![]() National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London During times of war and other crises, mobs deputized by the Royal Navy would roam the docks and wharves of Great Britain and her colonies in search of potential seafarers to man military ships. “Manning the Navy,” a satirical depiction of a British press gang from 1790. Whether English, Irish, American, or Canadian, any subject of the British Empire with seafaring experience was vulnerable to abduction. In the 18th and early 19th centuries fishermen and merchant seamen like Urquhart lived in fear of “press gangs,” groups of ruffians who roamed the nighttime streets, searching for victims to “impress” into the British navy. But unfortunately Urquhart’s experience was far from unique. They “tore my coat from my back, and afterwards me by the neck for fifty yards, until life was nearly exhausted,” wrote Urquhart in a letter that described the assault.įortunately for Urquhart passersby intervened, and the attackers fled. ![]() As the outraged Urquhart demanded to know by what right the man questioned him, three or four men seized him, smacked him on the head, and dragged him along the street. One summer evening in 1808, while on a stroll through London with his wife and sister-in-law, sailor Thomas Urquhart was accosted by a stranger who wanted to know his name. ![]()
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