Except in the case of masters, mates and apprentices to the sea, whose affidavits or indentures constituted their respective safeguards against the press, every person exempt from that infliction, whether by statute law or Admiralty indulgence, was required to have in his possession an official voucher setting forth the fact and ground of his exemption. This document was ironically termed his "protection."
Admiralty protections were issued under the hand of the Lord High Admiral; ordinary protections, by departments and persons who possessed either delegated or vested powers of issue. Thus each Trinity House protected its own pilots; the Customs protected whale fishermen and apprentices to the sea; impress officers protected seamen temporarily lent to ships in lieu of men taken out of them by the gangs. Some protections were issued for a limited period and lapsed when that period expired; others were of perpetual "force," unless invalidated by some irregular acton the part of the holder. No protection was good unless it bore a minute description of the person to whom it applied, and all protections had to be carried on the person and produced upon demand. Thomas Moverty was pressed out of a wherry in the Thames owing to his having changed his clothes and left his protection at home; and John Scott of Mistley, in Suffolk, was taken whilst working in his shirtsleeves, though his protection lay in the pocket of his jacket, only a few yards away. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 1479—Capt. Bridges, 11 August 1743. Admiralty Records 1. 1531—Capt. Ballard, 15 March 1804, and enclosure.]
The most trifling irregularity in the protection itself, or the slightest discrepancy between the personal appearance of the bearer and the written description of him, was enough to convert the protection into so much waste paper and the bearer into a naval seaman. North-country apprentices, whose indentures bore a 14s. stamp in accordance with Scottish law, were pressed because that document did not bear a 15s. stamp according to English law. A seaman was in one instance described in his protection as "smooth-faced," that is, beardless. The impress officer scrutinised him closely. "Aha!" said he, "you are not smooth-faced. You are pockmarked"; and he pressed the poor fellow for that reason.
To be over-protected was as bad as having no protection at all. Thomas Letting, a collier's man, and John Anthony of the merchant ship Providence, learnt this fact to their cost when they were taken out of their respective ships for having each two protections. In short, the slightest pretext served. If a protection had but a few more days to run; if the name, date, place or other essential particular showed signs of "coaxing," that is, of having been "on purpose rubbed out" or altered; if a man's description did not figure in his protection, or if it figured on the back instead of in the margin, or in the margin instead of on the back; if his face wore a ruddy rather than a pale look, if his hair were red when it ought to have been brown, if he proved to be "tall and remarkable thin" when he should have been middle-sized and thick-set—in any of these, as in a hundred and one similar cases, the bearer of the protection paid the penalty for what the impress officer regarded as a "hoodwinking attempt" to cheat the King's service of an eligible man.
Notwithstanding the fact that the impress officer regarded every pressable man as a person who made it his chief business in life to defraud the Navy of his services on the "miserable plea of a protection," it by no means followed that his zeal in pressing him on that account had in every case the countenance or met with the unqualified approval of the Admiralty. Thousands of men and boys taken in this irresponsible fashion obtained their discharge, though with more or less difficulty and delay, when the facts of the case were laid before the naval authorities; and in general it may be said, that although the Lords Commissioners were only too ready to wink at any colourable excuse whereby another physical unit might be added to the fleet, they nevertheless laid it down as a rule, inviolable at least on paper, "never to press any man from protections," since it brought "great trouble and clamour upon them." [Footnote: Admiralty Records 3. 50—Admiralty Minutes, 26 Feb. 1744-5.] To assert that the rule was generally obeyed would be to turn the truth into a lie. On the contrary, it was almost universally disregarded. Both officers and gangs traversed it on every possible occasion, leaving the justice or injustice of the act to the arbitrament of the higher tribunal. Zeal for the service was no crime, and to release a man was always so much easier than to catch him.
"Pressing from protections," as the phrase ran in the service, did not therefore mean that the Admiralty over-rode its own protections at pleasure. It merely signified that on occasion more than ordinarily stringent measures were adopted for the holding-up and examining of all protected persons, or of as many of them as could be got at by the gangs, to the end that all false or fraudulent vouchers might be weeded out and the dishonest bearers of them consigned to another place. And yet there were times when "pressing from protections" had its plenary significance too.
Lovers of prints who are familiar with Hogarth's "Stage Coach; or, a Country Inn Yard," date 1747, will readily recall the two "outsides"—the one a down-in-the-mouth soldier, the other a jolly Jack-tar on whose bundle may be read the word "Centurion." Now the Centurion was Anson's flag-ship, and in this print Hogarth has incidentally recorded the fact that her crew, on their return from that famous voyage round the world, were awarded life-protections from the press. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 1440—Capt. Anson, 24 July 1744.]
The life-protection was an indulgence extended to few. Samuel Davidson of Newcastle, sailor, aged fifty, who had "served for nine years during the late wars," in 1777 made bold to plead that fact as a reason why he should be freed from the attentions of the press-gang for the rest of his life. But the Lords Commissioners refused to admit the plea "unless he was in a position not inferior to that of chief mate." On the other hand, Henry Love of Hastings, who had merely served in a single Dutch expedition, but had the promise of Pitt and Dundas that both he and those who volunteered with him should never be pressed, was immediately discharged when that calamity befell him. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 1449—Capt. Columbine, 21 July 1800.]
The granting of extraordinary protections was thus something entirely erratic and not to be counted upon. Captain Balchen in 1708 had special protections for ten of his ship's company whom he desired to bring to London as witnesses in a suit then pending against him; but the building of the three earlier Eddystone lighthouses was allowed to be seriously impeded by the pressing of the unprotected workmen when on shore at Plymouth, and the keepers of the first erection of that name were once carried off bag and baggage by the gang.
Smeaton, who built the third Eddystone, protected his men by means of silver badges, and his storeboat enjoyed similar immunity—presumably with the consent of Admiralty—by reason of a picture of the lighthouse painted on her sail. Other great constructors, as well as rich mercantile firms, bought protection at a price. They supplied a stipulated number of men for the fleet, and found the arrangement a highly convenient one for ridding themselves of those who were useless to them or had incurred their displeasure. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 583—Admiral Thornborough, 30 Nov. 1813.]