Fulfillment In The Press Gang By G. Rogers

From the beginning few pages of Rogers’ The Press Gang, the thesis and theme of the book is made abundantly clear; coerced, forceful, and even violent impressment of ordinary British male citizens for the service of the British Navy in Great Britain during the 18th century and 19th century was a very real challenge to every day life. In fact, according to Rogers “the rough way in which press gangs recruited for the Royal Navy has long been commemorated in print and ballad, supplemented in the press by often harrowing accounts of the affrays that ensued” (Rogers, p. 17.) It is clear to see that the cultural and societal ramifications as well as national opinion of impressment are what The Press Gang aims to explain throughout the book. Opening

That being said, there are two critics of The Press Gang that may have helped the book along. First, while it does an outstanding job of explaining impressment and the feelings of the common people, it would seem that perhaps Rogers could have spent more time discussing the thoughts of the Navy as well. Time and time again there were segments on how the public felt, on how they viewed the government’s acceptance of harsh impressment tactics, on the grievances with the government that they held, justly so, but there did not seem to be an abundance on the reasoning for the Navy’s actions outside of the demand for man-power. Perhaps there is no more to the story or perhaps the exclusion was purposeful, but it would seem that the very admirals and high ranking officials whose stories Rogers claimed have been told so often by naval historians were ironically glossed over by Rogers. The next critic was that there were very few maps, graphs, and illustrations, which would have helped as a visualization for some of the information that Rogers included. For instance, throughout the book, Rogers references statistic after statistic, number after number, which may have been more helpful in the form of a graph as to compare numbers over the span of time that were being

One particularly notable section in The Press Gang calls into focus the remarks of N.A.M. Rodger, who suggested “impressment was not a significant social problem” (Rogers, p. 13) but rather a “humdrum affair calling for little if any violence” (Rogers, p. 13). Rogers is quick to point out that Rodger’s interpretation is both arguable and unlikely, writing that such a suggestion provides an incomplete view of naval recruitment by only focusing on one small time period instead of impressment as a whole. Granted N.A.M. Rodger’s work is dated from 1987, while Rogers’ is from 2007, the overall idea is that Rodger did not do adequate research before concluding that press gangs had little effect as a social problem. Another example of Rogers’ thoughts on his fellow historians interpretations of impressment was that according to Rogers, many naval histories take a only a glancing look into the issue of impressment choosing instead to focus the on the rampant problem of the lack of man-power needed to propel Britain’s commitments in war. In Rogers’ opinion, those types of histories do not offer the most compelling and informative snapshot of the effects that impressment really had on the lives of everyday British