The forays of the press-gangs were battles in themselves, and many a man on either side was killed in these man-hunting expeditions. “Private mischief,” said the Earl of Mansfield, “had better be submitted to than that public detriment and inconvenience should ensue;” but the men who fought with the press-gangs did not see matters in this light, and neither did their womenkind. The beautiful decorative drawing by Morland that forms the frontispiece to this book puts the sentiment of the time against impressment in a poetical way, but Gillray’s more nervous and satirical pencil gives, in his “Liberty of the Subject,” a realistic and satirical picture that shows how strenuously the press was resisted. It is a most graphic and humorous representation of a “hot press” in the streets of some seaport town, at a period immediately following upon the American War of Independence, when men were particularly scarce. A gang has seized a tailor, a poor, miserable-looking wretch with no fighting in him, almost literally as well as metaphorically the “ninth part of a man,” and his captors are dragging him off, knock-kneed and incapable of resistance. But if he submits so easily, the women of the crowd have to be reckoned with, and are doing nearly all the fighting. The furious virago in the foreground is pulling at a midshipman’s hair with all the strength of one hand, while with the other she is lugging his ear off, kicking him, at the same time, with her knee. A sailor in the rear, with an animated expression of countenance, has hold of her arm, and appears to be aiming a blow at her head with the butt-end of a pistol; while another woman with a heavy mop is preparing to fell him to the ground.
One of the “hottest presses,” and at the same time the most successful, ever known, was that of March 8, 1803, Portsmouth. Five hundred able seamen were obtained on that occasion by the strategy and cunning of a certain Captain Brown, who assembled a company of marines late at night with all the fuss and circumstance he could display, in order, as he gave out, to quell a mutiny at Fort Monckton. The news of this pretended mutiny spread rapidly, and great crowds came rushing down to see the affair. When they had all crossed Haslar Bridge they were cooped up like so many fowls, and that master of strategy, having posted his marines at the bridge end, seized every suitable man in the crowd.
But the pressed men, although they tried every dodge to escape this forced service, and though their unwillingness to serve his Majesty afloat has made a classic of the saying, “One volunteer is worth three pressed men,” did good service when once they were trapped and trained. For one thing, they had no choice. ’Twas either a cheerful obedience to orders and readiness in action when once afloat, or else a flogging with the cat and a remand, heavily ironed, to the hold. Seeing how useless would be any malingering, the pressed men turned to with a will, and fought our battles with such spirit that the victories of Trafalgar, of “the glorious First of June,” off Cape St. Vincent, and many of the other notable exploits of the British Fleet, are due to their courage and resolution.
REVELRY
When the pressed men came home (if ever they were so fortunate) they were as a rule so inured to sea-service and hard knocks, that, so soon as they had had a spree and spent their money, they were ready for another cruise. But meanwhile they enjoyed themselves with the reckless prodigality possible only to such men. When the ships came home (and ships were always coming home then), Portsmouth ran with liquor, riot, and revelry; and on fine summer days the grassy slopes of Portsdown Hill were all alive with the jolly Jacks engaged with great earnestness in the business of pleasure. Here, in the taverns that overlook from this breezy height the harbour, the town, and the distant mud-flats, generations of soldiers and sailors, fresh from battle and the salt sea, have caroused. Here, opposite the “George” and the Belle Vue Gardens, where “the military” and the servant-girls, the sailors and their lasses, still disport on high-days and holidays, with swings, Aunt Sallies, cocoa-nut shies, and, in short, all the fun of the fair, have the look-out men of a hundred years ago shivered in the wind while scanning the distant horizon for signs of Bonaparte and his flotilla, the inglorious Armada that never left port.
XXXVI
When workmen were engaged in lowering the road opposite the old “George” Inn, that stands so boldly and with such a fine last-century air on the hill brow, they opened a tumulus which was found to contain, at a depth of only eighteen inches, the well-preserved skeletons of sixteen men, the victims of some prehistoric fray. Their feet were all placed towards the east, and in the skull of one was found the iron head of a spear. Who were these vanquished soldiers in a forgotten fight? Were they Belgæ? Surely not. Were they Christianized Saxons, slain in battle with Pagan vikings, marauders from over sea? This seems more likely than any other theory. That they were Christians appears certain from the position of their skeletons, east and west; that they fell in battle is evident from the silent testimony of the spear-head.
Down goes the road in a long steady slope, flanked by the great forts of Purbrook and Widley, whose dingy red-brick walls and embrasures command the entrance to the harbour. Away, to right and left, for a distance of seven miles, runs a succession of these forts, from Fareham to Purbrook, cresting the ridge of the long hill, connected by telegraph, and furnished with extensive barrack accommodation.
Cosham village comes next, crouching at the foot of the ridge, with the great guns high overhead to the rearwards: Cosham, neither town nor village; busy enough for a town, sufficiently quaint for a village; with a railway-crossing barring the road; a station adjoining it; the tramp of soldiers re-echoing, and the blare of bugles familiar in the ears of the people all day and every day.