The percentage of men thus 'raised' was small. Sometimes
there is a note stating that the man had been allowed to enter
from the '----shire Militia.' A rare note is 'Brought on board
by soldiers,' which most likely indicated that the man had been
recaptured when attempting to desert. It is sometimes asserted
that many men who volunteered did so only to escape impressment.
This may be so; but it should be said that there are frequent
notations against the names of 'prest' men that they afterwards
volunteered. This shows the care that was taken to ascertain the
real conditions on which a man entered the service. For the purposes
of this inquiry all these men have been considered as impressed,
and they have not been counted amongst the volunteers. It is,
perhaps, permissible to set off against such men the number of
those who allowed themselves to be impressed to escape inconveniences
likely to be encountered if they remained at home. Of two John
Westlakes, ordinary seamen of the _Boadicea_, one--John (I.)--was
'prest,' but was afterwards 'taken out of the ship for a debt
of twenty pounds'; which shows that he had preferred to trust
himself to the press-gang rather than to his creditors. Without
being unduly imaginative, we may suppose that in 1803 there were
heroes who preferred being 'carried off' to defend their country
afloat to meeting the liabilities of putative paternity in their
native villages.
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