obtain no volunteers.
Setting his gangs to work, he got together a scratch crew of the
wretchedest description; yet so marvellous were the personality and
disciplinary ability of the man, that with only this unpromising material
ready to his hand he intercepted the Spanish trade off Cape Finisterre

and captured four successive prizes of very great value. The Pallas
returned to Portsmouth with "three large golden candlesticks, each
about five feet high, placed upon the mast-heads," and from that time
onward Dundonald's reputation as a