Of late years great attention has been paid to our naval history, and many even of its obscure byways have been explored.  A general result of the investigation is that we are enabled to form a high estimate of the merits of our naval administration in former centuries.  We find that for a long time the navy has possessed an efficient organisation; that its right position as an element of the national defences was understood ages ago; and that English naval officers of a period which is now very remote showed by their actions that they exactly appreciated and—­when necessary—­were able to apply the true principles of maritime warfare.  If anyone still believes that the country has been saved more than once merely by lucky chances of weather, and that the England of Elizabeth has been converted into the great oceanic and colonial British Empire of Victoria in ‘a fit of absence of mind,’ it will not be for want of materials with which to form a correct judgment on these points.

It has been accepted generally that the principal method of manning our fleet in the past—­especially when war threatened to arise—­was to seize and put men on board the ships by force.  This has been taken for granted by many, and it seems to have been assumed that, in any case, there is no way of either proving it or disproving it.  The truth, however, is that it is possible and—­at least as regards the period of our last great naval war—­not difficult to make sure if it is true or not.  Records covering a long succession of years still exist, and in these can be found the name of nearly every seaman in the navy and a statement of the conditions on which he joined it.  The exceptions would not amount to more than a few hundreds out of many tens of thousands of names, and would be due to the disappearance—­in itself very infrequent—­of some of the documents and to occasional, but also very rare, inaccuracies in the entries.

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 TheNaval_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 TheNaval_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.