In addition to the executive of the vessel, as defined in the
foregoing paragraph, it was of course necessary to extend protection
to as many of her "hands", as were essential to her safe and efficient
working. How many were really required for this purpose was, however,
a moot point on which ship-masters and naval officers rarely saw eye
to eye; and since the arbiter in all such disputes was the
"quarter-deck gentlemen," the decision seldom if ever went in favour
of the master.

The importance of the coal trade won for colliers an early concession,
which left no room for differences of opinion. Every vessel employed
in that trade was entitled to carry one exempt able-bodied man for
each hundred units of her registered tonnage, provided it did not
exceed three hundred. The penalty for pressing such men was 10 Pounds
for each man taken. [Footnote: 2 & 3 Anne, cap. 6.]

On the coasts of Scotland commanders of warships whose carpenters had
run or broken their leave, and who perhaps were left, like Capt. Gage
of the _Otter_ sloop, "without so much as a Gimblett on board,"
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1829-Capt. Gage, 29 Sept.
1742.] might press shipwrights from the yards on shore to fill the
vacancy, and suffer no untoward consequences; but south of the Tweed
this mode of collecting "chips" was viewed with disfavour. There,
although ship-carpenters, sailmakers and men employed in rope-walks
were by a stretch of the official imagination reckoned as persons
using the sea, and although they were generally acknowledged to be no
less indispensable to the complete economy of a ship than the
able-bodied seaman, legal questions of an extremely embarrassing
nature nevertheless cropped up when the scene of their activities
underwent too sudden and violent a change. The pressing of such