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The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore. J. R. Hutchinson
Читать онлайн.Название The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4064066165826
Автор произведения J. R. Hutchinson
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
Amongst accessories essential to the efficient activity of gangs stationed at coast or river towns the boat had first place. Sometimes both sail and row-boats were employed. Luggers of the old type, fast boats carrying a great press of sail, served best for overhauling ships; but on inland waterways, such as the Thames, the Humber or the Tyne, a "sort of wherry, constructed for rowing fast," was the favourite vehicle of pursuit. The rate of hire varied from 1s. a day to two or more guineas a week, according to the size and class of boat. At Cork it was "five shillings Irish" per day.
Accessories of a less indispensable nature, occasionally allowed, were, at Dartmouth and a few other places, cockades for the gangsmen's hats, supplied at a cost of 1s. each; at Tower Hill a messenger, pay 20s. a week; and at Appledore an umbrella for use in rainy weather, price 12s. 6d.
The arms of the gang comprised, first, a press-warrant, and, second, such weapons as were necessary to enforce it.
In the literature of the eighteenth century the warrant is inseparably associated with the short, incurvated service sword commonly known as the cutlass or hanger; but in the press-gang prints of the period the gangsmen are generally armed with stout clubs answering to Smollett's "good oak plant." Apart from this artistic evidence, however, there is no valid reason for believing that the bludgeon ever came into general use as the ganger's weapon. As early as the reign of Anne he went armed with the "Queen's broad cutlash," and for most gangs, certainly for all called upon to operate in rough neighbourhoods, the hanger remained the stock weapon throughout the century. In expeditions involving special risk or danger, the musket and the pistol supplemented what must have been in itself no mean weapon.
As we have already seen, the earliest recorded press-warrants emanated from the king in person, whilst later ones were issued by the king in council and endorsed by the naval authorities. As the need of men became more and more imperative, however, this mode of issue was found to be too cumbersome and inexpeditious. Hence, by the time the eighteenth century came in, with its tremendously enhanced demands on behalf of the Navy, the royal prerogative in respect to warrants had been virtually delegated to the Admiralty, who issued them on their own initiative, though ostensibly in pursuance of His Majesty's Orders in Council.
An Admiralty warrant empowered the person to whom it was directed to "impress" as many "seamen" as possibly he could procure, giving to each man so impressed 1s. "for prest money." He was to impress none but such as "were strong bodies and capable to serve the king"; and, having so impressed such persons, he was to deliver them up to the officer regulating the nearest rendezvous. All civil authorities were to be "aiding and assisting" to him in the discharge of this duty.
Now this document, the stereotyped press-warrant of the century, here concisely summarised in its own phraseology, was not at all what it purported to be. It was in fact a warrant out of time, an official anachronism, a red-tape survival of that bygone period when pressing still meant "presting" and force went no further than a threat. For men were now no longer "prested." They were pressed, and that, too, in the most drastic sense of the term. The king's shilling no longer changed hands. Even in Pepys' time men were pressed "without money," and in none of the accounts of expenses incurred in pressing during the century which followed, excepting only a very few of the earlier ones, can any such item as the king's shilling or prest-money be discovered. Its abolition was a logical sequence of the change from presting to pressing.
The seaman, moreover, so far from being the sole quarry of the warrant-holder, now sought concealment amongst a people almost without exception equally liable with himself to the capture he endeavoured to elude. Retained merely as a matter of form, and totally out of keeping with altered conditions, the warrant was in effect obsolete save as an instrument authorising one man to deprive another of his liberty in the king's name. Even the standard of "able bodies and capable" had deteriorated to such an extent that the officers of the fleet were kept nearly as busy weeding out and rejecting men as were the officers of the impress in taking them.
Still, the warrant served. Stripped of its obsolete injunctions, it read: "Go ye out into the highways and hedges, and water-ways, and compel them to come in"—enough, surely, for any officer imbued with zeal for His Majesty's service.
Though according to the strict letter of the law as defined by various decisions of the courts a press-warrant was legally executable only by the officer to whom it was addressed, in practice the limitation was very widely departed from, if not altogether ignored; for just as a constable or sheriff may call upon bystanders to assist him in the execution of his office, so the holder of a press-warrant, though legally unable to delegate his authority by other means, could call upon others to aid him in the execution of his duty. Naturally, the gangsmen being at hand, and being at hand for that very purpose, he gave them first preference. Hence, the gangsman pressed on the strength of a warrant which in reality gave him no power to press.
While the law relating to the intensive force of warrants was thus deliberately set at naught, an extraordinary punctiliousness for legal formality was displayed in another direction. According to tradition and custom no warrant was valid until it had received the sanction of the civil power. Solicitor-General Yorke could find no statutory authority for such procedure. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 7. 298—Law Officers' Opinions, 1733–56, No. 102.] He accordingly pronounced it to be non-essential to the validity of warrants. Nevertheless, save in cases where the civil power refused its endorsement, it was universally adhered to. What was bad law was notoriously good policy, for a disaffected mayor, or an unfriendly Justice of the Peace, had it in his power to make the path of the impress officer a thorny one indeed. "Make unto yourselves friends," was therefore one of the first injunctions laid upon officers whose duties unavoidably made them many enemies.
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