The tavern legend of the king’s shilling hidden in a tankard is a myth: press officers faced fines for trickery, and volunteers got a cooling off period. The real system was impressment. Between 1793 and 1812 the Royal Navy grew from about 135 ships and 36,000 men to 584 ships and 114,000 men. Conditions deterred volunteers: planners expected up to half a crew to die on major voyages, mostly from scurvy; inflation eroded navy pay while merchant wages could double in wartime; and the navy withheld six months to two years of pay to prevent desertion, which still averaged 25 percent a year. Press gangs targeted seafaring men aged 18 to 55, spotted by their rolling gait, tans, tar stains, and tattoos, and in a hot press they tore up protection papers.

Most pressing happened at sea, as warships stopped homebound merchant ships and took their best hands, so merchant captains built hidden compartments. Under the 1795 to 1815 quota system counties emptied their jails, spreading typhus through fleets. Local juries acquitted men who killed press gang members, and Americans resisted too. Britain’s refusal to recognize naturalized American citizenship led it to take an estimated 6,500 sailors from American ships, a leading cause of the War of 1812. Mass impressment ended after Napoleon surrendered in 1814.

• The Dutch warship Staten Generaal lost 428 of its 550 men to desertion in 1795.
• At Easton on the Isle of Portland in 1803, a press gang fired on quarrymen and killed four people.
• Thomas Urquhart, seized on a London street in 1808, sued his attackers in the Court of King’s Bench and won.
• In 1757 about 3,000 Royal Navy sailors swept New York City and hauled in 800 men.
• Continental Navy captain James Nicholson illegally pressed about 30 Baltimore citizens in 1777 until Maryland’s governor intervened.