Impressment
The large size of the British Royal Navy in the Age of Sail meant impressment was most commonly associated with Great Britain and Ireland.
It was used by the Royal Navy in wartime, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice can be traced back to the time of Edward I of England.
[1] Though the public opposed conscription in general, impressment was repeatedly upheld by the courts, as it was deemed vital to the strength of the navy and, by extension, to the survival of the British realm and influence.
Impressment was essentially a Royal Navy practice, reflecting the sheer size of the British fleet and its substantial manpower demands.
The impressment of seamen from American ships caused serious tensions between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War.
After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Britain formally ended the practice; later conscription was not limited to the Royal Navy but covered all British armed forces.
[9] In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, it was not at all unusual for impressed men to view life in the navy, hard though it was, as still preferable to their previous lives on shore, and to volunteer for further service when the opportunity came to leave the ship.
[15] In Elizabethan times a statute regulated impressment as a form of recruitment, and with the introduction of the Vagabonds Act 1597, men of disrepute (vagrants) found themselves drafted into service.
The power of the Impressment Service to conscript was limited by law to seafarers, including merchant seamen, longshoremen, collier crews and fishermen.
There is little basis to the widespread impression that civilians without any seafaring background were randomly seized from home, country lane or workplace by press gangs or that the latter were employed inland away from coastal ports;[17] notably Portsmouth, Plymouth, Harwich and Yarmouth.
[18] However, convicted petty criminals were often given the option of volunteering for naval service as unskilled "quota men" by parish constables[18] and inland courts (see below).
He went on to lobby for changes in law and practice, publishing Letters on the evils of impressment: with the outline of a plan for doing them away, on which depend the wealth, prosperity, and consequence of Great Britain in 1816.
Reportedly some merchant captains redirected their ships to Irish ports to offload favoured crewmen, before making final landfall in England.
Apart from the probably lower quality of recruits taken by this means, another downside of the Quota System was the frequent introduction of disease, especially typhus, to healthy ships.
Navy press gangs sparked resistance, riots, and political turmoil in seaports such as Halifax, St John's, and Quebec City.
Four hundred were retained in the service[29] The Royal Navy extended the reach of its press gangs into coastal areas of British North America by the early 19th century.
Although these impressments violated American law, Jefferson ignored them so as to remain on good terms with Britain as he was negotiating to obtain Florida from the Spanish.
This changed in 1805 when the Royal Navy began seizing American merchantmen violating British law by trading with the West Indies, condemning the ships and their cargoes as prizes and impressing their crews.
The ship would then sail, with the cargo never having been offloaded or duty actually paid, as now bona fide commerce between neutral America and the West Indies.
After searching Chesapeake, the deserters, David Martin, John Strachan, and William Ware, were found to be native-born Americans who had been wrongly impressed.
Eight miles southeast of Cape Henry a boat from the British frigate HMS Leopard intercepted her but Commodore James Barron declined to permit his crew to be mustered.
[38][39] By the time of Britain's next major war, against Russia in 1853, a new system of fixed-term engagements had given the Royal Navy a sufficient number of volunteer recruits to meet its manpower needs.
Throughout the remainder of the 19th century changes in manpower needs and improved conditions of service permitted the Royal Navy to rely on voluntary enlistment to meet its requirements, augmented by the recall of reservists when necessary.
Following the execution of King Charles I, the Rump Parliament passed several acts in 1649 and 1650 concerning the encouragement of officers, mariners and for the impressment of seamen (e.g. 22 February 1648/9).
[41] This act gave parish authorities the power to indenture and apprentice boys to the sea, from as young as 10, until age 21; it also reaffirmed that rogues and vagabonds were subject to be pressed into the navy.
As part of a wider effort to build colonial capability and harass its enemies, Parliament passed the Trade to America Act 1707 (6 Ann.
Despite doubts over the continuing legality of impressment in continental waters, but for similar reasons, Parliament passed the Sugar Trade Act 1746 (19 Geo.
[citation needed] Starting in 1645, the New Model Army raised by Oliver Cromwell to overthrow Charles I during the English Civil War was largely manned by impressment.
During the American Revolutionary War, after the losses at the Battle of Saratoga and the impending hostilities with France, the existing voluntary enlistment measures were judged to be insufficient.
The impressment portion of the 1778 Act applied only to Scotland and the area around London, excluding Wales and the rest of England, to avoid interfering with harvesting.
