The crews of war vessels were divided into mariners and soldiers in unequal proportions. There were always more of the second than of the first. Thirty seamen were considered the full complement even of a large vessel; and when it is remembered that two hundred or two hundred and fifty tons was the size of a "great ship," and that the rigging was simple, the number will appear amply sufficient. It must always, too, be kept in mind that, though the relative number of sailors and soldiers in ships has varied, this distinction between the two elements constituting the crews of fighting craft has prevailed to our own time. No man-of-war was ever manned entirely by seamen, nor was it necessary that she should be. The number of men required to fight or to do work only on the decks, or between the decks, was at all times much in excess of what was needed for the purpose of sailing the ship. The steersmen and mariners of the Middle Ages, and the prime seamen of the eighteenth century, were highly trained men, whom it would have been folly to employ on such work as could be sufficiently well done by less skilful hands. From the earliest time of which there is any record, the great and arbitrary power of impressment was used to find crews for the king's ships. In 1208 King John ordered the seamen of Wales to cease making trading voyages, and to repair to Ilfracombe for the purpose of transporting soldiers to Ireland. He bade them "know for certain that if you act contrary to this, we will cause you and the masters of your vessels to be hanged, and all your goods to be seized for our use." In later times this would have been called a "hot press." The forms used might vary, and the penalties grow more humane, but the king's ships continued to be supplied with crews, down to the end of the war with Napoleon, after exactly the fashion in which King John provided for the transport of his soldiers to Ireland in 1208.