artificers consequently met with little official encouragement.
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers' Opinions,
1778-83, No. 2.]

Where the Admiralty scored, in the matter of ship protections, and
scored heavily, was when the protected person went ashore. For when on
shore the protected master, mate, boatswain, carpenter, apprentice or
seaman no longer enjoyed protection unless he was there "on ship's
duty." The rule was most rigorously, not to say arbitrarily, enforced.
Thus at Plymouth, in the year 1746, a seaman who protested in broken
English that he had come ashore to "look after his master's
_sheep_" was pressed because the naval officer who met and
questioned him "imagined sheep to have no affinity with a ship!"
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2381--Capt. John Roberts, 11
July 1746. Capt. Roberts was a very downright individual, and years
before the characteristic had got him into hot water. The occasion was
when, in 1712, an Admiralty letter, addressed to him at Harwich and
containing important instructions, by some mischance went astray and
Roberts accused the Clerk of the Check of having appropriated it. The
latter called him a liar, whereupon Roberts "gave him a slap in the
face and bid him learn more manners." For this exhibition of temper he
was superseded and kept on the half-pay list for some six years.
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt. Brand, 8 March 1711-12.
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2378, section 11, Admiralty note.]

Any mate who failed to register his name at the rendezvous, as soon as
his ship arrived in port, did so at his peril. Without that formality
he was "not entitled to liberty." So strict was the rule that when
William Tassell, mate of the _Elizabeth_ ketch, was caught
drinking in a Lynn alehouse one night at ten o'clock, after having