To crew ships, the Admiralty relied on the process of “pressing” men into service. What did you think of this process? Was there any advantage to it?
No, basically trafficking humans. They will never be fully committed to a service they were forced into!
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Wasn’t this horrible! Ship life was hard enough without having a crew of men who didn’t want to be there and had families who had no idea what happened to them. OK, maybe prisoners should be encouraged to sign up, especially if their terms were to be lengthy, but just grabbing men off the streets?
But it’s also indicative of how many officers often viewed their crews. They were almost a different (lower) species to those who commanded them, not worthy of respect or consideration of their feelings.
The advantage was that it added bodies, but they were unwilling bodies! Terrible!
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The attraction of sharing in great wealth by capturing a Spanish Gallon motivated most of the crew. But some where conscripted without their consent and forced to serve.
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I had no idea this was how ship crews were created. Terrible - and of course - this made it difficult to have “loyalty” to those above.
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This horrible practice certainly served the purpose of providing manpower to fill out a ship’s roster, but it was most certainly cruel, demeaning, and, in the final analysis, unsuccessful because it didn’t provide skilled, loyal sailors. It’s a wonder more mutinies didn’t occur under this practice.
“Pressing” men to serve on ships was wrong on many levels. No wonder sailors had no respect for the captain or his men. Yes, they were slaves and had no where to go except “jump overboard”.
Pressing men into service is wrong on so many levels. Yes, they got the bodies that were needed to fully man the ship but it’s nothing but kidnapping. Perhaps enticing possible recruits with better wages and/or benefits for their families might have been a better option. Certainly it would be kinder and more humane. These men were snatched off the streets and went missing without families knowing what happened to their loved ones.
This is never a good practice, because when people are forced to do something they don’t want to, they won’t give it their best effort and will look for first opportunity to obscond and save themselves, as was evident before the ships ever even left the port. The whole crew was doomed from the start when they were stuck with hundreds of sick and disabled people that would utilize their supplies, spread sickness to others, and were of no benefit to the crew. I don’t know how anyone thought this was a good idea.
These massive floating castles needed manpower. It seemed that there were strict divisions between the officer class and the lower class groups that were pressed into service. Not very fair or equitable that one could be on a barstool one night and seized the next and made to serve God and country the next with no choice.
The description of “pressing” right at the beginning of the book reminded me of slavery (though the seamen were paid). I get that the navy needed manpower, and that at the time there wasn’t an equivalent to a draft (other than pressing). I get that there wouldn’t be sufficient volunteers, and that there needed to be a way to staff the warships, but the whole thing seemed to me distasteful in a way I can’t quite pinpoint.