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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6134781" data-attributes="member: 22424">I've been reading the &quot;Master and Commander&quot; novels by Patrick O'Brian over the last several months which, not surprisingly, have a few things to say about the press-gangs. In particular, it appears that there were some laws about who could and could not (legally) be pressed that have not yet been mentioned here, though I'm inferring that from their comments about who could be pressed...Specifically, the books make mention that a person could be pressed provided they have &quot;been to sea&quot; in the past. That is, once you've served on a ship in the past, you're fair game to be pressed. And in at least one instance, the books mention an outbound ship being crewed by pressing the crew of a returning ship just before they disembarked.Of course, ships were also crewed by scouring the jails for criminals who could serve, much as in &quot;Game of Thrones&quot; and the Men of the Knight's Watch.Finally, I'm not sure if it's related to press-gangs or to conscription, but something I've seen in museums here is a tankard with a coin build into the base. The idea being that the gangmaster would buy the proespective conscript a drink using this tankard. Once they'd drunk it, they were considered to have &quot;taken the king's shilling&quot;... at which point they could legally be conscripted/pressed (even if they then returned the tankard).It's also important to note that the reality of the situation is that the law was often implemented... unevenly. There was a certain amount of trickery, a certain amount of abduction, and a distinct lack of due process (or any equivalent). And, as noted up-thread, once you're on the ship, you're stuck - work or die.(Oh, and I'm slightly amused that PC noted nobody had linked to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>... and then didn't link to it himself. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )</blockquote>

[QUOTE="delericho, post: 6134781, member: 22424"] I've been reading the "Master and Commander" novels by Patrick O'Brian over the last several months which, not surprisingly, have a few things to say about the press-gangs. In particular, it appears that there were some laws about who could and could not (legally) be pressed that have not yet been mentioned here, though I'm inferring that from their comments about who [i]could[/i] be pressed... Specifically, the books make mention that a person could be pressed provided they have "been to sea" in the past. That is, once you've served on a ship in the past, you're fair game to be pressed. And in at least one instance, the books mention an outbound ship being crewed by pressing the crew of a returning ship just before they disembarked. Of course, ships were also crewed by scouring the jails for criminals who could serve, much as in "Game of Thrones" and the Men of the Knight's Watch. Finally, I'm not sure if it's related to press-gangs or to conscription, but something I've seen in museums here is a tankard with a coin build into the base. The idea being that the gangmaster would buy the proespective conscript a drink using this tankard. Once they'd drunk it, they were considered to have "taken the king's shilling"... at which point they could legally be conscripted/pressed (even if they then returned the tankard). It's also important to note that the reality of the situation is that the law was often implemented... unevenly. There was a certain amount of trickery, a certain amount of abduction, and a distinct lack of due process (or any equivalent). And, as noted up-thread, once you're on the ship, you're stuck - work or die. (Oh, and I'm slightly amused that PC noted nobody had linked to [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment"]Wikipedia[/URL]... and then didn't link to it himself. :) ) [/QUOTE]

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