home. Of two John
Westlakes, ordinary seamen of the _Boadicea_, one--John (I.)--was
'prest,' but was afterwards 'taken out of the ship for a debt
of twenty pounds'; which shows that he had preferred to trust
himself to the press-gang rather than to his creditors. Without
being unduly imaginative, we may suppose that in 1803 there were
heroes who preferred being 'carried off' to defend their country
afloat to meeting the liabilities of putative paternity in their
native villages.

The muster-books examined cover several months, during which
many 'prest' men were discharged and some managed to desert,
so that the total was never present at anyone time. That total
amounts to 1782. It is certain that even this is larger than
the reality, because it has been found impossible--without an
excessive expenditure of time and labour--to trace the cases
of men being sent from one ship to another, and thus appearing
twice over, or oftener, as 'prest' men. As an example of this
the _Minotaur_ may be cited. Out of twenty names on one page of
her muster-book thirteen are those of 'prest' men discharged to
other ships. The discharges from the _Victory_ were numerous; and
the _Ardent_, which was employed in keeping up communication with
the ships off Brest, passed men on to the latter when required. I
have, however, made no deductions from the 'prest' total to meet
these cases. We can see that not more than 1782 men, and probably
considerably fewer, were impressed to meet the increase of the
navy during the greater part of 1803. Admitting that there were
cases of impressment from merchant vessels abroad to complete
the crews of our men-of-war in distant waters, the total number
impressed--including these latter--could not have exceeded greatly
the figures first given. We know that owing to the reduction of
1802, as stated by Sir Sydney Smith, the seamen were looking
for ships rather than the ships for seamen. It seems justifiable
to infer that the whole number of impressed men on any particular
day did not exceed, almost certainly did not amount to, 2000. If
they had been spread over the whole navy they would not have made
2 per cent. of the united complements of the ships; and, as it was,
did not equal one-nineteenth of the 39,600 seamen ('blue-jackets')
raised to complete the navy to the establishment sanctioned by
Parliament. A system under which more than 37,000 volunteers
come forward to serve and less than 2000 men are obtained