In the 1700s, a press-gang was essentially a
state-sanctioned kidnapping squad.
Technically known as "Impressment," this was the
Royal Navy’s brutal solution to a math problem: they had the world's largest
fleet of warships but not enough volunteers to sail them. To fill the gap,
groups of armed sailors and officers (the press-gang) would roam port towns to
forcibly "recruit" men into service.
THE SAILMAKER AND THE BOATSWAIN*
A still more curious
story is that of a sailmaker who many years ago went to spend Christmas with
his mother near Deal. On his way he spent a night at an inn at Deal, and shared
a bed with the landlady’s
uncle, the boatswain of an Indiaman*, who had just come ashore. In the morning
the uncle was missing, the bed was saturated with blood, and the young
sailmaker had disappeared. The bloodstains were soon traced through the house,
and beyond, as far as the pier-head. It was naturally concluded that the
boatswain had been murdered and his body thrown into the sea. A hue-and-cry was
at once set up for the young man, who was arrested the same evening in his
mother’s house.
He was taken
red-handed, with ample proof of his guilt upon him. His clothes were stained
with blood; in his pockets were a knife and a strange silver coin, both of
which were sworn to most positively as the property of the missing boatswain.
The evidence was so conclusive that no credence could be given to the
prisoner’s defense, which was ingenious but most improbable. His story was that
he woke in the night and asked the boatswain the way to the garden, so that he
could not open the back door, and borrowed his companion’s clasp-knife to lift
the latch. When he returned to bed the boatswain was gone; why or where he had
no idea.
The youth was convicted
and sent to the gallows, but by strange fortune he escaped death. The hanging
was done so imperfectly that his feet touched the ground, and when taken down
he was soon resuscitated by his friends. They made him leave as soon as he
could move, and he went down to Portsmouth, where he engaged on board a
man-of-war about to start for a foreign station. On his return from the West
Indies three years later to be paid off, he had gained the rating of a master’s
mate and gladly took service on another ship. The first person he met on board
was the boatswain he was supposed to have murdered!
The explanation given
was sufficiently strange. On the day of his murder the boatswain had been bled
by a barber for a pain in the side. During the absence of his bedfellow the
bandage had come off his arm, which bled copiously, and he got up hurriedly to
go in search of the barber. The moment he got into the street he was seized by
a press gang and carried off to the pier. There a man-of-war’s boat was in
waiting, and he was taken off to a ship in the Downs, which sailed direct for
the East Indies. He never thought of communicating with his friends;
letter-writing was not much indulged in at that period.
Doubts have been thrown
upon this story, which rests upon local tradition. As no body was found, it
does not seem probable that there would be a conviction for murder. Of the
various circumstances on which it was based, that of the possession of the
knife was explained, but not the possession of the silver coin. It has been
suggested that when the sailmaker took it out of the boatswain’s pocket the
coin had stuck between the blades of the knife.
*The boatswain (pronounced and often
spelled "bosun") was essentially the ship's Foreman or Chief
of Operations. He didn't navigate the ship (that was the Master’s job), but
he was responsible for everything physical on the deck.
*An East Indiaman was a massive, heavily
armed merchant ship belonging to the East India Company (EIC).
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