"150 on board, the greatest part of them sorry fellows."
"Poor ragged souls, and very small."
"Miserable poor creatures, not a seaman amongst them, and the fleet in the same condition."
"Unfit for service, and a nuisance to the ship."
"Never so ill-manned a ship since I have been at sea. The worst set I ever saw."
"Twenty-six poor souls, but three of them seamen. Ragged and half dead."
"Landsmen, boys, incurables and cripples. Sad wretches great part of them are."
"More fit for an hospital than the sea."
"All the ragg-tagg that can be picked up."
In this last phrase, "All the rag-tag that can be picked up," we have the key to the situation; for though orders to press "no aged, diseased or infirm persons, nor boys," were sufficiently explicit, yet in order to swell the returns, and to appease in some degree the fleet's insatiable greed for men, the gangs raked in recruits with a lack of discrimination that for the better part of a century made that fleet the most gigantic collection of human freaks and derelicts under the sun.