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Name
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The Press Gangs at Douglas
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Description
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The Royal Navy's press gangs came to the island and took who they wanted. The legal basis was contested everywhere in Britain; in Mann, where Parliament's authority was itself constitutionally questionable, the question of whether the press gang had any lawful power was never even raised. Men were taken from the herring boats and the merchant vessels. A man might leave his cottage intending to fish, and by nightfall be on a naval vessel headed for the Channel, with no message sent to his family. The naval records preserve the distinction between men who volunteered and those who were enlisted by civil power. The euphemism was precise — not military conscription, but civil power. The machinery of administration applied to the extraction of men, just as it had been applied to the extraction of revenue.
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Type
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Impressment
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Source
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Naval muster rolls; manuscript research
