osition as an element of
the national defences was understood ages ago; and that English
naval officers of a period which is now very remote showed by their
actions that they exactly appreciated and--when necessary--were able
to apply the true principles of maritime warfare. If anyone still
believes that the country has been saved more than once merely
by lucky chances of weather, and that the England of Elizabeth
has been converted into the great oceanic and colonial British
Empire of Victoria in 'a fit of absence of mind,' it will not
be for want of materials with which to form a correct judgment
on these points.

It has been accepted generally that the principal method of manning
our fleet in the past--especially when war threatened to arise--was
to seize and put men on board the ships by force. This has been
taken for granted by many, and it seems to have been assumed that,
in any case, there is no way of either proving it or disproving
it. The truth, however, is that it is possible and--at least as
regards the period of our last great naval war--not difficult to
make sure if it is true or not. Records covering a long succession
of years still exist, and in these can be found the name of nearly
every seaman in the navy and a statement of the conditions on
which he joined it. The exceptions would not amount to more than
a few hundreds out of many tens of thousands of names, and would
be due to the disappearance--in itself very infrequent--of some of
the documents and to occasional, but also very rare, inaccuracies
in the entries.

The historical evidence on which the belief in the prevalence
of impressment as a method of recruiting the navy for more than
a hundred years is based, is limited to contemporary statements
in the English newspapers, and especially in the issues of the
periodical called _The_Naval_Chronicle_, published in 1803,
the first year of the war following the rupture of the Peace
of Amiens. Readers of Captain Mahan's works on Sea-Power will
remember the picture he draws of the activity of the press-gang
in that year, his authority being _The_Naval_Chronicle_. This
evidence will be submitted directly to close examination, and
we shall see what importance ought to be attached to it. In the
great majority of cases, however, the belief above mentioned has
no historical foundation, but is to be traced to the frequency
with which the supposed operations of the press-gang were used
by the authors of n