by Roy Adkins
Wolfe and his men marched half a mile from the castle to the village of Chiswell, where they successfully ‘impressed Henry Wiggot and Richard Way, without any interruption whatsoever’20, and these two men were placed under guard in the castle. The other inhabitants of Chiswell ran up the hill to escape and raised the alarm, pursued by the press-gang, and at the village of Easton the chief constable of the island’s court leet asked the press-gang by whose authority they were on the island. They replied that they had a warrant signed by the Mayor of Weymouth, but, as they were told, Portland was a Royal Manor, whose inhabitants owed allegiance directly to the king. The mayor’s jurisdiction did not extend to Portland, and so Wolfe’s press-gang had no legal right to be there. This did not deter them, and they rushed down Reforne Street to confront ‘the mob . . . [who were] soon reinforced by nearly three hundred men, armed with muskets, pistols, and cutlasses, which had been plundered from the transports wrecked on that coast in 1795’.21
The press-gang then tried to seize several men, but a scuffle broke out, and Wolfe fired his pistol into the ground, ‘at which signal the Lieutenant of Marines ordered his men to fire, which being done, three men fell dead, being all shot through the head’.22 These men, all married, were killed instantly: Alexander Andrews, a quarryman aged forty-seven, Richard Flann, also a quarryman, aged forty-two and William Lano, a twenty-six-year-old blacksmith, who had been ‘in the act of cocking a musket’.23 Two others were dangerously wounded: Richard Bennett and Mary Way, sister of the impressed man Richard Way. She was shot in the back, and on 13 April The Times reported that ‘the ball is still in her body, and but little hopes are entertained of her recovery’.24 Sixteen men of the press-gang were also wounded in this skirmish, nine so severely that they were discharged from the navy.
No effort was made to stop the inhabitants fleeing in all directions,while Wolfe’s press-gang made their way dejectedly back to the castle and took on board the two men they had seized earlier. An inquest was held at Weymouth in mid-April, at which contradictory accounts of the incident were given, resulting in a verdict of wilful murder. Following this, Captain Wolfe, Lieutenant Hastings, Midshipman Morgan and Marine Lieutenant Jeffries were charged with the crime.
Mary Way died seven weeks after she was shot, and along with the other victims she was buried in the graveyard of St George’s Church, a magnificent Georgian building that had been consecrated some thirty-seven years earlier. The inscriptions in the graveyard set in stone the anger felt by the Portlanders at what became known as the Easton Massacre, with that on William Lano’s headstone stating that he was ‘wantonly Shot by some of a Pressgang’.25 Mary’s inscription reads: ‘To the Memory of MARY Daughter of JOHN and MARY WAY who was Shot by some of a Press gang on the 2nd of April 1803 And died of the Wound the 21st of May the same Year. Aged 21 Years.’26 When Captain Wolfe and his colleagues were tried at Dorchester Assizes in the summer, a surgeon of Weymouth ‘stated that a young girl [Mary Way] who had received a wound in the late tumult, declared to him before her death that Captain Wolfe was the person who had shot her’27, but despite his evidence all the men involved ‘were fully acquitted, the jury agreeing that they had merely acted in self defence’.28
At the other end of the country, the press-gangs during this hot press ranged as far north as the Shetland Isles in search of men, as sixteen-year-old Midshipman George Vernon Jackson described:We were at Shields [at the mouth of the River Tyne] with other men-of-war, engaged in the impressment of men for the service. Our instructions were to spare no effort in procuring fresh hands, and we succeeded beyond our hopes. From Shields we went to Shetland, and . . . we carried off every able-bodied male we could lay our hands upon. I think the number we captured in Shetland alone amounted to seventy fine young fellows. When the ship was on the point of leaving, it was a melancholy sight; for boat-loads of women - wives, mothers, and sisters - came alongside to take leave of their kidnapped relatives. Being young at the business I was not always proof against some of the trials I encountered ashore, and often repented having made a capture when I witnessed the misery it occasioned in homes hitherto happy and undisturbed . . . These were strange times when a youngster of my age could lay violent hands upon almost any man he came across and lead him into bondage, but such was the law, and to resist it was dangerous and sometimes productive of even greater evils. There is a fine touching old song which was composed about this period illustrating the cruelties of impressment. It became a universal favourite with the poorer classes. Such an influence did this song exercise upon the people that it was forbidden to be sung in public.29
The song that Jackson mentioned was ‘The Voyage Was Past’, which told the story of a sailor taken by the press-gang just as he reaches his home after a long time at sea.
Further south, John Nicol was beginning to earn a living as a cooper in Edinburgh. He was now forty-eight, a very experienced seaman who had sailed around the world twice and seen many battles. He had also given his new wife a promise that he would not return to sea and yet, as he recorded, ‘the press-gang came in quest of me. I could no longer remain in Edinburgh and avoid them. My wife was like a distracted woman, and gave me no rest until I sold off my stock in trade and the greater part of my furniture, and retired to the country. Even until I got this accomplished I dared not to sleep in my own house, as I had more than one call from the gang.’30 Nicol moved into the countryside to Cousland, 9 miles from Edinburgh, and eventually took a job he disliked in a quarry just to survive. Even here he was not safe: ‘I was becoming a little more reconciled to my lot, when the press-gang came out even to Cousland, and took away a neighbour of the name of Murray. He had a large family, and, through the interest [influence] of the minister and neighbouring gentlemen, he got off. His impressment was a great blow to my tranquillity for many months. For a long time I slept every night either in Dalkeith or Musselburgh, and, during the day, a stranger could not appear near the quarry without causing the most disagreeable sensations to me.’31
The whole of the north-east coast of England and Scotland was frequently raided by press-gangs, and Tyneside was a favourite target. At North Shields one gang was under the command of Lieutenant John Mitchell. On 19 April he took his men across the River Tyne to South Shields, where he was ‘attacked by a Multitude of Pilots and Women, who threw a quantity of Stones and Brickbatts at him, they likewise threatened to hew him down with their Spades, which are very dangerous Weapons, they being round and quite Sharp, with Shanks of about Six feet in length, and likewise threatened to Murder him if he ever came back.’32
Despite the threats, his gang did in fact return on several occasions to South Shields, but never with great success. Only a week later Mitchell and his men went to South Shields early in the morning, and ‘after going a short way along the [river] bank he saw two Seamen run down into the street, when he immediately pursued them and was again attacked by a Mob of Women’.33 One of those who frequently attempted to stop the press-gang’s activities was Dolly Peel, a notorious fishwife and smuggler, and a woman of great wit and humour. She was so tall that she could hide fugitives beneath her voluminous skirts. On one occasion her husband, Ralph (or Cuthbert) Peel, rushed into their home at the top of a house in Shadwell Street (now Wapping Street), right by the river, pursued by the press-gang, who forced open the door. She stopped them pushing past ‘for she possessed phenomenal strength and had the muscles of a man. Thus Dolly held them at bay until her husband had contrived to make his exit through a window in the roof of the house.’34
The following day, ‘when the party landed for a final round-up, they were accompanied by cutlass-armed reinforcements from the receiving ship, lying at Pegg’s Hole, South Shields. They rushed from the boats like an invading army into Pilot Street, brandishing their weapons and impressing all remaining men young and of mature years . . . This time Ralph (Peel) was not allowed to go scot-free.’35 Dolly managed to follow Ralph to sea and is recorded as having helped the surgeon in the warship
’s cockpit during battle. She died at South Shields in 1857 at the age of seventy-five, and a statue of her, unveiled in 1987, overlooks the River Tyne from close to where she lived.
Also in South Shields, the twenty-three-year-old merchant seaman John Wetherell was saying goodbye to his family before he headed back to London to join a merchantman to the West Indies. Hearing rumours of the coming of the press-gang, he hurriedly left by sea for London only to be pressed at the mouth of the River Thames by a gang from the frigate Hussar commanded by Captain Philip Wilkinson. The Hussar was part of a small squadron under the overall command of Sir Sidney Smith that was then actively boarding merchant ships to seize their crews. Wetherell had been travelling with a carpenter’s certificate of protection, but to no avail. With the navy desperate for new recruits, permission had been given by government for the suspension of protections, and since there was a great need for carpenters, Wetherell was taken.
Not all the sailors were pressed men, and even at this time there were still volunteers, like the thirteen-year-old Robert Hay, who ran away from the life of a weaver in the cotton mills of Paisley in Scotland to seek his fame and fortune. He made his way to Greenock with the idea of joining a merchant ship, but he met two other boys who persuaded him that the navy offered better prospects. ‘After rambling about the greater part of the day,’ he recalled, ‘we towards evening repaired to the naval rendezvous. Here we found a lieutenant of the navy, to whom we offered our services . . . We then underwent a surgical [medical] examination, found to be sound in body, and in less than an hour after found ourselves on board of the war vessel a mile or two from shore.’36 It took several days for Hay’s father to track down his runaway son, and as the warship had not sailed, he came on board. Hay recorded that ‘at our meeting where both joy and grief were mingled I could observe in his paternal countenance a mixture of anger and pity . . . he could not refrain from shedding tears on my account. He applied with urgency to the Captain for my discharge, but it would not be obtained without advancing a sum of which alas! he was not master. “Furthermore,” the Captain said, “Hands are too scarce just now . . . and hot as the press is, we cannot get a sufficient supply of seamen. Your son, it is true, will not be of much use to us for some time, but if I can judge from the cut of his jib (eyeing me as he spoke, from head to foot) we have here the makings of a smart fellow.” To all further solicitations he remained inflexible.’37
Robert Hay would have been rated as a Boy, being under the age of eighteen. Those under the age of fifteen were Boys Third Class and those over fifteen were Second Class. Those rated Boys First Class were training to be officers. Adults who had no sea-going experience (of whom many had been pressed) were rated as Landmen, while expert sailors were rated as Able Seamen. Between these two levels of competence were the Ordinary Seamen, who had been to sea before but were not recognised as skilful sailors. This rating system was based on the level of competence of the crew member, although men could be disrated as a punishment, since it meant a drop in pay and privileges, so it was possible to have a skilled seaman rated as a Landman.
Even a few women tried to enlist, and in mid-April 1803 The Times reported that on ‘Thursday morning a young woman, dressed as a seaman, came to one of the rendezvous in Falmouth, for the purpose of entering herself for the navy; but her sex being soon discovered, she was of course rejected. It appears that she belongs to a parish at a small distance from Falmouth, and that her attachment to a young man, who is gone into the navy (and by whom she is by child), actuated her in this extraordinary proceeding, for the sake of following him.’38 The idea of a woman disguising herself as a sailor to find a missing lover was something that captured the popular imagination, and songs such as William Taylor and The Handsome Cabin Boy, now surviving as traditional folk songs, were composed on the theme. In fact a few women did serve in both navy and merchant vessels by passing themselves off as men, but such cases were comparatively rare.
As at the Battle of the Nile, the women on board warships were largely the wives of petty officers, but they were accompanying their husbands, not working as sailors. Just as they took no part in the working of the ship and were there contrary to Admiralty rules, so they were generally free to leave at any time. In May the frigate Hussar, still involved in the hot press, was off Harwich, and John Wetherell recorded in his diary that ‘our Corporal of Marines . . . had his wife on board, a fine young woman. She took sick and died on board. The Boat was order’d to be mann’d next morning, her body put in a shell made by the ship’s joiner, taken out to sea and sunk, at the same time the ship lay within three miles of Harwich.’39 Not burying her on land was regarded by the crew as a grossly inhumane action on the part of Captain Wilkinson, and on 12 May Wetherell noted: ‘This morning several of our Married men’s wives left the ship and went on board the tender and landed in the evening at Harwich. They would not remain on board where such an unfeeling Monster commanded.’40
While mobilisation of the British Navy was in full swing before war was declared, in France unease increased among the British visitors. Fanny Burney wrote to her father on 6 May of her ‘suspense and terror . . . from the daily menace of war’.41 With her husband now employed in France, Fanny had the agonising decision of whether to stay with him or return to Britain before hostilities broke out. On 13 May she added a final paragraph to a letter: ‘Ah, my dearest friends - what a melancholy end to my hopes and my letter. I have just heard that Lord Whitworth set off for Chantilly last night; war therefore seems inevitable; and my grief, I, who feel myself now of two countries, is far greater than I can wish to express.’42
That Lord Whitworth, the British Ambassador, was on his way out of France was a sign that diplomacy had failed, and it was only a matter of time before war was expected to break out. Some British visitors were preparing to leave, and one of these was John Wesley Wright, now a captain, who was still involved with the British Secret Service. He left Paris clandestinely, accompanied by an official from the British Embassy and a locked trunk. The embassy official ensured it passed customs at Dover without being searched, and it reached London unopened, with over two hundredweight of secret maps, plans and manuscripts.
During the peace, travel to France had been relatively cheap, and hundreds of people had made the journey - not just upper-class travellers with their servants, but ladies and gentlemen to see the latest fashions, many young people for whom it was the first opportunity to see France, and businessmen and merchants. With war looking more likely, wary travellers in Britain postponed their plans, but others continued to arrive in France, and the French newspapers encouraged them to stay. On 18 May 1803, only a few days after Wright had reached London, Britain declared war on France.
Many of those still in France rushed to get back home, but on the 23rd a furious Napoleon issued a decree to General Junot, one of his top aides, ordering the arrest of all British men then in France, both civilians who might be liable to military service and those already holding a commission: ‘All Englishmen from the ages of eighteen to sixty, or holding any commission from His Britannic Majesty, who are at present in France, shall immediately be constituted Prisoners of War.’43 Napoleon further insisted that ‘this measure must be executed by seven this evening. I am resolved that to-night not an Englishman shall be visible in the obscurest theatre or restaurant of Paris.’44
The British were outraged, believing this action to be a breach of international law. Lieutenant William Dillon, who had recently moved from the Impress Service at Hull to blockade duty in the frigate Africaine, recorded:On the 18th the war was declared. I believe I am correct as to the date. In the newspapers received by the Packet we were informed of Prizes being taken daily. Bonaparte was terribly annoyed at not being able to humbug us any longer, and the capture of two vessels in Hodierne Bay [Audierne Bay, south of Brest] became the subject of severe controversy, as he insisted that we had taken these vessels previous to the declaration of war. Therefore in retaliation (as he said) he laid
hands upon all the English travellers and residents in France, who thought themselves safe while in possession of their passports. He did not care what he said, if it answered his purpose; the press and the Moniteur being solely under his control.45
Dillon was right - the French vessels were only seized after the declaration of war. He went on to describe the rapid sequence of events: ‘Scarcely had Lord Whitworth quitted Paris before the telegraph spread the order for the detention of his countrymen, and in one night, from Brussels to Montpel[l]ier, from Bordeaux to Geneva, all the British subjects were arrested. Travellers on the road to Spain, Germany or England, even those who were waiting at Calais for a favourable wind, shared the same fate. Some were called out of theatres, others were waked in their beds to sign a paper declaring themselves prisoners of war.’46 The Dover to Calais packet boat, the Prince of Wales, was stopped from sailing back to England with its full load of passengers, and not another packet would sail between the two countries for eleven years.
By his decree, Napoleon was expecting thousands of civilians to be taken, but only about seven or eight hundred were detained. Even boys and elderly men were held, on the grounds that the British could force them into military service, but women were not included in the decree, although some were arrested. Generally, women were at liberty to go free if they wished, along with very young children, but Fanny Burney made her decision to stay in France with her husband and son.
