The historical evidence on which the belief in the prevalence
of impressment as a method of recruiting the navy for more than
a hundred years is based, is limited to contemporary statements
in the English newspapers, and especially in the issues of the
periodical called _The_Naval_Chronicle_, published in 1803,
the first year of the war following the rupture of the Peace
of Amiens. Readers of Captain Mahan's works on Sea-Power will
remember the picture he draws of the activity of the press-gang
in that year, his authority being _The_Naval_Chronicle_. This
evidence will be submitted directly to close examination, and
we shall see what importance ought to be attached to it. In the
great majority of cases, however, the belief above mentioned has
no historical foundation, but is to be traced to the frequency
with which the supposed operations of the press-gang were used
by the authors of naval stories and dramas, and by artists who
took scenes of naval life for their subject. Violent seizure and
abduction lend themselves to effective treatment in literature
and in art, and writers and painters did not neglect what was
so plainly suggested.
A fruitful source of the widespread belief that our navy in the old
days was chiefly manned by recourse to compulsion, is a confusion
between two words of independent origin and different meaning,
which, in ages when exact spelling was not thought indispensable,
came to be written and pronounced alike.
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