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wife’s plea was turned down, and John Creed was forced to join the Royal Navy.
    Earlier the same year John Jacobs, the thirty-year-old boatswain of the merchant ship
Betsey,
was returning to Bristol in a convoy from the West Indies. His ship was intercepted by a vessel commanded by Lieutenant Lucas, and Jacobs found himself pressed into the navy. His wife, Mary Jacobs, immediately wrote to the Admiralty and begged their lordships to accept a substitute to serve in his place because “he is the sole support of me and four children.” 9 The regulating captain noted that John Jacobs was Swedish, but because he had married in Bristol he was still liable for impressment. The scribbled note on the back of the letter suggests that Mary Jacobs also lost her husband to the navy.
    In July 1806, Lucy Castle wrote to the Admiralty from Princes Street, Bristol, on behalf of her husband, William, who had been taken by the press gang and confined on board the naval brig
Enchantress
until such time as he could be dispatched to Plymouth to serve on a warship. Mrs. Castle explained that her husband was a native of America, but her plea was set aside because he had married an Englishwoman. From his confinement in the
Enchantress,
William Castle wrote a pathetic letter to the authorities in which he pointed out that his wife was pregnant, and that she and her other children were in great misery and had nobody to maintain them. The regulating captain noted that William Castle was twenty-two years of age, was formerly chief mate of a merchant ship, and “being an able seaman in every respect fit for the service cannot be discharged.” 10
    What most upset the merchant seamen and their families was not so much the forcible impressment, though that was bad enough; it was the fact that the men were prevented from seeing their friends and loved ones. “It seems shocking to the feelings of humanity,” wrote Spavens, “for a sailor, after he has been on a long voyage, endured innumerable hardships, and is just returning to his native land with the pleasing hope of shortly beholding a beloved wife and children, some kind relations, or respected friends, to be forced away to fight, perhaps to fall, and no more enjoy those dear connexions.” 11 William Richardson, another merchant seaman who had been impressed, thought the navy’s practice of intercepting homecoming merchant ships was as bad as Negro slavery and pointed out that if a man complained about being prevented from seeing his wife or friends and relations he was likely to be flogged “much more severe than the Negro driver’s whip, and if he deserts he is flogged round the fleet nearly to death.” 12 He reckoned that if men were allowed a few weeks’ liberty after a long voyage, they would soon grow tired of shore life and return more contented to their ships.
    The same message appears in many seamen’s memoirs, and it is not surprising to find that this was one of the major grievances behind the Mutiny at the Nore in 1797. One of the nine articles of the document drawn up by Richard Parker and presented to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty expressed the seamen’s demands in notably restrained language:
That every Man upon a Ship’s coming into Harbour, shall be at liberty (a certain number at a time, so as not to injure the Ship’s duty) to go and see their friends and families; a convenient time to be allowed to each man. 13
    The more humane officers appreciated the men’s situation, and when circumstances allowed they did give permission for shore leave. In June 1755, Admiral Hawke received a petition from seventeen men who had been on a two-year voyage to the East Indies. Their ship had been intercepted by a naval tender in the English Channel, and they had all volunteered for service. (The generous bounty persuaded many merchant seamen to volunteer for service in the Royal Navy.) In these circumstances