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The two mutinies Melville details in the story are moments where the Royal Navy underwent internal strife during a prolonged war effort against France.

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The Delegates in Council, or beggars on horseback, a contemporaneous caricature

The Spithead and Nore mutinies were two major mutinies by sailors of the Royal Navy in 1797. They were the first in an increasing series of outbreaks of maritime radicalism in the Atlantic World. Despite their temporal proximity, the mutinies differed in character. The Spithead mutiny was a simple, peaceful, successful strike action to address economic grievances, while the Nore mutiny was a more radical action, articulating political ideals as well, which failed.

The mutinies were extremely concerning for Britain, because at the time the country was at war with Revolutionary France, and the Navy was the main component of the war effort. There were also concerns among the government that the mutinies might be part of wider attempts at revolutionary sedition instigated by societies such as the London Corresponding Society and the United Irishmen.

Map of Spithead between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight

The mutiny at Spithead (an anchorage near Portsmouth) lasted from 16 April to 15 May 1797. Sailors on 16 ships in the Channel Fleet, commanded by Admiral Lord Bridport, protested against the living conditions aboard Royal Navy vessels and demanded a pay rise, better victualling, increased shore leave, and compensation for sickness and injury. On 26 April a supportive mutiny broke out on 15 ships in Plymouth, who sent delegates to Spithead to take part in negotiations.

Seamen's pay rates had been established in 1658, and because of the stability of wages and prices, they were still reasonable as recently as the 1756-1763 Seven Years' War; however, high inflation during the last decades of the 18th century had severely eroded the real value of the pay. In recent years, pay raises had also been granted to the army, militia, and naval officers. At the same time, the practice of coppering the submerged part of hulls, which had started in 1761, meant that British warships no longer had to return to port frequently to have their hulls scraped, and the additional time at sea greatly altered the rhythm and difficulty of seamen's work. The Royal Navy had not made adjustments for any of these changes, and was slow to understand their effects on its crews. Impressment (a common practice) meant that some of the seamen were onboard ship against their wills. Finally, the new wartime quota system meant that crews had many landsmen from inshore (including some convicted criminals sent in lieu of punishment) who did not mix well with the career seamen, leading to discontented ships' companies.

The mutineers were led by elected delegates and tried to negotiate with the Admiralty for two weeks, focusing their demands on better pay, the abolition of the 14-ounce " purser's pound" (the ship's purser was allowed to keep two ounces of every true pound-16 ounces-of meat as a perquisite, equivalent to 57 g in every 450 g), and the removal of a handful of unpopular officers. Neither flogging nor impressment was mentioned in the mutineers' demands, even though ending impressment had been one of the motivations for the Mutiny[citation needed ]. The mutineers maintained regular naval routine and discipline aboard their ships (mostly with their regular officers), allowed some ships to leave for convoy escort duty or patrols, and promised to suspend the mutiny and go to sea immediately if French ships were spotted heading for English shores.

Because of mistrust, especially over pardons for the mutineers, the negotiations broke down, and minor incidents broke out, with several unpopular officers sent to shore and others treated with signs of deliberate disrespect. When the situation calmed, Admiral Lord Howe intervened to negotiate an agreement that issued a royal pardon for all crews, reassignment of some of the unpopular officers, a pay raise and abolition of the purser's pound. Afterwards, the mutiny was to become nicknamed the "breeze at Spithead".

Richard Parker about to be hanged for mutiny (image from The Newgate Calendar)

Inspired by the example of their comrades at Spithead, the sailors at the Nore, an anchorage in the Thames Estuary, also mutinied, on 12 May 1797, when the crew of Sandwich seized control of the ship. Several other ships in the same location followed this example, though others slipped away during the mutiny despite gunfire from the ships that were attempting to use force to hold the mutiny together. The mutineers had been unable to organise easily because the ships were scattered along the Nore (and were not all part of a unified fleet, as at Spithead), but they quickly elected delegates for each ship.

Richard Parker was elected "President of the Delegates of the Fleet". According to him, he was nominated and elected without his knowledge. Parker was a former master's mate who was disrated and court-martialled in December 1793 and re-enlisted in the Navy as a seaman in early 1797, where he came to serve aboard the brig-sloop Hound. Demands were formulated and on 20 May 1797, a list of eight demands was presented to Admiral Charles Buckner, which mainly involved pardons, increased pay and modification of the Articles of War, eventually expanding to a demand that the King dissolve Parliament and make immediate peace with France. These demands infuriated the Admiralty, which offered nothing except a pardon (and the concessions already made at Spithead) in exchange for an immediate return to duty.

Captain Sir Erasmus Gower commissioned HMS Neptune (98 guns) in the upper Thames and put together a flotilla of fifty loyal ships to prevent the mutineers moving on the city of London. It was largely fear of this blockade moving down river that made the mutineers reconsider their actions and begin to waver.

The mutineers expanded their initial grievances[further explanation needed ] and blockaded London, preventing merchant vessels from entering the port, and the principals made plans to sail their ships to France, alienating the regular English sailors and losing more and more ships as the mutiny progressed.This gave rise to a fear in the Admiralty that ships still at sea might be taken to France, but that was generally unfounded. When word of the mutiny reached the squadron under Sir John Borlase Warren, cruising off Ushant, the crew of HMS Galatea (1794) seized her, confining her captain, Richard Goodwin Keats, but the whole squadron nonetheless followed orders to return to Plymouth. There was seemingly no thought of treason - the men just wanted improvements in their conditions. When they returned to shore Keats was released and once prize money was secured and other matters of pay were settled, they returned to their station. Although the port of Brest was unwatched for some weeks the French missed the opportunity to get to sea.

On 5 June Parker issued an order that merchant ships be allowed to pass the blockade, and only Royal Navy victualling (i.e., supply) ships be detained.) The ostensible reason provided in the order was that "the release of the merchant vessels would create a favourable impression on shore", although this decision may have had more to do with such a wide and complex undertaking as interdicting all the merchant traffic on the busy Thames. After the successful resolution of the Spithead mutiny, the government and the Admiralty were not inclined to make further concessions, particularly as they felt some leaders of the Nore mutiny had political aims beyond improving pay and living conditions.

The mutineers were denied food and water, and when Parker hoisted the signal for the ships to sail to France,[contradictory ] all of the remaining ships refused to follow.

Meanwhile, Captain Charles Cunningham of HMS Clyde, which was there for a refit, persuaded his crew to return to duty and slipped off to Sheerness. This was seen as a signal to others to do likewise, and eventually, most ships slipped their anchors and deserted (some under fire from the mutineers), and the mutiny failed. Parker was quickly convicted of treason and piracy and hanged from the yardarm of Sandwich, the vessel where the mutiny had started. In the reprisals that followed, 29 were hanged, 29 were imprisoned, and nine were flogged, while others were sentenced to transportation to Australia. One such was surgeon's mate William Redfern who became a respected surgeon and landowner in New South Wales. The majority of men involved in the mutiny were not punished at all, which was lenient by the standards of the time.

After the Nore mutiny, Royal Navy vessels no longer rang five bells in the last dog watch, as that had been the signal to begin the mutiny.

Death mask of Richard Parker taken shortly after he was hanged for mutiny in 1797; a fine original casting is held at the Hunterian Museum (London).

The authorities were more than ready to see in the mutinies, not only the hand of English radicals but also among the large contingent of Irish sailors, the hand of the United Irishmen. Much was made of Valentine Joyce, among the delegates at Spithead, described by Edmund Burke as a "seditious Belfast clubist".

That the Valentine Joyce in question was Irish and a republican has been disputed, and while that "rebellious paper, the Northern Star" (from Belfast) may have circulated as reported among the mutineers, no evidence has emerged of a concerted United Irish plot to subvert the fleet. In Ireland there was talk of seizing British warships as part of a general insurrection, but it was only after the Spithead and Nore mutinies that United Irishmen awoke to "surprising effectiveness" of formulating sedition within the Royal Navy".

HMS Defiance, which had been part of the "floating republic" at Spithead, did see United Irish oaths administered (according to court-martial evidence) in a further mutiny during the Irish rebellion in the early summer of 1798. Eleven of the crew were hanged and ten sentenced to transportation.

In September 1797, the crew of Hermione mutinied in the West Indies, killing almost all the officers in revenge for a number of grievances, including throwing into the sea without proper burial, the bodies of three men killed by falling from the rigging in a desperate attempt not to be the last men on deck, which was punishable by flogging. The Hermione was taken by the crew to the Spanish port of La Guaira.

On 27 December, the crew of Marie Antoinette murdered their officers and took their ship into a French port in the West Indies. Other mutinies took place off the coast of Ireland and at the Cape of Good Hope and spread to the fleet under Admiral Jervis off the coast of Spain. On HMS Defiance, a court martial took the evidence of the oaths of allegiance to the United Irishmen and eleven men were sentenced to hang for it. In the years following Spithead and the Nore, there was about a 50% increase in mutinies among European navies and merchant companies. Scholars have linked it to the radical political ideologies developing at the time, including the development of working class consciousness among sailors. Both explanations have been the subject of extensive academic investigation. Political analyses often emphasize the radical discourse and conduct of the Nore mutineers as evidence of their ideological motivation. Class analyses often emphasize harsh discipline and economic grievances of the Spithead mutineers as pointing to "class solidarity". Recent attempts have been made to class these approaches under a heading of masculine identity, arguing that interpretations of what it meant to be a man for sailors marked the difference of motivation between the two mutinies.

The father of the protagonist in Frederick Marryat's The King's Own (1830) was hanged for his part in the Nore mutiny.

Herman Melville's novel (1891, published 1924), and the 1951 opera based on it by Benjamin Britten, are set immediately after the mutinies.

The Floating Republic - An account of the Mutinies at Spithead and The Nore in 1797, by G. E. Manwaring and Bonamy Dobrée published by Frank Cass & Co. 1935 is a history of these mutinies. In 1982, BBC Radio 4's Saturday Night Theatre broadcast a dramatised account of the book called The Floating Republic.

The 1962 film H.M.S. Defiant (released in the U.S. as Damn the Defiant!) and the 1958 novel Mutiny by Frank Tilsley is a fictional account of a ship's crew undertaking a mutiny based on the Spithead mutiny, which is part of the plot.

Ramage and the Freebooters (1969) by British novelist Dudley Pope begins when Lieutenant Ramage is given command of a ship anchored at Spithead during the mutiny, and must convince the crew to sail so that he may carry out his orders.

The Men They Couldn't Hang, an English folk-punk group, commemorated the executed leaders of the mutiny in the ballad "The Colours" (1988).

In William Kinsolving's 1996 novel Mister Christian, Fletcher Christian returns from the South Seas and witnesses the Nore mutiny.

Much of the Dewey Lambdin 2000 novel A King's Captain is set during the Nore Mutiny as seen by the protagonist, Alan Lewrie.

Mutiny (2004) by Julian Stockwin is a fictional account of the Nore mutiny.

1. Frykman, Niklas (2013). "Connections Between Mutinies in European Navies". International Review of Social History. 58: 87-107. doi:10.1017/s0020859013000230.

2. ^ "Research guide B8: The Spithead and Nore mutinies of 1797". Royal Museums Greenwich. 11 June 2002.

3. Council of Delegates at Spithead "From the Delegates to the Admiralty" in The Naval Mutinies of 1797 ed. Conrad Gill (Manchester University Press, 1913), 362-363.

4. Earl Spencer "Spencer's Diary, 18 April 1797" in ^ The Naval Mutinies of 1797 ed. Conrad Gill (Manchester University Press, 1913), 364.

5. Earl Spencer "Spencer's Diary, 21 April 1797" in ^ The Naval Mutinies of 1797 ed. Conrad Gill (Manchester University Press, 1913), 366-367

6. Richard Parker, "The Dying Declaration of the late unfortunate Richard Parker, written two days previous to his execution, in a letter to a person he had known from his earliest infancy" in ^ The Floating Republic: An Account of the Mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in 1797 ed. G. E. Manwaring & Bonamy Dobree (Harcourt Brace and Co. 1935),273-276

7. ^ Bates, Ian M (31 May 2017). Champion of the Quarterdeck: Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower (1742-1814) (First ed.). Sage Old Books. p. 231. ISBN 9780958702126.

8. ^ Bates, Ian M (31 May 2017). Champion of the Quarterdeck: Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower (1742-1814) (First ed.). Sage Old Books. pp. 231-243. ISBN 9780958702126.

9. ^ Bates, Ian M (31 May 2017). Champion of the Quarterdeck: Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower (1742-1814) (First ed.). Sage Old Books. p. 242. ISBN 9780958702126.

10. ^ Barnett, Len. "Valentine Joyce--Naval Mutineer of 1797" (PDF). Reality behind a Myth - the life of a Spithead Mutineer of 1797. Barnett Maritime.

11. TNA ADM 1/5346 - Court martial papers

12. Featherstone, David (2013). "'We will have equality and liberty in Ireland': The Contested Geographies of Irish Democratic Political Cultures in the 1990s" (PDF). Historical Geography. 41: 128-130.

13. Thompson, EP (1963). The Making of the English Working Class. Gollancz. pp. 183-184.

14. ^ Glasco, Jeffery (2004). "The Seaman Feels Himself a Man". International Labor and Working Class History. 66: 40-56. doi:10.1017/s014754790400016x. S2CID 143488488.

"Nore mutiny : The Nore", 1000s of Museums Online, 2015

CE staff (2009), "Mutiny", The Columbia Encyclopedia (Sixth ed.), New York: Columbia University Press

Clowes, William (1897), The Royal Navy. A History from the Earliest Times to 1900, vol. 4, p. 549

Gill, Conrad (1913), The Naval Mutinies of 1797, Manchester University Press

NG staff (1999), "Royal Navy Mutinies at the Nore and Spithead: Demands made by Mutineers", Napoleonic Guide

Roberts, Jason (2007), A Sense of the World : How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler, New York, NY: Harper Perennial, ISBN 978-0-00-716106-5

Tracy, Nicholas (2006), Who's Who in Nelson's Navy: 200 Naval Heroes, London: Greenhill Books/Chatham Publishing, ISBN 1-86176-244-5

Neale, William Johnson (1842), History of the Mutiny at Spithead and the Nore: With an Enquiry into Its Origin and Treatment, and Suggestions for the Prevention of Future Discontent in the Royal Navy, T. Tegg, hdl:2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t2c827t0x

Manwaring, G.E.; Dobrée, Bonamy (1987) [1935], The Floating Republic: An Account Of The Mutinies At Spithead And The Nore In 1797, London: Cresset Library, ISBN 0-09173-154-2 - 1st pub, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company 1935

Dugan, James (1967) [1965], The Great Mutiny (New American Library (paperback) ed.), G. P. Putnam's Sons

The Historical Society of Hele's School Exeter (1950), "Richard Parker", Born in Exeter, Exeter: A. Wheaton & Company

Schneer, Jonathan (2006), The Thames : England's River (Paperback ed.), London: Abacus, ISBN 0349119295

Woodman, Richard (2005), A Brief History of Mutiny (1st Carroll & Graf ed.), New York: Carroll & Graf, ISBN 0-7867-1567-7

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The Spithead and Nore mutinies were two major mutinies by sailors of the Royal Navy in 1797. They were the first in an increasing series of outbreaks of maritime radicalism in the Atlantic World. Despite their temporal proximity, the mutinies differed in character.

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- Fond of Billy

While the old man's eccentricities... repelled the juniors, Billy,
undeterred thereby, revering him as a salt hero, would make advances,
never passing the old Agamemnon man without a salutation..." p. 272

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Both are witness to horrid acts of physical abuse. Douglass, while hiding in a kitchen closet. Billy, his first day of impressment.

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The death mask of Richard Parker, who was hanged for the 1797 mutiny.

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The death mask of Richard Parker, who was hanged for the 1797 mutiny.

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Flowery language to describe men/male presenting bodies?

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Flowery language to describe men/male presenting bodies?

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Present in both Howe's The Hermaphrodite and in phrases/sentences/descriptions of Billy.

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Bellipotent comes from the Latin "bellum", meaning war, and "potens", meaning power.
Means "mighty in war."

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mighty in war... See the full definition

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Claggart, Billy, and Vere as one Individual 

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Claggart, Billy, and Vere as one Individual 

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From Shattuck's article: "The Bellipotent is a ship of war that represents not only a ship of state in crisis but also the ship of a divided and unified individual: Claggart as evil, Billy as good or innocence, Captain Vere as the authority of reason trying to maintain order."

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The name of the merchant ship that Billy is on is named after Thomas Paine's famous appeal to support the French Revolution

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Melville provides us with a way of thinking about desire in a completely masculine environment. On ships, there is the position of "The Handsome Sailor," who seems to be kept around as a kind of object of desire to keep all the other sailors in a bright and cheerful mood. On the Rites and the Indomitable.

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This is a bit of stretch but...at moments of affections lurked violence against bodies. We see these with Laurence and with Harriet Jacobs.

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Shattuck: "...partially based on a mutiny in 1842 aboard the U.S. Navy brig, Somers. Melville's much admired cousin... was First Lieutenant on the Somers at the time."

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"his entire family was practically invested in himself" (253)

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"his entire family was practically invested in himself" (253)

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In describing how most sailors "had wives and children left," the narrator goes on at length about how Billy Budd is without a form of normative family connections.

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Billy Budd's looks have an affect on others 

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Billy Budd's looks have an affect on others 

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"As the Handsome Sailor, Billy Budd's position aboard the seventy-four was something analogous to that of a rustic beauty transplanted from the provinces...But this change in circumstances he scarce noted. As little did he observe that something about him provoked an ambiguous smile in one or two harder faces among the bluejackets. Nor less unaware was he of the peculiar favorable effect his person and demeanour had upon the more intelligent gentlemen of the quarter-deck" (254)

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I'm reminded of Laurence's schoolyards friends' appreciation of them when comparing to Billy Budd's relationship among the men on ship.

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Billy Budd: youthful, naive, more unaware, less intelligent sounding
Claggart: sounds more intense, more dignified and negative, but educated
Vere: maybe similar to "veer," could potentially be implying deviance or variance
Squeak: implies weakness, subservient to Claggart?
Ratcliffe: literally rat (negative view in soceity) and cliff (a point of nervousness and fear)

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Shattuck: "The phrase 'mystery of iniquity' designates the problem of the existence of evil in a God-created world..." This is perhaps "Melville's Quarrel with God or Melville's Testament of Acceptance."

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There is a very short scene with Billy Budd and the afterguardsman, where the afterguardsman confronts Billy Budd about being an impressed sailor and wanting help with something that would cause trouble for Billy Budd, a mutiny. This sailor is trying to include Billy Budd in a group, however troublesome, and Billy Budd chooses to distance himself and make a fuss about this. For Billy Budd, it seems that just the comraderie is not enough to make him accept the risk of getting in trouble. Billy Budd seems less concerned with his connections than with following the rules.

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The interaction between Dansker and Billy Budd sets up a duality between the public and private spheres. The way Calggart is portrayed as antagonistic for outwardly kind words highlights an emphasis on emotion and feeling as a "closeted" action between men

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The captain of the Indomitable, a bit odd for a sailor.
- Well read and always making references lost on his sailor
- Prone to getting lost in thought
- Nickname comes from a literary allusion

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"rustic beauty" and "an ambiguous smile" 

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"rustic beauty" and "an ambiguous smile" 

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Billy Budd is compared to a "rustic beauty transplanted" into a court scene and brought into competition with others; this inspires some of the "harder faces" to produce "an ambiguous smile"--how might this be a form of homosocial bonding or knowingness?

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There is not a lot of sudden action in this novella. Instead, we are given long descriptions of seemingly mundane happenings. There's indeed something over the top about how the narrative seeks to delve into the inner life of the characters. The form, then, feels anti-action, seeking instead to delve into some form of a deeper question about motivation.

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provocative language throughout, like "ejaculate," "handsome," "shapely mouth," "down on," "pleasant young fellow," "touching the more private career of Claggart," "deadly space between," Plato mentioned (Greece and homosexuality), "natural depravity"

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I think there's an interesting connection here with Disaffected. the idea of unfeeling as a form of resistance against societal oppression, but Claggart's aggression seems to be outwardly antagonistic of his own desire. He is not only refusing to feel but persecuting the object of his desire. I don't have much to say on this, but I'm interested in the way the refusal of feeling can be it's own form of desire to return to a social norm

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It seems significant that this story is set in the same era as the story of "Benito Cereno." How does that story's disclosure of action parallel how things are disclosed here? Are there ways to bring both texts together? Or do we see something about how Melville has shifted his writing style between the 1850s and the 1880s/90s?

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This is a proverb that means "character and behavior are more important than appearance." It's interesting to think that Claggart is the one who repeats this. What might be being said through that?

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Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless
in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth. Is Envy
then such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes
of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did ever
anybody seriously confess to envy?

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Billy's moral ignorance and brush with evil

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Billy's moral ignorance and brush with evil

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When the sailor offers Billy guineas to participate in a mutiny, he has a taste of what evil (or justice) might look and feel like. He nevertheless perceives what he encounters with the shipmate as evil, and contemplates its consequences: "And yet he was not without natural curiosity to see how such a visitor in the dark would look in broad day."

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"Impressment was strongly criticized by those who believed it to be contrary to the British constitution."

Impressment not seen as favorable, strongly criticized by many. Even non-sailors were sometimes impressed. It was seen as necessary for the British Navy.

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Impressment, colloquially " the press" or the " press gang", is the taking of men into a military or naval force by compulsion, with or without notice. European navies of several nations used forced recruitment by various means. 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. The Royal Navy impressed many merchant sailors, as well as some sailors from other, mostly European, nations. People liable to impressment were "eligible men of seafaring habits between the ages of 18 and 55 years". Non- seamen were sometimes impressed as well, though rarely. In addition to the Royal Navy's use of impressment, the British army also experimented with impressment from 1778 to 1780.

Impressment was strongly criticized by those who believed it to be contrary to the British constitution.[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 influence and realm.

Impressment was essentially a Royal Navy practice, reflecting the sheer size of the British fleet and its substantial manpower demands. While other European navies applied forced recruitment in times of war, this was generally done as an extension of the practice of formal conscription applied by most European armies from the Napoleonic Wars on. The U.S. Continental Navy also applied a form of impressment during the American War of Independence.

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. One of the 27 colonial grievances enumerated in the Declaration of Independence directly highlights the practice.[2] It was again a cause of tension leading up to the War of 1812. 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.

Working and living conditions for the average sailor in the Royal Navy in the 18th century were very harsh by modern standards. Naval pay was attractive in the 1750s, but towards the end of the century its value had been steadily eroded by rising prices.[3] Sailors' pay on merchant ships was somewhat higher during peacetime, and could increase to double naval pay during wartime.[Note 1]

Despite this, there were still many volunteers for naval service. The work for individual sailors was less than on merchant ships, since the naval crew size was determined by the number needed to man guns - around four times more than the number of crew needed to simply sail the ship.[7] Furthermore, the food supplied by the Navy was plentiful, regular, and of good quality by the standards of the day.[8] 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.[9] Shipowners and governments routinely estimated that 50% of the sailors on a given voyage would die due to scurvy.[10][specify ]

The main problem with naval recruitment, though, was a shortage of qualified and experienced seamen during wartime, when the Navy quickly had to recruit an extra 20,000 (early 18th century) to 40,000 men (late 18th century). Privateers, the Royal Navy, and the Merchant Navy all competed for a small pool of ordinary and able seamen in wartime, and all three groups were usually short-handed. The recruitment figures presented to Parliament for the years 1755-1757 list 70,566 men, of whom 33,243 were volunteers (47%), 16,953 pressed men (24%), while another 20,370 were also listed as volunteers separately (29%). Although there are no records that explain why volunteers were separated into two groups, it is likely these were pressed men who became "volunteers" to get the sign-up bonus, two months' wages in advance and a higher wage; it is known large numbers did do this. Volunteering also protected the sailor from creditors, as the law forbade collecting debts accrued before enlistment. The main disadvantage was that volunteers who subsequently deserted were liable to execution if captured; whereas pressed men would simply be returned to service. Other records confirm similar percentages throughout the 18th century.[5]
Average annual recruitment 1736-1783[11]

Dates

Period

Royal Navy

Privateer

Merchant

Total

1736-1738

Peacetime

14,845

35,239

50,084

1739-1748

War of Jenkins' Ear

43,303

2,602

30,392

76,297

1753-1755

Peacetime

17,369

40,862

58,231

1756-1763

Seven Years' War

74,771

3,286

37,584

115,641

1773-1775

Peacetime

18,540

50,903

69,443

1775-1783

American Revolutionary War

67,747

3,749

44,947

116,443

All three groups also suffered high levels of desertion. In the 18th century, British desertion rates on naval ships averaged 25% annually, with slight difference between volunteers and pressed men.[12] The rate of desertion started high, then fell heavily after a few months on board a ship, and generally became negligible after a year - because Navy pay ran months or years in arrears, desertion might mean not only abandoning companions in the ship's company, but also the loss of a large amount of money already earned. If a naval ship had taken a prize, a deserting seaman would also forfeit his share of the prize money. In a report on proposed changes to the RN written by Admiral Nelson in 1803, he noted that since 1793 more than 42,000 sailors had deserted.

The Impress Service (colloquially called the "press-gang") was formed to force sailors to serve on naval vessels.[10][13] There was no concept of "joining the navy" as a fixed career-path for non-officers at the time, since seamen remained attached to a ship only for the duration of its commission. They were encouraged to stay in the Navy after the commission but could leave to seek other employment when the ship was paid off. Impressment relied on the legal power of the King to call men to military service, as well as to recruit volunteers (who were paid a bounty upon joining, unlike pressed men). Seamen were not covered by Magna Carta and "failure to allow oneself to be pressed" was punishable by hanging, although the punishment became less severe over time.[14]

In Elizabethan times a statute regulated impressment as a form of recruitment, and with the introduction of the Vagabonds Act in 1597 men of disrepute ( vagrants) found themselves drafted into service. In 1703 an act passed limiting the impressment of men under 18 years of age to those who were not apprenticed. A further act in 1740 raised the maximum age to 55. Although no foreigner could normally be pressed, they lost their protection if they married a British woman or had worked on a British merchant ship for two years. Some governments, including Britain, issued "protections" against impressment which protected men had to carry on their person at all times; but in times of crisis the Admiralty would order a "hot press", which meant that no-one remained exempt.[13]

The Royal Navy also impressed seamen from inbound British merchant ships at sea, though this was done by individual warships, rather than by the Impress Service. Impressment, particularly press gangs, became consistently unpopular with the British public (as well as in the American colonies), and local officials often acted against them, to the point of imprisoning officers from the Impress Service or opposing them by force of arms.

There were occasions when the local populace would band together to oppose the activities of the press where these exceeded legal bounds. One such incident, the Easton Massacre in 1803 (see caption at right), resulted in a press gang firing on a crowd, killing four people in the village of Easton on the Isle of Portland, where they were trying to impress the quarrymen.[17] In 1808, Thomas Urquhart was saved from a press gang of three or four men when London passersby intervened.[10][18] Urquhart complained to local officials, identified at least one of the men involved and successfully sued for damages in the Court of King's Bench. 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.[18]

Patrolling in or near sea ports, the press gang would try to find men aged between 15 and 55 with seafaring or river-boat experience, but this was not essential. Potential crewmen with no experience were called " landsmen". From 1740, landsmen were legally exempt from impressment, but this was on occasion ignored in wartime unless the person seized was an apprentice or a " gentleman".[19] Two landsmen were considered by captains to be the equivalent of one able seaman. If a landsman was able to prove his status to the Admiralty he was usually released. Court records do however show fights breaking out as people attempted to avoid what was perceived as wrongful impressment, and the London Times reported occasions when press gangs instituted a "hot press" (ignoring protections against impressment) in order to man the navy.[20]

Merchant seamen ashore from their ships (and usually conspicuous by their clothing and general appearance) were however another matter. Anyone with seafaring experience encountered in the street would first be asked to volunteer for naval service. If the potential recruit refused he was often plied with alcohol or simply seized and taken. A commonly held belief is that a trick was used in taverns, surreptitiously dropping a King's shilling ("prest money") into a man's drink, as by "finding" the shilling in his possession he was deemed to have volunteered, and that this led to some tavern owners putting glass bottoms in their tankards. However, this is a legend; press officers were subject to fines for using trickery and a volunteer had a "cooling-off" period in which to change his mind.

The great majority of men pressed were taken from merchant ships at sea, especially those homeward bound for Britain. This was legal as long as the Navy replaced the man they took, and many Naval captains would take the best seamen, replacing them with malcontents and landsmen from their own ship. It was also common for "trusted" volunteers to act as substitutes; they would then desert as soon as the merchant ship docked, and return to their Navy ship.[21]

The owners of British whalers, because of the Press, often appointed a master to them whilst the vessels were in port in order to protect the whalers' crews. Otherwise the Press could take the men for naval service. The owners would then appoint an actual master to replace the placeholder masters.

In addition to impressment, Britain also used the Quota System (or The Quod) from 1795 to 1815, whereby each county was required to supply a certain number of volunteers, based on its population and the number of its seaports. Unlike impressment, the Quota System often resulted in criminals serving on board ships as counties who failed to meet their quota offered prisoners the option of completing their sentence or volunteering. 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.[14]

Ireland formed a separate but subordinate state, the Kingdom of Ireland, between 1534 and 1800. All of Ireland was united to Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland between 1801 and 1922. The Royal Navy recruited heavily in Ireland during this period, including using impressment.[22][23] For example, in 1734, impressment took place in Wicklow.[24] Impressment was also common during the Napoleonic wars, although poverty in Ireland made sure that volunteers were usually available.[25]

One of the largest impressment operations occurred in the spring of 1757 in New York City, then still under British colonial rule. Three thousand British soldiers cordoned off the city, and plucked clean the taverns and other sailors' gathering places. "All kinds of tradesmen and Negroes" were hauled in, nearly eight hundred in all.[26] Four hundred of these were "retained in the service".

The Royal Navy also used impressment extensively in British North America from 1775 to 1815. Its press gangs sparked resistance, riots, and political turmoil in seaports such as Halifax, St John's, and Quebec City. Nevertheless, the Royal Navy extended the reach of its press gangs into coastal areas of British North America by the early 19th century. In response, sailors and residents fought back with a range of tactics. They sometimes reacted violently. The riots in St John's in 1794 and Halifax in 1805 led to a prohibition on impressment on shore for much of the Napoleonic Wars. The protest came from a wide swath of the urban community, including elites, rather than just the vulnerable sailors, and had a lasting negative impact on civil-naval relations in what became Canada. The local communities did not encourage their young men to volunteer for the Royal Navy.[27]

The American Continental Navy impressed men into its service during the American Revolutionary War. The Continental Congress authorized construction of thirteen frigates, including USS Virginia in 1775. The senior captain of the Continental Navy, James Nicholson, was appointed to command Virginia. When it was fitted out in 1777, Nicholson received orders to sail to Martinique. Many of Nicholson's crew had deserted to sign on as privateers, for higher pay at less risk. Therefore, Nicholson impressed about thirty citizens of Baltimore, an act expressly forbidden by Maryland law. Maryland governor Thomas Johnson demanded immediate release of the impressed men and Congress convinced Nicholson to release them all. Nicholson avoided impressment on land and instead stopped two American merchant ships at sea in 1780, to impress men from their crews.[28]

The individual states did not deny the concept of impressment for their own navies, but were reluctant to grant the right to the Continental Congress. The concept of drafting men into armed service remained contentious, even after adoption of the federal constitution.[29]

There is one documented case of a British seaman impressed by the US Navy in 1810.[30]

In 1795, the Jay Treaty went into effect, addressing many issues left unresolved after the American Revolution, and averting a renewed conflict. However, the treaty's neglect to address British impressment of sailors from American ships and ports became a major cause of complaint among those who disapproved of it. While non-British subjects were not impressed, at this point Britain did not recognize naturalised American citizenship and treated anyone born a British subject as still "British"; as a result, the Royal Navy impressed over 9,000 sailors who claimed to be American citizens.

During the wars with France (1793 to 1815), the Royal Navy aggressively reclaimed British deserters on board ships of other nations, both by halting and searching merchant ships, and, in many cases, by searching American port cities. Although these impressments were illegal, Jefferson ignored them to remain on good terms with Britain as he was negotiating to obtain "the Floridas". This tolerance changed in 1805 when the British began seizing American merchantmen trading with the West Indies and condemning the ships and their cargoes as a prize and enforcing impressment on their crews.[31] Under the Rule of 1756, in times of war direct trade between a neutral European state and a British colony was forbidden if such trade had not existed in time of peace. The Americans had found a way around this policy by "landing" cargoes from Europe in the United States and issuing certificates that duty had been paid. 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. The British became aware of the practice during the court case involving the seizure of the Essex. The court ruled that the cargo of the Essex had never been intended for American markets so the voyage had not been broken and could thus be considered continuous. The end result was the blockade of New York Harbor by two British frigates, the Cambrian and the Leander, which provoked public demonstrations.

For the next year scores of American ships were condemned in admiralty courts and American seamen were impressed with increasing frequency until, in the early summer of 1807, when three deserters from the British frigate HMS Melampus lying in Chesapeake Bay enlisted on the American frigate USS Chesapeake. After searching the Chesapeake, the deserters, David Martin, John Strachan, and William Ware, were found to be native-born Americans who had been wrongly impressed. The search also established that another crew member, listed as Jenkin Ratford, was actually a British deserter; however, he could not be found. Admiral Berkeley angrily issued an order to all commanders in the North Atlantic Squadron to search the Chesapeake if encountered on the high seas. Eight miles southeast of Cape Henry a boat from the British frigate HMS Leopard intercepted her but Commodore Barron declined to permit his crew to be mustered. The Leopard began approaching and the commander shouted a warning to which Barron replied "I don't hear what you say". The Leopard then fired two shots across the bow and almost immediately poured a broadside into the American ship. The Chesapeake did not return fire but the British ship fired another two broadsides. Three crew were killed and eighteen wounded. The British boarding party not only arrested the British deserter but also the three Americans. The Chesapeake-Leopard affair provoked an outcry for war from all parts of the country and Jefferson later wrote: "The affair of the Chesapeake put war into my hand, I had only to open it and let havoc loose". He ordered the state governors to ready their militias but the Embargo Act of 1807 he eventually passed only ordered all British armed vessels out of American waters and forbade all contact with them if they remained.

Britain fought the war against Napoleon on the high seas, enlarging its Royal Navy from 135 ships in 1793 to 584 in 1812, and expanding personnel from 36,000 seamen in 1793 to 114,000 in 1812.[34] In spring 1814 Napoleon surrendered, the allies restored the Bourbon kings to the throne, and France was no longer an enemy of Great Britain. The naval war was over and Britain could now sharply reduce its Royal Navy. It had no need to impress sailors, and never again used that means of forced recruitment, although it did not officially renounce the practice.[35][36] 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. This continued to be the case until World War I, when organised conscription was introduced in 1916 for all the military services.

The first Act of Parliament legalising this practice was passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth in 1563 and was known as "An Act touching political considerations for the maintenance of the navy". It was renewed many times until 1631. In the Vagabonds Act 1597, several lists of persons were subject to impressment for service in the fleet. 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). In 1695 an Act was passed to build a permanent register of 30,000 men for ready call-up by the navy, "without having recourse to the barbarous and unconstitutional practice of pressing".[37] The act also established basic rules and benefits for all types of seamen, including access to Greenwich Hospital.

With wars raging in Europe and in America the Navigation Act 1703 (2 & 3 Ann. c. 6) was passed "for the Encrease of Seamen and better Encouragement of Navigation, and the Protection of the Coal Trade".[38] 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. The act establishes administration and regulations for the act, including youth who volunteer for the indenture and certain seamen engaged in the coal trade supplying cities, are exempt from impressment for three years. This act was followed by the Recruiting Act 1703 (2 & 3 Ann. c. 13), which allows impressing able-bodied men into the army and navy who did not have visible means of subsistence; also as a wartime measure the act relaxes English crewing requirements under the Navigation Acts, to make experienced English seamen more available to serve on ships of war.[39] In 1740, impressment was limited to men between 18 and 45, and it also exempted foreigners.

As part of a wider effort to build colonial capability and harass its enemies, Parliament passed the Trade to America Act 1707 (6 Ann. c. 64). Section 9 mandated that mariners serving on board privateers and trading ships in any part of America, and those on shore, are not liable for impressment.[40] Lingering questions remained whether the law applied only to the navy, or to civil authorities as well, and whether it applied only to the current war or to all future wars.[41] Two attorneys-general of Great Britain, one in 1716, and another in 1740, issued opinions that the 1707 Act was no longer in effect,[42] but many American colonists disagreed.

Despite doubts over the continuing legality of impressment in continental waters, but for similar reasons, Parliament passed the Sugar Trade Act 1746 (19 Geo. 2 c. 30) stating that impressment was forbidden in the West Indies, but it added certain exceptions and made no specific mention of America.[43] This would lead to the Knowles Riot in Boston the following year, and continuing colonial questions, particularly in heavily maritime New England.[41]

The last law was passed in 1835, in which the power to impress was reaffirmed. This limited the length of service of a pressed man to five years, and added the provision that a man could not be pressed twice. Although Britain abandoned the practice of impressment in 1815, impressment remained legal until the early 1900s, and the various laws authorising impressment have never been repealed.[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.[35][44] After the restoration of the monarchy, impressment into the army was discontinued.

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. Between 1775 and 1781, the regular army increased from 48,000 to 110,000. Two acts were passed, the Recruiting Act 1778 and the Recruiting Act 1779, for the impression of individuals into the British Army.[45] The chief advantages of these acts was in the number of volunteers brought in under the apprehension of impressment. To avoid impressment, some recruits incapacitated themselves by cutting off the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, making it impossible to use a musket or sword.[46] The Recruiting Act of 1779 was repealed on 26 May 1780, and army impressment was permanently discontinued.

During the experiment, the British government allowed army impressment under severely restricted circumstances - both acts emphasized volunteering over impressment, and offered strong incentives to volunteers as a " carrot and stick" tactic, to encourage the men to volunteer lest they be pressed instead. 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. The 1779 Act applied to all of Great Britain, but was initially suspended everywhere except the area around London, and actually applied to all of Great Britain for only six months, until the 1779 act was repealed in May 1780, and army impressment ceased in Britain.[47]

Unlike naval impressment, army impressment applied only to "able-bodied idle, and disorderly Persons, who could not, upon Examination, prove themselves to exercise and industriously follow some lawful Trade or Employment, or to have some Substance sufficient for their Support and Maintenance", as well as smugglers, according to the 1778 law, but excluding from that any men who were voters, or harvest workers. The 1779 law extended impressment also to "incorrigible rogues" who had abandoned their families, and left them as expenses on the parish.[48] Impressed apprentices were released under appeal from their masters, and impressed foreigners were released when requested by their countries' embassies.[48]

Literature

Poor Jack (1840) by Frederick Marryat, features a scene in which a press-gang board a merchantman and collar a young sailor below decks. When brought on deck he finds he has been impressed by his own brother.

The events in Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Sylvia's Lovers (1863) take place against the background of the practice of impressment during the early phases of the Napoleonic Wars. Charlie Kinraid is forcibly enlisted in the Royal Navy by a press gang and later Sylvia Robson's father is executed for leading a revengeful raid on press-gang collaborators.

In Herman Melville's novel Billy Budd, Sailor, first published in 1924, and in the opera and film based on it, Billy is impressed to service on a British warship from Right-of-Man, a merchant ship.

In A Ship of the Line by C. S. Forester, Captain Horatio Hornblower is depicted, when urgently needing sailors to make up his crew, as stopping a ship of the British East India Company and impressing a large part of its sailors - the sailors being very reluctant, since conditions in the Royal navy ships were far worse than in those of the civilian Company.

In China Miéville's 2002 novel The Scar, many members of The Armada society are pressganged from various ships to live on the floating colony. Miéville favours the word "pressganged" and has used it in numerous works of fiction to refer to people compelled to join some organisation or faction against their wills for political purposes.

Poetry

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's first published poem, "On the Cruelty of Forcement to Man" (c. 1812, when she was six years old), addressed impressment.[49]

John Ashton's 1888 compilation Modern Street Ballads includes "Victory", relating the plight of a young aristocratic lady whose parents, disapproving of her poor suitor, arrange to have him pressed to service aboard Lord Nelson's flagship of that name, aboard which he is killed at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Music

Garage punk band The Murder City Devils' song "Press Gang", from their album In Name and Blood, is about a man who becomes "a victim of the press gang", a group of soldiers which brings him from a ship at sea to a town and publicly hangs him for unnamed offenses.[50]

Folk singer Richard Digance wrote "I Hear The Pressgang", describing the tale of a man forcibly enlisted into the Royal Navy who later drowned at sea. The song asks who will look after his wife, child and farm whilst he is gone.

The title track of The Unthanks album Here's the Tender Coming describes the pressing of men into service.

Cinema

H.M.S. Defiant (Lewis Gilbert, 1962): the opening scene depicts a press gang in Spithead, England, during the Napoleonic Wars forcibly recruiting men at night in pubs or in the street. Later, we see them on the deck being "compulsorily enlisted".

Informational notes

During the 18th century, a Royal Navy Able Seaman was paid (after deductions) 22 shillings and 6 pence per month. Pay was reckoned by the 28-day lunar month, so the annual rate of pay was somewhat more than 12 times this. A farm worker of the era might earn around only a quarter to a third of this. Wages on merchant ships were higher: 25 to 30 shillings per lunar month - and increased further during wartime (merchant pay rates of 70 shillings per month at London and 35 shillings at Bristol were offered during the Seven Years' War). But merchant crews could be cheated of their pay in several ways by dishonest ship-owners.^ [4]

Citations

1. ^ Hume, David (1758). "Of Some Remarkable Customs". Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (New ed.). Strand and Edinburgh: A. Millar and A. Kincaid & A. Donaldson. pp. 207-208 - via Internet Archive. david hume essays.

2. ^ Hill, J. R. (2002). The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy. Oxford University Press. pp. 135-137. ISBN 0-19-860527-7.

3. ^ "Myths of Nelson's Navy". Timewatch. 2000. BBC.

4. ^ Price, Catherine (2017). "The Age of Scurvy". Distillations. 3 (2): 12-23.

5. IRSH 54 (2009), Niklas Frykman: Seamen on Late Eighteenth-Century European Warships. pp. 67-93 doi:10.1017/S0020859009000030^
For example, the frigate HMS Hermione, with a regular complement of 180 men had 129 desertions between 1793 and 1797. Desertion rates for Dutch and French warships was even higher with annual rates of up to 90% not uncommon. In 1795, the Dutch vesselStaaten Generaal, with a complement of 550 lost 428 to desertion, the Delft, with 350 men lost 340.

6. "Impressment: the Press Gangs and Naval Recruitment". Royal Naval Museum.

7. Conditions of service in Britain's maritime organisations Archived 31 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine pp. 39-40.

8. John Keegan, ^ Battle at Sea, p. 38. ISBN 1-8441-3737-6

9. ^ John Keegan, Battle at Sea, p. 39. ISBN 1-8441-3737-6

10. ^ Adkins, Roy; Adkins Lesley (2006). The War For All The World's Oceans. Lancaster Place, London.: Little, Brown Book Group. pp. 109-110. ISBN 0-316-72837-3.

11. Urquhart, Thomas (1816). 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. London: J. Richardson. pp. 49-55. ISBN 978-1169103108.

12. Pope, Dudley (1996). Life in Nelson's Navy. Naval Institute Press. p. 99. ISBN 1-55750-516-0.

13. ^ Usher, Roland G. (1951). "Royal Navy Impressment During the American Revolution". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 37 (4): 673-688. doi:10.2307/1889363. JSTOR 1889363.

14. ^ Sites (www.communitysites.co.uk), Community. "Wicklow Historical Society Journal 1990 | Pressgangs in Wicklow | 1990 WICKLOW HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL | WICKLOW HISTORICAL SOCIETY | WICKLOW HISTORICAL SOCIETIES | Places | County Wicklow Heritage". countywicklowheritage.org.

15. ^ Rogers, Nicholas (1 February 2018). "British impressment and its discontents". International Journal of Maritime History. 30 (1): 52-73. doi:10.1177/0843871417745731.

16. Anthony Steel, "Anthony Merry and the Anglo-American Dispute about Impressment, 1803-6." ^ Cambridge Historical Journal 9#3 (1949): 331-51 online.

17. Paul A. Gilje, "'Free Trade and Sailors' Rights': The Rhetoric of the War of 1812", ^ Journal of the Early Republic, Spring 2010, Vol. 30 Issue 1, pp. 1-23.

18. Hannay, David McDowall (1911). "Impressment" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 14 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 346-347.

19. ^ Adam Anderson (1787). An historical and chronological deduction of the origin of commerce..., pp. 624-625.

20. Rodger (2004), p. 316.

21. ^ 19 Geo. 2 c. 30, in Danny Pickering (ed.), The Statutes at Large, from the 15th to the 20th Year of King George II (1765), Gray's Inn, p. 472

22. ^ "New Model Army (England)".

23. ^ "The British Army - Chapter Three".

24. Curtis, chapter 3.

25. ^ "The Murder City Devils - Press Gang Lyrics - Genius Lyrics". Genius.

Bibliography Edit

Brunsman, Denver, "The Evil Necessity: British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World" (Univ. of Virginia Press: 2013) ISBN 978-0-8139-3351-1

Cray, Robert E., "Remembering the USS Chesapeake: The Politics of Maritime. Death and Impressment," Journal of the Early Republic (Fall 2005) vol 25 pp 445-74.

Curtis, Edward, The Organization of the British Army in the American Revolution. 1972, ISBN 0-85409-906-9

Dancy, J. Ross. The Myth of the Press Gang: Volunteers, Impressment and the Naval Manpower (2015)

Ennis, Daniel James. Enter the Press-Gang: Naval Impressment in Eighteenth-Century British Literature (University of Delaware Press, 2002).

Lewis, Michael. A Social History of the Navy 1793-1815 (1960).

Mercer, Keith. "North Atlantic Press Gangs: Impressment and Naval-civilian Relations in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, 1749--1815" (PhD Dissertation, Dalhousie U, 2008) online free

Miller, Nathan. Sea of Glory, 1974, ISBN 0-679-50392-7

Nash, Gary, The Urban Crucible, The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution, 1986, ISBN 0-674-93058-4

Rodger, N. A. M. The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy. W. W. Norton and Company, 1986.

Rodger, N. A. M. The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815. W. W. Norton and Company, 2004.

Rogers, Nicholas "The Press Gang: Naval Impressment and its Opponents in Georgian Britain" (2007) ISBN 978-1-8528-5568-0

Sawtell, Clement Cleveland, "Impressment of American Seamen by the British," Essex Institute Historical Collections 76#4 (October 1940): pp. 314-44.

Selement, George. "Impressment and the American Merchant Marine 1782-1812: an American View." The Mariner's Mirror 59#4 (1973): 409-418.

Smith, Page, A new age now begins, 1976, ISBN 0-07-059097-4

Steel, Anthony (1952). "Impressment in the Monroe-Pinkney Negotiation, 1806-1807". The American Historical Review. American Historical Association. 57 (2): 352-69. doi:10.2307/1849880. ISSN 1937-5239. JSTOR 1849880.

Steel, Anthony. "Anthony Merry and the Anglo-American Dispute about Impressment, 1803-6." Cambridge Historical Journal 9#3 (1949): 331-51. online.

Usher, Roland G., Jr. (1951). "Royal Navy Impressment During the American Revolution". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. Organization of American Historians. 37 (4): 673-88. doi:10.2307/1889363. ISSN 0161-391X. JSTOR 1889363.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Impressment, colloquially " the press" or the " press gang", is the taking of men into a military or naval force by compulsion, with or without notice. European navies of several nations used forced recruitment by various means. The large size of the British Royal Navy in the Age of Sail meant impressment was most commonly associated with Great Britain and Ireland.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.colorado.edu/gendersarchive1998-2013/2003/03/01/flesh-word-billy-budd-sailor-compulsory-homosociality-and-uses-queer-desire

# data[].attributes.body
"Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man; while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, in the first" (261)
things that are considered selfish, in any manner, are seen as wrong. Desire, personal feelings, these are all things that would be frowned upon since it is not related to military virtue

# data[].attributes.body
The British fleet struggled during this battle due to the mutinies of 1797.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Order of battle at the Battle of Camperdown - Wikipedia

# data[].attributes.body
Person from the Trojan War.

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When this older fellow meets Billy, he's described his way: "Now the first time that his small weasel eyes happened to light on Billy Budd, a certain grim internal merriment set all his ancient wrinkles into antic play" (271). Fascinating moment where feeling becomes so subtly expressive.

# data[].attributes.headline
Making Waves: Gender and Sex in the History of Seafaring

# data[].attributes.subject
Making Waves: Gender and Sex in the History of Seafaring

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Making Waves: Gender and Sex in the History of Seafaring on JSTOR

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
STEVEN MAYNARD, Making Waves: Gender and Sex in the History of Seafaring, Acadiensis, Vol. 22, No. 2 (SPRING/PRINTEMPS 1993), pp. 144-153

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"The avowal of such an imperfection in the Handsome Sailor should be evidence not alone that he is not presented as a conventional hero, but also that the story in which he is the main figure is no romance." (257)