The Evil Necessity: British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World

By Denver Brunsman

A fundamental component of Britain’s early success, naval impressment not only kept the Royal Navy afloat—it helped to make an empire. In total numbers, impressed seamen were second only to enslaved Africans as the largest group of forced laborers in the eighteenth century.

In The Evil Necessity, Denver Brunsman describes in vivid detail the experience of impressment for Atlantic seafarers and their families. Brunsman reveals how forced service robbed approximately 250,000 mariners of their livelihoods, and, not infrequently, their lives, while also devastating Atlantic seaport communities and the loved ones who were left behind. Press gangs, consisting of a navy officer backed by sailors and occasionally local toughs, often used violence or the threat of violence to supply the skilled manpower necessary to establish and maintain British naval supremacy. Moreover, impressments helped to unite Britain and its Atlantic coastal territories in a common system of maritime defense unmatched by any other European empire.

Drawing on ships’ logs, merchants’ papers, personal letters and diaries, as well as engravings, political texts, and sea ballads, Brunsman shows how ultimately the controversy over impressment contributed to the American Revolution and served as a leading cause of the War of 1812.

Early American HistoriesWinner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an Outstanding Work of Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Studies

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Release date: Mar 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9780813933528

Book preview

EARLY AMERICAN HISTORIES

Douglas Bradburn, John C. Coombs, and

S. Max Edelson, Editors

Winner of the

WALKER COWEN MEMORIAL PRIZE

for an outstanding work of scholarship

in eighteenth-century studies

The Evil Necessity

British Naval         

Impressment in the

Eighteenth-Century

Atlantic World        

DENVER BRUNSMAN

University of Virginia Press  Charlottesville & London

University of Virginia Press

© 2013 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First published 2013

9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brunsman, Denver Alexander, 1975–

The evil necessity : British naval impressment in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world / Denver Brunsman.

    p. cm. — (Early American histories) (Winner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an outstanding work of scholarship in eighteenth-century studies)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8139-3351-1 (cloth : acid-free paper)—

ISBN 978-0-8139-3352-8 (e-book)

 1. Great Britain—History, Naval—18th century. 2. Great Britain. Royal Navy—History—18th century. 3. Impressment—Great Britain—History—18th century. 4. Impressment—United States—History—18th century. 5. Sailors—Great Britain—History—18th century. 6. Sailors—United States—History—18th century. 7. Imperialism—History—18th century. I. Title.

     DA77.B78 2013

     359.00941'09033—dc23

                                                                                   2012025398

Maps by Bill Nelson

Title page illustration: Jack Detected Sailing under False Colors, by George Cruikshank, London, 1837–38. (Princeton Univerity Library)

for Taryn

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART I. EMPIRE

1 Imperial Design

2 Ruling the Waves

3 Cultures of Impressment

PART II. SAILORS

4 Men of War

5 Everyday Escapes

6 Atlantic Impressment Riots

Epilogue

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

MAPS

1 The Atlantic World, c. 18th century

2 Royal Navy Recruiting Officers, c. 1740s

3 Stations in the Impress Service, c. 1800

4 The Royal Navy in the Western Hemisphere, c. mid-18th century

FIGURES

1 The Liberty of the Subject, by James Gillray

2 Manning the Navy, by Samuel Collings

3 Detail of topmen at the Battle of Havana, by Dominique Serres

4 The Use of a Gentleman; or, Patronage for the Admiralty, by Charles Williams

5 Accommodation; or, Lodgings to Let at Portsmouth!!, by George Woodward

6 The Press Gang; or, English Liberty Display'd

7 Jack Detected Sailing under False Colors, by George Cruikshank

8 Portrait of Admiral Charles Knowles

TABLES

1 Britain's major wars in the long eighteenth century

2 British naval mobilizations outside of major wars in the eighteenth century

3 Survey of lieutenants employed in raising men, July 4, 1743

4 Legal status of impressment in North America and the West Indies

Acknowledgments

Writing a book is much like working as a member of a crew on a ship. The author may be the captain, but the ship (as this book attests) goes nowhere without the talented and dedicated labor of numerous individuals. The project began as a Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton University, where generous funding from the Graduate School, Department of History, and a timely grant from the Center of International Studies, allowed me to travel to libraries and archives throughout North America and the United Kingdom. I count the day that John Murrin became my graduate advisor as one of the most fortunate in my life. Although the book has changed significantly from the dissertation, John has been a constant, always sharing his support and legendary intellect. Barbara Oberg has acted as a second advisor from the early stages of the dissertation to the completed book. She is an inspiration for showing that someone so accomplished can also be so kind. The final members of my dissertation committee, David Armitage and Linda Colley, both took time out of their busy lives to help me. In their own ways, each has produced models of scholarship in British, Atlantic, and global history to which this work aspires.

Numerous other people and institutions helped this vessel set sail. At Princeton, Drew Isenberg, Stan Katz, James McPherson, Peter Silver, Frank Trentmann, and Sean Wilentz all took an interest in my work and helped to train me as a historian. My fellow graduate students, particularly Alec Dun, Brendan Kane, Eileen Kane, Thierry Rigogne, David Silverman, and Jenny Weber, all helped to shape my thinking on impressment. Alec, Brendan, and David have continued to read chapters and share ideas—often at a moment's notice—as the dissertation has turned into the book. The McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania served as my second academic home (and, at times, my actual home) during my graduate study. I thank the center and its director, Dan Richter, for a Society of the Cincinnati/ MCEAS Dissertation Fellowship and an incomparable intellectual setting for writing a dissertation. As a graduate student, I also received generous funding from a Price Visiting Research Fellowship at the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan; Eastern Regional Scholarship from the Colonial Dames of America; Alexander O. Vietor Memorial Fellowship from the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University; Society of Colonial Wars of Massachusetts Fellowship from the Massachusetts Historical Society; Albert J. Beveridge Grant from the American Historical Association; and Graduate Student Fellowship from the Institute of United States Studies, University of London.

I transformed my dissertation into a book as a member of the History Department at Wayne State University. The university provided exceptional financial and intellectual support during my early professional career. A University Research Grant, Humanities Center Faculty Fellowship, and additional research funds from the History Department, Humanities Center, and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences allowed me to continue researching impressment and make this project truly global in scope. My department chair, Marc Kruman, went beyond the call of duty in giving endless encouragement and securing the time necessary for my writing. The Wayne State Humanities Center and its director, Walter Edwards, hosted me as a yearlong Resident Scholar and provided invaluable interdisciplinary perspectives on my work. I also appreciate help from my terrific colleagues in the History Department, including Eric Ash, John Bukowczyk, Jorge Chinea, José Cuello, Hans Hummer, Janine Lanza, Danielle McGuire, Aaron Retish, Stanley Shapiro, Melvin Small, and Kidada Williams. Sandra VanBurkleo deserves special mention for serving as the best mentor any young scholar could ask for. Gayle McCreedy cheerfully provided outstanding administrative support for the book. My students at Wayne State continually inspired me by their dedicated scholarly pursuits, often against difficult odds. My former students Joel Stone and Doug Fisher have turned into close friends and collaborators. I appreciate Joel for sharing his expertise on maritime history and Doug for devoting countless hours to reading chapters and talking about press gangs.

I completed the final stages of the book as a member of the History Department at George Washington University. In a short time, my new colleagues have already provided rich input on my research and extended a warm welcome to my family. I especially appreciate the department's chair, William Becker, and administrator, Michael Weeks, for taking care of numerous details during my transition, which allowed me to finish the book.

During the 2007–8 academic year, I was a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Newberry Library. I am grateful to the NEH and everyone at the Newberry, particularly Jim Grossman, Diane Dillon, and Paul Gehl, for making my experience so memorable. My cubicle mates and joint fellows, Alice Fahs and Justine Murison, reminded me of the joys and rewards of participating in a vibrant writing group. I also benefited greatly from engaging conversations with Leon Fink as he completed his own maritime labor study, Sweatshops at Sea. During the 2009–10 academic year, I had the good fortune to belong to yet another stimulating intellectual community as a Residency Research Fellow at the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Michigan. Ronald Suny, the institute's director, took me under his wing and somehow found space for me to continue working even after my official fellowship ran out. The past and present staff of the Eisenberg Institute, including Shannon Ralston, Shelly Rettell, and Gregory Parker, could not have been more gracious in hosting me and my hundreds of books and file folders.

I have used the collections of more than thirty archives in the United States, Canada, England, and Scotland to produce this study. Although it is impossible to thank by name all of the archivists and librarians who helped me, I could not have written this book without their assistance. The staff of the Clements Library was particularly instrumental in aiding my research. I especially thank the late John Harriman, Barbara DeWolfe, Brian Leigh Dunnigan, and the library's former director, John Dann. Clayton Lewis was incredibly helpful in locating illustrations for the book. I also appreciate Julie Cochrane of the Picture Gallery of the National Maritime Museum for handling my numerous image requests and helping with permission for the book's jacket. The Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University, London Metropolitan Archives, Portsmouth Athenaeum, and Rare Books and Special Collections of the Princeton University Library kindly granted me permission to use images from their collections. Bill Nelson carefully produced each of the maps in the book. I am also grateful to the University of Pennsylvania Press for allowing me to reuse material that first appeared in my journal articles, Subjects vs. Citizens: Impressment and Identity in the Anglo-American Atlantic, Journal of the Early Republic 30 (Winter 2010): 557–86, and The Knowles Atlantic Impressment Riots of the 1740s, Early American Studies 5 (Fall 2007): 324–66. Brill has kindly allowed me to include material that first appeared in my journal article, Men of War: British Sailors and the Impressment Paradox, Journal of Early Modern History 14 (Spring 2010): 9–44.

Numerous scholars, some perhaps without knowing, have contributed to the book. Even though we approach impressment from slightly different perspectives, Jesse Lemisch, Peter Linebaugh, and Marcus Rediker have graciously supported my efforts. Important works by Nicholas Rodger and Nicholas Rogers have made my study possible. I am indebted to Paul Gilje, Isaac Land, Lisa Norling, Bill Pencak, and Danny Vickers for providing feedback at different crucial stages of the project. For the past several years, Keith Mercer has shared his exciting work on the Royal Navy in Canada. Having a drink with Keith (because we could not afford to dine) at the Press Gang restaurant in Halifax was a highlight of my research travels. My fellow participants in the Harvard Atlantic History Seminar on Transatlantic Networks opened several new avenues of research and interpretation. John Donoghue and I forged a friendship at the seminar based on our common passions for baseball and Atlantic history, and I have profited ever since from exchanging work with him. Another friend and member of the seminar, Chris Hodson, pushed me to think of forced labor and migration in new ways through his imaginative work on the Acadians. Several other scholars, working in a range of fields, have given me valuable research tips and feedback, including John Beck, Hester Blum, Brian Carroll, Kelly Chaves, David Collins, Christian De Pee, Gerald Dreslinski, Amanda Epperson, Charlie Foy, Eric Hinderaker, Martin Hubley, the late Rhys Isaac, Andrew Lambert, Andrew Lewis, Ken Lockridge, Brendan McConville, Tom Malcomson, Mary Malloy, Jonathan Marwil, Jenny Pulsipher, Matthew Raffety, Brian Holden Reid, John Shy, Phil Stern, Peter Way, Gordon Wood, and Neil York.

Many other people, from all parts of my life, made my research and writing process a happy voyage. My closest childhood friend, Jeremy Warner, and his roommate, Kamron Keele, hosted me for a month while I did research in Washington, D.C. Frances Walsh, my history tutor during an undergraduate year at Oxford, and her husband, John, opened their home to me during my research trips to England. Chris Grasso, my undergraduate advisor at St. Olaf College and now at the College of William and Mary, has supported me in everything that I have pursued, including this book. Two of my other St. Olaf professors, Karen Cherewatuk and David Booth, provided reassuring words at a difficult time. My admiration for the sailors impressed into the British navy contributed to my decision to join the U.S. Army Reserves as an infantryman at the height of America's recruiting crisis during the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. My enlistment delayed the completion of the book, but in return I gained an appreciation for military service unknown to most scholars. I thank the members of my former Reserve unit in Fraser, Michigan, for their service and for welcoming me, tweed and all, so generously into their ranks.

The University of Virginia Press has expertly brought this ship into its final port. My acquisitions editor, Dick Holway, has championed the project since before I had written a single dissertation chapter. I appreciate his patience, wisdom, and good humor in guiding the manuscript into book form. Dick's assistant, Raennah Mitchell, was extremely helpful at each step in the process. Anonymous outside reviewers contributed thoughtful comments that sharpened my analysis at several turns. I am proud to have the book in the University of Virginia Press's Early American Histories series and thank the series editors, Douglas Bradburn, John C. Coombs, and S. Max Edelson, and the Press director, Penelope Kaiserlian. Finally, I am grateful for the meticulous work of my project editor, Mark Mones, and copy editor, Margaret Hogan. I often hear friends and colleagues complain about the exhausting last stages of writing a book, but Mark and Maggie have made the process a joy.

Over the years, my family has provided unwavering support even when it seemed I was auditioning to become the leader of the slow book movement. My wife's parents, Jack and Cheri Boss, could not have been more loving or understanding of the time required for the book. My godmother, Gerri Sorben, has a contagious passion for learning, which I caught at an early age. No one responded more enthusiastically to each stage of the publication process. My four older sisters, Laura Lintz, Leah Brunsman, Sally Brunsman, and Julie Howard, and their families, all looked after me in multiple ways during the entire project. As with the dissertation, Sally was the last person to proofread the book in manuscript form. Sadly, our late father, Frank Brunsman, was not here to join her in the proofreading, as he did for the dissertation. From him, I received so much, not least an appreciation for the wonders of history. I also wish that our mother, Mary Brunsman, and her partner and my foster mother, Margaret Fullmer, were still with us. Their humanity lives on in the countless people whom they touched.

I hope to impart the same lessons in my children, Gavin and Sanne, so that they will someday understand why I felt compelled to write this history of men and women who, at first glance, might seem so remote to us today. My wife and best friend, Taryn, has done more than anyone else to make this book a reality. With love, it is dedicated to her.

Introduction

n July 1, 1666, the great English diarist and naval administrator Samuel Pepys went to bed with a lot on his mind. He had spent that day, like so many during his tenure in the navy as Clerk of the Acts (1660–73) and Admiralty Secretary (1673–79, 1684–89), tending to the problems of impressed sailors. Pepys went to the Tower of London, where captured seamen were then kept, multiple times until finally at midnight he oversaw the last of them being sent down the River Thames to join awaiting navy warships. Lord, how some poor women did cry, Pepys recorded in his diary, and in my life I never did see such natural expression of passion as I did here—in some women's bewailing themselfs, and running to every parcel of men that were brought, one after another, to look for their husbands, and wept over every vessel that went off, thinking they might be there, and looking after the ship as far as ever they could by moone-light. Pepys confided that the whole affair grieved me to the heart and was a great tyranny. Yet, having finished his work, he bade the lieutenant of the Tower good night, went home, and ended his diary entry as he did every other: and to bed. ¹

How well Pepys slept that night we can only guess, but he was far from the last of England's naval administrators for whom impressment weighed heavily on his conscience. For almost the next century and a half, until the practice ended after the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, impressment would plague sailors and their loved ones in the British Empire, destabilize Atlantic seaport communities, and challenge the reputation of Britain's self-proclaimed empire of liberty.

Within this long history, Pepys's tenure represented a period of transition. By his retirement in 1689, the navy had started to expand impressment from a seasonal, limited operation to a continual practice in wartime. It took place throughout the Atlantic and claimed tens of thousands of sailors who remained in the service until they died, escaped, or a war ended—whichever came first. Given Pepys's strong feelings against impressment (he admitted in a letter that he was ashamed of the practice) and his penchant for naval reform (on his watch the Royal Navy became a professional service), one might expect that he would have prevented the seizing of sailors on a massive scale. In this respect, however, his mix of horror and resignation toward the institution in his diary and other writings also anticipated later developments: Even among its most ardent supporters, impressment was always seen as a compromise, an evil necessity that allowed Britain to defend its nation and empire.²

This book's focus begins where Pepys's career ended. What distinguished impressment after 1688 was its expanded Atlantic and imperial contexts. Between 1688 and 1815, a period known to historians as the long eighteenth century, Britain fought a series of wars against France, and often Spain, for control of Europe and colonial territories around the globe. Where naval actions in the Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652–54, 1665–67, 1672–74) and earlier conflicts were concentrated in the northern European seas, naval warfare beginning with the wars of William III and Anne (1688–97, 1702–13) also occurred in the waters of the Caribbean, North America, the Mediterranean, and beyond. At the same time, England was in the midst of an unprecedented overseas commercial expansion. The joint demands of war and trade put enormous pressure on its maritime labor market. The British state answered the manning needs of its navy in wartime by impressing, or forcing, the empire's seafaring subjects into service.³

Impressment was more than a stopgap measure to keep the Royal Navy afloat: It was a fundamental component of Britain's early imperial success. Press gangs, consisting of a navy officer backed by sailors and occasionally local toughs, used violence or the threat of violence to supply the skilled manpower necessary to establish and maintain British naval supremacy. Moreover, the practice helped to unite Britain and its Atlantic colonial territories in a common system of maritime defense unmatched by any other European empire. The purpose of impressment was not to target the idle, poor, and criminal elements within British society but rather the most skilled Atlantic seafarers. These elite sailors lacked incentive to join the navy because they could earn far higher wages during war on private merchant vessels. On a typical British warship, the majority of impressed sailors had the highest rating of able seaman, signifying their proficiency in a range of shipboard tasks gained through at least two years of experience at sea. In the eighteenth century, Britannia ruled the waves because of, not despite, its forced conscripts.

At the same time, the success of impressment came at profound human cost and with risk to the very empire that press gangs served. Forced naval service robbed mariners of their lives and livelihoods. It also had devastating consequences for Atlantic seaport communities and loved ones who were left behind. The British navy's manning practices turned seamen's wives into impressment widows. Whether their impressed men actually died or not, women had no idea when they would return home. These damaging consequences inspired sailors and their supporters to engage in a wide range of violent and nonviolent resistance tactics against press gangs. Anti-impressment riots had the ability to paralyze naval operations and alienate Atlantic seaport communities from British imperial rule. In using impressment to sustain its empire, the British state nearly destroyed it.

This is the first comprehensive study of British naval impressment throughout the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. It draws from a wide range of archival sources and the insights of writers, statesmen, philosophers, and scholars from both sides of the Atlantic for more than three centuries. Such luminaries as Daniel Defoe, Adam Smith, David Hume, Voltaire, Mary Wollstonecraft, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Herman Melville, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Theodore Roosevelt all shared a fascination with—and often revulsion for—impressment. More recently, some of the leading social historians of our time have found the subject ideal for exploring a range of complex human interactions. Works by Jesse Lemisch, Nicholas Rogers, N. A. M. Rodger, Peter Linebaugh, Marcus Rediker, and countless other historians have made this study possible.⁴

Despite wide interest in impressment, few scholarly works have focused solely on the institution, especially over any appreciable space or time. The topic has most often appeared from a single national perspective or as a corollary to works on other subjects. Although this speaks to the prevalence of impressment in eighteenth-century life, it has not led to a full understanding of the institution's social or political impact in the Atlantic world. Instead, narrow treatments have resulted in wildly divergent interpretations of impressment. The divide is especially evident in works by the British naval historian N. A. M. Rodger and the American social historian Marcus Rediker. For Rodger, impressment was a humdrum affair calling for little if any violence.⁵ His research has helped to dispel the stereotype that press gangs swept the streets and emptied the jails to man the Royal Navy. Yet, as other scholars have also suggested, Rodger has little appreciation for the immense sacrifice or constant resistance caused by impressment.⁶ Within Rediker's Marxist framework, by contrast, the early modern sailing vessel is a site of both capitalist exploitation and proletarian resistance. This approach better accounts for the various miseries of the seafaring life, including impressment. Rediker's concept of sailor agency, however, rarely allows for anything but resistance. His analytical framework is no more equipped to explain British naval success than Rodger's is to account for sailors' defiance.⁷

More generally, scholarly debate on impressment has so long centered on how bad it was (or wasn't) for sailors that historians have overlooked its larger contribution to making empire. In spite of their clear service to Britain's early imperial project, impressed seamen are not usually included in the same category as other unfree colonial subjects such as enslaved Africans, indentured servants, and transported convicts. The obvious difference is that whereas each of those groups worked in colonial territories, navy sailors labored under the Union Jack on British men-of-war. Contemporaries in the Age of Sail defined vessels as places—that is, as wooden worlds where sailors lived and worked for months and years at a time. British and other European legal systems classified a nation's ships as sovereign territory. By the Victorian era, commentators such as John Ruskin saw naval ships and territories in the British Empire in analogous terms. Colonies should be motionless navies, Ruskin wrote, where Britain could expect every man to do his duty. By invoking Admiral Horatio Nelson's famous command at Trafalgar, Ruskin defined the obedient sailor as the ideal British subject.⁸

MAP 1. The Atlantic World, c. 18th century

If colonies were like motionless navies, navies could be thought of as colonies in motion. The Royal Navy might not have transported seamen to a fixed destination as in more typical coerced migrations, yet the purpose of directing their movement was the same—to extract labor in the service of empire. The blue water orientation of Britain's early empire, with its emphasis on trade, made the navy its most indispensable institution. As the London merchant Jonas Hanway proudly declared in 1754, The splendour of this monarchy is supported by commerce, and commerce by naval strength.⁹ The navy guarded shipping lanes and colonial territories, opened new markets to British commerce, and defended the mother country against possible invasion. Without the unfree labor of British sailors at sea, the empire could not have reaped the full rewards of its unfree labor on land. Still, a more important distinction than sea and shore separated mariners from every other large group of forced laborers in the British Atlantic: They were not selected for their class, beliefs, ethnicity, or skin color but rather for their particular skill set—the ability to hand, reef, and steer a sailing vessel.¹⁰

No other British domestic group paid a higher price for empire. Between 1688 and 1815, the Royal Navy mobilized roughly 500,000 men, volunteer and impressed, in Britain's wars against France and Spain. Different experts agree that the percentage of impressed seamen in the British navy could range in any given war between a third and two-thirds but normally averaged about half. Taking this consensus estimate, we can safely say that approximately 250,000 British seamen were impressed during the long eighteenth century—many more than once. Unfortunately, we will never have exact figures as to the number of sailors impressed because the navy did not make hard distinctions between forced men and volunteers in its own accounting. As Admiral Philip Cavendish pointed out in May 1741, they are all Voluntiers as soon as they find they can't get away.¹¹

The Royal Navy's extraordinary manning needs placed sailors second only to enslaved Africans as the largest group of forced laborers in the eighteenth-century British Empire. Impressed seamen, though, were still a very distant second to slaves, both in total numbers and in the condition of their bondage. British subjects, including American colonists, shipped more than a quarter of the 12.5 million African slaves estimated to have been transported by all countries to the western hemisphere between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although impressed mariners often referred to themselves as slaves, there were crucial differences in the two forced labor systems. Unlike actual slaves, who were trapped in a permanent and hereditary condition of legal bondage, impressed seamen went free at the ends of wars. Impressed sailors also received wages for their labor in addition to other material benefits. It is little wonder, then, that most slaves equated naval service, including impressment, with freedom.¹²

These differences do not diminish the enormous sacrifices common seamen made for Britain's imperial gain. Without impressment, Britain could not have maintained its naval superiority or protected its global commercial empire in the eighteenth century. The British state limited slavery three different times—in 1772 (ending slavery in Britain proper), in 1807 (closing British participation in the Atlantic slave trade), and in 1833 (emancipating West Indian slaves)—before ever reforming naval impressment. The mariner William Robinson (aka Jack Nastyface) did not exaggerate when he called his fellow sailors the floating sinews of her [Britain's] existence.¹³

The imperial benefits of impressment are most evident in comparison with other European naval manning systems. In the eighteenth century, all of Europe's major navies, with the exception of the Dutch, depended on some form of conscription or compulsion to man their fleets. Critics of British impressment most often contrasted it with France's inscription maritime. The French minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert established that system with other naval reforms in the late seventeenth century; it registered all of France's seafarers into different classes that rotated into the navy every third or fourth year during wartime. Close in spirit to the modern draft, the inscription maritime became the darling of British naval reformers for generations because it seemed to eliminate the inefficiency and unpredictability of impressment. Yet, outside of a brief and unsuccessful experiment with it in the late 1690s and early 1700s, Parliament rejected all efforts to reform impressment on the French model. The reason? British politicians contended that a centralized, bureaucratic manning system represented a tyranny worse than the press gang! By preserving impressment in the name of liberty, the British state may have acted disingenuously, but the decision proved a boon to its imperial ambitions. Whereas France and Spain sacrificed much of their merchant shipping to man their navies during war, the British navy learned over time how to avoid disabling its own merchant marine. As a result, Britain could draw on a continuous reserve of skilled maritime labor in most wars long after more absolutist European states had exhausted their supplies.¹⁴

For impressment to serve Britain's imperial interest, it had to find a minimal level of acceptance within British society. By law, press gangs could only impress British subjects, including colonists, who used the sea and only during times of public necessity, usually defined as wartime or periods of mobilization for war. Even if it had been legal, the British navy rarely needed to conscript nonseafaring landsmen; the service generally received plenty of unskilled volunteers. In any case, it was dangerous to have landsmen compose more than a third of an average naval crew. The British Admiralty, however, did narrow or broaden the definition of who used the sea according to the state's needs. The Admiralty normally protected groups such as watermen, bargemen, lightermen, fishermen, and coastal traders from impressment except during hot presses—times of particular emergency—when the board could waive its own protections. Even during a hot press, however, press gangs could not seize groups that had Parliament's statutory protection against impressment: foreigners, masters and chief mates of all merchantmen over fifty tons, seamen over age fifty-five and under eighteen, landsmen in their first two years at sea, and apprentices in their first three. These restrictions left the navy's key prize—professional British (native and colonial) merchant seamen—open for the taking.¹⁵

Navy press gangs were thus not responsible for most of the small numbers of landsmen forced into naval service. Local magistrates in Britain always shared the authority to impress seamen, a legacy of the institution's medieval origins. The civil officials invariably tried to use wars to rid their communities of unwanted individuals, but these conscripts were increasingly peripheral to the navy's primary manning efforts in the eighteenth century. Parliament also passed a handful of naval acts during the 1700s that allowed magistrates to send vagrants and select groups of criminals into the navy. But nothing in the acts required the service to accept them. In 1773, the Lords of Admiralty expressed their wishes that no more convicts may be ordered on board H.M. ships, as such persons may not only bring distempers and immoralities among their companies, but may discourage men of irreproachable character from entering H.M.'s service, seeing they are to be ranked with common malefactors. More criminals entered the navy during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15) than at any other time during the long eighteenth century, but even then the service kept standards. In 1805, when the Admiralty was asked to take on a man convicted of grand larceny, it replied that it did not consider persons of this description fit for the service.¹⁶

Although a skill-based institution, impressment still maintained a class bias. Sailors were many things but nearly all were poor. Rediker's most valuable insight is that seamen comprised the first international working class. His thesis works best for the long-distance trades out of the Atlantic's largest seaports. If not always the poorest, sailors consistently belonged to the lowest economic tier of Atlantic commercial centers. In London, mariners generally only earned more than farm laborers and unskilled workers; they made considerably less than most skilled craftsmen. Sailors had a similar economic standing in large colonial seaports, such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. In 1772, 70 percent of seamen paid the minimum tax in Philadelphia, which defined the city's poorest residents; only a third of the city's skilled artisans fell into the same category. Daniel Vickers's landmark social history of Salem, Massachusetts, suggests that in small- and medium-sized ports, the poverty of young sailors was more likely to be a temporary life stage than a permanent condition. Still, his research cautions us not to judge the quality of seafaring life simply by income levels or promotion rates. About 30 percent of Salem's young seamen never lived to see their thirtieth birthdays. In disease, shipwrecks, and other accidents, Atlantic seafarers always faced more occupational hazards than just press gangs.¹⁷

The marginal status of sailors in British Atlantic communities could not help but make them more vulnerable for impressment. Yet, by the eighteenth century, class was not the determining factor in naval impressments. A basic equation dictated Britain's imperial fortunes: no sailors, no navy; no navy, no empire. The situation often put supporters of impressment in an uncomfortable position. In 1771, the radical polemicist Junius contended that the question of impressment did not "lye between rich and poor" but rather was a matter of public necessity. He granted that his was a very unpopular opinion and one that he did not form lightly. I lament the unhappy necessity, Junius wrote, whenever it arises, of providing for the safety of the state, by a temporary invasion of the personal liberty of the subject. Nevertheless, he believed that a community's right to command the service of its members in an emergency superseded all other arguments.¹⁸

Our knowledge today that Junius was the War Office clerk Philip Francis adds significance to his defense of impressment. Although he was not speaking officially for the government, Francis's views demonstrated that the state's position aligned closely with legal opinions and other popular defenses of forced naval service.¹⁹ The navy did not pursue sailors because they were poor but out of a desperate need for their trade skills. The eighteenth-century British state was certainly not above exploiting the labor of its impoverished subjects and carrying out schemes to expel undesirables from its borders. One need look no further than the British army for an example. Although it was far less common than naval impressment, British army impressment claimed primarily the unskilled and unemployed. During the Seven Years' War (1756–63), town officials in Coventry, England, received typical army recruiting instructions to search for able bodied, idle, and disorderly Persons, who cannot, upon Examination, prove themselves to exercise and industriously follow some lawful Trade or Employment, or to have some Substance sufficient for their Support and Maintenance. In other words, class trumped skill in the army. The government wanted men for the land service who, because of ability or circumstance, could not do anything else. The navy's work, by contrast, was too specialized and the stakes too high to leave in the hands of idle landlubbers.²⁰

Of course, the integrity of the naval impressment system offered little consolation for seamen. The Royal Navy concentrated its conscription efforts in spaces where sailors worked and dwelled. The majority of impressments took place where the navy was guaranteed the highest return of skilled seafarers—at sea. On land, press gangs targeted taverns, brothels, boardinghouses, and other favorite haunts of sailors. The navy's selection procedure was evident in the impressment of two Scotsmen, Robert Spotswood and Robert Hay, a half-century apart. In 1744, Spotswood, a young surgeon from Edinburgh, traveled to London as a passenger and landed at the sailor neighborhood of Wapping in the city's East End. A press gang captured him there. Having never heard of impressing seamen on shore for the Navy, Spotswood wrote in his journal, [I] was convinced…I was to be robbed and perhaps murdered. The gang took him to a public house where a navy lieutenant asked, How long at sea? Nine days, Spotswood answered. After he repeated the answer several more times, the lieutenant finally asked to see the surgeon's hands. He endeavoured to persuade me they had been pulling or hauling ropes for years, however he evidently saw it was not the case, according to Spotswood. When the lieutenant asked for proof that he was a surgeon, Spotswood pulled out a lancet case and was set at liberty and never afterwards challenged. In viewing the surgeon's hands, the lieutenant was looking for evidence of hard labor, but not just any work. Although Spotwood's soft hands helped his case, they did not secure his freedom. In other cases, the British Admiralty's law officers made clear that a high economic station, including the status of a freeholder, could not keep a seafarer from impressment. For Spotswood, carrying his surgical tools turned out to be the best protection.²¹

In October 1811, the Scottish seaman and carpenter Robert Hay was also captured by a press gang in London's East End. Taken on Tower Hill, he was brought before a lieutenant at the gang's headquarters in a public house. The officer asked Hay if he had ever gone to sea. I made some evasive answers to these interrogations and did not acknowledge having been at sea, Hay later recalled, but my hands being examined and found hard with work, and perhaps a little discoloured with tar, overset all my hesitating affirmations and I was remanded for further examination. The tar on Hay's hands, likely left over from waterproofing his pants or waist-jacket, or from insulating the ropes on his previous ship's rigging, was a dead giveaway that he was a sailor. He cut the interview short and disclosed his sailing experience for fear that the gang would find a pair of navy-issued stockings in his bag and realize that he was also a naval deserter. As with Spotswood, the navy was guilty of occupational profiling in its questioning of Hay in London's primary maritime district. Both cases ended with the legally correct result, which was also in the best interests of the service.²²

That impressment was based primarily on skill rather than class did not lessen its toll on sailors. In the past generation, maritime historians have demonstrated that Atlantic seafaring was defined by variance and contingency. Professional deepwater seamen—Rediker's working class—served in the Atlantic triangle trade involving African slaves, American colonial staples, and British manufactures. A single ocean did not contain these mariners. They also worked for the East India Company in the Asian silk, cloth, and spice trades, and joined Britain's growing number of Pacific expeditions. The most common seafaring experience, however, was not on long-distance voyages but in coastal and regional trades, such as the northeast English coal trade and the North American-Caribbean intercolonial trade out of shipping centers like Salem and Bermuda. Kinship ties most influenced the shipboard relations within these trades. Thus, even as Atlantic shipping as a whole became increasingly interracial and multinational in the eighteenth century, some ports remained highly parochial. One final trend in Atlantic seafaring had nothing to do with the water. As Vickers has emphasized, the majority of sailors spent most of their lives, including their working lives, on land. Like anyone else, seamen had family, friends, and often other forms of work.²³

The terms of naval impressment marked a radical departure from the natural rhythms of Atlantic seafaring. On the decks of a British warship, the diversity of the maritime Atlantic collapsed into a single pursuit. Mariners transformed from mostly independent and largely seasonal workers into forced laborers in the continuous service of empire. Impressment was not Britain's only attempt to reclaim its own sailors from the Atlantic for imperial ends. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Britain waged a war on the same pirates that it had once sponsored because they became unpredictable in their targets and threatened imperial trade. The seventeenth-century Navigation Acts also attempted to nationalize the world's waterways by directing English sailors to serve on English merchant ships. But impressment was far more restrictive. Where the Navigation Acts sought to guide seamen's free movements in overseas commerce, press gangs suppressed their freedom of movement altogether.

Given the consequences, it is not surprising that sailors and their local communities vigorously resisted press gangs. What is surprising is that impressment worked at all. Britain established naval dominance with largely disaffected, forced laborers. This achievement, which I call the impressment paradox, is quite possibly the most remarkable feature of the Royal Navy's success in the eighteenth century. After being impressed, navy seamen often continued mostly nonviolent efforts at escaping for up to a year. Thereafter, a combination of shipboard discipline, male camaraderie, and the professional ethic of the Atlantic's best sailors all helped to mitigate the negative effects of impressment. Aside from lower wages, naval service had several advantages over merchant sailing, including less work because of much larger crews and more reliable, if not always savory, provisions. The primary reason that sailors detested impressment, therefore, was not necessarily naval service itself but the fact of being forced to do it.

This sentiment pervades the surviving writings left by impressed seamen. In 1794, the seafarer John Nicol rationalized his situation after being impressed, ultimately convincing himself that he was as happy as a man in blasted prospects can be. Nicol went on to serve with distinction in Admiral Nelson's victorious squadron at the Battle of the Nile and was discharged during the temporary peace between Britain and France in 1802. When Britain mobilized for war again the following year, Nicol's new wife exacted a promise that he would not return to the sea. He thus moved nine miles inland from his native Edinburgh, where he hid from the press gang by working in the local lime quarries for the next eleven years.²⁴ The existing polarized scholarly debate on impressment cannot fully account for sailors like Nicol, who found benefits in naval service but still wanted to escape. His actions, though extreme, fit the overall behavioral pattern of impressed seamen: Resistance and admirable service were not mutually exclusive. Few Atlantic seafarers, except those of African descent, embraced impressment. But once confronted with the blasted prospects of forced naval service, most seamen made the best of it, especially after an initial socialization process. A brotherhood of the sea, which celebrated common trade skills and other masculine ideals, helped to ease the transition to impressment.

The Royal Navy's greatest challenge was not keeping sailors but getting them from different imperial spaces. The press gang did not make empire by functioning as a monolithic Leviathan. Like slavery, impressment had some basic similarities everywhere but also reflected the local social, political, and economic conditions of individual Atlantic seaports and regions.²⁵ I use the term cultures of impressment to describe these differences. In the late seventeenth century, the navy first discovered that seizing men could have radically different consequences in different Atlantic regions. Press gangs had to negotiate their authority according to local conditions to protect the empire's trade and sometimes their own lives. In any given locale, they had to adjust to a combination of statutory law, customary privileges, Admiralty regulations, regional economies, political bodies, and crowd violence. The Atlantic communities that the navy simultaneously served and exploited insisted upon it.

Problems resulted when press gangs violated existing impressment cultures or failed to adapt to shifting local conditions. With each new war, the navy had to reestablish its authority to impress men in different areas. Local political institutions as distant and varied as the Lord Mayor of London, the Scottish Parliament, and the Boston Town Meeting all shared a common distrust of press gangs. Unable to ban impressment, these officials and institutions sought to influence how gangs behaved in their communities. As a rule, Atlantic seaports always objected the most to the navy's disturbing local trades and taking resident seamen. Press gangs had to proceed with extra caution in sensitive colonial labor markets. In 1747, in the aftermath of the Knowles Riot in Boston, the Scottish emigrant William Douglass explained that pressing was so controversial in the colonies because they had "no spare Hands."²⁶ Shortages of skilled seafaring labor in the West Indies and North America led to higher merchant seamen wages and encouraged the navy's men to desert in wartime. In turn, the navy used impressment to replace deserters, which