The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore Part 12

[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1482--Lieut. Barnsley, 25 March 1746.]

Similar disaster overtook the organisers of the Tooley Street affair, of which one Taylor, lieutenant to Capt. William Boys of the _Royal Sovereign_, was the active cause. At the "Spread-Eagle" in Tooley Street he and his gang one evening pressed a privateersman--an insult keenly resented by the master of the s.h.i.+p. He accordingly sent off to the tender, whither the pressed man had been conveyed for security's sake, two wherries filled with armed seamen of the most piratical type. The fierce fight that ensued had a dramatic finish. "Two Pistols we took from them," says the narrator of the incident, in his quaint old style, "and three Cutla.s.ses, and Six Men; but one of the Men took the Red Hott Poker out of the Fire, and our Men, having the Cutla.s.ses, Cutt him and Kill'd him in Defence of themselves." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.

1488--Lieut. Taylor, 1 April 1757.]

In attacks of this nature the fact that the tender was afloat told heavily in her favour, for unless temporarily hung up upon a mud-bank by the fall of the tide, she could only be got at by means of boats. With the rendezvous ash.o.r.e the case was altogether different. Here you had a building in a public street, flaunting its purpose provocatively in your very face, and having a rear to guard as well as a front. For these reasons attacks on the rendezvous were generally attended with a greater measure of success than similar attempts directed against the tenders.

The face of a pressed man had only to show itself at one of the stoutly barred windows, and immediately a crowd gathered. To the prisoner behind the bars this crowd was friendly, commiserating or chaffing him by turns; but to the gangsmen responsible for his being there it was invariably and uncompromisingly hostile, so much so that it needed only a carelessly uttered threat, or a thoughtlessly lifted hand, to fan the smouldering fires of hatred into a blaze. When this occurred, as it often did, things happened. Paving-stones hurtled through the curse-laden air, the windows flew in fragments, the door, a.s.sailed by overwhelming numbers, crashed in, and despite the stoutest resistance the gang could offer the pressed man was hustled out and carried off in triumph.

The year 1755 witnessed a remarkable attack of this description upon the rendezvous at Deal, where a band of twenty-seven armed men made a sudden descent upon that obnoxious centre of activity and cut up the gang most grievously. As all wore masks and had their faces blackened, identification was out of the question. A reward of 200 Pounds, offered for proof of complicity in the outrage, elicited no information, and as a matter of fact its perpetrators were never discovered.

In Capt. McCleverty's time the gang at Waterford was once very roughly handled whilst taking in a pressed man, and Mr. Mayor Alc.o.c.k came hurrying down to learn what was amiss. He found the rendezvous beset by an angry and dangerous gathering. "Sir," said he to the captain, "have you no powder or shot in the house?" McCleverty a.s.sured him that he had.

"Then, sir," cried the mayor, raising his voice so that all might hear, "do you make use of it, and I will support you." The crowd understood that argument and immediately dispersed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Deposition of Lieut. M Kellop, 1780.]

Had the Admiralty reasoned in similar terms with those who beat its gangsmen, converted its rendezvous into match-wood and carried off its pressed men, it would have quickly made itself as heartily feared as it was already hated; but in seeking to sh.o.r.e up an odious cause by pacific methods it laid its motives open to the gravest misconstruction.

Prudence was construed into timidity, and with every abstention from lead the sailor's mobbish friends grew more daring and outrageous.

One night in the winter of 1780, whilst Capt. Worth of the Liverpool rendezvous sat lamenting the temporary dearth of seamen, Lieut. Haygarth came rus.h.i.+ng in with a rare piece of news. On the road from Lancaster, it was reported, there was a whole coach-load of sailors. The chance was too good to be lost, and instant steps were taken to intercept the travellers. The gangs turned out, fully armed, and took up their position at a strategic point, just outside the town, commanding the road by which the sailors had to pa.s.s. By and by along came the coach, the horses weary, the occupants nodding or asleep. In a trice they were surrounded. Some of the gangsmen sprang at the horses' heads, others threw themselves upon the drowsy pa.s.sengers. Shouts, curses and the thud of blows broke the silence of the night. Then the coach rumbled on again, empty. Its late occupants, fifteen in number, sulkily followed on foot, surrounded by their captors, who, as soon as the town was reached, locked them into the press-room for the rest of the night, it being the captain's intention to put them on board the tender in the Mersey at break of day.

In this, however, he was frustrated by a remarkable development in the situation. Unknown to him, the coach-load of seamen had been designed for the _Stag_ privateer, a vessel just on the point of sailing. News of their capture reaching the s.h.i.+p soon after their arrival in the town, Spence, her 1st lieutenant, at once roused out all his available men, armed them, to the number of eighty, with cutla.s.s and pistol, and led them ash.o.r.e. There all was quiet, favouring their design. The hour was still early, and the silent, swift march through the deserted streets attracted no attention and excited no alarm. At the rendezvous the opposition of the weary sentinels counted for little. It was quickly brushed aside, the strong-room door gave way beneath a few well-directed blows, and by the time Liverpool went to breakfast the _Stag_ privateer was standing out to sea, her crew not only complete, but ably supplemented by eight additional occupants of the press-room who had never, so far as is known, travelled in that commodious vehicle, the Lancaster coach. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7, 300--Law Officers'

Opinions, 1778-83, No. 19.]

The neighbouring city of Chester in 1803 matched this exploit by another of great audacity. Chester had long been noted for its hostility to the gang, and the fact that the local volunteer corps--the Royal Chester Artillery--was composed mainly of ropemakers, riggers, s.h.i.+pwrights and sailmakers who had enlisted for the sole purpose of evading the press, did not tend to allay existing friction. Hence, when Capt. Birchall brought over a gang from Liverpool because he could not form one in Chester itself, and when he further signalised his arrival by pressing Daniel Jackson, a well-known volunteer, matters at once came to an ugly head. The day happened to be a field-day, and as Birchall crossed the market square to wait upon the magistrates at the City Hall, he was "given to understand what might be expected in the evening," for one of the artillerymen, striking his piece, called out to his fellows: "Now for a running ball! There he goes!" with hissing, booing and execrations. At seven o'clock one of the gang rushed into the captain's lodgings with disquieting news. The volunteers were attacking the rendezvous. He hurried out, but by the time he arrived on the scene the mischief was already done. The enraged volunteers, after first driving the gang into the City Hall, had torn down the rendezvous colours and staff, and broken open the city jail and rescued their comrade, whom they were then in the act of carrying shoulder-high through the streets, the centre of a howling mob that even the magistrates feared to face. By request Birchall and his gang returned to Liverpool, counting themselves lucky to have escaped the "running ball" they had been threatened with earlier in the day. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1529--Capt.

Birchall, 29 Dec. 1803.]

Another town that gave the gang a hot reception was Whitby. As in the case of Chester the gang there was an importation, having been brought in from Tyneside by Lieuts. Atkinson and Oakes. As at Chester, too, a place of rendezvous had been procured with difficulty, for at first no landlord could be found courageous enough to let a house for so dangerous a purpose. At length, however, one Cooper was prevailed upon to take the risk, and the flag was hung out. This would seem to have been the only provocative act of which the gang was guilty. It sufficed.

Antic.i.p.ation did the rest; for just as in some individuals grat.i.tude consists in a lively sense of favours to come, so the resentment of mobs sometimes avenges a wrong before it has been inflicted.

On Sat.u.r.day the 23rd of February 1793, at the hour of half-past seven in the evening, a mob of a thousand persons, of whom many were women, suddenly appeared before the rendezvous. The first intimation of what was about to happen came in the shape of a furious volley of brickbats and stones, which instantly demolished every window in the house, to the utter consternation of its inmates. Worse, however, was in store for them. An attempt to rush the place was temporarily frustrated by the determined opposition of the gang, who, fearing that all in the house would be murdered, succeeded in holding the mob at bay for an hour and a half; but at nine o'clock, several of the gangsmen having been in the meantime struck down and incapacitated by stones, which were rained upon the devoted building without cessation, the door at length gave way before an onslaught with capstan-bars, and the mob swarmed in unchecked.

A scene of indescribable confusion and fury ensued. Savagely a.s.saulted and mercilessly beaten, the gangsmen and the unfortunate landlord were thrown into the street more dead than alive, every article of furniture on the premises was reduced to fragments, and when the mob at length drew off, hoa.r.s.ely jubilant over the destruction it had wrought, nothing remained of His Majesty's rendezvous save bare walls and gaping windows.

Even these were more than the townsfolk could endure the sight of. Next evening they reappeared upon the scene, intending to finish what they had begun by pulling the house down or burning it to ashes; but the timely arrival of troops frustrating their design, they regretfully dispersed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2739--Lieut. Atkinson, 26 Feb. and 27 June 1793.]

Out at sea the sailor, if he could not set the tune by running away from the gang, played up to it with great heartiness. To sink the press-boat was his first aim. With this end in view he held stolidly on his course, if under weigh, betraying his intention by no sign till the boat, manoeuvring to get alongside of him, was in the right position for him to strike. Then, all of a sudden, he showed his hand. Clapping his helm hard over, he dexterously ran the boat down, leaving the struggling gangsmen to make what s.h.i.+ft they could for their lives. Many a knight of the hanger was sent to Davy Jones in this summary fas.h.i.+on, unloved in life and cursed in the article of death.

The attempt to best the gang by a master-stroke of this description was not, it need hardly be said, attended with uniform success. A miss of an inch or two, and the boat was safe astern, pulling like mad to recover lost ground. In these circ.u.mstances the sailor recalled how he had once seen a block fall from aloft and smash a s.h.i.+pmate's head, and from this he argued that if a suitable object such as a heavy round-shot, or, better still, the s.h.i.+p's grindstone, were deftly dropped over the side at the psychological moment, it must either have a somewhat similar effect upon the gangsmen below or sink the boat by knocking a hole in her bottom. The case of the _John and Elizabeth_ of Sunderland, that redoubtable Holland pink whose people were "resolved sooner to dye than to be impressed," affords an admirable example of the successful application of this theory.

As the _John and Elizabeth_ was running into Sunderland harbour one afternoon in February 1742, three press-boats, hidden under cover of the pier-head, suddenly darted out as she surged past that point and attempted to board her. They met with a remarkable repulse. For ten minutes, according to the official account of the affair, the air was filled with grindstones, four-pound shot, iron crows, handspikes, capstan-bars, boat-hooks, billets of wood and imprecations, and when it cleared there was not in any of the boats a man who did not bear upon his person some b.l.o.o.d.y trace of that terrible fusillade. They sheered off, but in the excitement of the moment and the mortification of defeat Mids.h.i.+pmen Clapp and Danton drew their pistols and fired into the jeering crew ranged along the vessel's gunwhale, "not knowing," as they afterwards pleaded, "that there was any b.a.l.l.s in the pistols." Evidence to the contrary was quickly forthcoming. A man fell dead on the pink's deck, and before morning the two middies were safe under lock and key in that "dismal hole," Durham jail. It was a notable victory for the sailor and applied mechanics. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt.

Allen, 13 March 1741-2, and enclosure.]

The affair of the _King William_ Indiaman, a s.h.i.+p whose people kept the united boats'-crews of two men-of-war at bay for nearly twenty-four hours, carried the sailor's resistance to the press an appreciable step further and developed some surprising tactics. Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon of a day in September 1742, two s.h.i.+ps came into the Downs in close order. They had been expected earlier in the day, and both the _Shrewsbury_ frigate and the _Shark_ sloop were on the lookout for them. A shot from the former brought the headmost to an anchor, but the second, the _King William_, hauled her wind and stood away close to the Goodwins, out of range of the frigate's guns. Here, the tide being spent and the wind veering ahead, she was obliged to anchor, and the wars.h.i.+ps' boats were at once manned and dispatched to press her men.

Against this eventuality the latter appear to have been primed "with Dutch courage," as the saying went, the manner of which was to broach a cask of rum and drink your fill. On the approach of the press-boats pandemonium broke loose. The maddened crew, brandis.h.i.+ng their cutla.s.ses and shouting defiance, a.s.sailed the on-coming boats with every description of missile they could lay hands on, not excepting that most dangerous of all casual ammunition, broken bottles. The _Shrewsbury's_ mate fell, seriously wounded, and finding themselves unable to face the terrible hail of missiles, the boats drew off. Night now came on, rendering further attempts temporarily impossible--a respite of which the Indiaman's crew availed themselves to confine the master and break open the arms-chest, which he had taken the precaution to nail down.

With morning the boats returned to the attack. Three times they attempted to board, and as often were they repulsed by pistol and musketry fire. Upon this the _Shark_, acting under peremptory orders from the _Shrewsbury_, ran down to within half-gunshot of the Indiaman and fired a broadside into her, immediately afterwards repeating the dose on finding her still defiant. The s.h.i.+p then submitted and all her men were pressed save two. They had been killed by the _Shark's_ gun-fire. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1829--Capt. G.o.ddard, 22 Sept. and 16 Oct., and his Deposition, 19 Oct. 1742.]

With the appearance of the gang on the deck of his s.h.i.+p there was ushered in the last stage but one of the sailor's resistance to the press afloat. How, when this happened, all hands were mustered and the protected sheep separated from the unprotected goats, has been fully described in a previous chapter. These preliminaries at an end, "Now, my lads," said the gang officer, addressing the pressable contingent in the terms of his instructions, "I must tell you that you are at liberty, if you so choose, to enter His Majesty's service as volunteers. If you come in in that way, you will each receive the bounty now being paid, together with two months' advance wages before you go to sea. But if you don't choose to enter volunteerly, then I must take you against your wills"

It was a hard saying, and many an old sh.e.l.lback--ay! and young one too--spat viciously when he heard it. Conceive the situation! Here were these poor fellows returning from a voyage which perhaps had cut them off from home and kindred, from all the ordinary comforts and pleasures of life, for months or maybe years; here were they, with the familiar cliffs and downs under their hungry eyes, suddenly confronted with an alternative of the cruellest description, a Hobson's choice that left them no option but to submit or fight. It was a heartbreaking predicament for men, and more especially for sailor-men, to be placed in, and if they sometimes rose to the occasion like men and did their best to heave the gang bodily into the sea, or to drive them out of the s.h.i.+p with such weapons as their hard situation and the sailor's Providence threw in their way--if they did these things in the gang's despite, they must surely be judged as outraged husbands, fathers and lovers rather than as disloyal subjects of an exacting king. They would have made but sorry man-o'-war's-men had they entertained the gang in any other way.

Opposed to the service cutla.s.s, the sailor's emergency weapon was but a poor tool to stake his liberty upon, and even though the numerical odds chanced to be in his favour he often learnt, in the course of his pitched battles with the gang, that the edge of a hanger is sharper than the corresponding part of a handspike. Lucky for him if, with his s.h.i.+pmates, he could then retreat to close quarters below or between decks, there to make a final stand for his brief spell of liberty ash.o.r.e. This was his last ditch. Beyond it lay only surrender or death.

The death of the sailor at the hands of the gang introduces us to a phase of pressing technically known as the accidental, wherein the accidents were of three kinds--casual, unavoidable, and "disagreeable."

The casual accident was one that could be neither foreseen nor averted, as when Capt. Argles, returning to England on the breaking up of the Limerick rendezvous in 1814, was captured by an American privateer "well up the Bristol Channel," a place where no one ever dreamed of falling in with such an enemy. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1455--Capt.

Argles, 17 Aug. 1814.]

To the unavoidable accident every impress officer and agent was liable in the execution of his duty. It could thus be foreseen in the abstract, though not in the instance. Hence it could not be avoided. Wounds given and received in the heat and turmoil of pressing came under this head, provided they did not prove fatal.

The accident "disagreeable" was peculiar to pressing. It consisted in the killing of a man, by whatever means and in whatever manner, whilst endeavouring to press him, and the immediate effect of the act, which was common enough, was to set up a remarkable contradiction in terms.

The man killed was not the victim of the accident. The victim was the officer or gangsman who was responsible for striking him off the roll of His Majesty's pressable subjects, and who thus let himself in for the consequences, more or less disagreeable, which inevitably followed.

While it was naturally the ambition of every officer engaged in pressing "to do the business without any disagreeable accident ensuing," he preferred, did fate ordain it otherwise, that the accident should happen at sea rather than on land, since it was on land that the most disagreeable consequences accrued to the unfortunate victim. These embraced flight and prolonged expatriation, or, in the alternative, arrest, preliminary detention in one of His Majesty's prisons, and subsequent trial at the a.s.sizes. What the ultimate punishment might be was a minor, though still ponderable consideration, since, where naval officers or agents were concerned, the law was singularly capricious.

[Footnote: As in Lacie's case, 25 Elizabeth, where a mortal wound having been inflicted at sea, whereof the party died on land, the prisoner was acquitted because neither the Admiralty nor a jury could inquire of it.] At sea, on the other hand, the conditions which on land rendered accidents of this nature so uniformly disagreeable, were almost entirely reversed. How and why this was so can be best explained by stating a case.

The accident in point occurred in the year 1755, and is a.s.sociated with the ill.u.s.trious name of Rodney. The Seven Years War was at the time looming in the near future, and England's secret complicity in the causes of that tremendous struggle rendered necessary the placing of her Navy upon a footing adequate to the demands which it was foreseen would be very shortly made upon it. In common with a hundred other naval officers, Rodney, who was then in command of the _Prince George_ guards.h.i.+p at Portsmouth, had orders to proceed without loss of time to the raising of men. One of his lieutenants was accordingly sent to London, that happy hunting-ground of the impress officer, while two others, with picked crews at their backs, were put in charge of tenders to intercept homeward-bounds. This was near the end of May.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANNE MILLS. Who served on board the _Maidstone_ in 1740.]

On the 1st of June, in the early morning, one of these tenders--the _Princess Augusta_, Lieut. Sax commander--fell in, off Portland Bill, with the _Britannia_, a Leghorn trader of considerable force. In response to a shot fired as an intimation that she was expected to lay-to and receive a gang on board, the master, hailing, desired permission to retain his crew intact till he should have pa.s.sed that dangerous piece of navigation known as the Race. To this reasonable request Sax acceded and the s.h.i.+p held on her course, closely followed by the tender. By the time the Race was pa.s.sed, however, the merchant-man's crew had come to a resolution. They should not be pressed by "such a pimping vessel" as the _Princess Augusta_. Accordingly, they first deprived the master of the command, and then, when again hailed by the tender, "swore they would lose their lives sooner than bring too." The Channel at this time swarmed with tenders, and to Sax's hint that they might just as well give in then and there as be pressed later on, they replied with defiant huzzas and the discharge of one of their maindeck guns. The tender was immediately laid alongside, but on the gang's attempting to board they encountered a resistance so fierce that Sax, thinking to bring the infuriated crew to their senses, ordered his people to fire upon them. Ralph St.u.r.dy and John Debusk, armed with harpoons, and John Wilson, who had requisitioned the cook's spit as a weapon, fell dead before that volley. The rest, submitting without further ado, were at once confined below.

Now, three questions of moment are raised by this accident: What became of the s.h.i.+p? what was done with the dead men? and what punishment was meted out to the lieutenant and his gang? The crew once secured under hatches, the safety of the s.h.i.+p became of course the first consideration. It was a.s.sured by a simple expedient. The gang remained on board and worked the vessel into Portsmouth harbour, where, after her hands had been taken out--Rodney the receiver--"men in lieu" were put on board, as explained in our chapter on pressing afloat, and with this make-s.h.i.+ft crew she was navigated to her destination, in this instance the port of London.

As persons killed at sea, the three sailors who lay dead on the s.h.i.+p's deck did not come within the jurisdiction of the coroner. That official's cognisance of such matters extended only to high-water mark when the tide was at flood, or to low-water mark when it was at ebb.

Beyond those limits, seawards, all acts of violence done in great s.h.i.+ps, and resulting in mayhem or the death of a man, fell within the sole purview and jurisdiction of the Station Admiral, who on this occasion happened to be Sir Edward Hawke, commander of the White Squadron at Portsmouth. Now Sir Edward was not less keenly alive to the importance of keeping such cases hidden from the public eye than were the Lords Commissioners. Hence he immediately gave orders that the bodies of the dead men should be taken "without St. Helens" and there committed to the deep. Instead of going to feed the Navy, the three sailors thus went to feed the fishes, and another stain on the service was washed out with a commendable absence of publicity and fuss.

There still remained the lieutenant and his gang to be dealt with and brought to what, by another singular perversion of terms, was called justice. On sh.o.r.e, notwithstanding the lenient view taken of such accidents, an indictment of manslaughter, if not of murder, would have a.s.suredly followed the offence; and though in the circ.u.mstances it is doubtful whether any jury would have found the culprits guilty of the capital crime, yet the alternative verdict, with its consequent imprisonment and disgrace, held out anything but a rosy prospect to the young officer who had still his second "swab" to win. That was where the advantage of accidents at sea came in. On sh.o.r.e the judiciary, however kindly disposed to the naval service, were painfully disinterested. At sea the scales of justice were held, none too meticulously, by brother officers who had the service at heart. Under the judicious direction of Admiral Osborn, who in the meantime had succeeded Sir Edward Hawke in the Portsmouth command, Lieut. Sax and his gang were consequently called upon to face no ordeal more terrible than an "inquiry into their proceedings and behaviour." Needless to say, they were unanimously exonerated, the court holding that the discharge of their duty fully justified them in the discharge of their muskets. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5925--Minutes at a Court-Martial held on board H.M.S.

_Prince George_ at Portsmouth, 14 Nov. 1755. Precedent for the procedure in this case is found in _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers'

Opinions, 1733-56, No. 27.] When such disagreeable accidents had to be investigated, the disagreeable business was done--to purloin an apt phrase of c.o.ke's--"without prying into them with eagles' eyes."

But it is time to leave the trail of blood and turn to a more agreeable phase of pressing.

CHAPTER IX.

THE GANG AT PLAY.

The reasons a.s.signed for the pressing of men who ought never to have made the acquaintance of the warrant or the hanger were often as far-fetched as they are amusing. "You have no right to press a person of my distinction!" warmly protested an individual of the superior type when pounced upon by the gang. "Lor love yer! that's the wery reason we're a-pressin' of your wors.h.i.+p," replied the grinning minions of the service. "We've such a set of black-guards aboard the tender yonder, we wants a toff like you to learn 'em manners."

The quixotic idea of inculcating manners by means of the press infected others besides the gangsman. In a Navy whose officers not only plumed themselves on representing the _ne plus ultra_ of etiquette, but demanded that all who approached them should do so without sin either of omission or commission, the idea was universal. Pride of service and pride of self entered into its composition in about equal proportions; hence the sailing-master who neglected to salute the flag, or who through ignorance, cra.s.s stupidity, or malice aforethought flew prohibited colours, was no more liable to be taught an exemplary lesson than the b.u.m-boatman who sauced the officer of the watch when detected in the act of smuggling spirits or women into one of His Majesty's s.h.i.+ps.

For all such offenders the autocracy of the quarter-deck, from the rigid commander down to the very young gentleman newly joined, kept a jealous lookout, and many are the instances of punishment, swift and implacable, following the offence. Insulted dignity could of course take it out of the disrespectful fore-mastman with the rattan, the cat or the irons; but for the ill-mannered outsider, whether pertaining to sea or land, the recognised corrective was His Majesty's press. A solitary exception is found in the case of Henry Crabb of Chatham, a boatman who rejoiced in incurable lameness; rejoiced because, although there were many cripples on board the Queen's s.h.i.+ps in his day, his infirmity was such as to leave him at liberty to ply for hire "when other men durst not for feare of being Imprest." He was an impudent, over-reaching knave, and Capt. Balchen, of the _Adventure_ man-o'-war, whose wife had suffered much from the fellow's abusive tongue and extortionate propensities, finding himself unable to press him, brought him to the capstan and there gave him "eleven lashes with a Catt of Nine Tailes." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1466--Capt. Balchen, 10 March 1703-4.]

A letter written in the early forties-a letter as breezy as the sea from which it was penned--gives us a striking picture of the old-time naval officer as a teacher of deportment. Cruising far down-Channel, Capt.

Brett, of the _Anglesea_ man-o'-war, there fell in with a s.h.i.+p whose character puzzled him sorely. He consequently gave chase, but the wind falling light and night coming on, he lost her. Early next morning, as luck would have it, he picked her up again, and having now a "pretty breeze," he succeeded in drawing within range of her about two o'clock in the afternoon, when he fired a shot to bring her to. The strange sail doubtless feared that she was about to lose her hands, for instead of obeying the summons she trained her stern-chasers on the _Anglesea_ and for an hour and a half blazed away at her as fast as she could load.

"They put a large marlinespike into one of their guns," the indignant captain tells us, "which struck the carriage of the chase gun upon our forecastle, dented it near two inches, then broke asunder and wounded one of the men in the leg, and had it come a yard higher, must infallibly have killed two or three. By all this behaviour I concluded she must be an English vessel taken by the Spaniards. However, when we came within a cable's length of him he brought to, so we run close under his stern in order to shoot a little berth to leeward of him, and at the same time bid them hoist their boats out. Our people, as is customary upon such occasions, were then all up upon the gunhill and in the shrouds, looking at him. Just as we came under his quarter he pointed a gun that was sticking out a little abaft his main-shrouds right at us, and put the match to it, but it happened very luckily that the gun blew. A fellow that was standing on the quarter-deck then took up a blunderbuss and presented it, which by its not going off must have missed fire. As it was almost impossible, they being stripp'd and bareheaded, besides having their faces besmeared with powder, for us to judge them by their looks, I concluded they must be a Parcell of Light-headed Frenchmen run mad, and thinking it by no means prudent to let them kill my men in such a ridiculous manner, I ordered the marines, who were standing upon the quarter-deck with their musquets shoulder'd, to fire upon them. As soon as they saw the musquets presented they fell flat upon the decks and by that means saved themselves from being kill'd. Some of our people at the same time fired a 9-pounder right into his quarter, upon which they immediately submitted. I own I never was more surprised in all my life to find that she was an English vessel, tho' my surprise was lessened a good deal when I came to see the master and all his fighting men so drunk as to be scarce capable of giving a rational answer to any question that was asked them. I was very glad to find that none of them were hurt; _but I found out the man who presented the blunderbuss, and upon his behaving saucily when I taxed him with it, I took him out of the vessel._" [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1479--Capt. Brett, 17 April 1743. The captain's use of gender is philologically instructive. Not till later times, it seems, did s.h.i.+ps lose the character of a "strong man armed" and take on, uniformly, the attributes of the skittish female.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAILORS CAROUSING. From the mezzotint after J. Ibbetson.]

So abhorrent a condiment was "sauce" to the naval palate, whether of officer or impress agent, that its use invariably brought its own punishment with it. "You are no gentleman!" said Gangsman Dibell to one Hartnell, a currier who accidentally jostled him whilst he was drinking in a Poole taproom. "No, nor you neither!" replied Hartnell. The retort cost him a most disagreeable experience. Dibell and his comrades collared him and dragged him off to the rendezvous, where he was locked up in the black-hole till the next day. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Inquiry into the Conduct of the Impress Officers at Poole, 13 Aug. 1804.]