is favourable, “The sea, the sea, the open sea,” is the word with all. What bustle and confusion! What making fast and casting off of ropes! How the captains shout! How the men swear! How the dock-masters rush about! What horrible “confusion worse confounded” seems to prevail! And yet there is method in all this seeming madness. Order will presently come out of all this apparent chaos. The vessels pass through the dockgates. Meat and bread are tossed on board of them at the last moment. Friends are bidding farewell! Wives tremble and look pale. There is a tear in the stout-hearted sailor’s eye as he waves his adieu. But, “Give way, give way there, my lads; heave away my hearties!” The vessel clears the dock, passes through the gut, and then pauses for a brief space at the pier, while the sails are set and trimmed. Then comes the final word, “Cast off that rope!” and many a time have we, at hearing it, tugged with our tiny hands until we have succeeded in effecting it, and then strutted away as proudly as if we had just won Waterloo or Trafalgar. And now the sails fill; she moves, she starts, there is a cheer, “Off she goes!” dashing the spray on either side of her as soon as ever she feels the breeze. And now all the river is alive. The heavy Baltic vessels are creeping away. The Americans, always the same, are cracking along with every stitch of canvas they can carry. The West Indiamen sail nobly along, like the very rulers of the ocean. There are the coasters, and the Irish traders, and packets, while the smart pilot-boat dashes along under easy sail, here, there, and everywhere almost at the same time. And so they go on, until, like a dissolving view, they are lost behind the Rock, and we retire from our post, with the determination to be there again when the same scene is repeated.
ut the peace of which we spoke in our last chapter was nothing but a hollow and armed truce, which gave both parties time to breathe for a few months. England was suspicious. Napoleon was ambitious. The press galled him to the quick. At all events, “the dogs of war” were hardly tied up before they were again “let slip”; and then into what a bustle, and what a fever of excitement, do we remember old Liverpool to have been plunged. What cautions and precautions we used to take, both by land and water. We had a venerable guard ship in the river, the “Princess,” which we believe had originally been a Dutch man-of-war, and, if built to swim, was certainly never intended to sail. There she used to lie at her moorings, opposite the old George’s Dock pier, lazily swinging backwards and forwards, with the ebbing and flowing of the tide, and looking as if she had been built expressly for that very purpose and no other. Her very shadow seemed to grow into that part of the river on which she lay. But, besides her, we had generally some old-fashioned vessel of war, which had come round from Portsmouth or Plymouth to receive volunteers, or impressed men. A word about these last. Those who live in these “piping times of peace” have no idea of the means which were employed in the days of which we are speaking, to man our vessels of war. The sailors in our merchant service had to run the gauntlet, as it were, for their liberty, from one end of the world to the other. A ship of war, falling in with a merchant vessel in any part of the globe, would unceremoniously take from her the best seamen, leaving her just hands enough to bring her home. As they approached the English shore, our cruisers, hovering in all directions, would take their pick of the remainder. But the great terror of the sailor was the press gang. Such was the dread in which this force was held by the blue-jackets, that they would often take to their boats on the other side of the Black Rock, that they might conceal themselves in Cheshire; and many a vessel had to be brought into port by a lot of riggers and carpenters, sent round by the owner for that purpose. And, truly, according to our reminiscences, the press-gang was, even to look at, something calculated to strike fear into a stout man’s heart. They had what they called a “Rendezvous,” in different parts of the town. There was one we recollect, in Old Strand-street. From the upper window there was always a flag flying, to notify to volunteers what sort of business was transacted there. But look at the door, and at the people who are issuing from it. They are the Press-gang. At their head there was generally a rakish, dissipated, but determined looking officer, in a very seedy uniform and shabby hat. And what followers! Fierce, savage, stern, villainous-looking fellows were they, as ready to cut a throat as eat their breakfast. What an uproar their appearance always made in the streets! The men scowled at them as they passed; the women openly scoffed at them; the children screamed, and hid themselves behind doors or fled round the corners. And how rapidly the word was passed from mouth to mouth, that there were “hawks abroad,” so as to give time to any poor sailor who had incautiously ventured from his place of concealment to return to it. But woe unto him if there were no warning voice to tell him of the coming danger; he was seized upon as if he were a common felon, deprived of his liberty, torn from his home, his friends, his parents, wife or children, hurried to the rendezvous-house, examined, passed, and sent on board the tender, like a negro to a slave-ship. And so it went on, until the floating prison was filled with captives, when the living cargo was sent round to one of the outports, and the prisoners were divided among the vessels of war which were in want of men. Persons of the present generation have certainly heard of the press-gang, but they never attempt to realise the horrors by which it was accompanied. Nay, the generality seem to us to hardly believe in its existence, but rather to classify it with Gulliver’s Travels, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, or the Heathen Mythology. But we can recollect its working. We have seen the strong man bent to tears, and reduced to woman’s weakness by it. We have seen parents made, as it were, childless, through its operation; the wife widowed, with a husband yet alive; children orphaned by the forcible abduction of their fathers. And yet, there were many in those days, not only naval men, but statesmen and legislators, who venerated the press-gang as one of the pillars and institutions of the country. In those days, indeed! We much fear that, if even now we could look into the heart of hearts of many a veteran admiral and captain, we should find that they have, in the event of a war, no other plan in their heads for manning the navy but a return to this dreadful and oppressive system. We would, however, recommend those in whose department it lies to be devising some other scheme, as we are strongly impressed with the conviction that public opinion will not in these days tolerate, under any plea or excuse of necessity, such an infringement upon the liberty of the subject. But we are not writing a political article, but only describing our old-world fashions. Pretty rows and riots, you may suppose, now and then occurred between the press-gang and the fighting part of the public; and not a few do we remember to have witnessed in our younger days. On more than one occasion we have seen a rendezvous-house gutted and levelled to the ground.
Sometimes the sailors and their friends would show fight, and, as the mob always joined them, the press-gang invariably got the worst of it in such battles. Sometimes, too, the press-gangers would “get into the wrong box,” and “take the wrong sow by the ear,” by seizing an American sailor or a carpenter, and then there was sure to be a squall. The bells from the shipbuilding yards would boom out their warning call in the latter case, and thousands would muster to set their companion at liberty. A press-gangman was occasionally tarred and feathered in those days, when caught alone. We remember, as if it were only yesterday, walking down South Castle Street (it was Pool Lane then), with the Old Dock, where the Custom-house now stands, before us. It was, for some reason or other, tolerably clear of ships at the time. We well remember, however, that there was one large vessel, or hulk, somewhere about the middle. Before we tell what happened, we must observe that, attached to the Strand Street press-gang, there was one most extra piratical-looking scoundrel, named Jack Something-or-other. Perhaps, as is often the case, “they gave the devil more than his due;” but, if one half of the things said against this Jack were true, he deserved to be far and away prince and potentate and prime minister in Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors. Well, as aforesaid, the Old Dock was in front of us, when all at once we heard a noise behind us, which told us that the game was up, and the hounds well laid on and in full cry.
At the same moment, Jack shot past us, like an arrow from a bow, while hundreds of men, women, and children, were howling, shouting, screaming, yelling, threatening close behind him. Every street sent forth its crowd to intercept him. There
is favourable, “The sea, the sea, the open sea,” is the word with all. What bustle and confusion! What making fast and casting off of ropes! How the captains shout! How the men swear! How the dock-masters rush about! What horrible “confusion worse confounded” seems to prevail! And yet there is method in all this seeming madness. Order will presently come out of all this apparent chaos. The vessels pass through the dockgates. Meat and bread are tossed on board of them at the last moment. Friends are bidding farewell! Wives tremble and look pale. There is a tear in the stout-hearted sailor’s eye as he waves his adieu. But, “Give way, give way there, my lads; heave away my hearties!” The vessel clears the dock, passes through the gut, and then pauses for a brief space at the pier, while the sails are set and trimmed. Then comes the final word, “Cast off that rope!” and many a time have we, at hearing it, tugged with our tiny hands until we have succeeded in effecting it, and then strutted away as proudly as if we had just won Waterloo or Trafalgar. And now the sails fill; she moves, she starts, there is a cheer, “Off she goes!” dashing the spray on either side of her as soon as ever she feels the breeze. And now all the river is alive. The heavy Baltic vessels are creeping away. The Americans, always the same, are cracking along with every stitch of canvas they can carry. The West Indiamen sail nobly along, like the very rulers of the ocean. There are the coasters, and the Irish traders, and packets, while the smart pilot-boat dashes along under easy sail, here, there, and everywhere almost at the same time. And so they go on, until, like a dissolving view, they are lost behind the Rock, and we retire from our post, with the determination to be there again when the same scene is repeated.
