=Discovery= 8·8″ } In remote parts. The letters A.S. stand for “Armed Ship.” These were merchant craft bought into or hired for the navy, and armed with small guns. The =Resolution= and =Discovery= were the ships of Captain Cook, then on his last voyage. It must be remembered that these lists represent the cruisers and convoy ships at home or sent directly from home. On every station the admiral would detail part of his command for such duties as these. The manning of the navy continued to present the old difficulties, aggravated by the fact that we had lost the services of the thousands of American seamen who had been found in our ships in the last war. They were now manning the privateers which preyed on our commerce as far abroad as the Channel and the Mediterranean. All the old complaints were heard of the cruelty, the unconstitutional character, and the inefficiency of the press. A Bill to abolish it was introduced and favourably received in the House of Commons, but went no further. The fact is that the press was indispensable. We would not train men in peace. The merchant seamen would never enlist of their free will in the navy, and were the less likely to do so because the first effect of a war was to send up wages in the trading-ships. But the press was not only needed for the sailors. They indeed were sought by it with particular zeal, because their skill was indispensable in the ships as riggers and to set an example to other men in handling masts and sails in all conditions of weather. It was on them, too, that the captain relied in the greater perils of navigation. But they never formed the bulk of the crews of our warships, nor was it possible they should. In a debate on the Bill to abolish the Press, held on 11th March 1777, Lord Mulgrave declared that the total number of seamen in the country was only 60,000, while the number required for the navy in war had sometimes risen to 80,000. If the whole body of our merchant seamen had been swept into the navy and their places in our trading-ships taken by foreigners who swarmed in to earn the high war wages, there would still have been a deficiency. In truth we never secured all the merchant sailors. The list of men rated as seamen was made up by taking landsmen, who either volunteered or were impressed, and were not uncommonly vagabonds and jail-birds. Though all might be known officially by the same name, a wide distinction was always made among the crews themselves, and in the opinion of the officers, between the “prime seamen” who had served their apprenticeship in the long sea voyages and could turn their hand to anything, and the mere “man-of-warsman,” who had not been bred to the sea and had only been taught the work of his particular station. It was inevitable that in crews composed in this fashion there should have been wide differences of quality and that some of their elements were worthless and criminal.