FORCED SERVICE: OFFICIAL AND POPULAR RESPONSES TO THE IMPRESSMENT OF SEAMEN INTO THE ROYAL NAVY, 1660-1815 Patrick M. Prendergast A Thesis Submitted to the University of North Carolina Wilmington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Department of History University of North Carolina Wilmington 2009 Approved by Advisory Committee Paul A. Townend William Atwill _William J. McCarthy_ Chair Accepted by ____________________ Dean, Graduate School TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................. iv INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 CAUSES OF THE DEBATE ABOUT IMPRESSMENT ............................................... 12 OFFICIAL AND PUBLIC DEBATE ABOUT THE PRESS .......................................... 33 OFFICIAL AND POPULAR RESPONSES TO IMPRESSMENT ................................ 57 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................ 88 WORK CITED ................................................................................................................. 93 ii ABSTRACT The British Royal Navy has been the subject of much scholarly examination regarding nearly every facet of its composition, history, and accomplishments. There are, however, a number of aspects of the Royal Navy lack adequate analysis. One of these areas is the practice of forcibly pressing of men into service aboard naval vessels by the government. The impressment of men into the Navy, the burdensome and sometimes violent means by which men were pressed, and the negative impacts this had on British families and society ignited a vociferous official and popular debate that lasted from the creation of the press in the years after the Restoration of the monarchy to its reduction and elimination after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte. This national discussion gave rise to a number of actions taken in an effort to ameliorate or reform the onerous elements of the press. Through an examination of relevant primary and secondary source documents, this thesis will identify the mechanisms by which the press operated and how they gave rise to the discourse over the existence of the press. Assessing the characteristics of the national debate over impressment leads to an awareness of why there were attempts to reform the practice. The ultimate goal of this thesis is to demonstrate how, through the general failure of these modifications, the perceived necessity of utilizing the press to maintain the Navy’s manpower strength, and the various means used by sailor’s to evade forced naval service, the press persisted despite its unpopularity. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My first thanks go to my parents, Tom and Lisa Prendergast, who first ignited my thirst for knowledge. Without their love, support, and encouragement this thesis and every other endeavor would not have been possible. Next I would like to express my gratitude to my brother, Chris Prendergast, and my sister, Michelle Prendergast, whose intelligence and achievements have always motivated me to strive for success. Their thoughts have been invaluable in writing this thesis and in every other aspect of my life. I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. William McCarthy, for his guidance. Dr. McCarthy’s suggestions and insights were invariably useful and always provoked me to think and write to the best of my ability. His calm and steady presence made a difficult process a delight. I would also like to convey my appreciation to my committee, Dr. Paul Townend and Dr. Bill Atwill for their contributions to my thesis. Their ideas expanded my understanding of this topic and helped me write a more thorough and reasoned manuscript. Special thanks go to Michelle Cicero who, more than anyone, was a sounding board for my many ideas and reassured me when necessary. Without her love and support this process would have been considerably more onerous. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr. Robert Roer, Dean of the Graduate School, whose reasoned decision made it possible for me to complete this program. Finally, I would like to convey my appreciation to novelist Patrick O’Brian. His well-written and thoroughly-research novels about the Royal Navy first peaked my interest in this subject and sustained me while researching and writing my thesis. iv INTRODUCTION Impressment, the practice of coercing men into service in the Royal Navy, was an enduring aspect of British military and civilian life between the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815. During this era, England grew from a nation with few overseas outposts to a global empire. The Royal Navy’s supremacy not only facilitated the defeat of its enemies, it allowed Britain to capture the bases of other colonial powers, develop colonies in areas previously uncontrolled by western nations, and to wage war against native rulers around the world with only limited interference from other European powers. It was mainly as a result of the Navy’s efforts that, in 1815, so much of the globe was dominated by the British. 1 As Britain’s territorial acquisitions grew and imperial responsibilities expanded, the need for the Royal Navy to protect the nation’s far flung assets increased. 2 Along with the growth of the Navy there was an increase in the official and popular responses to the negative aspects of impressment, the primary means of manning Britain’s expanding fleet. Britain was involved in major wars for almost half the 155-year period between the Restoration and Waterloo. As it is an imperial nation, the Royal Navy bore the brunt of the burdens of these conflicts. The role of the Navy in assisting Britain to defeat its European rivals was of the greatest consequence as by 1815 the Dutch, Spanish, Danish, and French fleets had all been defeated by Britain, frequently multiple times. 3 Along with building and maintaining a fleet, the greatest impediment the Navy faced in defending the home islands and pursuing Britain’s strategic goals (military victory, territorial and commercial expansion) around the globe 1 Jeremy Black, European Warfare, 1660-1815 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 180. 2 Arthur Herman, To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 47. 3 Black, European Warfare, 1660-1815 , 177. was that Service’s chronic shortage of men. 4 To remedy this continual manpower shortfall, the Admiralty turned to the practice of impressment—the involuntary enlistment of men into the Royal Navy. The press reached its apogee from the late seventeenth into the early eighteenth centuries but the origins of forcing men into naval service go back to antiquity. 5 While impressment as it existed in the mid-seventeenth through early nineteenth centuries was related to the ancient tradition of conscription it was also rooted in Saxon England and the later feudal period.6 The transition toward recognizable full-time, extended impressment occurred during the Renaissance, hand-in-hand with the evolution of permanent navies. The navies of this period maintained the seasonal mobilization associated with the feudal period but fleets grew larger and leaders began to recognize the utility of dedicated warships. Despite this movement toward a full-time navy, the defining feature of Renaissance naval warfare remained privateering. This was a pragmatic decision because armadas like Spain’s of 1588 were costly and risky. As a consequence of these perils, a fully-manned, professional navy did not appear in Britain until the late seventeenth- century and that is when impressment in its mature form began. Before this time fleets were collected with short-term objectives in mind and were financed by investors (including the 4 Daniel James Ennis, Enter the Press Gang: Naval Impressment in Eighteenth-Century British Literature (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 2002), 15. 5 Slaves were the oarsmen who propelled the navies of Greece and Rome. Chester G. Starr Jr., The Roman Imperial Fleet, 31 B.C. – A.D. 324 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1975), 74. 6 Specifically in the monarch’s custom of requiring the most important seaports in medieval England to provide the crown with a set number of ships and crews each year. The ships of this era, precursors to the Royal Navy, were provided for seasonal campaigning. During the Hundred Years’ War, when King Edward III organized a flotilla to invade France in 1347, only about thirty of the seven hundred ships belonged to the crown. The rest were borrowed from merchants and fisherman and were only used to ferry troops to and from their destination. Piracy was the only other use medieval monarchs had for ships during conflicts. Kings issued letters of marque, licenses permitting mariners to attack ships of other countries. The dual purpose of this government-sponsored thievery was to cripple enemy commerce and fill the crown’s coffers, Herman, 35 and 51. 2 monarch), not the national treasury, and financial benefit, not strategic advantages was the goal. 7 In the eighteenth-century the Navy finally transformed from a seasonal, largely mercenary force into a permanent instrument of national policy. 8 This era represents a period of marked evolution