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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wilphe" data-source="post: 2235141" data-attributes="member: 8221">Well that depends if you can get out of your commitments by saying "I'm not British anymore, I'm a citizen of the US* which by the way didn't even exist when I was born"&In certain circumstances you'd get treated as British even if you weren't born there; either through serving on a British merchant ship for long enough or marrying a British citizen.* Regardless the Admiralty would probably have respected American protections had they been worth the paper they were written on - but they weren't.All you had to do was go to an American Consul and swear that you were an American citizen - the Consul would then give a signed Protection stating that they had seen you swear that you were an American citizen. At no point did they check up that you were who you said you were; nor did that Protection have a description on it so you could sell it on to somone else for cash.When the Admiralty gave a Protection they included a description and, because they had a centrally administered system, were able to ensure that they were only given out to people who actually existed.I'm not saying that people didn't get pressed who shouldn't have been; it's just a matter of putting the other side of the argument. It depends how desperate they are for men and how tolerant the pressing officer is for the same old excuses he heard last time.</blockquote>