art of the merchants' seamen. Forcible impressment to naval service was
the worst that could befall the traders' men. For want of energy or
ability to carry through the drudgery of early sea-training, the naval
officers took toll of the practised commercial seamen as they came in
from sea. Bitter hardship set wedge to the cleavage. After long and
perilous voyaging, absent from a home port for perhaps two or three
years, the homeward-bound sailor had little chance of being allowed a
term of liberty on shore--a brief landward turn to dissolve the salt
casing of his bones. Within sound of his own church bells, in sight of
the windmills and the fields and the home dwelling he had longed for, he
was haled to hard and rigorous sea-service on vessels of war. The
records of the East India Company have frequent references to this cruel
exercise of naval tyranny.

"On Thursday morning the Directors received the
agreeable news of the safe arrival of the
_Devonshire_, Captain Prince, from Bengal. . . .
Her men have all been impressed by the Men-of-War
in the Downs, and other hands were put on board
to bring her up to her moorings in the River."

". . . On Sunday morning the Purser of the
_William_, Captain Petre, arrived in town, who
brought advice of the said ship in the Downs,
richly laden, on Account of the Turkey Company:
the Ships of War in the Downs impressed all her
men, and put others on board to bring her up."

"Notwithstanding the Report spread about, fourteen
days ago, that no more sailors would be impressed
out of the homeward-bound ships, several ships
that arrived last week had all their men taken
from them in the Downs."

Serving by turns, as his agility to dodge the gangs was rated, on King's
ship for a turn, then hauling bowline on a free vessel; forced and
hunted and impressed, the shipmen had perhaps sorry records to offer the
historian, then busy with the enthralling chronicles of fleet
engagements and veiling with glamour the toll of battles. Perhaps it
was, after all, the better course to preserve a silence on the traders'
doings and leave to romantic conjecture a continuance of Hakluyt's
patient story.

Since the date of naval offgrowth, the chronicles have not often turned
on our commercial path. Lone voyages and encounters with the s