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Naval Impressment

The Crown's claimed prerogative right to take trained seamen by force out of the merchant service into the ships of the Royal Navy, together with the paper machinery of exemption called protection and the long argument about whether the right existed at all.

Also writtenThe press; The press gang; Pressing; Impressment

Impressment was the taking of a seaman's labour by force for the King's ships, without consent or contract. It fell on one trade, because no warship could be worked by men taught in a season. The press was a wartime instrument. The central years of the Golden Age were largely years of peace, Britain being at war with Spain only from 1718 to 1720, so the press belongs to the wars closed at Ryswick and Utrecht rather than to the surge of about 1716 to 1726.

The right and its basis

The authority was a prerogative claim, recognised rather than created by statute and never reduced in this period to one authorising act. Sir Michael Foster's formula was that the right of impressing mariners "is a prerogative inherent in the Crown, grounded upon common law, and recognized by many acts of Parliament". No single press act existed; Parliament gave the practice authority at various times, in 1703 and 1705 among others, but legislated about exemption, and about what might be offered instead, far more than about the press itself.1

The Register of Seamen of 1696, and the paper protection

One statute of these years tried to replace the press with a bargain. 7 and 8 William III chapter 21, An Act for the Increase and Encouragement of Seamen, set up a voluntary Register of Seamen and offered a man who enrolled on it "the yearely Summe or Bounty of Forty Shillings" above his pay, and made a man who ignored a summons forfeit it for ever and serve six months without pay. A state legislating a bounty to get seamen knows the press is not working, though the act nowhere says so.2

Protection appears in that same act: licences to landmen taking up sea service were "to them a Protection against being impressed for the space of Twoe yeares", a shield for the newcomer while the seasoned mariner had none. Admiralty instructions, below the statute, exempted boatswains, carpenters and first mates of merchant ships of fifty tons and upwards, but only "at the pleasure of the Lords of the Admiralty", an indulgence and revocable. It could fail: a list of Woodes Rogers's privateer crews taken on 31 August 1711 to obtain protection apparently did not prevent their impressment at Wapping, and their agent paid counsel's fees to clear most of them.3

Where the taking happened

Much of the Adventure Galley's company is said to have been pressed out of her at the Buoy at the Nore in 1696, on Kidd's own account as printed by Dalton, though the proportion is given variously and Dalton's 1 March stands against an April departure.

The American exemption

The act of Anne exempting men in America from the press is An Act for the Encouragement of the Trade to America, 6 Anne chapter 64 in the Statutes of the Realm and chapter 37 in the common printed editions; its session is dated 1707 but its provisions take effect from 24 June 1708, which is why it is dated variously to 1707 and to 1708. It enacts that no mariner or other person serving or retained to serve aboard any privateer or trading ship employed in any part of America, nor any mariner or other person on shore there, shall be liable to be impressed by any officer of the Queen's ships of war, unless he had before deserted from one of them after 14 February 1707, on pain of twenty pounds a man forfeit to the master or owners. Whether the exemption outlived the war of the Spanish succession, and so still ran in the Spanish war of 1718 to 1720 in the waters where Blackbeard, Vane, Rackham and Bonnet operated, is not settled by the act itself.4

The Weymouth at Cape Corso Road, 1721

Disease had ruined both ships of the squadron sent against Bartholomew Roberts, and the 1724 narrative leaves the Weymouth at Cape Corso "to impress Men, being unable at this Time, either to hand the Sails, or weigh her Anchor". John Atkins, surgeon in the Swallow, wrote that she stretched to windward in November 1721 "in order to mann, by the Purchase of Slaves, and impressing Sailors from the Merchant Vessels; the latter we had little Occasion of, their ill Treatment, and bad Diet (or a Pretence of it) making them all Volunteers that could be spared." Impressing men stood among the four purposes of that cruise, with securing trade, airing a sickly ship and intelligence. As many again, Atkins wrote, "took on with the Pyrates".5

The purchase of enslaved people stands first in Atkins's clause and belongs to race, empire and maritime labour. Atkins was also Register at the Cape Coast trials the printed narrative reproduces, so the two accounts share a witness.

What the pirates did not say

Volume one of the 1724 General History of the Pyrates was searched for the press. Every occurrence resolves to suppress, express, oppress, compress or impression except six, of which exactly one is impressment in the naval sense, describing the Royal Navy; press-gang and impress'd do not occur at all. The founding source of the pirate legend carries no complaint about the press and no pressed man, a result about the text, not about pirate opinion. The grievance it gives Roberts is aimed at the merchant service: "In an honest Service, says he, there is thin Commons, low Wages, and hard Labour".6

What these sources will not give is scale, paper, or a pirate saying so. No annual series of seamen borne or impressed for 1689 to 1713 has been obtained, so no figure of scale is given here; the muster books in ADM 36 and pay books in ADM 33 would settle it. No protection document from inside this window has been found, the surviving specimens being of 1756, 1802 and 1807, and the earliest protection clause traced is the licence for landmen in the act of 1696. No golden-age press riot was traced, and the pressing of Kidd's crew rests on secondary accounts that the Kidd pages here do not record. The section number of the American exemption could not be read in the scan of the statute used here, so the clause is cited by its words.

What the evidence does not settle

The American exemption

  • The American exemption is 6 Anne chapter 64 section 9Confirmed

Kidd's crew pressed

Impressment at Cape Corso Road

  • Names of the men impressed onto the Weymouth are unknownUnverified

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. Impressment in this period rested on a prerogative right described as inherent in the Crown, grounded on common law and recognised rather than created by acts of Parliament, and was never reduced to a single authorising statute within the archive's window; Parliament legislated about exemption, and about what might be offered in place of the press, far more than it legislated the press itself. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Legal scholarship and legislature public history: John Finlay, 'Inter arma enim silent leges? Impressment and the Scottish Courts in the later eighteenth century', Edinburgh Law Review 26.1 (2022), quoting Sir Michael Foster's formula, with the United Kingdom Parliament Living Heritage page 'Press gangs'; Finlay's declared scope is the later eighteenth century and its statutory material is background to that argument
  2. The act 7 and 8 William III chapter 21, An Act for the Increase and Encouragement of Seamen, attempted to man the navy by bargain rather than by seizure, setting up a voluntary register of seamen which offered "the yearely Summe or Bounty of Forty Shillings" over and above a man's pay and imposed forfeiture of that benefit for ever, together with six months' unpaid naval service, on a registered man who failed to repair on board within thirty days of summons; that a state legislated a register and a bounty in order to get seamen is read here as an admission that the press was not working, which is this archive's reading of the act and not a statement in it. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Statute in digitised edition: Statutes of the Realm volume 7, pages 98 to 102, at British History Online; the wording is that returned by the digitised text and has not been checked against the statute roll, and no commencement date for the act is given
  3. A protection was a document rather than a right: the same act of 1696 granted licences to landmen taking up sea service which were "to them a Protection against being impressed for the space of Twoe yeares", the earliest protection clause found for this record and one that shielded the newcomer rather than the established mariner, while below the level of statute the exemption of boatswains, carpenters and first mates of merchant ships of fifty tons and upwards rested on Admiralty instructions granted only at the pleasure of the Lords; protection could also fail outright, a list of the men aboard Woodes Rogers's privateers the Duke and the Dutchess taken on 31 August 1711 to obtain protection not preventing their impressment at Wapping, after which the crews' agent paid counsel's fees, fees of protection and other charges to clear most of them. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Statute in digitised edition, legal scholarship and the privateering record: Statutes of the Realm volume 7, pages 98 to 102, at British History Online for the landmen's protection; John Finlay, Edinburgh Law Review 26.1 (2022) for the Admiralty instructions and the fifty ton rule; the privateering record on this site for the 1711 list and the Wapping impressment
  4. The act of Anne exempting men in America from impressment is An Act for the Encouragement of the Trade to America, 6 Anne chapter 64 in the Statutes of the Realm and chapter 37 in the common printed editions, of the session dated 1707 but with provisions taking effect from 24 June 1708, which accounts for later accounts dating it variously to 1707 and to 1708. It enacts that no mariner or other person serving or retained to serve on board any privateer or trading ship employed in any part of America, nor any mariner or other person being on shore there, shall be liable to be impressed by any officer of any of the Queen's ships of war, unless he had before deserted from one of the Queen's ships of war after 14 February 1707, on pain of twenty pounds a man forfeit to the master or owners. Whether the exemption survived the war of the Spanish succession, and so ran through the Spanish war of 1718 to 1720, is not settled by the act itself, and the section number could not be read in the copy used here. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Statute: An Act for the Encouragement of the Trade to America, 6 Anne c. 64, in Statutes of the Realm: Volume 8, ed. John Raithby (1820), with the editor's footnote "This is Chapter XXXVII. 6 Ann. in the Common printed Editions" and the running head giving the year as 1707; read in the Internet Archive scan of the volume (archive.org/details/pp63095177). The impressment clause: "And be it further enacted by the Authority aforesaid That no Mariner or other Person who shall serve on board or be retained to serve on board any Privateer or Trading Ship or Vessel that shall be imployed in any Part of America nor any Mariner or other Person being on Shore in any Part thereof shall be liable to be impressed or taken away by any Officer or Officers of or belonging to any of Her Majesties Ships of War impowered by the Lord High Admiral or any other Person whatsoever unless such Mariner shall have before deserted from such Ship of War belonging to Her Majesty at any Time after the Fourteenth Day of February One thousand seven hundred and seven", the offender to "forfeit to the Master or Owner or Owners of any such Ship or Vessel Twenty Pounds for every Man he or they shall so impress or take". The first section suppresses all prize offices in America "from and after the Four and twentieth Day of June One thousand seven hundred and eight". The section numerals are lost in this scan except for the second, so the clause is cited by its words and not by a section number.
  5. In November 1721 His Majesty's Ship Weymouth was left under the guns of Cape Corso, too disabled by disease to hand her sails or weigh her anchor, expressly to impress men, while the Swallow stretched away to windward "in order to mann, by the Purchase of Slaves, and impressing Sailors from the Merchant Vessels; the latter we had little Occasion of, their ill Treatment, and bad Diet (or a Pretence of it) making them all Volunteers that could be spared"; against a marginal date of 10 November 1721 the same witness gives the cruise's purposes as securing trade, airing a sickly ship, gathering intelligence and impressing men from the merchant ships, and records that as many again on the same complaint "took on with the Pyrates". Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Printed contemporary narrative, eyewitness participant: John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil and the West Indies (London, 1735), the Gold Coast narrative for October and November 1721 and the voyage abstract at 10 November 1721, corroborated for the Weymouth's station by A General History of the Pyrates, volume one (1724); the two are not independent witnesses, both coming out of the Swallow's people; A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies
  6. A mechanical search of volume one of the 1724 General History of the Pyrates finds every occurrence of the string press resolving to suppress, express, oppress, compress or impression except six, of which exactly one is impressment in the naval sense and describes the Royal Navy, while prest, press-gang, impress'd and impressed do not occur at all: the founding printed source of the pirate legend carries no pirate complaint about the press, no press gang and no pressed man, and the labour grievance it does record, Bartholomew Roberts on "thin Commons, low Wages, and hard Labour" in an honest service, names merchant masters, wages and food and expressly denies want of employment as a motive. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Period narrative, searched for a negative result: A General History of the Pyrates, volume one (1724), working plain text transcription of the Project Gutenberg digitisation; the result is a negative about that text and not a finding about pirate opinion, and no later volume or edition was searched; A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates