Sylvias Lovers | Page 4

parties of soldiers patrolling the streets, and sentries with screwed
bayonets placed at every door while the press-gang entered and
searched each hole and corner of the dwelling; when we hear of
churches being surrounded during divine service by troops, while the
press-gang stood ready at the door to seize men as they came out from
attending public worship, and take these instances as merely types of
what was constantly going on in different forms, we do not wonder at
Lord Mayors, and other civic authorities in large towns, complaining
that a stop was put to business by the danger which the tradesmen and
their servants incurred in leaving their houses and going into the streets,
infested by press-gangs.
Whether it was that living in closer neighbourhood to the
metropolis--the centre of politics and news--inspired the inhabitants of
the southern counties with a strong feeling of that kind of patriotism
which consists in hating all other nations; or whether it was that the
chances of capture were so much greater at all the southern ports that
the merchant sailors became inured to the danger; or whether it was
that serving in the navy, to those familiar with such towns as
Portsmouth and Plymouth, had an attraction to most men from the dash
and brilliancy of the adventurous employment--it is certain that the
southerners took the oppression of press-warrants more submissively
than the wild north-eastern people. For with them the chances of profit
beyond their wages in the whaling or Greenland trade extended to the
lowest description of sailor. He might rise by daring and saving to be a
ship-owner himself. Numbers around him had done so; and this very

fact made the distinction between class and class less apparent; and the
common ventures and dangers, the universal interest felt in one pursuit,
bound the inhabitants of that line of coast together with a strong tie, the
severance of which by any violent extraneous measure, gave rise to
passionate anger and thirst for vengeance. A Yorkshireman once said to
me, 'My county folk are all alike. Their first thought is how to resist.
Why! I myself, if I hear a man say it is a fine day, catch myself trying
to find out that it is no such thing. It is so in thought; it is so in word; it
is so in deed.'
So you may imagine the press-gang had no easy time of it on the
Yorkshire coast. In other places they inspired fear, but here rage and
hatred. The Lord Mayor of York was warned on 20th January, 1777, by
an anonymous letter, that 'if those men were not sent from the city on
or before the following Tuesday, his lordship's own dwelling, and the
Mansion-house also, should be burned to the ground.'
Perhaps something of the ill-feeling that prevailed on the subject was
owing to the fact which I have noticed in other places similarly situated.
Where the landed possessions of gentlemen of ancient family but
limited income surround a centre of any kind of profitable trade or
manufacture, there is a sort of latent ill-will on the part of the squires to
the tradesman, be he manufacturer, merchant, or ship-owner, in whose
hands is held a power of money-making, which no hereditary pride, or
gentlemanly love of doing nothing, prevents him from using. This
ill-will, to be sure, is mostly of a negative kind; its most common form
of manifestation is in absence of speech or action, a sort of torpid and
genteel ignoring all unpleasant neighbours; but really the
whale-fisheries of Monkshaven had become so impertinently and
obtrusively prosperous of late years at the time of which I write, the
Monkshaven ship-owners were growing so wealthy and consequential,
that the squires, who lived at home at ease in the old stone
manor-houses scattered up and down the surrounding moorland, felt
that the check upon the Monkshaven trade likely to be inflicted by the
press-gang, was wisely ordained by the higher powers (how high they
placed these powers I will not venture to say), to prevent overhaste in
getting rich, which was a scriptural fault, and they also thought that

they were only doing their duty in backing up the Admiralty warrants
by all the civil power at their disposal, whenever they were called upon,
and whenever they could do so without taking too much trouble in
affairs which did not after all much concern themselves.
There was just another motive in the minds of some provident parents
of many daughters. The captains and lieutenants employed on this
service were mostly agreeable bachelors, brought up to a genteel
profession, at the least they were very pleasant visitors, when they had
a day to spare; who knew what might come of it?
Indeed, these brave officers were not unpopular