by Roy Adkins
In March 1802 the treaty between France and Britain was formally ratified in what became known as the Peace of Amiens, but even before this the effects of peace were being felt. The price of food in Britain fell, and increased trade with the Continent provided greater variety. Many people, unable to visit France for so many years, flocked there as soon as they had the chance. One of these was the Francophile Henry Redhead Yorke. Like many British people, Yorke had initially supported the French Revolution in the days before it became a bloodbath. Now visiting France for the first time since 1792, he found many things had altered in a very short time. Soon after he landed he talked to a fisherman who stated that ‘in no part of France had the peace of England caused more joy than at Calais, which had suffered extremely by the war, where the inhabitants were in a most deplorable condition; the young and middle-aged, to avoid being famished, had no other resource than to join the armies, which chiefly subsisted upon the plunder of foreign countries, for they had no alternative between famine and conquest’.48 Other people had different views, and some who spoke to Yorke said that ‘in their opinion the Peace was in favour of England, and when I enumerated the names of the different colonies we had restored to France they laughed at me and said, “You have taken away our commerce, and what have we taken from you?”’49
In Paris Yorke noted many changes, both in the appearance of the city, where many buildings had been demolished during the Revolution, and in the life of the people. He visited the Temple prison:The place is now greatly altered . . . all the surrounding buildings have been pulled down and a large opening formed which absolutely secludes it from all immediate communication with the city. It is impossible to obtain admission into this State prison - it is rigidly guarded within and without the walls. Persons are daily conveyed there by a lettre de cachet from the Grand Inquisitor Fouché, without any preliminary examination and often without the knowledge of their friends. This is the real history of those sudden disappearances of a number of persons, which the French journalists ascribe to robbers and assassins.50
It was most apparent in the capital that France had become a police state, and Yorke observed that ‘spies of the police prowl in every coffee house . . . no one dares now talk politics in them’.51
Poverty was much in evidence, and Yorke thought that conditions were much worse than in Britain: ‘In France at this time there are neither parochial rates nor workhouses such as we have in England . . . no kind of provision exists which affords employment to persons who, from sickness, misfortune, or lack of employment, have been thrown out of work. Hence the poverty of a French pauper is the consummation of wretchedness; rags, filth and disease waste his constitution and destroy his body, while despair for ever settles on his soul.’52 In contrast to the poverty, gambling dens and brothels, Yorke also found luxury goods on sale in shops.
With France in such a situation many people favoured a strong leader like Napoleon, and he was as skilful a politician as he was a general. The novelist Fanny Burney, married to a Frenchman who had escaped to Britain during the Revolution, returned to France in the spring of 1802. She stopped at a rural hamlet on the road from Calais to Paris, where she met ‘two good old women [who] told us that this was the happiest day (’twas Sunday) of their lives; that they had lost le bon Dieu [the Good Lord] for these last ten years, but that Bonaparte had now found him! In another cottage we were told the villagers had kept their own Curé all this time concealed, and though privately and with fright, they had thereby saved their souls through the whole of the bad times!’53 Napoleon had no respect for religion, but restoring it after its being banned by the revolutionaries was a cost-effective way of winning support. Because he was still securing his power base within France, peace with Britain would give him more time to deal with domestic concerns.
This was only the beginning, because Napoleon had ambitions to transform just about every aspect of French life in addition to extending his power well beyond the borders of France. After the horrors of the Revolution he appeared to offer a better future, and Bourrienne recorded the optimism: ‘The period of the peace of Amiens must be considered as the most glorious in France’s history. I exclude neither the time of the conquests of Louis XIV nor the more brilliant era of the Empire. The Consular glory was at that time pure, with only rosy expectations in prospect.’54
SIX
HOT PRESS
We made use of the Peace, not to recruit our Navy, but to be the cause of its ruin. Nothing but a speedy battle, a complete annihilation of the Enemy’s Fleets, and a seven years’ Peace, can get our Fleet in the order it ought to be.
Nelson, writing to Hugh Elliot, a British
diplomat at Naples, in July 18041
By the spring of 1803 it was clear that peace with France was not going to last - it was nothing more than an armed truce. France was preparing to renew the war, and yet again Britain was faced with the threat of invasion. When the Peace of Amiens was signed the year before, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Earl St Vincent, had drastically cut the navy, but now it needed to expand rapidly to meet the threat. On 8 March 1803 a message from King George III was delivered to Parliament: ‘His Majesty thinks it necessary to acquaint the House of Commons, that, as very considerable military preparations are carrying on in the ports of France and Holland, he has judged it expedient to adopt additional measures of precaution for the security of his dominions.’2 The French were claiming that they were building up military strength merely to protect their own colonies. The British did not believe them.
The very next day there began frenzied activity to prepare the laid-up naval ships for possible war and to enlist thousands of seamen. Warrants authorising press-gangs were issued in the greatest secrecy so that nobody could hide beforehand, and orders were given to ships’ captains to start a hot press - a vigorous and ruthless mobilisation. To obtain extra crew, a ship’s captain could send on shore a gang of trusted seamen commanded by a lieutenant or even board merchant ships, but many press-gangs were part of the Impress Service. At the Peace of Amiens, the Impress Service had been virtually dismantled, and so it was now hurriedly reinstated around the coast of Britain, with each press-gang headed by a lieutenant under a regulating captain.
Once the decision was taken to conduct a hot press, an Admiralty messenger raced to Plymouth in just thirty-two hours, arriving there early in the morning of 10 March. The news he brought led to the gates of the barracks being immediately shut, andabout 7 P. M. the town was alarmed with the marching of several bodies of Royal Marines, in parties of 12 and 14 each, with their officers, and a naval officer, armed, towards the Quays. So secret were the orders kept, that they did not know the nature of the service on which they were going until they boarded the tier of colliers [coal boats] at the New Quay, and other gangs the ships in Catwater, 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 landmen of all descriptions; and the town looked as if in a state of siege . . . one press gang entered the Dock Theatre, and cleared the whole gallery, except the women.3
The same sort of activity occurred simultaneously at Portsmouth, where ‘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 living 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.’4 The first few days of the hot press caused consternation and mayhem in places such as Portsmouth and Plymouth, and quickly moved further afield.
At the start of the hot press, twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant William Henry Dillon was struck with horror at being asked to work for the Impress Service in Hull. He had been in the navy for twelve years, and to him ‘the news was so astounding that I was completely taken aback, as I thought it a degrading appointment. None, generally speaking, but worn-out lieutenants were employed in that Service.�
��5 William Marsden, Second Secretary at the Admiralty in London, persuaded him to take up the post because ‘he told me that Lord St. Vincent had changed the whole system relating to the Impress Service by nominating young and active officers to it instead of old ones’.6 Dillon left for Hull the following day and ‘had not been out of the stage[coach] one minute when I met one of my shipmates of the Crescent, the sailmaker [they had served together in the West Indies]. He hailed me with a cheerful countenance, but when he heard the reason for my presence in that town, he took to his heels and was out of sight in no time.’7
Although the Royal Navy had no problem recruiting officers, seamen were always needed, especially in times of war, and the key method of recruitment was forcing them to enlist through impressment. Other methods of recruiting, such as calling for volunteers, were much less effective. The word ‘prest’ came from the French word prêter, to lend or pay in advance. It was originally a small sum of money paid to a seaman upon recruitment, who was then said to be ‘prest’. It took on a more menacing meaning when conflated with ‘press’, implying coercion. A group of seamen given a particular task was called a ‘gang’, but the press-gang - responsible for impressment - became hated and feared, and so the word ‘gang’ acquired sinister and criminal associations.
Impressment had its origins in a feudal society, but by the time of the Napoleonic Wars it was regarded by many people as nothing short of ‘legalized slavery’8, although others felt that impressment was an evil necessity in time of war and that the king had every right ‘to compel the services of the seamen, when their element (the ocean) is invaded’.9 Inevitably, those most opposed to it were the ones at greatest risk from being pressed. Torn from their families, men were forced into the navy with no idea how long they would serve - often until the end of a war unless they deserted, died or became unfit for service. No seaman had any guarantee of shore leave, as captains feared they would desert, which often made them more determined to run away as soon as they had an opportunity.
By law a press-gang was allowed to take only seafaring men and those associated with river craft, but they interpreted this ruling loosely and at times operated far inland. Only men between eighteen and fifty-five were supposed to be pressed, but age was difficult to prove since there were no birth certificates at this time and no system of recording births: parish registers, kept in churches, only recorded baptisms, marriages and burials. With all the difficulties of keeping impressment within the legal guidelines, any rumours of the approach of a press-gang tended to cause mass panic.
Although thousands of recruits to the navy were needed, experienced men were most valued, in particular merchant seamen. Crews of outward-bound merchant ships were exempt, as were several other categories of people, such as apprentices, some fishermen, custom-house employees and captains and mates of merchant ships, but they all had to carry a certificate of protection. Foreigners were also exempt, although Americans often found it difficult to prove their nationality. It was up to men taken by the press-gang to show they were exempt. Merchant ships returning home, even after a prolonged voyage, were targeted and their crews often cruelly depleted when boarded by the press-gangs within sight of Britain’s shores.
The process of impressment was often brutal. The press-gangs snatched men from the streets, taverns and even their own homes to be taken to the Impress Service’s headquarters, known as the ‘rendezvous’ or ‘rondy’ - usually a local inn. Here they were locked up until they could be transferred to a pressing tender, a small ship moored nearby. This was because until they were aboard their allotted ship, where they were asked whether they wanted to volunteer, the men were subject to civil law, not the law of the navy. Once they were asked, many did volunteer, since the only practical difference between a volunteer and a pressed man was that the volunteer was given a cash bounty for joining. Accommodation in the rendezvous and tenders tended to be cramped and filthy, conducive to the spread of diseases such as typhus. William Robinson described the conditions in which newly pressed men were held: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. As soon as the officer on deck understood that the men below were overcome with foul air, he ordered the hatches to be taken off, when day-light broke in upon us; and a wretched appearance we cut, for scarcely any of us were free from filth and vermin.10
Scenes of violence occurred throughout the country in the desperate attempts to escape the press-gangs. In early May, two press-gangs were attacked less than 400 yards from the Admiralty in London, the very headquarters of the Impress Service - ‘two gallies, each having an Officer and press-gang in it, in endeavouring to impress some persons at Hungerford Stairs, were resisted by a party of coal-heavers belonging to a wharf adjoining, who assailed them with coals and glass bottles: Several of the gang were cut in a most shocking manner on their heads and legs, and a woman who happened to be in a [nearby] wherry was wounded in so dreadful a manner, that it is feared she will not survive.’11 Hungerford Stairs were wooden steps leading down to the River Thames, since destroyed by the building of the Victoria Embankment.
One of the ships in the Thames that was looking to impress seamen was the frigate Immortalité, with Midshipman Abraham Crawford on board. He recorded that his ship was there ‘to enter or impress a new ship’s company as quickly as possible; the old one, which had served in the late war, being promised their discharge from the service as soon as the new crew should be completed’.12 With the prospect of the old crew being released, ‘all now was eagerness and anxiety to raise men . . . no vessel inward or outward bound escaped a search’.13 Even with such enthusiasm it took a while to raise the new crew, and Crawford recalled that ‘some time before we were complete, the ship still wanting perhaps some forty or fifty good hands, the captain learned that two Indiamen, which had just dropped down to Gravesend, had received their crews that morning’.14 Ships of the East India Company were known for the high quality of their officers and men, in comparison with other merchant seamen, and they were well armed and capable of fending off pirates and privateers. They would have just the type of seamen that were needed. The captain of the Immortalité decided to send several boats full of armed men to search two East Indiamen, the Ganges and the Woodford. By the time the boats reached the sides of the ships they ‘found the whole crew at quarters, armed with pikes and cutlasses, and every description of missile that the ship could supply’.15 It was obvious that the Indiamen would not submit without a fight, and Crawford recorded what happened after the lieutenant in charge of their boats ordered his men to board the ships:This order was more easily given than accomplished. The sides of the Indiamen were high, and everything which might aid a man in mounting had been carefully hauled in board; besides, she was terribly wall-sided [sides nearly vertical], which rendered the ascent still more difficult. The boats’ crews, as they attempted to board, were thrust back by those long pikes with which the Indiamen are supplied, one of which was hurled with great force into the boat I was in, and nailed a poor fellow’s foot to the bottom of the boat. Once more the lieutenant cautioned our stout opponents as to the consequences of conduct so refractory and illegal, ordering the marines in the boats at the same time to load. At length, finding every remonstrance unavailing, and every species of missile, including cold shot hurled into the boats, his patience became exhausted, and he ordered half a dozen muskets to be fired. This fire, though fatal, wounding two men mortally, had only the effect of exasperating the Indiaman’s crew more and more, and rousing them, if possible, to a fiercer and still more determined resistance. 16
Other controversial deaths had occurred during impressment a month earlier in Dorset. On 1 April the frigate Aigle, under the command of Captain George Wolfe, anchored off Portland, having sailed over 55 miles from his station at Portsmouth. Before it was light the following day a small boat rowed Wolfe, three of his officers, a lieutenant of marines, twenty-seven marines and a similar number of seamen to land close to the dilapidated castle on the north side of Portland. Thomas Hardy was right to call the forbidding, virtually treeless Portland the ‘Gibraltar of Wessex’.19 Rising abruptly from the sea and just 4 miles long, the rocky island was an impregnable fortress, linked only to the Dorset mainland by the immense shingle beach of Chesil Bank. Many of its men worked in the quarries that produced fine Portland building stone, as well as holystones 25 for scrubbing down decks of naval ships. These men had a fierce reputation, and in order to hide from the press-gangs, the fishermen of nearby Poole used Portland as a refuge.