The surprise tactics of the gang of course varied according to circumstances, and the form they took was sometimes highly ingenious. A not uncommon stratagem was the impersonation of a recruiting party beating up for volunteers. With cockades in their hats, drums rolling and fifes shrilling, the gangsmen, who of course had their arms concealed, marched ostentatiously through the high-street of some sizable country town and so into the market-place. Since nobody had anything to fear from a harmless recruiting party, people turned out in strength to see the sight and listen to the music. When they had in this way drawn as many as they could into the open, the gangsmen suddenly threw off their disguise and seized every pressable person they could lay hands on. Market-day was ill-adapted to these tactics. It brought too big a crowd together.
A similar ruse was once practised with great success upon the inhabitants of Portsmouth by Capt. Bowen of the _Dreadnought_, in connection with a general press which the Admiralty had secretly ordered to be made in and about that town. Dockyard towns were not as a rule considered good pressing-grounds because of the drain of men set up by the ships of war fitting out there; but Bowen had certainly no reason to subscribe to that opinion. Late on the night of the 8th of March 1803, he landed a company of marines at Gosport for the purpose, as it was given out, of suppressing a mutiny at Fort Monckton. The news spread rapidly, drawing crowds of people from their homes in anticipation of an exciting scrimmage. This gave Bowen the opportunity he counted upon. When the throngs had crossed Haslar Bridge he posted marines at the bridge-end, and as the disappointed people came pouring back the "jollies" pressed every man in the crowd. Five hundred are said to have been taken on this occasion, but as the nature of the service forbade discrimination at the moment of pressing, nearly one-half were next day discharged as unfit or exempt. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1057--Admiral Milbanke, 9 March 1803.]
Sometimes, though not often, it was the gang that was surprised. All hands would perhaps be snug in bed after a long and trying day, when suddenly a thunderous knocking at the rendezvous door, and stentorian cries of: "Turn out! turn out there!" coupled with epithets here unproducible, would bring every man of them into the street in the turn of a handspike, half-dressed but fully armed and awake to the fact that a party of belated seamen was coming down the road. The sailors were perhaps more road-weary than the gangsmen, and provided none of them succeeded in slipping away in the darkness, or made a successful resistance, in half-an-hour's time or less the whole party would be safe under lock and key, cursing luck for a scurvy trickster in delivering them over to the gang.