Press Gang Week: Isaac Land

Consider this a postscript to Press Gang Week. I reached out to Dr. Land after the week had already started. Below is his response.

Dr. Isaac Land is an Associate Professor of History at Indiana State University. He received his PhD from University of Michigan Ann-Arbor in 1999 and is the author of War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor. 1750-1850. Among Dr. Land's recent projects is the Coastal History Blog, part of the Port Towns & Urban Cultures website. One of his specialties is the state of historical scholarship and debate surrounding press gangs.

I showed Dr. Land seven primary source images depicting press gangs at work, and asked him to choose the one that best captured the nature of press gangs in the eighteenth century.


I don’t think that any of these artists was trying to give us a sense of what a typical, real press gang looked like in action (a lot of impressment took place at sea, for example), though maybe the rough-and-tumble choreography and sheer physical comedy of most of your images does capture what impressment looked and felt like in a crowded port town.  The presence of concerned women in so many of the images does underscore the fact that women really did resent the practice, as it deprived them of breadwinners, and were not shy about obstructing or even fighting the gangs.

Mary Wollstonecraft remarked that impressment was a women’s issue.  Still, these images are better considered as political cartoons than as slices of life, and the pointed, sometimes abstract titles (“Liberty of the Subject”) reinforce this.

I’ll offer a contrarian choice and select the George Morland image. Morland is undergoing something of a revival or critical reappraisal at the moment, with a major exhibition in Leeds this year and a new edited volume coming out about his work. Morland’s pious sailor, with his hands clasped in prayer and his large, emotion-laden eyes turned skyward, is presented as a lamb-like victim.  As an artist, Morland is drawing on the long tradition of martyrdom portraits in Christian religious art.  (Most of your other images derive more or less directly from William Hogarth’s sly and coarse physiognomies that in turn owed much to the Dutch genre of moralizing “low life” paintings.)

Morland is also well known for his depiction of the Atlantic slave trade, actually a quieter composition but also one in which the dignity and integrity of the victim—in this case a shirtless, classically proportioned African male—is contrasted with the turmoil and injustice around him.  We can certainly quibble about the merits of the impressment – slave trade comparison, but it is a connection that many contemporaries made.  It is helpful to remember that for Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, and quite a few ordinary people, impressment was seen as an affront to universal values, or as the naval surgeon Thomas Trotter put it in the 1790s, a violation of “civil liberties.”

Be sure to visit the Coastal History Blog to keep following the work of Dr. Isaac Land!

Press Gang Week: Keith Mercer

Dr. Keith Mercer is a Research Associate at the Gorsebrook Research Institute, Saint Mary's University. Dr. Mercer received his PhD from Dalhousie University in 2008, and has published numerous articles on Canadian maritime history with a focus on press gangs and resistance to impressment. You can read several of these articles in full at his official website KeithMercer.com.
I showed Dr. Mercer seven primary source images depicting press gangs at work, and asked him to choose one that best captured the nature of press gangs in the eighteenth century.


These are all terrific images.

What's so exciting about studying press gangs these days is the quality and quantity of the scholarship -- in Britain, North America, and the wider Atlantic World. It's a welcome change from when I picked up the topic in grad school 15 years ago. For my part I've focused on the Canadian colonies, particularly civil-naval relations in the naval ports of St. John's, Halifax, and Quebec City. No one had really studied that topic before. There exists folklore and popular memory about press gangs, but that's about it. My answer thus stems from the Canadian context.

Like Marcus Rediker, I choose the Morland painting from 1790, which I've always called "Jack in the Bilboes." Interestingly, as in Denver Brunsman's answer about the Falklands crisis in 1770, this depiction of a press gang may have resulted from another large-scale, peacetime mobilization of the Royal Navy in 1790 stemming from the British-Spanish territorial dispute over Nootka Sound (off British Columbia, Canada). Britain's rapid mobilization of its powerful navy was a major deterrent for Spain and likely prevented war. It included significant impressment, including "presses from all protections." Even the North American squadron based at Halifax used impressment to get in fighting shape. But the colonial government resisted, especially pressing on shore.

This image is the only one showing impressment at sea, albeit in a boat coming ashore. For me this speaks to a common misconception about impressment. In the vast majority of cases, certainly away from the major British port towns and the government-operated Impress Service, impressment occurred on the water rather than on land. This included boats coming ashore, merchantmen stopped on the high seas and along the coast, and particularly naval guard boats and cutters boarding incoming vessels in harbours. In other words, the traditional caricature of the press gang accosting civilians on the street or barging into taverns was both a relatively rare occurrence and something of an anachronism, especially in the Canadian and colonial American contexts.

An example of just such a caricature:
"A Cribbage Party in St. Giles Disturbed by a Press Gang," Thomas Rowlandson,
1787, Royal Collection Trust

Impressment on shore was just too dangerous, for those doing the pressing. It often led to violence, political disputes, and negative publicity. Press gangs were relegated to the water, where they were far more productive anyway. Unless sailors jumped ship, which was very dangerous at sea, they were not getting away.

Keep an eye out for Dr. Mercer's upcoming book North Atlantic Press Gangs: A Social History of the British Navy in Canada, 1675-1815. For more information about his work, to read his blog, and more, visit KeithMercer.com.

Press Gang Week: Niklas Frykman

As part of the ongoing Press Gang Week, today's featured historian is Niklas Frykman.

Dr. Frykman received his PhD at the University of Pittsburgh in 2010, where is currently an Assisant Professor in the Department of History. He specializes in mutiny in European navies in the long eighteenth century, and his work is published in Mutiny and Maritime Radicalism in the age of Revolution: A Global Survey, Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and its Empire, and in the Journal of Social History.

I showed Dr. Frykman seven primary source images depicting press gangs at work, and asked him to choose the one that best captured the nature of press gangs in the eighteenth century.

I don’t think any of the images really captures impressment very well, and really they say much more about the various prejudices that English society had about sailors in particular, and the working class more broadly, than about coercive recruitment. I also find it really remarkable that you’ve only been able to find seven prints! That in itself is extremely telling, it seems to me.

However, I do think overall that Collet and Barlow do a better job than the others.

"The Press Gang," c.1760, John Collet

"Attic Miscellany: Maning the Navy," 1790, J. Barlow

First, they do not portray those pressed as respectable artisans and middling types set upon by the violent sailors of the press gang, as is the case in some of the other ones. For one thing, it is clear that the primary purpose of impressment was not just to hoover up manpower, but specifically to funnel skilled manpower (that is, experienced sailors, not tailors!) into the navy. 

Detail of a tailor being pressed from James Gillray's
"The Liberty of the Subject," 1779

But I also dislike the politics of this implied contrast between the landed respectable working class and the disreputable, violent, uncouth and unprincipled maritime working class, whose denunciation is achieved by portraying them as the perpetrators of the very violence they in fact were victimize by. What makes that contrast worse is that in some of the prints there are no officers or other higher ranking representatives of the impressment hierarchy present, thus making the sailors of the press gang sole agents, and turning the whole thing into an example of intra-class rather than the inter-class violence it really was. More positively, what I appreciate about Collet is the way the image shows the humdrum, almost banal nature by which impressment often tore families apart (and took men to their deaths). But the violence upon which that banality arose is at best hinted at. In Barlow, in contrast, it is central, though its sting is removed by the cartoonish, literally de-humanizing nature of the image.

So, all in all, none do a great job, but each captures elements of the truth (like the importance of women in fighting the press gangs in Rowlandson or Gilray, or the political implications in the images from the Lewis Walpole Library) and Collet and Barlow in a way accumulate most truthful elements, while avoiding some prominent prejudices.

Pick up a copy of Mutiny and Maritime Radicalism in the Age of Revolution: A Global Survey, co-edited by Dr. Niklas Frykman to learn about other forms of violent resistance in the maritime world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Press Gang Week: Marcus Rediker

As part of the ongoing Press Gang Week, today's featured historian is Marcus Rediker.

Author of important works including Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail, The Slave Ship: A Human History, and Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750, Marcus Rediker received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently the Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh.

I showed Dr. Rediker seven primary source images depicting press gangs at work, and asked him to choose the one that best captured the nature of press gangs in the eighteenth century.

I would pick the Morland painting, by quite a margin, with Barlow second.

Morland captures impressment in action and renders realistically and in convincing detail both people and place.  One sees the unexpected situation, a boat hijacked, so to speak, along the waterfront, which was always a dangerous place.

He also captures the chaos: the bosun (with his stick) at the moment of capture, the hat in the water, the sailor ankle-deep, the violence, actual and threatened.  Is the sailor with the clenched fist African-American?  He appears to be darker-skinned than the rest of the people depicted.  All in all, it's the best representation of the press gang I've ever seen.

My second choice would be Barlow, but it is compromised by its (conventional) use of caricature, making the faces of the workers look rather ridiculous.

Be sure to pick up a copy of Rediker's latest work Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail.

Press Gang Week: Denver Brunsman

As part of the ongoing Press Gang Week, today's featured historian is Denver Brunsman.

Denver Brunsman is an Associate Professor of History at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 2004, and is a leading expert on naval impressment. Most recently, his book "The Evil Necessity:British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World," received the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an outstanding Work of Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Studies.

I showed Dr. Brunsman seven primary source images depicting press gangs at work, and asked him to choose one that best captured the nature of press gangs in the eighteenth century.

The engraving “The Press Gang; or, English Liberty Display’d,” first published in the Oxford Magazine in October 1770, receives my vote. The image is literally a cartoon, and it reinforces common misconceptions about impressment in the eighteenth century. Yet, like the best social satire, it also exposes essential truths about the practice that a more realistic depiction might miss. In the scene, a press gang hauls a man off to naval service, ignoring the pleas of woman, most likely his wife. Errors abound. Press gangs did most of their work at sea (not land), and they targeted seafarers (not landsmen).

Although the conscript in the image could be a sailor, he wears a long coat more customary of a gentleman and in contrast with the gang members surrounding him. In fairness, the image appeared during the Royal Navy’s rapid mobilization for a possible war with Spain over the Falkland Islands. The mobilization came without warning and included abuses customary of a “hot press” (when gangs ignored normal legal protections). Britain and Spain resolved the crisis peaceably in early 1771, staving off war over the Falklands for two centuries.

Regardless of the immediate context, the engraving correctly captures the social price of impressment. The practice turned the women of impressed men into what I have called “impressment widows,” for they had no idea when or if their loved ones would return. In the print, the pressing lieutenant responds churlishly to the woman: “Let them starve & be damned, the King wants Men, haul him on Board you dogs.” 

While cartoonish, the lieutenant’s words reflected the policy of the British state, which did nothing to compensate the family members of impressed seamen. The image reminds us that for all the explanations and justifications for impressment (and there are many), contemporaries widely recognized the practice as out of place in the eighteenth century and contrary to Britain’s most cherished value, liberty.

Be sure to pick up a copy of "The Evil Necessity" for a thorough approach to the topic.

Via Amazon.com

Press Gang Week: An Introduction

Have I got a treat for you!

Rather than relating anecdotes about press gangs in Britain and America, I have decided to take this year's Press Gang Week in a different direction.

Thus far, I have collected seven primary source images of press gangs at work in the course of compiling this blog. After reading Denver Brunsman's The Evil Necessity: British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World, I hit on the idea of using these images to explore the ongoing historical dialogue concerning impressment.

Over the past month I have reached out to leading maritime historians of the eighteenth century with a simple question: which image best captures the nature of naval impressment, and why?

For the next few days you will see the responses of experts on naval impressment including Marcus Rediker, Denver Brunsman, and Niklas Frykman. There may be a last minute addition or two. The week will conclude with a new examination of three different colorized versions of James Gillray's "The Liberty of the Subject."

Before we dive into their thoughts, what are yours? Take a look at the seven images below, consider them, and come to your own conclusion. Which painting or print do you think best captures the nature of naval impressment?

"The Press Gang," John Collet, c.1760, The Foundling Museum.

"The Press Gang," artist unknown, 1770, Lewis Walpole Library.

"The Press Gang, or English Liberty Display'd," artist unknown, 1770, Lewis Walpole Library.

"The Liberty of the Subject," James Gillray, 1779, National Portrait Gallery (UK).

"A Cribbage Party in St. Giles Disturbed by a Press Gang," Thomas Rowlandson, 1787, Royal Collection Trust.

"The Press Gang," George Morland, 1790, Wikiart.

"Attic Miscellany. Manning the Navy," J. Barlow, 1790, National Maritime Museum.

Don't forget to visit our partner blog HMS Acasta.com for more posts about naval impressment every day this week!

Press Gang Week: The Murder of Thomas Nogan

For our final installment in support of HMS Acasta's Press Gang Week, we cross the Atlantic to London.

"The Press Gang," Walpole Library

Thomas Nogan was a pressed man. He was also a murder victim. We know both of these facts because of a transcript of a trial held at the Old Bailey on October 24, 1759.

Desertion from the Royal Navy was rampant. In turn, impressment was used to replace those who fled. Understandably, men pressed into service were discontented, and themselves deserted. This created a circle of desertion and impressment from which the Royal Navy could not escape until well into the nineteenth century.

Nogan typified this dilemma. Pressed into service aboard the hospital ship Phoenix (or Phenix as recorded by the Old Bailey's stenographer), Nogan sought his escape by stealing a boat to take him ashore. Almost immediately his bad luck began. Shouts erupted from the ship at his escape: "Come to! Come to!" and "Stop the man!" According to a witness at the trial by the name of John Walker, Nogan "did not understand rowing the boat very well" and was pursued by another boat a mere twenty yards off.  James Pritchard, a waterman serving aboard the Phoenix confirmed that they were closing on Nogan when someone shouted "Fire!" Though the source of the order is unclear, both Surgeon's Steward Matthew Makepeace and Boatswain's Steward Joshua Squire were accused of uttering the fatal word. One witness even claimed that both had said it.

Marine John Neale proclaimed "If I have orders to fire, I'll fire." He took up his musket from the ship's wheel, and pulled the trigger. The bullet found its mark and Nogan "failed in his rowing upon the first fire." Matthew Makepeace called out "For God's sake, fire no more!" Squire, however, commanded another shot. Neale grabbed fellow Marine Samuel Black's musket and bored a hole in Nogan's boat with the ball.

Pritchard, in pursuit, pulled alongside and took Nogan's boat in tow, helping the mortally wounded man back onto the ship. Despite medical treatment and four days in hospital, Nogan succumbed to his wound.

In the end, the court found Makepeace, Squire, and Neale all guilty of manslaughter. Each was sentenced to a painful branding on the hand.

The sentence in this case may represent the uneasy attitude of the British people toward impressment. It was perfectly understandable for a man to try and escape a situation in which he is physically and sometimes violently forced into a life not of his choosing. Though the need to stop him from escape was not disputed, the use of deadly force to prevent that escape was being examined here. The questions asked of the witnesses often dealt with the likelihood of his apprehension. How far off from the pursuit boat was he? Was he likely to evade his pursuers? Where was he headed? These questions imply that the concern of the court was whether the death of the man was really necessary to prevent his escape. In this case it was not.

Though Nogan's case was extreme, he was one of the innumerable sailors and common men kidnapped and pressed into service throughout the eighteenth century.

Press Gang Week: Press Gangs in Nova Scotia

Today we continue our posts in support of HMS Acasta's Press Gang Week.

"The Press Gang," John Collet

One region of British North America that I often neglect is that of Nova Scotia and Canada. Part of the reason for this is that neither was actually part of the British Empire until their capture in the French and Indian War. Thousands of New Englanders moved to Nova Scotia following the end of that conflict in 1763, and brought with them the resistance to the press gangs that Yankees were known for.

In the short history of the province, there had been no major issue with impressment, but the manpower needs of the Royal Navy increased dramatically with the American Revolutionary War, and the original thirteen North American colonies could no longer be used to make up the shortfall. The war years would be especially rough on the small population of Nova Scotia.

Thanks to Keith Mercer's 2008 PhD dissertation North Atlantic Press Gangs: Impressment and Naval-Civilian Relations in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, 1749-1815, we have a thorough summation and examination of the use and consequences of press-gangs in the new colony.

Of particular interest to me is the proclamation issued by Lieutenant Governor Richard Hughes against the use of impressment in Nova Scotia:

Whereas impressing Men on the Land for the Sea Service without the Countenance & permission of Civil Authority and the Search after Deserters from that Service without the Power of the Magistrate are both proceedings irregular, unjustifiable and unlawfull, and are frequently attended with Quarrels and Bloodshed, and the loss of life. In order therefore to prevent such Evils, and for the Public Security[,] I have thought fit to Publish this Proclamation hereby restricting all Persons whatever, from such irregular and illegal Practices, as they would avoid the pains & penalties following the prosecutions at Law to which Offenders in such Cases become liable.

Despite his efforts, the press gangs and the officers who commanded them would continue to bring "Quarrels and Bloodshed, and the loss of life" throughout the American Revolution.

Tomorrow we'll return to England and finish Press Gang Week with a look at the unfortunate end to one of the countless victims of impressment.

Press Gang Week: Impressment in the Continental Navy

This is another part in support of HMS Acasta's Press Gang Week.

"The Press-Gang in New York," Howard Pyle, 1882.

When we think of impressment we think of the Royal Navy, and this is not without reason. British impressment was a factor in countless court cases and two wars with America.

Thanks to the American Naval Records Society, and their remarkable effort to convert all of the gargantuan collection Naval Documents of the American Revolution into searchable .pdf files, I learned of an attempt at impressment by an American naval officer during the American Revolution!

Governor Thomas Johnson, who had been elected the first governor of the state of Maryland only a month before, took up his pen to write an indignant letter to Captain James Nicholson of the Virginia late in March of 1777:

Sir,
We have received repeated Accounts of your having impressed, and detained a number of Seafaring Men, and others, who either resided in, or were occasionally at Baltimore Town, and that beside the wrong to the Individuals, it's [sic] consequences have been injurious to the Town, in deterring People from going to Market there, for fear of being treated in the same manner. -
We do not know that you can have any Authority, under which to justify such violence, or to interfere in any manner with any Person, who has not voluntarily enlisted in the Continental Marine Service. - If you have any Person, under Colour of his being impressed, we require you instantly to discharge him, and to forbear from a further Exercise of Such an unwarrantable power. It is the Office of Government to protect every Subject in his Liberty and property, nor shall we who are honoured by our Country with the highest Department, be idle Spectators of the Oppression of any man in it.
We are Sir [&c.]
Tho Johnson

Nicholson is a notorious figure in the history of the Continental Navy. A native of Chestertown, Maryland, he was far better at navigating the politics of Congress than he ever was commanding a ship. It was through this maneuvering that he gained command of the Virginia.

The Virginia, despite her name, was of Maryland construction, having been laid down in Fells Point. Nicholson was given orders to take her out and run the British blockade of the Chesapeake. He failed numerous times in this mission, and also failed to keep his restive crew in check. Desertions were "so numerous that Virginia was unable to leave the docks." A frustrated Nicholson eventually turned to impressment. It was a practice he would continue into 1780, despite the numerous official and unofficial protests.

What makes this letter particularly interesting is the way in which Governor Johnson frames Captain Nicholson's transgression: "It is the Office of Government to protect every Subject in his Liberty and property." The very foundation of the rebellious government was liberty. The English themselves had long been uncomfortable with impressment, but the Americans were taking a stand on it.

Nicholson's attempt appears to be the only time an American naval officer used press gangs. Are you aware of any others?

Press Gang Week: The Knowles Riot of 1747

As we saw yesterday in the first part our posts in support of HMS Acasta's Press Gang Week, the use of naval impressment in America was one of the causes of the American Revolution. What may surprise you is that the use of press gangs in America, and resistance to them, predates even the earliest thoughts of independence.

In 1747, during the humorously named War of Jenkin's Ear, the accomplished Royal Navy commander Charles Knowles (recently promoted to Rear Admiral of the White) anchored his fleet beside Boston to refit and resupply before sailing to the West Indies. While in Boston, he was plagued with that ever present drain on manpower: desertion.

His solution was predictable: use the press gangs to make up for the loss. As I mentioned yesterday, the use of press gangs in America was a legal gray area. The Royal Navy felt they were entitled to use it for the mutual defense of Britain and her colonies, but Americans wouldn't stand for it.

Knowles may have been able to work around this stalemate. Provincial Governors could give permission to press men into the Navy from their colony. If a ship was inward bound, rather than outward, it was far less injurious to the economy, and therefore more acceptable.

In fact, this was almost done successfully in 1745 by the HMS Wager. Her captain appealed to the authorities for permission to press, which was granted providing that the press gangs only take men who were not Massachusetts subjects, and that they press no veterans of the successful and famous Louisbourg campaign. Though the gangs of the HMS Wager did not follow these instructions, it does demonstrate the limited willingness of colonial governments to cooperate.

Knowles ignored all precedents. Outward bound crews were pressed, men expressly exempted from impressment by law and by the request of the governor were pressed. The people of Boston would tolerate Knowles brazen disregard.

"The Press Gang, or English Liberty Display'd," 1770, Walpole Library

On the morning of November 16, 1747, hundreds of Bostonian sailors armed "with Cutlasses and Clubs" began taking hostages. Naval officers were targeted as especially valuable to their cause. A sheriff unwisely arrested two of the mob, and was attacked in turn until he released the two prisoners. Throughout the day the mob rioted, taking more naval officers into their grasp. A series of exchanges, rescues, and narrow escapes ensued. Regular soldiers were called out to protect the governor's house. The crowd continued to grow into the thousands. At one point, the mob even rampaged into the Town House!

At its worst, Governor Shirley fled the town, and Knowles threatened to level the city with his ships guns. The conflict over impressment would not again be this heated until the War of 1812.

It was not until the impressed Bostonians were released that the the mob finally abated. Knowles left the town dissatisfied, but a bloodbath had been avoided.

To read more about the riots caused by the HMS Wager and Charles Knowles, check out Jack Tager's Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence and Russel Bourne's Cradle of Violence: How Boston's Waterfront Mobs Ignited the American Revolution.

Tomorrow: Did the American navy ever use press gangs?

Press Gang Week: Independence and Impressment

This is the first part in a series of posts supporting HMS Acasta's Press Gang Week.

From history.com

Though Americans are familiar with the general gist of the Declaration of Independence, the specific points are less well known.

Among the many complaints that the founding fathers leveled against the Crown is this one:

He [King George III] has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

With renewed enforcement of the Navigation Acts in the 1760's and 1770's, many Americans were being arrested at sea. This grievance, however, is not what is being addressed here. Those smugglers who violated the Navigation Acts were prisoners, not necessarily pressed.

This specific complaint is instead about the effective nullification of the American Act of 1708, sometimes called the Sixth of Anne, that (among other things) forbid the use of impressment against American colonists, deeming it to cause unwarranted damage to the empire's economy. Legal opinions over the next few decades cast doubt on the act, and though Americans were staunchly opposed to these opinions, the Royal Navy maintained that it had the legal right to press Americans into service. The insistence by the Crown and the Royal Navy of their right to force subjects onto warships contributed to the colonists' agitations.

Throughout the eighteenth century numerous riots, especially in Boston, were sparked by the violent press gangs. Next time, we'll be addressing one of the most sensational of these: The Knowles Riot of 1747.

Coming Soon: Press Gang Week!

In support of our friends, the Napoleonic Royal Navy reenactors of the HMS Acasta, and their upcoming press gang recreation for The Fair at New Boston in Springfield, Ohio, British Tars, 1740-1790 will be doing a whole week of posts on press gangs in our era of study!

We'll examine the resistance to, the consequences, and the use of press gangs in New England, the Chesapeake, Nova Scotia, and Britain. Each day we'll be posting a different event in the long history of impressment in the eighteenth century. To get the full experience, visit HMS Acasta's blog to read about press gangs and get updates about the upcoming event!