deserted from the navy.

The slightest acquaintance with the British navy when Nelson was winning
immortal glory by his victory at Trafalgar must convince the most
sceptical that his seamen for the most part were little better than
galley slaves. Life on board these frigates was well-nigh unbearable.
The average life of a seaman, Nelson reckoned, was forty-five years. In
this age before processes of refrigeration had been invented, food could
not be kept edible on long voyages, even in merchantmen. Still worse
was the fare on men-of-war. The health of a crew was left to Providence.
Little or no forethought was exercised to prevent disease; the commonest
matters of personal hygiene were neglected; and when disease came
the remedies applied were scarcely to be preferred to the disease.
Discipline, always brutal, was symbolized by the cat-o'-nine-tails.
Small wonder that the navy was avoided like the plague by every man and
seaman.

Yet a navy had to be maintained: it was the cornerstone of the Empire.
And in all the history of that Empire the need of a navy was never
stronger than in these opening years of the nineteenth century. The
practice of impressing able men for the royal navy was as old as the
reign of Elizabeth. The press gang was an odious institution of
long standing--a terror not only to rogue and vagabond but to every
able-bodied seafaring man and waterman on rivers, who was not exempted
by some special act. It ransacked the prisons, and carried to the navy
not only its victims but the germs of fever which infested public places
of detention. But the press gang harvested its greatest crop of seamen
on the seas. Merchantmen were stopped at sea, robbed of their able
sailors, and left to limp short-handed into port. A British East
Indiaman homeward bound in 1802 was stripped of so many of her crew in
the Bay of Biscay that she was unable to offer resistance to a French
privateer and fell a rich victim into the hands of the enemy. The
necessity of the royal navy knew no law and often defeated its own
purpose.

Death or desertion offered the only way of escape to the victim of the
press gang. And the commander of a British frigate dreaded making port
almost as much as an epidemic of typhus. The deserter always found
American merchantmen ready to harbor him. Fair wages, relatively
comfortable quarters, and decent treatment made him quite ready to take
any measures to forswear his allegiance to Britannia. Natural