The Evil Necessity: British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World

chapter 4 | Men of War

139 A gap in logic has pervaded writing on the British Royal Navy from the eighteenth century to today.One the one hand,contemporaries and historians have long cited superior seafaring as a key advantage of the navy over its European rivals. On the other hand, past and current commentators have maligned the British naval manning system—the same system that provided for the navy’s superior sailors—as at best inefficient and at worst barbaric.So if impressment was so bad,why was the British navy so good? The following chapters will analyze this paradox by closely examining the lived experience of impressed seamen. This chapter explores the impact of forced naval service on merchant seamen and their families; the final two chapters look at different forms of resistance against press gangs. The argument throughout is that we do not have to deny the injustice of impressment or sailor resistance to recognize the extraordinary achievements of British seamen in the eighteenth century. In short, impressment was that bad, and the British navy was that good.1 The contradiction was not lost on contemporaries of the British press gang. In 1845, the Norwegian-born American merchant seaman Nicholas Isaacs, who was twice impressed during the War of 1812 era and carried Danish and American protection certificates just to be safe,looked back on Britain’s naval dominance with puzzlement. “What a disgrace it is to the proud lion-flag of England,that it is defended by so many involuntary seamen!”he wrote.“How strange that it has been so often victorious with such defenders!” Isaacs explained the impressment paradox by suggesting that, with the notable exception of the United States,Britain’s enemies also forced sailors into their navies. It was not a bad answer.As we have seen,every European navy struggled with shortages of skilled mariners in the Age of Sail, and most experimented with conscription schemes. But Isaacs’s comparative analysis still does not explain why Britain’s forced laborers performed so well.2 The two primary and conflicting ways that historians today explain the impressment paradox are even less satisfying: Historians either deny that impressment was an imposition at all but rather something sailors accepted as a “way of life,” or they claim that seamen were so oppressed that they had no choice but to serve. These models do not fit the careers of sailors such as William Spavens. A press gang seized Spavens in 1755 upon his return to Hull from a trading voyage to Havre-de-Grâce in northwest France. Within chapter 4 | Men of War 140 | S a i l o r s days of his capture, he conspired with fellow impressed seamen on a pressing tender to mutiny. The uprising fizzled, however, when officers caught wind of the plot. Thereafter, Spavens, resigned to his fate, reasoned that he could at least improve his sailing skills in the navy. He fought in both the American and European theaters of the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) and even saw duty in a press gang patrolling the waters, harbors, and seaports of England and Ireland.Adding further complexity to his relationship with impressment, Spavens later declared the practice as “shocking to the feelings of humanity” and “a hardship which nothing but absolute necessity can reconcile to our boasted freedom.” In one career, therefore, he was a victim of impressment, a mutineer, a dutiful navy sailor, a member of a press gang, and an opponent of Britain’s naval manning system.3 Or consider the career of the impressed seaman Robert Wilson a halfcentury later in the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15).Taken from the London streets just days after returning from Jamaica in July 1805, Wilson rose quickly while serving on vessels in Britain’s naval blockade of Napoleonic Europe, first as an able seaman and signalman, then as a midshipman, and finally as an acting second master,all within four and a half years of his impressment.And yet,like Spavens,Wilson criticized the treatment of British sailors who were “snatched from their wives, parents, and everything they hold most dear, to fight the implacable foe.” In March 1811, despite his considerable success in the Royal Navy, Wilson deserted at the island of Mikoni in the Aegean Sea.4 Far from extraordinary, the examples of William Spavens and Robert Wilson were more representative of the experience of impressed British seamen in the long eighteenth century than either of the leading models in the existing...