Until the ship was paid off and thus put out of commission—­or, in the case of a very long commission, until ‘new books’ were ordered to be opened so as to escape the inconveniences due to the repetition of large numbers of entries—­the name of every man that had belonged to her remained on the list, his disposal—­if no longer in the ship—­being noted in the proper column.  One column was headed ’Whence, and whether prest or not?’ In this was noted his former ship, or the fact of his being entered direct from the shore, which answered to the question ‘Whence?’ There is reason to believe that the muster-book being, as above said, primarily an account-book, the words ‘whether prest or not’ were originally placed at the head of the column so that it might be noted against each man entered whether he had been paid ‘prest-money’ or not.  However this may be, the column at the beginning of the nineteenth century was used for a record of the circumstances of the man’s entering the ship, whether he had been transferred from another, had joined as a volunteer from the shore, or had been impressed.

I have examined the muster-book of every ship mentioned in the Admiralty letter to the Board of Ordnance above referred to, and also of the ships mentioned in TheNaval_Chronicle_ as fitting out in the early part of 1803.  There are altogether thirty-three ships; but two of them, the Utrecht and the Gelykheid, were used as temporary receiving ships for newly raised men.[61] The names on their lists are, therefore, merely those of men who were passed on to other ships, in whose muster-books they appeared again.  There remained thirty-one ships which, as far as could be ascertained, account for the additional force which the Government had decided to put in commission, more than two-thirds of them being ships of the line.  As already stated, their total complements amounted to 17,234, and the number of the ‘blue-jackets’ of full age to at least 11,500.  The muster-books appear to have been kept with great care.  The only exception seems to be that of the Victory, in which there is some reason to think the number of men noted as ‘prest’ has been over-stated owing to an error in copying the earlier book.  Ships in 1803 did not get their full crews at once, any more than they did half a century later.  I have, therefore, thought it necessary to take the muster-books for the months in which the crews had been brought up to completion.

[Footnote 61:  The words ‘recruit’ and ‘enlist,’ except as regards marines, are unknown in the navy, in which they are replaced by ‘raise’ and ‘enter.’]