How common was press-ganging?
The system of forcible impressment by a ‘press gang’ was used by European navies in the 17th and 18th centuries, to crew their fleets at the outbreak of war or to replace men lost to death or desertion. In principle, the impress was no different from military conscription. It was intended to solve a basic problem: that during wartime there were never enough professional seamen to crew both a fully mobilised navy and the merchant fleet. Men could be impressed ashore or from ships at sea. Only seafaring men between the ages of 18 and 55 could be impressed; the navy had no trouble recruiting unskilled ‘landmen’ by offering a bounty. Ocean-going seamen accepted the press as an occupational hazard and, when caught by a press gang, most took the cash bounty and higher rating in the navy. Though violence was threatened, it was used only rarely: dead or injured sailors were of no use in the fleet. Even so, the press was unpopular because it took men from better-paid jobs on merchant ships. Though last used in 1814, pressganging remained legal for another half century, despite a public campaign for abolition. The government retained the right to impress until the 1860s, when it created an effective Naval Reserve to crew the fleet in an emergency. Modern research has challenged the more extreme claims of impressment’s critics, but it was a common occurrence: few professional sailors escaped a period in naval service between 1793 and 1815. Andrew Lambert, Laughton professor of naval history at King’s College London