seduced." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 233--Admiral Vernon,
5 Sept. 1742. A rare recruiting sheet of 1780, which has for its
headpiece a volunteer shouting: "Rum for nothing!" describes Jamaica
as "that delightful Island, abounding in Rum, Sugar and Spanish
Dollars, where there is delicious living and plenty of GROGG and
PUNCH."]

At Louisberg, in the Island of Cape Breton, the North American
Squadron in 1746 lost so many men through the seductions practised by
New England skippers frequenting that port, that Townsend, the admiral
in command, indited a strongly worded protest to Shirley, then
Governor of Massachusetts; but the latter, though deploring the "vile
behaviour" of the skippers in question, could do nothing to put a stop
to it. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 480--Townsend, 17 Aug.;
Shirley, 12 Sept. 1746.] As a matter of fact he did not try.

On the coast of Carolina many of the English merchantmen in 1743 paid
from seventeen to twenty guineas for the run home, and in addition "as
many pounds of Sugar, Gallons of Rum and pounds of Tobacco as pounds
in Money." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1 1479-Capt. Bladwell,
1 July 1743.]

The lust for privateering had much to answer for in this respect. So
possessed were the Virginians by the desire to get rich at the expense
of their enemies that they quite "forgot their allegiance to the
King." By the offer of inordinately high wages and rich prizes they
did their utmost to seduce carpenters, gunners, sailmakers and able
seamen from His Majesty's ships. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
1. 1480--Capt. Lord Alexander Banff, 21 Oct. 1744.] Any ship forced to
winter at Rhode Island, again, always counted upon losing enough men