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Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

> They started to harass American merchant vessels, Britain in particular, to the point of literally kidnapping sailors off U.S. ships and drafting them into the Royal Navy. In euphemistic Brit-speak that was called "impressment."

> "Probably in the neighborhood of 6,000 Americans were impressed by the British leading up to the war of 1812," estimates James Ellis, author of "A Ruinous, Unhappy War: New England and the War of 1812." "This was a real sore point."

Just to give some context impressment had been going on for a long time before that, and by the battle of Trafalgar (1805) over half(!!!) of the navy's 120K men were people pressed into service.

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Related was how the Navy used to recruit, was case of if they could pass you a coin (shilling iirc) you had taken the kings money and was duly obliged to serve.

What would happen is they would drop coins into unsuspecting drinks in the local taverns and the drinker would suddenly find himself drinking and then touching the coin onto his lips on the last drink (something like that). So to avoid this the trend was to have drinking tankards with a glass bottom, so the drinker could check he was not being press-ganged into the navy.

ok did quick google and wiki does more service to this than my memory:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_shilling

From Wikipedia you linked:

> There are recurring tales of sailors being pressed after a shilling was slipped into their drink, leading to glass-bottomed tankards. However, this is likely to be a myth, for the Navy could press by force, rendering deception unnecessary.

Euphemistic? Not only is it just a direct description of the process, it was, as you would expect, a word to curse by for anyone at risk of being subject to it.

Look at these lyrics from a 19th-century ballad (about, in fact, the battle of Trafalgar):

There was thirteen on the press-gang, they did my love surround

and four of that accursed gang went bleeding to the ground

My love was overpowered, though he fought most manfully

They dragged him through the dark, wet streets toward the Victory

http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/roud/2278

Sailors pressed off US ships were not US citizens, but British citizens "who had known the sea" (fishermen, merchant seamen, whalers etc.) who understandably preferred working for better pay for US skippers than risking life and limb in the Royal Navy.

That is an interesting claim. Was there a US citizenship at the time, or were people from one state or another?

The British didn’t recognize naturalized US citizens at the time, if you were born in Britain and later emigrated to the US they still considered you a British subject. The US government obviously had a different view but there wasn’t much it could do short of declaring war.

Remember too that the navy only really pressed seamen. They were not kidnapping landmen onto ships. They were after skilled people. A person who had completed a voyage or two was a valuable asset, as opposed to a farmer who would be far more of a liability onboard a navy ship.

And for all the horrors described about life in the royal navy, it was often far better than life in the country. You got food. You were a member of a crew with rights and privileges. A laborer in farm country, or in a mine, was much worse off.

Beware any statement that suggests something like "this form of forced labor wasn't so bad". If it was decent work then people would do it without being kidnapped. Involuntary enslavement, whether permanent or temporary, is a terrible thing.

> If it was decent work then people would do it without being kidnapped.

This doesn't really follow from the description in your parent comment, which claims that being impressed is worse than being a free sailor but better than being a free peasant. The logical conclusion from that is not that sailors would be lining up for Navy jobs if the Navy couldn't enslave them.

> Involuntary enslavement, whether permanent or temporary, is a terrible thing.

This point is more interesting. Note that the military is generally still enslaved today; leaving and disobeying are both illegal. The modern US military is not involuntarily enslaved, but it is voluntarily enslaved.

Should other employers also be allowed to employ voluntary slaves?

And beware of saying that military service is horrible simply because men are drafted into it during time of war. Some of us have chosen that life.

Having a draft is terrible, and I'm grateful I never lived through one. It's just the lesser of two evils in some cases.

They used to force people into draft here in Colombia.

From my personal point of view the Colombian army is terrible, if one of their own combatants get shot in combat, they kill him and dress him in a uniform that resembles the one wore by guerrilla.

A week ago they bombed 8 kids and dressed them as guerrilla fighters [1] and it is suspected about two million people were killed in the last 20 years by the Colombian army.

My family belongs to a long line military and police men, so I get to know beforehand the new ways in which they are benchmarked. During the 2004 till 2012 administration the military and police men were required to have certain amount of blood liters per month [2].

1: https://colombiareports.com/duque-presented-bombed-minors-an...

2: https://washingtonmemo.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/colombia-the...

Americans used to do the same for Merchant Marine, it was euphemistically called 'Shanghai-ing'.

I've always wondered how you can have a large portion of you military essentially be slaves. I would imagine that it would be very possible for them to rebel during a critical battle and the join the enemy.

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