But if the Admiralty became urgent in their demands, they were also
willing to be unscrupulous. Landsmen, if able-bodied, might soon be
trained into good sailors; and once in the hold of the tender, which
always awaited the success of the operations of the press-gang, it
was difficult for such prisoners to bring evidence of the nature of
their former occupations, especially when none had leisure to listen
to such evidence, or were willing to believe it if they did listen,
or would act upon it for the release of the captive if they had by
possibility both listened and believed. Men were kidnapped,
literally disappeared, and nothing was ever heard of them again. The
street of a busy town was not safe from such press-gang captures, as
Lord Thurlow could have told, after a certain walk he took about
this time on Tower Hill, when he, the attorney-general of England,
was impressed, when the Admiralty had its own peculiar ways of
getting rid of tiresome besiegers and petitioners. Nor yet were
lonely inland dwellers more secure; many a rustic went to a statute
fair or 'mop,' and never came home to tell of his hiring; many a
stout young farmer vanished from his place by the hearth of his
father, and was no more heard of by mother or lover; so great was
the press for men to serve in the navy during the early years of the
war with France, and after every great naval victory of that war.

The servants of the Admiralty lay in wait for all merchantmen and
traders; there were many instances of vessels returning home after
long absence, and laden with rich cargo, being boarded within a
day's distance of land, and so many men pressed and carried off,
that the ship, with her cargo, became unmanageable from the loss of
her crew, drifted out again into the wild wide ocean, and was
sometimes found in the helpless guidance of one or two infirm or
ignorant sailors; sometimes such vessels were never heard of more.