Robert Walpole, in 1740, brought in a Bill for the "General Registry of the Mariners of the Kingdom." When insisting upon the necessity of this measure, he remarked, "After every means of impress had been used until not another man could be got, all the haunts of seamen having been searched, the impress was suspended and protection granted in order that the trading ships might go to sea. This soon made it apparent that there was no want of sailors in the nation; they turned out by thousands-16,000 demanded protection for the colonies and coasters alone."

But his proposal for general registration, resembling in some respects the system then and now in vogue with the French, was not favourably received by Parliament, while the popular cry against it became so strong that he was obliged to withdraw the Bill.

In 1749, however, Lord Barrington, a member of the Board of Admiralty, under Mr. Pelham's administration, re-introduced this measure with certain modifications, wherein he proposed to raise a reserve of 10,000 men by a retaining fee of £10 per annum to each able seaman who held himself ready to serve in the Royal Navy when required.

But though a resolution to that effect passed the House of Commons after a long debate, it was never embodied in any Act of Parliament, no doubt from the fact of its too expensive character. In the meantime, one of the recommendations of George II. on his accession to the throne in 1726, which, however, did not become law until 1747 (20 Geo. II., chap. 38), had a material effect in encouraging seamen, if not to enter the Navy, to remain in the country. By this Act merchant seamen were, for the first time, required to subscribe 6d. per month out of their wages to what was long known as the "Greenwich Fund," towards the support of their aged and infirm. With all its failings, the Greenwich Fund, so long as it

was honestly conducted, gave them what they never had before, and what now the merchant seamen in the Reserve alone have a stake in the hedge," a pension in old age, which induced them to stay at home.*

66

Nine years afterwards the training-ship of the Marine Society was established through the influence and patriotism of Mr. Jonas Hanway, a merchant of the City of London, and an ornament to the age in which he lived. It was the first of its kind, and the institution has been maintained ever since, proving of great value to the Merchant Service and Royal Navy.

Various fresh proposals were made about this period to render impressment unnecessary, as the press-gang had now become, not merely an ineffective and expensive means of obtaining seamen, but an intolerable nuisance to almost every class of the community, an evil, increasing and interfering as the people became more and more intelligent, and in itself practically worse than worthless, for I believe that at no period of our history were the men annually impressed, greater than the whole number of men, engaged in the various press-gangs.

In 1770, the Lord Mayor of London formally represented to the Admiralty that the tradesmen of the City could not go about their lawful callings without being interrupted and insulted by press-gangs; and in the same year the seamen themselves presented a most urgent petition to the King in which they supplicate his " Majesty's interposition to prevent the unpolitic and abominable practice."‡

* The Thames Watermen were under a statutory obligation to provide a certain number of seamen for the Navy as long as their special privileges existed, or rather until these were materially modified.

+ Gentleman's Magazine, September, 1770.

The celebrated novelist, Captain Marryat, wrote an energetic and exhaustive pamphlet condemning the system of impressment, of which he had seen the evils in the early part of his naval career. It received

In 1774, Lieutenant Tomlinson proposed a scheme for rendering impressment unnecessary, which attracted considerable attention. He suggested that every seaman entering the Navy voluntarily, should be allowed leave of absence, while on pay, for ten days to visit his friends before joining his ship, with the expenses of his journey, but making it felony for him to desert after receiving this bounty. Able seamen, by his plan, would not be bound to serve more than three years, and ordinary seamen not more than four years, the former receiving 30s. and the latter 24s. per month while in the service of the State. Landsmen were to be paid 22s. per month, their term of service being for five years. Having completed their servitude, they were to be supplied with certificates protecting them from impressment. He proposed, however, that the whole seafaring population should be obliged to serve, if required, in the Royal Navy, receiving a pension, when fifty years of age, from Greenwich Hospital if they had fulfilled their engagements.

This scheme was brought under notice of the House of Commons on the 11th March, 1777, but, after full debate, the resolution in its favour was rejected. In that year another scheme was suggested, not unlike the existing measure for our Naval Reserve, whereby seamen were to be voluntarily enrolled in time of peace for service during war, and when "not in actual service in King's ships might be permitted to serve on board merchantmen" in cases where the length of service did not exceed six months. Twenty thousand men were to be thus enrolled, each of whom was to receive an annual retaining fee of £5, with £1 on enrolment. But this scheme, also, failed to meet the approval of the then Government.

considerable attention at the time, but it drew on him the displeasure of our Sailor King, William IV., who, in consequence, refused to bestow on Captain Marryat the order of C.B., to which he was entitled by war service.

In 1793, Pitt, still finding that every scheme, and especially impressment, had signally failed to obtain the number of seamen necessary for the emergency of war, introduced his famous "Quota Bill," whereby all seaports and parishes were required "to furnish seamen and landsmen in proportion to their extent for His Majesty's service." The Bill was passed, but so many vagabonds*frequently the sweepings of our gaols-were thus introduced into our Navy, that various writers of the period were of opinion that the scheme was in a great measure the cause of the mutiny at the Nore, which subsequently brought so much disgrace upon the British fleet.

But impressment contined;† and although it has not

* Amongst the numerous instances recorded in the public journals of the period, mention is made of one James Thompson, who, having been capitally convicted at the Old Bailey for felony and piracy, was respited on condition that he served in the Navy so long as his services were there required! And Captain E. P. Brenton, in his "Naval History," remarks:- -“The seamen who voluntarily entered in 1793, and had fought some of the most glorious of our battles, received but five pounds bounty, and these brave fellows saw men, the very refuse and outcasts of society, flying from justice and the vengeance of the laws, come on board with a bounty of seventy pounds, for such enormous sums were the merchants obliged to pay for their quota men before the ships were allowed to sail." Forty-five press-gang stations were in full operation at the commencement of the great naval war, having an average of 20 men engaged at each station, to which must be added the guardships and tenders. In confirmation of the depraved class of men thus obtained, Admiral Eiken, in his "Naval Battles," states :-" The ships, on the breaking out of the war in 1803, were worse manned than ever. The Donegal and Belleisle went out to the Mediterranean with not more than 20 men each that could take the wheel, and from that time to the conclusion of the war in 1815 there were few exceptions to the inefficient and miserable state of the ships' crews.

"The Princess Royal, in the Channel Fleet, was obliged to take 60 convicts, and still remained 70 short of her complement, yet in three months time the captain considered his crew very fair, compared with the general state of the fleet at that time.

"In 1804, 50 convicts were sent in one draft to the Bellona. The Canada received 60 Spaniards from the prison ships in one day, and a

been put in force since the close of the last French war, the law has never been repealed.*

In a paper, "Remarks on on Manning the Navy," presented by Lord Nelson to Earl St. Vincent on the 13th February, 1803, he estimated the expense of raising seamen at that time to be £20 per head, remarking that no fewer than 42,000 men had deserted during the late

74 left Plymouth 80 short of complement, the port admiral declaring he had not a single man to give her.”

* An old friend of mine-a very distinguished Statesman, who has kindly glanced over the proof-sheets of this article, remarks: "There is no law enacting impressment; this is stated in the Encyclopædia Brittanica article Impressment,' and I well remember reading a case of resisting and killing one of the ruffians of a press-gang where the Court decided that such killing was not murder, as the acts of the press-gang had no sanction of law."

Anxious to be strictly accurate in all my statements, I addressed the Secretary to the Marine Department of the Board of Trade on this point, and with his usual courtesy and promptitude, he replies: "The operation of the press-gang is this: in the time of danger, Her Majesty, by proclamation, has power to command the services of all her people, or any particular class, or any section of any particular class, and when the class or section whose services are commanded do not come forward, they are seized and sent on board. This is called the press-gang system. If you look at the Report of the Royal Commission on Manning the Navy, 1859 (of which, by the way, you were a member), pages 20 and 21, you will there see the law distinctly stated. I also enclose copies of the sections of the Acts 5 & 6 William IV., chap. 24, and 16 & 17 Victoria, chap. 69, which will show you that the compulsory service of men taken against their will may be for five years or longer in emergency. I may, however, add that when required to serve for more than five years, the latter Act provides that they "shall for such extension of service be entitled to such bounty as may be given by such proclamation."

To make quite certain, the above statement was submitted to the Registrar of the Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, who remarks: "You have correctly stated the Law on the subject of impressment. Its legality is undoubted. It is part of the common law of the land."

Further, referring to the "Law relating to the Officers of the Navy," by Harris Prendergast, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, part i., p. 88, I find, "The power of impressment for manning the Navy by the King's Com