prominence during the century, escaped this unpleasant but necessary
duty in their younger days. But on shore an altogether different order
of things prevailed.

[Illustration: MANNING THE NAVY. Reproduced by kind permission from a
rare print in the collection of Mr. A. M. Broadley.]

The impress service ashore was essentially the grave of promotion.
Whether through age, fault, misfortune or lack of influence in high
places, the officers who directed it were generally disappointed men,
service derelicts whose chances of ever sporting a second "swab," or
of again commanding a ship, had practically vanished. Naval men afloat
spoke of them with good-natured contempt as "Yellow Admirals," the
fictitious rank denoting a kind of service quarantine that knew no
pratique.

Like the salt junk of the foremast--man, the Yellow Admiral got
fearfully "out of character" through over-keeping. With the service he
lost all touch save in one degrading particular. His pay was better
than his reputation, but his position was isolated, his duties and his
actions subject to little official supervision. With opportunity came
peculiar temptations to bribery and peculation, and to these he often
succumbed. The absence of congenial society frequently weighed heavy
upon him and drove him to immoderate drinking. Had he lived a
generation or so later the average impress officer ashore could have
echoed with perfect truth, and almost nightly iteration, the crapulous
sentiment in which Byron is said to have toasted his hosts when dining
on board H.M.S. _Hector_ at Malta:--

"Glorious Hector, son of Priam,