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Defeating the Armada
to forget over the centuries. According to Sir Walter Raleigh, writing early in the next century, ‘many times they go with great grudging to serve in His Majesty’s ships, as if they were to be slaves in the galleys, for so much do they stand in fear of penury and hunger, the case being clean contrary in all merchants ships’.10 Furthermore, the actual system of impressment began to break down, with allegations of corruption. According to Raleigh, ‘As concerning the musters and presses for sufficient mariners to serve in his majesty’s ships, either the care therein is very little, or the bribery is very great; so that of all other shipping his majesty’s are ever the worst manned ... it is grown a proverb among the sailors, that the muster masters do carry the best and ablest men in their pockets.’11 Even the seamen who had been recruited were prone to desertion. In 1602 William Monson complained, ‘it is an incredible thing to inform your honours of the number of sailors that are run away since our coming home’.12 He suggested some measures against this, and wrote to ‘the chief officers of the towns where any presses have been that if they find any prest men returned from Her Majesty’s ships without a discharge under my hand, that they shall apprehend him and cause him to be conveyed to the gaol, to be tried according to the statute’. The Royal orders became more strict, and applied to a wider range of men; in 1599 mariners from ages 16 to 60, instead of 18 to 50, were called, and were ‘charged upon pain of death to make their present repair unto Chatham’. Each vice admiral was ‘to appoint some discreet and trusty persons to come in their company, to hasten them in coming hither, and see that none of them do run away.’13
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