Perhaps the oddest reasons ever adduced in justification of specific acts of pressing were those put forward in the cases of James Baily, a Gosport ferry-man who was pressed on account of his "great inactivity," and of John Conyear, exempt passenger on the packet-boat plying between Dartmouth and Poole, subjected to the same process because, as the officer responsible ingenuously put it when called to book for the act, if Conyear had not been on board, "another would, who might have been a proper person to serve His Majesty." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1451--Capt. Argles, 4 May 1807; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2485--Capt. Scott, 13 March 1780.]
An ironical interest attaches to the pressing of John Hagin, a youth of nineteen who cherished an ambition to go a-whaling. Tramping the riverside at Hull one day in search of a ship, he accidentally met one of the lieutenants employed in the local impress service, and mistaking him for the master of a Greenland ship, stepped up to him and asked him for a berth. "Berth?" said the obliging officer. "Come this way;" and he conducted the unsuspecting youth to the rendezvous. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1455--Capt. Ackton, 23 March 1814.]
Before you took a voyage for the benefit of your health in those days it was always advisable to satisfy yourself as to the nature of the cargo the vessel carried or intended to carry, otherwise you were liable to be let in for a longer voyage than health demanded. Richard Gooding of Bawdsey, in the county of Suffolk, a twenty-one-year-old yeoman who knew nothing of the iniquities practised in ships, in an evil hour acted on the advice of his apothecary and ran across to Holland for the sake of his health, which the infirmities of youth appear to have undermined. All went well until, on the return trip, just before Bawdsey Ferry hove in sight, down swooped a revenue cutter's boat with an urgent request that the master should open up his hatches and disclose what his hold contained. He demurred, alleging that it held nothing of interest to revenue men; but on their going below to see for themselves they discovered an appreciable quantity of gin. Thereupon the master wickedly declared Gooding to be the culprit, and he was pressed on suspicion of attempting to run a cargo of spirits. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1530--Capt. Broughton, 20 April 1803, and enclosure.]