Elizabeth Donne joins us this week with facts about Royal Navy Press Gangs and the part they play in her novella in Moonlight Madness.
My novella, “Always with You,” appears in the Bluestocking Belles’ Halloween-themed anthology, Moonlight Madness, which is available for pre-order until its launch October 15. The price will revert to retail after that.
This novella tells the story of Florrie and her husband, Jesse Dobbs, who is press-ganged into service by the Royal Navy in 1815.
Researching these impressment activities was both heartbreaking and enlightening. Here is some of what I learned.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy’s duties were extensive. They included such basic tasks as transporting men and supplies, creating blockades to prevent the enemy from replenishing their soldiers and stocks, and actual warfare activities involving highly destructive cannon fire.
However, Britain had its fingers in pies all over the world. Even though it wasn’t at war with all these nations, it was using its navy to protect its interests by patrolling the coasts of its colonies and offering escorts to its merchant ships along trade routes. Needless to say, such far-reaching responsibilities necessitated an enormous number of crew members.
Sailors, of course, preferred life on somewhat safer merchant ships where they received better pay and a chance to go home between voyages. By comparison, naval conscription lasted years, and the likelihood of death as a result of battle, malnutrition, or disease was high enough to frighten off volunteers. However, experienced sailors were valuable to the navy. So, when authorities ran short of willing participants, the government sanctioned the use of press-gangs. Or, to put it bluntly, brute-force kidnappers.
Armed groups patrolled docks, taverns, and nearby places for seafaring men they could manhandle into conscription. At times of extreme need, the gangs might even go into the countryside in search of possible victims. The law allowed the forcible taking of men of “seafaring habits,” aged 18 to 55. However, the press-gangs might grab anyone hale and healthy enough to be of use if the need was great. The only men safe from such action were apprentices (who had to prove they were bound by contract) and, of course, gentlemen.
One way to draw men hiding from press gangs out into the open was to start some kind of riot. My novella contains a scene based on a true event where the press-gang thugs pretended to take the women since they had not met their quota of men. Needless to say, the men came out to save their kinfolk and were duly nabbed.
Merchant vessels out at sea were also not safe from such gangs. In fact, American merchant ships were favorite targets, and relentless impressment was cited as one of the reasons for the War of 1812.
Once aboard a navy vessel, impressed men were typically not given shore leave for fear they would desert. One of the very few legal ways to escape the life they’d been forced into was serious injury. If the wound was severe enough to require treatment on land, their ship might sail while they are recovering and they’d be free to go. Sometimes only to be conscripted again.
As you can see, it was a harrowing time for simple, honest folk. It affected not only the men, but the women who loved them and depended on them.
About the Book, Moonlight Madness
When the year grows colder and the veil between worlds grows thin—or so they say—comes the time for stories to make you shiver. The Bluestocking Belles bring ghosts, and ghoulies, and spirits of all kinds, Eight authors, eight stories, each leading to love, the greatest madness of all.
https://books2read.com/u/4Dwnjr
About the Story, “Always With You”
Jessie and Florrie Dobbs live a simple, happy life selling fish at Weymouth docks. That is, until the Navy press-gangs Jessie into service, forcing husband and wife apart without any idea of where he will be going, how long he will be away, or whether he will ever return.
Each must cope with their new challenges alone, bolstered only by memories of each other and the hope that they will be together again. All the while, the silence between them stretches on interminably.
Can Jessie keep his promise to return to Florrie? Or will they only be reunited in the next life?
About the Author
Elizabeth Donne’s writing is a natural outpouring of a lifelong love affair with English literature. Although she has spent most of her life in Cape Town, South Africa, she now lives in the American Midwest, where she enthusiastically introduces her visitors to the joys of drinking rooibos tea. With a biscuit, of course.
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