Perhaps the relief felt in the fleet was expressed in some measure by the salute of seventeen guns recorded on the same day, “being the anniversary of King Charles’ restoration.”
Gradually matters were righted. Very early promotions were abolished, and throughout the Navy efforts were made on the part of the officers to make their men more comfortable, and especially to give them better and more wholesome food—but reforms must always be slow if they are to do good and not harm, and, necessarily, the lightening of punishments which seem to us barbarous was the slowest of all.
The work of the press-gang is always a subject of some interest and romance. It is difficult to realise that it was a properly authorised Government measure. There were certain limits in which it might work, certain laws to be obeyed. The most useful men, those who were already at sea, but not in the King’s service, could not legally be impressed, unless they were free from all former obligations, and the same rule applied to apprentices. These rules were not, however, strictly kept, and much trouble was often caused by the wrong men being impressed, or by false statements being used to get others off. The following letter, written much later in his career by Francis Austen when he was Captain of the Leopard in 1804, gives a typical case of this kind.
Leopard, Dungeness, August 10, 1804.
“Sir,—I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 17th inst., with the enclosure, relative to Harris Walker, said to be chief mate of the Fanny, and in reply thereto have the honour to inform you that the said Harris Walker was impressed from on board the brig Fanny, off Dungeness, by Lieutenant Taylor of his Majesty’s ship under my command, on the evening of the 7th inst., because no documents proving him to be actually chief mate of the brig were produced, and because the account he gave of himself was unsatisfactory and contradictory. On examining him the following day he at first confessed to me that he had entered on board the Fanny only three days before she sailed from Tobago, in consequence of the captain (a relation of his) being taken ill, and shortly afterwards he asserted that the whole of the cargo had been taken on board and stowed under his direction. The master of the Fanny told Lieutenant Taylor that his cargo had been shipped more than a fortnight before he sailed, having been detained for want of a copy of the ship’s register, she being a prize purchased and fitted at Tobago. From these very contradictory accounts—from the man’s having no affidavit to produce of his being actual chief mate of the brig, from his not having signed any articles as such—and from his handwriting totally disagreeing with the Log-Book (said to have been kept by himself) I felt myself perfectly justified in detaining him for his Majesty’s service.
“I return the enclosure, and have the honour to be,
“Sir, your obedient humble servant,
“Francis Wm. Austen.
“Thomas Louis, Esq.,
“Rear-Admiral of the Blue.”
The reason assigned, that the reports Harris Walker gave of himself were “unsatisfactory and contradictory,” seems to us a bad one for “detaining him for his Majesty’s service,” but it shows clearly how great were the difficulties in keeping up the supply of men. Captain Austen had not heard the last of this man, as the belief seems to have been strong that he was not legally impressed. Harris Walker, however, settled the matter by deserting on October 5.
An entry in the log of the newly built frigate Triton, under Captain Gore, gives an instance of wholesale, and one would think entirely illegal action.
November 25, 1796, in the Thames (Long Reach).