It is a reasonable presumption that, except perhaps on a single occasion, the merchant service did not furnish the men required—­not from any want of patriotism or of public spirit, but simply because it was impossible.  Even as regards the single exception the evidence is not uncontested; and by itself, though undoubtedly strong, it is not convincing, in view of the well-grounded presumptions the other way.  The question then that naturally arises is—­If the navy did not fill up its complements from the merchant service, how did it fill them up?  The answer is easy.  Our naval complements were filled up largely with boys, largely with landsmen, largely with fishermen, whose numbers permitted this without inconvenience to their trade in general, and, to a small extent, with merchant seamen.  It may be suggested that the men wanted by the navy could have been passed on to it from our merchant vessels, which could then complete their own crews with boys, landsmen, and fishermen.  It was the age in which Dr. Price was a great authority on public finance, the age of Mr. Pitt’s sinking fund, when borrowed money was repaid with further borrowings; so that a corresponding roundabout method for manning the navy may have had attractions for some people.  A conclusive reason why it was not adopted is that its adoption would have been possible only at the cost of disorganising such a great industrial undertaking as our maritime trade.  That this disorganisation did not arise is proved by the fact that our merchant service flourished and expanded.

It is widely supposed that, wherever the men wanted for the navy may have come from, they were forced into it by the system of ‘impressment.’  The popular idea of a man-of-war’s ‘lower deck’ of a century ago is that it was inhabited by a ship’s company which had been captured by the press-gang and was restrained from revolting by the presence of a detachment of marines.  The prevalence of the belief that seamen were ‘raised’—­’recruited’ is not a naval term—­for the navy by forcible means can be accounted for without difficulty.  The supposed ubiquity of the press-gang and its violent procedure added much picturesque detail, and even romance, to stories of naval life.  Stories connected with it, if authentic, though rare, would, indeed, make a deep impression on the public; and what was really the exception would be taken for the rule.  There is no evidence to show that even from the middle of the seventeenth century any considerable number of men was raised by forcible impressment.  I am not acquainted with a single story of the press-gang which, even when much embellished, professes to narrate the seizure of more than an insignificant body.  The allusions to forcible impressment made by naval historians are, with few exceptions, complaints of the utter inefficiency of the plan.  In Mr. David, Hannay’s excellent ’Short History of the Royal Navy’ will be found more than one illustration of its inefficient working in the seventeenth century.