The muster-books examined cover several months, during which
many 'prest' men were discharged and some managed to desert,
so that the total was never present at anyone time. That total
amounts to 1782. It is certain that even this is larger than
the reality, because it has been found impossible--without an
excessive expenditure of time and labour--to trace the cases
of men being sent from one ship to another, and thus appearing
twice over, or oftener, as 'prest' men. As an example of this
the _Minotaur_ may be cited. Out of twenty names on one page of
her muster-book thirteen are those of 'prest' men discharged to
other ships. The discharges from the _Victory_ were numerous; and
the _Ardent_, which was employed in keeping up communication with
the ships off Brest, passed men on to the latter when required. I
have, however, made no deductions from the 'prest' total to meet
these cases. We can see that not more than 1782 men, and probably
considerably fewer, were impressed to meet the increase of the
navy during the greater part of 1803. Admitting that there were
cases of impressment from merchant vessels abroad to complete
the crews of our men-of-war in distant waters, the total number
impressed--including these latter--could not have exceeded greatly
the figures first given. We know that owing to the reduction of
1802, as stated by Sir Sydney Smith, the seamen were looking
for ships rather than the ships for seamen.
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