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

Notes

253 Abbreviations Add. MSS Additional Manuscripts, British Library, London ADL Administration and Law Papers (Naval), British National Maritime Museum, London ADM Admiralty Papers, National Archives of the United Kingdom, London BL British Library, London Bod. Bodleian Library, Oxford CL William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor CO Colonial Office Papers, National Archives of the United Kingdom, London CSP Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies EL Ellesmere Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, California FO Foreign Office Papers, National Archives of the United Kingdom, London HL Huntington Library, San Marino, California HPD Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, Third Series HSP Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia HSR History Collection, British National Maritime Museum, London JHC Journals of the House of Commons JHL Journals of the House of Lords KB Court of King’s Bench Records, National Archives of the United Kingdom, London LMA London Metropolitan Archives, London Lords MSS Manuscripts of the House of Lords Mass. Arch. Massachusetts Archives Collection, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston Mass. JHR Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts MHS Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston NAS National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh NEHGS New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston NL Newberry Library, Chicago NMM British National Maritime Museum, London PC Privy Council Papers, National Archives of the United Kingdom, London PL William R. Perkins Library, Duke University SP State Papers, National Archives of the United Kingdom, London TNA National Archives of the United Kingdom (formerly Public Record Office) WMQ William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series Notes 254 | n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 – 3 Introduction 1. Pepys, Diary of Samuel Pepys, 7:189. 2. Samuel Pepys to [the Earl of Sandwich], London, November 11, 1665, in Pepys, Further Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, 77 (“ashamed”). For the disconnect between Pepys’s private feelings and public actions concerning impressment, see Ennis, Enter the Press-Gang, 40–44. For naval reforms during Pepys’s career, see Davies, Gentlemen and Tarpaulins. 3. For studies that also use the series of Anglo-French wars to define the long eighteenth century, see J. Black, Britain as a Military Power, and Stone, ed., Imperial State at War. Different historians have made the eighteenth century even longer by identifying common themes in British and European history stretching from the Stuart Restoration in 1660 to the Parliamentary Reform Act of 1832. See, for example, Frank O’Gorman, The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History, 1688–1832 (London: Arnold, 1997), and William Prest, Albion Ascendant: English History, 1660–1815 (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1998). For England’s joint expansion in overseas naval and commercial activity, see Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 64–76; Davis, Rise of the English Shipping, 22–23; Lloyd, British Seaman, 115–17; and Linebaugh and Rediker, ManyHeaded Hydra, 148. 4.Most major secondary works on impressment consider the institution from either a British or American national perspective. For Britain, the classic study is J. R. Hutchinson , Press Gang. The most recent treatments are N. Rogers, Press Gang, and Land, War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor, esp. 29–56. See also Rodger, Wooden World, 164–82; Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 205–15, 312–26, 395–407, 442–53, 489–506; Baugh, British Naval Administration, 147–240; and Gradish, Manning of the British Navy. For America, see Zimmerman, Impressment of American Seamen; Lemisch, “Jack Tar in the Streets”; Lax and Pencak,“Knowles Riot”; and D. M.Clark,“Impressment of Seamen.” Other areas of the British Empire have also received limited attention. For the West Indies, see Pares, “Manning of the Navy,” and N. Rogers, “Archipelagic Encounters .”For Canada,see Mercer,“Northern Exposure.”Although not principally a study of impressment,Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker’s pioneering article,“Many-Headed Hydra” (later expanded into a book of the same name), first considered the practice within a larger Atlantic framework. For my initial depiction of impressment as an Atlantic system, see Brunsman, “Knowles Atlantic Impressment Riots.” 5. Rodger, Wooden World, 182. In addition to his books previously cited, Rodger has advanced his thesis in shorter writings. See especially “Little Navy” and “Officers and Men.” For the division between Rodger and Rediker, see Vickers and Walsh, “Young Men and the Sea,”17–18,and N. A. M.Rodger,Review of Between the Devil by Rediker, Mariners’ Mirror 74 (1988): 307–8. 6. Nicholas Rogers has leveled particularly vociferous criticism of Rodger’s treat- n o t...