The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore Part 16

Sooner or later he must go before the "gent with the swabs" and be "regulated," that is to say, stripped to the waist, or further if that exacting officer deemed it advisable, and be critically examined for physical ailments and bodily defects. In this examination the local "saw-bones" would doubtless lend a hand, and to outwit the combined skill of both captain and surgeon was a point of honour with the pressed man if by any possibility it could be done. With this laudable end in view he devoted much of his enforced leisure to the rehearsal of such symptoms and the fabrication of such defects as were best calculated to make him a free man.

For the sailor to deny his vocation was worse than useless. The ganger's shrewd code--"All as says they be land-lubbers when I says they baint, be liars, and all liars be seamen"--effectually shut that door in his face. There were other openings, it is true, whereby a knowing chap might wriggle free, but officers and medicoes were extremely "fly." He had not practised his many deceptions upon them through long years for nothing. They well knew that on principle he "endeavoured by every stratagem in his power to impose"--that he was, in short, a cunning cheat whose most serious ailments were to be regarded with the least sympathy and the utmost suspicion. Yet in spite of this disquieting fact the old hand, whom long practice had made an adept at deception, and who, when he was so inclined, could simulate "complaints of a nature to baffle the skill of any professional man," [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1540--Capt. Barker, 5 Nov. 1807.] rarely if ever faced the ordeal of regulating without "trying it on." Often, indeed, he antic.i.p.ated it. There was nothing like keeping his hand in.

Fits were his great stand-by, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.

1534--Capt. Barker, 11 Jan. 1805, and many instances.] and the time he chose for these convulsive turns was generally night, when he could count upon a full house and nothing to detract from the impressiveness of the show. Suddenly, at night, then, a weird, horribly inarticulate cry is heard issuing from the press-room, and at once all is uproar and confusion. Unable to make himself heard, much less to restore order, and fearing that murder is being done amongst the pressed men, the sentry hastily summons the officer, who rushes down, half-dressed, and hails the press-room.

"Hullo! within there. What's wrong?"

Swift silence. Then, "Man in a fit, sir," replies a quavering voice.

"Out with him!" cries the officer.

Immediately, the door being hurriedly unbarred, the "case" is handed out by his terrified companions, who are only too glad to be rid of him.

To all appearances he is in a true epileptic state. In the light of the lantern, held conveniently near by one of the gangsmen, who have by this time turned out in various stages of undress, his features are seen to be strongly convulsed. His breathing is laboured and noisy, his head rolls incessantly from side to side. Foam tinged with blood oozes from between his gnashing teeth, flecking his lips and beard, and when his limbs are raised they fall back as rigid as iron. [Footnote: Almost the only symptom of _le grand mal_ which the sailor could not successfully counterfeit was the abnormal dilation of the pupils so characteristic of that complaint, and this difficulty he overcame by rolling his eyes up till the pupils were invisible.]

After surveying him critically for a moment the officer, if he too is an old hand, quietly removes the candle from the lantern and with a deft turn of his wrist tips the boiling-hot contents of the tallow cup surrounding the flaming wick out upon the bare arm or exposed chest of the "case." When the fit was genuine, as of course it sometimes was, the test had no particular reviving effect; but if the man were shamming, as he probably was in spite of the great consistency of his symptoms, the chances were that, with all his nerve and foreknowledge of what was in store for him, the sudden biting of the fiery liquid into his naked flesh would bring him to his feet dancing with pain and cursing and banning to the utmost extent of his elastic vocabulary.

When this happened, "Put him back," said the officer. "He'll do, alow or aloft."

Going aloft at sea was the true epileptic's chief dread. And with good reason, for sooner or later it meant a fall, and death.

In the meantime other enterprising members of the press-room community made ready for the scrutiny of the official eye in various ways, practising many devices for procuring a temporary disability and a permanent discharge. Some, horrible thought! "rubbed themselves with Cow Itch and Whipped themselves with Nettles to appear in Scabbs"; others "burnt themselves with oil of vitriol" to induce symptoms with difficulty distinguishable from those of scurvy, that disease of such dread omen to the fleet; whilst others emulated the pa.s.sing of the poor consumptive of the canting epitaph, whose "legs it was that carried her off." Bad legs, indeed, ran a close race with fits in the pressed man's sprint for liberty. They were so easily induced, and so cheaply. The industrious application of the smallest copper coin procurable, the humble farthing or the halfpenny, speedily converted the most insignificant abrasion of the skin into a festering sore. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt. Ambrose, 20 June 1741; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1544--Capt. Bowyer, 18 Dec. 1808; _Admiralty Records_ 1.

1451--A. Clarke, Examining Surgeon at Dublin, 18 May 1807; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1517--Letters of Capt. Brenton, March and April 1797, and many instances.]

Here and there a man of iron nerve, acting on the common belief that if you had lost a finger the Navy would have none of you, adopted a more heroic method of shaking off the clutch of the gang. Such a man was Samuel Caradine, some time inhabitant of Kendal. Committed to the House of Correction there as a preliminary to his being turned over to the fleet for crimes that he had done, he expressed a desire to bid farewell to his wife. She was sent for, and came, apparently not unprepared; for after she had greeted her man through the iron door of his cell, "he put his hand underneath, and she, with a mallet and chisel concealed for the purpose, struck off a finger and thumb to render him unfit for His Majesty's service." [Footnote: _Times_, 3 Nov. 1795.]

A stout-hearted fellow named Browne, who hailed from Chester, would have made Caradine a fitting mate. "Being impressed into the sea service, he very violently determined, in order to extricate himself therefrom, to mutilate the thumb and a finger of his left hand; which he accomplished by repeatedly maiming them with an old hatchet that he had obtained for that purpose. He was immediately discharged." [Footnote: _Liverpool Advertiser_, 6 June 1777.] Such men as these were a substantial loss to the service. Fighting a gun shoulder to shoulder, what fearful execution would they not have wrought upon the "hereditary enemy"!

It did not always do, however, to presume upon the loss of a forefinger, particularly if it were missing from the left hand. Capt. Barker, while he was regulating the press at Bristol, once had occasion to send into Ilchester for a couple of brace of convicts who had received the royal pardon on condition of their serving at sea. Near Shepton Mallet, on the return tramp, his gangsmen fell in with a party armed with sticks and knives, who "beat and cut them in a very cruel manner." They succeeded, however, in taking the ringleader, one Charles Biggen, and brought him in; but when Barker would have discharged the fellow because his left forefinger was wanting, the Admiralty brushed the customary rule aside and ordered him to be kept. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.

1528--Capt. Barker, 28 July 1803, and endors.e.m.e.nt.]

The main considerations entering into the dispatch of pressed men to the fleet, when at length their period of detention at headquarters came to an end, were economy, speed and safety. Transport was necessarily either by land or water, and in the case of seaport, river or ca.n.a.l towns, both modes were of course available. Gangs operating at a distance from the sea, or remote from a navigable river or ca.n.a.l, were from their very situation obliged to send their catch to market either wholly by land, or by land and water successively. Land transport, though always healthier, and in many instances speedier and cheaper than transport by water, was nevertheless much more risky. Pressed men therefore preferred it. The risks--rescue and desertion--were all in their favour. Hence, when they "offered chearfully to walk up," or down, as the case might be, the seeming magnanimity of the offer was never permitted to blind those in charge of them to the need for a strong attendant guard.

[Footnote: In the spring of 1795 a body of Quota Men, some 130 strong, voluntarily marched from Liverpool to London, a distance of 182 miles, instead of travelling by coach as at first proposed. Though all had received the bounty and squandered it in debauchery, not a man deserted; and in their case the danger of rescue was of course absent. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1511--Capt. Bowen, 21 April 1795.] The men would have had to walk in any case, for transport by coach, though occasionally sanctioned, was an event of rare occurrence. A number procured in Berkshire were in 1756 forwarded to London "by the Reading machines,"

but this was an exceptional indulgence due to the state of their feet, which were already "blistered with travelling."

Even with the precaution of a strong guard, there were parts of the country through which it was highly imprudent, if not altogether impracticable, to venture a party on foot. Of these the thirty-mile stretch of road between Kilkenny and Waterford, the nearest seaport, perhaps enjoyed the most unenviable reputation. No gang durst traverse it; and no body of pressed men, and more particularly of pressed Catholics, could ever have been conveyed even for so short a distance through a country inhabited by a fanatical and strongly disaffected people without courting certain bloodshed. The naval authorities in consequence left Kilkenny severely alone. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1529--Capt. Bowen, 12 Oct. 1803.]

The sending of men overland from Appledore to Plymouth, a course frequently adopted to avoid the circuitous sea-route, was attended with similar risks. The hardy miners and quarrymen of the intervening moorlands loved nothing so much as knocking the gangsman on the head.

[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 22 Sept. 1805.]

The attenuated neck of land between the Mersey and the Dee had an evil reputation for affairs of this description. Men pressed at Chester, and sent across the neck to the tenders or ships of war in the Mersey, seldom reached their destination unless attended by an exceptionally strong escort. The reason is briefly but graphically set forth by Capt.

Ayscough, who dispatched three such men from Chester, under convoy of his entire gang, in 1780. "On the road thither," says he, "about seven miles from hence, at a village called Sutton, they were met by upwards of one Hundred Arm'd Seamen from Parkgate, belonging to different privateers at Liverpool. An Affray ensued, and the three Impress'd men were rescued by the Mobb, who Shot one of my Gang through the Body and wounded two others." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1446--Capt.

Ayscough, 17 Nov. 1780.] Parkgate, it will be recalled, was a notorious "nest of seamen." The alternative route to Liverpool, by pa.s.sage-boat down the Dee, was both safer and cheaper. To send a pressed man that way, accompanied by two of the gang, cost only twelve-and-six.

[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Admiral Phillip, 14 Sept. 1804.]

Mr. Midshipman Goodave and party, convoying pressed men from Lymington to Southampton, once met with an adventure in traversing the New Forest which, notwithstanding its tragic sequel, is not without its humorous side. They had left the little fishing village of Lepe some miles behind, and were just getting well into the Forest, when a cavalcade of mounted men, some thirty strong, all m.u.f.fled in greatgoats and armed to the teeth, unexpectedly emerged from the wood and opened fire upon them.

Believing it to be an attempt at rescue, the gang closed in about their prisoners, but when one of these was the first to fall, his arm shattered and an ear shot off, the gangsmen, perceiving their mistake, broke and fled in all directions. Not far, however. The smugglers, for such they were, quickly rounded them up and proceeded, not to shoot them, as the would-be fugitives antic.i.p.ated, but to administer to them the "smugglers' oath." This they did by forcing them on their knees and compelling them, at the point of the pistol and with horrible execrations, to "wish their eyes might drop out if they told their officers which way they, the smugglers, were gone." Having extorted this unique pledge of secrecy as to their movements, they rode away into the Forest, unaware that Mr. Midshipman Goodave, snugly ensconced in the neighbouring ditch, had seen and heard all that pa.s.sed--a piece of discretion on his part that later on brought at least one of the smugglers into distressing contact with the law. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 18: Informations of Shepherd Goodave, 1 Oct. 1779.]

Just as the dangers of the sea sometimes rendered it safer to dispatch pressed men from seaport towns by land--as at Exmouth, where the entrance to the port was in certain weathers so hazardous as to bottle all shipping up, or shut it out, for days together--so the dangers peculiar to the land rendered it as often expedient to dispatch them from inland towns by water. This was the case at Stourbridge. Handed over to contractors responsible for their safe-keeping, the numerous seamen taken by the gangs in that town and vicinity were delivered on board the tenders in King Road, below Bristol--conveyed thither by water, at a cost of half a guinea per head. This sum included subsistence, which would appear to have been mainly by water also. To Liverpool, the alternative port of delivery, carriage could only be had by land, and the risks of land transit in that direction were so great as to be considered insuperable, to say nothing of the cost. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Letters of Capt. Beecher, 1780.]

At ports such as Liverpool, Dublin and Hull, where His Majesty's ships made frequent calls, the readiest means of disposing of pressed men was of course to put them immediately on ship-board; but when no ship was thus available, or when, though available, she was bound foreign or on other prohibitive service, there was nothing for it, in the case of rendezvous lying so far afield as to render land transport impracticable, but to forward the harvest of the gangs by water. In this way there grew up a system of sea transport that centred from many distant and widely separated points of the kingdom upon those great entrepots for pressed men, the Hamoaze, Spithead and the Nore.

Now and then, for reasons of economy or expediency, men were shipped to these destinations as "pa.s.sengers" on colliers and merchant vessels, their escort consisting of a petty officer and one or more gangsmen, according to the number to be safeguarded. Occasionally they had no escort at all, the masters being simply bound over to make good all losses arising from any cause save death, capture by an enemy's ship or the act of G.o.d. From King's Lynn to the Nore the rate per head, by this means of transport, was 2 Pounds, 15s., including victualling; from Hull, 2 Pounds 12s. 6d.; from Newcastle, 10s. 6d. The lower rates for the longer runs are explained by the fact that, shipping facilities being so much more numerous on the Humber and the Tyne, compet.i.tion reduced the cost of carriage in proportion to its activity. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral Phillip, 3 and 11 Aug. 1801; Admiral Pringle, 2 April 1795.]

In spite of every precaution, such serious loss attended the shipping of men in this manner as to force the Admiralty back upon its own resources. Recourse was accordingly had, in the great majority of cases, to that handy auxiliary of the fleet, the hired tender. Tenders fell into two categories--cruising tenders, employed exclusively, or almost exclusively, in pressing afloat after the manner described in an earlier chapter, and tenders used for the double purpose of "keeping" men pressed on land and of conveying them to the fleet when their numbers grew to such proportions as to make a full and consequently dangerous ship. In theory, "any old unmasted hulk, unfit to send to sea, would answer to keep pressed men in." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.

579--Admiral Pringle, 2 April 1795.] In practice, the contrary was the case. Fitness for sea, combined with readiness to slip at short notice, was more essential than mere cubic capacity, since transhipment was thus avoided and the pressed man deprived of another chance of taking French leave.

One all-important consideration, in the case of tenders employed for the storing and detention of pressed men prior to their dispatch to the fleet, was that the vessel should be able to lie afloat at low water; for if the fall of the tide left her high and dry, the risk of desertion, as well as of attack from the sh.o.r.e, was enormously increased. Whitehaven could make no use of man-storing tenders for this reason; and at the important centre of King's Lynn, which was really a receiving station for three counties, it was found "requisite to have always a vessel below the Deeps to keep pressed men aboard," since their escape or rescue by way of the flats was in any anchorage nearer the town a foregone conclusion. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.

1486--Capt. Baird, 27 Feb. 1755.]

On board the tenders the comfort and health of the pressed man were no more studied than in the strong-rooms and prisons ash.o.r.e. A part of the hold was required to be roughly but substantially part.i.tioned off for his security, and on rare occasions this s.p.a.ce was fitted with bunks; but as the men usually arrived "all very bare of necessaries"--except when pressed afloat, a case we are not now considering--any provision for the slinging of hammocks, or the spreading of bedding they did not possess, came to be looked upon as a superfluous and uncalled-for proceeding. Even the press-room was a rarity, save in tenders that had been long in the service. Down in the hold of the vessel, whither the men were turned like so many sheep as soon as they arrived on board, they perhaps found a rough platform of deal planks provided for them to lie on, and from this they were at liberty to extract such sorry comfort as they could during the weary days and nights of their incarceration.

Other conveniences they had none. When this too was absent, as not infrequently happened, they were reduced to the necessity of "laying about on the Cables and Cask," suffering in consequence "more than can well be expressed." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt.

A'Court, 22 April 1741; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1497--Capt. Bover, 11 Feb. 1777, and Captains' Letters, _pa.s.sim_.] It is not too much to say that transported convicts had better treatment.

Cooped up for weeks at a stretch in a s.p.a.ce invariably crowded to excess, deprived almost entirely of light, exercise and fresh air, and poisoned with bad water and what Roderick Random so truthfully called the "noisome stench of the place," it is hardly surprising that on protracted voyages from such distant ports as Limerick or Leith the men should have "fallen sick very fast." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1444--Capt. Allen, 4 March 1771, and Captains' Letters, _pa.s.sim_.]

Officers were, indeed, charged "to be very careful of the healths of the seamen" entrusted to their keeping; yet in spite of this most salutary regulation, so hopelessly bad were the conditions under which the men were habitually carried, and so slight was the effort made to ameliorate them, that few tenders reached their destination without a more or less serious outbreak of fever, small-pox or some other equally malignant distemper. Upon the fleet the effect was appalling. Sickly tenders could not but make sickly ships.

If the material atmosphere of the tender's hold was bad, its moral atmosphere was unquestionably worse. Dark deeds were done here at times, and no man "peached" upon his fellows. Out of this deplorable state of things a remarkable legal proceeding once grew. Murder having been committed in the night, and none coming forward to implicate the offender, the coroner's jury, instead of returning their verdict against some person or persons unknown, found the entire occupants of the tender's hold, seventy-two in number, guilty of that crime. A warrant was actually issued for their apprehension, though never executed.

To put the men on their trial was a useless step, since, in the circ.u.mstances, they would have been most a.s.suredly acquitted. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 20.]

Just as a.s.suredly any informer in their midst would have been murdered.

The scale of victualling on board the tenders was supposed to be the same as on sh.o.r.e. "Full allowance daily" was the rule; and if the copper proved too small to serve all at one boiling, there were to be as many boilings as should be required to go round. Unhappily for the pressed man, there was a weevil in his daily bread. While it was the bounden duty of the master of the vessel to feed him properly, and of the officers to see that he was properly fed, "officers and masters generally understood each other too well in the pursery line."

[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral M'Bride, 19 March 1795.]

Rations were consequently short, boilings deficient, and though the cabin went well content, the hold was the scene of bitter grumblings.

Nor were these the only disabilities the pressed man laboured under.

His officers proved a sore trial to him. The Earl of Pembroke, Lord High Admiral, foreseeing that this would be the case, directed that he should be "used with all possible tenderness and humanity." The order was little regarded. The callosity of Smollett's midshipman, who spat in the pressed man's face when he dared to complain of his sufferings, and roughly bade him die for aught he cared, was characteristic of the service. Hence a later regulation, with grim irony, gave directions for his burial. He was to be put out of the way, as soon as might be after the fatal conditions prevailing on board His Majesty's tenders had done their work, with as great a show of decency as could be extracted from the sum of ten shillings.

Strictly speaking, it was not in the power of the tender's officers to mitigate the hardships of the pressed man's lot to any appreciable extent, let them be as humane as they might. For this the pressed man himself was largely to blame. An ungrateful rogue, his hide was as impervious to kindness as a duck's back to water. Supply him with slops [Footnote: The regulations stipulated that slops should be served out to all who needed them; but as their acceptance was held to set up a contract between the recipient and the Crown, the pressed man was not unnaturally averse from drawing upon such a source of supply as long as any chance of escape remained to him.] wherewith to cover his nakedness or shield him from the cold, and before the Sunday muster came round the garments had vanished--not into thin air, indeed, but in tobacco and rum, for which forbidden luxuries he invariably bartered them with the b.u.mboat women who had the run of the vessel while she remained in harbour. Or allow him on deck to take the air and such exercise as could be got there, and the moment your back was turned he was away _sans conge_. Few of these runaways were as considerate as that Scotch humorist, William Ramsay, who was pressed at Leith for beating an informer and there put on board the tender. Seizing the first opportunity of absconding, "Sir," he wrote to the lieutenant in command, "I am so much attached to you for the good usage I have received at your hands, that I cannot think of venturing on board your ship again in the present state of affairs. I therefore leave this letter at my father's to inform you that I intend to slip out of the way." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1524.--Capt. Brenton, 20 Oct. 1800.]

When that clever adventuress, Moll Flanders, found herself booked for transportation beyond the seas, her one desire, it will be recalled, was "to come back before she went." So it was with the pressed man. The idea of escape obsessed him--escape before he should be rated on shipboard and sent away to heaven only knew what remote quarter of the globe. It was for this reason that irons were so frequently added to his comforts.

"Safe bind, safe find" was the golden rule on board His Majesty's tenders.

How difficult it was for him to carry his cherished design into execution, and yet how easy, is brought home to us with surprising force by the catastrophe that befell the _Tasker_ tender. On the 23rd of May 1755 the _Tasker_ sailed out of the Mersey with a full cargo of pressed men designed for Spithead. She possessed no press-room, and as the men for that reason had the run of the hold, all hatches were securely battened down with the exception of the maindeck scuttle, an opening so small as to admit of the pa.s.sage of but one man at a time. Her crew numbered thirty-eight, and elaborate precautions were taken for the safe-keeping of her restless human freight. So much is evident from the disposition of her guard, which was as follows:--

_(a)_ At the open scuttle two sentries, armed with pistol and cutla.s.s.

Orders, not to let too many men up at once.

_(b)_ On the forecastle two sentries, armed with musket and bayonet.

Orders, to fire on any pressed man who should attempt to swim away.

_(c)_ On the p.o.o.p one sentry, similarly armed, and having similar orders.

_(d)_ On the quarter-deck, at the entrance to the great cabin, where the remaining arms were kept, one sentry, armed with cutla.s.s and pistol.

Orders, to let no pressed man come upon the quarter-deck.

There were thus six armed sentinels stationed about the ship--ample to have nipped in the bud any attempt to seize the vessel, but for two serious errors of judgment on the part of the officer responsible for their disposition. These were, first, the discretionary power vested in the sentries at the scuttle; and, second, the inadequate guard, a solitary man, set for the defence of the great cabin and the arms it contained. Now let us see how these errors of judgment affected the situation.

Either through stupidity, bribery or because they were rapidly making an offing, the sentries at the scuttle, as the day wore on, admitted a larger number of pressed men to the comparative freedom of the deck than was consistent with prudence. The number eventually swelled to fourteen--st.u.r.dy, determined fellows, the pick of the hold. One of them, having a fiddle, struck up a merry tune, the rest fell to dancing, the tender's crew who were off duty caught the infection and joined in, while the officers stood looking on, tolerantly amused and wholly unsuspicious of danger. Suddenly, just when the fun was at its height, a splash was heard, a cry of "Man overboard!" ran from lip to lip, and officers and crew rushed to the vessel's side. They were there, gazing into the sea, for only a minute or two, but by the time they turned their faces inboard again the fourteen determined men were masters of the ship. In the brief disciplinary interval they had overpowered the guard and looted the cabin of its store of arms. That night they carried the tender into Redwharf Bay and there bade her adieu. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 920--Admiral Sir Edward Hawke, 3 June 1755, and enclosures.] To pursue them in so mountainous a country would have been useless; to punish them, even had they been retaken, impossible. As unrated men they were neither mutineers nor deserters, [Footnote: By 4 & 5 Anne, cap. 6, pressed men could be apprehended and tried for desertion by virtue of the Queen's shilling having been forced upon them at the time they were pressed, but as the use of that coin fell into abeyance, so the Act in question became gradually a dead-letter. Hay, Murray, Lloyd, Pinfold and Jervis, Law Officers of the Crown, giving an opinion on this important point in 1756, held that "pressed men are not subject to the Articles (of War) until they are actually rated on board some of His Majesty's ships."--_Admiralty Records_ 7. 299--Law Officers'