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Updated: July 15, 2025
"Took by the crimps, you understand, and pressed to serve King George. Oh, but it was a rare spree to see them crimps a-laying in wait for us, and enticing us into their dens, and filling us up with rum till we nearly bust where we sat, so that they could go and bring the pressgang down upon us.
The immense levies made in France, one after the other, had converted the conscription into a sort of pressgang.
He apparently expected to carry the day by opposing the pressgang in a time of peace, and even permitted himself to repudiate philanthropy towards the African negro.
On these occasions he was generally brought back by Meg Merrilies, who, though she could not be prevailed upon to enter the Place of Ellangowan after her nephew had been given up to the pressgang, did not apparently extend her resentment to the child.
The boats at length reached the ship, and the captives were sent below under a guard. Mr Foley, at Gerald's suggestion, gave orders that Dillon especially should be strictly watched, as should any of them leap overboard, they were sure to have friends waiting in readiness to pick them up. This was only one of several expeditions made by the pressgang on shore, though none were so successful.
By and by, however, a sough and pattering of feet was heard approaching; and shortly after, in looking out, we saw the pressgang, headed by their officers, with cutlasses by their side, and great club-sticks in their hands. They said nothing; but the sound of their feet on the silent stones of the causey, was as the noise of a dreadful engine.
Travelling in those days was so slow that it took him a full month to get to High Leigh in Cheshire; and on the way he narrowly escaped being captured by the pressgang and made to serve on a British man-of-war, which was short of hands.
"It is in a private dockyard, where, if you are steady and attentive you will, I am certain, obtain a still more lucrative employment," he remarked; "had it been war time I should have tried to obtain an appointment in the Royal Dockyard, because you would then have had protection from the pressgang; but now you need have no fear of that." Two days after that, war again broke out with France!
As may be supposed, old Martin Goul and his poor witless wife were in a sad taking when they found that their son had been carried off by a pressgang. Old Goul vowed vengeance against those who had managed to have his son spirited away. His own days, however, were coming to a close.
He did not return, and for several days Adam could gain no tidings of his son, though he suspected what had occurred. At length he received a letter from Ben saying that he had been seized by a pressgang, and that he was on board a frigate destined for the East India station.
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