Youth, Heroism and War Propaganda: Britain and the young maritime hero, 1745–1820

摘要

Ascertaining the rate of impressment is complicated because of its many moving parts, such as variations in time and place, and men turned over to different ships. Dancy masters these difficulties, producing impressive and detailed data on the recruitment and service of sailors. Yet, as Rogers and others have pointed out, calculating the rate of impressment is not only complicated but also complex because numbers are open to interpretation. Indeed, Dancy himself disputes how Rogers has interpreted the number of impressment riots: given the high level of political tensions in eighteenth-century Britain, Dancy claims that one riot for every 750 men impressed (or even one for every 375, using Dancy’s figures) is hardly evidence of a population at arms over impressment. By contrast, Rogers compares the overall number of impressment riots with food and industrial affrays, arguing that impressment – like food shortages and industrialization – was a significant social problem in eighteenthcentury Britain. Moreover, historians such as Rogers are suspicious of muster books, not only because they are the Navy’s records, but also because these historians are interested in coerced labour, not simply impressment. As Denver Brunsman explains in The Evil Necessity: British naval impressment in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world (2013), men taken up by the press gang might volunteer for service (thereby customarily receiving a bonus) once they realized there was no escaping, making volunteer numbers less than straightforward. As a result, social historians who already doubt the objectivity of naval records may not be convinced by Dancy’s statistical analysis.