"banished any more to row for a year and a day." [Footnote: 2 & 3
Philip and Mary, cap. 16.] The exemption he otherwise enjoyed appears
to have conduced not a little to the waterman's proverbial joviality.
As a youth he spent his leisure in "dancing and carolling," thus
earning the familiar sobriquet of "the jolly young waterman." Even so,
his tenure of happiness was anything but secure. With the naval
officer and the gang he was no favourite, and few opportunities of
dashing his happiness were allowed to pass unimproved. In the person
of John Golden, however, they caught a Tartar. To the dismay of the
Admiralty and the officer responsible for pressing him, he proved to
be one of my Lord Mayor's bargemen. [Footnote: _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 2733-Capt. Young, 7 March 1756.]

Apart from the watermen of the Thames, the purchase of immunity from
the press by periodic levies met with little favour, and though the
levy was in many cases reluctantly adopted, it was only because it
entailed the lesser of two evils. The basis of such levies varied from
one man in ten to one in five--a percentage which the Admiralty
considered a "matter of no distress"; and the penalty for refusing to
entertain them was wholesale pressing.

The Tyne keelmen, while ostensibly consenting to buy immunity on this
basis, seldom levied the quota upon themselves. By offering bounties
they drew the price of their freedom to work in the keels from outside
sources. Lord Thurlow confessed that he did not know what "working in
the keels" meant. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 299--Law
Officers' Opinions, 1752-77, No. 70.] There were' few in the fleet who
could have enlightened him of their own experience. The keelmen kept
their ranks as far as possible intact. In this they were materially
aided by the Mayor and Corporation of Newcastle, who held a "Grand