by Roy Adkins
I have … deeply engraven on the memory of my boyhood the apprehensions and alarms that were experienced amongst the inhabitants of our town regarding the press-gang during the war. The cry that ‘the press-gang was coming’ was sufficient to cause all the young and eligible men of the town to flock up to the hills and away to the country as fast as possible, and to hide themselves in all manner of places till the danger was supposed to be over. It was not always, however, that the road to the country was open to them, for the authorities sometimes arranged that a troop of light horse should be at hand to cut off their retreat when the press-gang landed. Then might the soldiers be seen, with drawn cutlasses, riding down the poor fishermen, often through fields of standing corn where they had sought to hide themselves, while the press-gang were engaged in diligently searching every house in order to secure their victims. In this way, as well as out of their boats at sea, were great numbers taken away.12
William Richardson spoke of the way impressment ripped communities apart, as he witnessed with regret in his home town of South Shields in 1795, two years after war had resumed with France:
From Spithead we sailed away for Shields, to the great joy of my brother and I and other North countrymen in the ship. We anchored off the Bar and my brother and I soon had leave to go on shore, but we soon found Shields altered much from the happy times we had seen it; there was no joy, no merriment as used to be, everything appeared gloomy and the people sad; all the young men nearly were pressed and taken away and moreover we had no parents, brothers or sisters to greet our arrival as formerly, our family had become like a shipwreck and driven to different parts of the coast, but few of our relations here were alive, not a soul knew us as we went along the street, except a woman who had nursed us, and she poor creature was highly pleased to see us again. We called into a Publick house kept by a distant relation and ask’d if they knew where any of Capt Richardson’s sons [he and his brother] were, they replied with a sigh that they believed they were pressed into the Navy.13
The press-gang trawled the Shetland Isles frequently, and during the American War of Independence the parish minister John Mill wrote in his diary:
In July [1777], the people being apprised that the Government had sent over a tender, with a demand of an hundred men for their service, they fled from their houses and betook themselves to their hills and skulking places, which made me take notice of this on the Sabbath from the pulpit, saying they made great haste in running away for fear of the Pressgang, who did not want to hang them or put them in prison, but only to serve their King and Country in the suppression of Rebels in America, who had risen up against their lawful superiors without any just grounds, and [they] might be better employed for a year or two than at home; for when the rebellion was over, they might return again with their pockets full of money.14
Midshipman George Vernon Jackson, who joined the navy at the age of fourteen in 1801, was in charge of one press-gang at the renewal of war two years later and felt more sympathy:
From [South] Shields we went to Shetland, and I daresay there are people living there yet to whom a remembrance of our visit still clings. We carried off every able-bodied male we could lay our hands upon. I think the number we captured in Shetland alone amounted to 70 fine young fellows. When the ship was on the point of leaving, it was a melancholy sight; for boat-loads of women – wives, mothers, and sisters – came alongside to take leave of their kidnapped relatives … [I] often repented having made a capture when I witnessed the misery it occasioned in homes hitherto happy and undisturbed … These were strange times when a youngster of my age could lay violent hands upon almost any man he came across and lead him into bondage; but such was the law.15
Captain Charles Tyler, based in Pembroke, told the Admiralty about the deep distrust towards press-gangs he experienced when trying to raise a militia force of Sea Fencibles along the South Wales coast that same summer:
The men do not come forward as they ought. Some evil-disposed persons have insinuated that as soon as they are enrolled they will be sent to man the ships. I have taken every pains but cannot quite convince them to the contrary. At Fishguard not a man would enrol, although from the best information there are near two hundred employed in the coasting trade during the summer, and fishing in the winter. Nothing but a strong military force could press them. They bid defiance to any press-gang.16
Many men were legally exempt from impressment, such as foreigners, crews of outward-bound merchant ships, apprentices, some fishermen, custom-house employees and militia volunteers, but they had to carry a certificate of protection at all times. Also exempt were those sued and arrested for debt, and it was suspected that many such claims were fictitious in order to evade naval service. The smuggler John Rattenbury from Beer in Devon was taken by the press-gang at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1798 and apparently used forged documents relating to a baby boy, German Phillips, who had been baptised at Seaton (near Beer) only a few months earlier: ‘When it came to my turn to be examined, I told him I was an apprentice, and that my name was German Phillips, (that being the name of a young man, whose indenture I had for protection.) This stratagem however was of no avail with the keen-eyed lieutenant, and he took me immediately on board the Royal William, a guard ship, then lying at Spithead.’17
Whenever there was an urgent need to recruit seamen, a frenzied bout of impressment – a hot press – took place when protection certificates were waived, which caused even more panic. The most ruthless started in March 1803 when peace with France was collapsing and an invasion appeared imminent. One of the first targets was Plymouth: ‘At Stonehouse, Mutton Cove, North Corner, Morris Town, and in all the receiving and gin-shops at Dock, several hundreds of seamen and landmen were picked up and sent directly on board the flag ships … The different press-gangs, with their officers, literally scoured the country on the eastern roads and picked up several fine young fellows.’18 At Portsmouth on 11 March more chaos was reported: ‘The order for impressing seamen is still continued with the greatest vigilance, and not a single vessel of any description, lying in the harbour, but what has been completely searched, and the men, and even boys, taken out. It is with the utmost difficulty that people on the Point can get a boat to take them to Gosport, the terror of a press-gang having made such an impression on the minds of the watermen that ply the passage.’19 Seamen were brought from all round the coast into the main naval bases, such as Plymouth:
Came in from Liverpool, with impressed men and volunteers, the Sirius, of 36 guns, Captain Prowse; also, from Exmouth, the Eagle Excise cutter, Captain Ward, with seamen, from Falmouth; the Active Excise cutter, Captain Kinsman, with seamen for the fleet. Last night the Boadicea, of 44 guns, Captain Maitland boarded, by her boats, the whole flotilla of trawl boats then fishing off the Eddystone light-house, and took two seamen out of each trawl-boat, about forty in number, and sent them on board the flag-ship in Cawsand Bay.20
A month later, at the end of April, Rear-Admiral George Campbell issued a secret order to the captains under his command along the south-west coast of England:
WHEREAS it is intended that a general impress of seamen should take place at the different ports and places along the adjacent coast, and that preparation should be made with the utmost secrecy and caution to perform that service with promptitude and effect, you will, immediately on receipt of these orders, select from the crew of his Majesty’s ship under your command a sufficient number of trusty and well disposed men to man three boats, with as many marines and petty officers as you may judge necessary to send in each, under the orders of a lieutenant, to whom you will deliver a press warrant accordingly; and you are likewise to select sixteen steady marines that may be trusted to go on shore to stop the avenues leading up to the country … You will endeavour to have previous communication with one of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the district, applying to him to back the warrants, taking especial care to cause as little alarm as possible.21
Many requests w
ere made to the Admiralty for the discharge of impressed men and boys, and petitions were even presented when communities felt terrorised. In 1812 the Corporation of Falmouth in Cornwall complained in a petition about Lieutenant Robert Carter, a native of Exeter, saying that they had
for some time past, viewed with the sincerest regret and heartfelt sorrow, the vexatious and outrageous proceedings of Lieutenant Carter of the Impress Service, at this Port, acting under the orders of James Slade Esq. of the Royal Navy, the Regulating Captain. That said Lieutenant Carter appears to be guided, in such his impressments, by no regard to the authority of the Magistracy, the laws of the land or the welfare of the country; but to consider his own private views and interests paramount to all public considerations. That the said Lieutenant Carter impresses indiscriminately Landsmen, Fishermen, Packetsmen* and Local Militia Men, dragging them from their houses and quarters at unusual hours of the night. That the said Lieutenant Carter by firing at and molesting persons not subject to impressment, has interrupted and rendered the passing of this harbour in boats, dangerous. That said Lieutenant Carter, by impressing fishermen and others, concerned in supplying the markets of Falmouth and its neighbourhood with fish, as also with potatoes, has materially affected the supply of the markets with those, at all times necessary, but at the present moment of scarcity, indispensible articles of consumption. That the impressment of a local militia man (and who we conceive was not liable to impressment) on the second of this month, whilst the Regiment, in which he is enrolled, was embodied in this town, occasioned a very great sensation amongst the inhabitants and others, and was nearly productive of consequences the most alarming.22
Foreigners were exempt from impressment, but foreign seamen as well as prisoners-of-war could volunteer for the navy. Even so, there were many like Joseph Bates who were picked up by the press-gangs, often deliberately, resulting in numerous requests for their release. One example was mentioned to the Admiralty by Captain Edward Rotheram on board the Dreadnought off Ushant in April 1805:
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Lordship’s order of yesterday’s date requiring me to state the cases of John Peterson and Jna. Neilson on board His Majesty’s Ship under my command said to be subjects of Sweden as expressed in your Lordships order. I find that the men alluded to are both natives of Trondheim in Norway, that they were pressed the 23rd of April 1803 out of an East India ship, and that neither of them are married or settled in England or have received the King’s Bounty and as I conclude your Lordship’s order means their being discharged, if aliens, I will execute the same the first opportunity.23
It had taken these men two years to obtain their release. A decade earlier, in 1793, the merchant captain Samuel Kelly was at Bristol where some of his foreign crew were taken:
As soon as we cleared Customs I proceeded with the brig to Pill, to be ready for the first fair wind. Two or three of my crew were Swedes, which were in general secure from the Impress, and always considered so by the Admiralty, but while I was at Bristol the gang boarded the brig and carried off the foreign seamen, knowing them to be such. As soon as I heard of my loss I applied to the two lieutenants for their release, in vain. I then made a humble application to the regulating captain, who heard me with indifference and finally dismissed the petition.24
A major source of aggravation between Britain and America was the impressment of American seamen. One problem was deciding who was an American, because there was no especially distinctive American accent and anyone born before the Declaration of Independence in 1776 was formerly a British subject. Certificates of citizenship were issued to many American seamen to prevent their being seized by press-gangs, but bogus protection documents were freely purchased, both in America and in major British seaports, so the Royal Navy tended to treat them all with suspicion. It has been estimated that from the start of the war with France in 1793 to the outbreak of war with America in 1812, between eight and ten thousand American seamen were pressed into the Royal Navy, while others served as volunteers. The British believed that they had the right to board foreign ships to take off British deserters, but frequently removed those of different nationalities on the assertion that they were British. There was great bitterness, and the American Henry Torey,* who became a prisoner-of-war at Dartmoor, angrily complained: ‘When the British go on board an American merchant ship to look for English sailors, they adopt one easy rule, viz – they select the stoutest, most hardy and healthy looking men, and swear they are Englishmen. After they have selected one of these fine fellows, it is in vain that he produces his protection, or any other evidence of his American birth and citizenship.’25
In practice many naval captains were a law unto themselves, and knew very well they would be miles out to sea before some illegally pressed men were even missed by their family and friends. Instances occurred where pressed men just disappeared from their communities, and particularly for those who were illiterate and could not write home, their families might lose contact with them for months or years, sometimes for ever. Even a man like George Price, who could write reasonably well, had trouble making contact with his family, yet he was only based at the Downs off the Kent coast, not in some farflung location. ‘I wrote a letter to you about a fortnight ago and I have received no answer,’ he complained to his brother on 25 May 1804, adding, ‘in which I concluded the letter miscarried’,26 and again a week later: ‘I have wrote four letters to you and cannot get an answer which I think is very strange.’27 William Lovett said that of those seized in the Newlyn area, ‘many of them [were] never more heard of by their relations’.28 One young boy at Portsmouth who disappeared turned up several years later, in 1812:
About five years ago, a child of Mr. Sheppard, belonging to one of the coach offices in this town, but who is since dead, was stolen from his parents. Every possible enquiry was made after him, at the time, without success, and he was given up for lost. He has, a few days since, made his appearance in the Hebe frigate, just arrived in England. The boy has not the most distant recollection how he was enticed away; but remembers he was put on board the Royal William, and afterwards sent to sea in the Laurel. He has been 25 months in a French prison.29
Built at Bridport in Dorset in 1806, the 22-gun Laurel was sent to the Cape of Good Hope. In September 1808 the ship was keeping watch on the harbour of Port Louis in Mauritius, but was forced to surrender after a fierce fight with the much larger French frigate Canonnière, which is when the boy was taken prisoner.
Around the shores of Britain, the threat of impressment blighted communities for decade after decade. During most of Nelson’s adult life, British forces were fighting in some part of the globe, usually in a war against the French, and so he hardly knew a time when press-gangs did not operate. The press-gang was so prevalent that many traditional folk songs deal with its operations, and one from Tyneside was a typical lament:
O! the weary cutters – they’ve ta’en my laddie frae me,
O! the weary cutters – they’ve ta’en my laddie frae me;
They’ve press’d him far away foreign, with Nelson ayont the salt sea.
O! the weary cutters – they’ve ta’en my laddie frae me.30
Once the cutter or tender was full, the men were usually taken to a larger receiving vessel, from which they were eventually distributed to the warships that needed them. In 1801, when fourteen-year-old Daniel Goodall was volunteering for the navy, he was treated as badly as the impressed men:
I was handed over to the tender mercies of a corporal of marines, whose duty it was to conduct me to that purgatory of naval neophytes, the press-room, as the dog-hole in the hold of the ‘Tender’ is called, wherein newly-entered volunteers and impressed seamen are confined – for no distinction was made at the first between those who were forcibly deprived of their freedom and those who surrendered of their own will their liberty of action for the time being.31
Goodall was sent down a ladder into the hold, which was like a prison:
The ladder was instantly withdrawn, the grating clapped on again, and then of course, I was in total darkness … Such a torrent of oaths and obscenity were immediately poured out upon me from all sides as might well justify of themselves the character of ‘floating hells,’ only too justly bestowed upon some of those receptions for naval recruits, and before I could stumble to my feet I was again seized and violently shoved forward as before with the same result. This process was again and again repeated, until I was ready to drop between the pain of my bruises and sheer exhaustion. This was called ‘hustling’, and each time I fell the cry went round, ‘Up with him again and hustle him’.32
Eventually one man stopped the hustling and found him a place to sleep. Later in life, Goodall bitterly remembered this first encounter with the navy: ‘A lapse of more than half a century has not obliterated the vividness of my impressions.’33
In May 1805 the seventeen-year-old William Robinson, from Farnham in Surrey, was another volunteer who felt he was treated like a criminal:
We were ordered down in the hold, and the gratings put over us; as well as a guard of marines placed round the hatch-way, with their muskets loaded and fixed bayonets, as though we had been culprits of the first degree, or capital convicts. In this place we spent the day and following night huddled together, for there was not room to sit or stand separate: indeed, we were in a pitiable plight, for numbers of them were sea-sick, some retching, others were smoking, whilst many were so overcome by the stench, that they fainted for want of air.34