It was, in truth, not easy to fit out a fleet on the scale required for a struggle with Holland. Parliament was indeed enthusiastic for the war, and could supply the money. The £243,000 and odd required to victual 20,000 men for a year were easily voted, and were not difficult to raise among the merchants of the city, but to get the men and to equip the ships required more than money. The difficulty of finding men was immense. The press, though no doubt a powerful instrument of coercion, did not work satisfactorily in the hands to which it was entrusted. Corruption had already made way so far that the officials entrusted with the duty of levying the sailors were vehemently suspected of taking bribes to allow all who could afford to pay them to escape. It was only the more miserable who were taken. Peter Pett, the Commissioner of the Dockyard at Chatham, wrote to complain at the end of the year of "those pitiful pressed creatures, who are fit for nothing but to fill the ships full of vermin." At about the same time, the Duke of York at Portsmouth was complaining that no men could be found there, and that, unless men could be sent down from the Thames, some of his vessels must be left behind, or all of them must go to sea short-handed. Even when the men had been obtained, it was difficult to keep them. The duke complained that upwards of two hundred men had deserted in a few days. Furious threats of punishment to be inflicted for desertion were issued by the Admiralty, and the seamen were told that they would be hanged as an example if they dared to desert. All this coercion appeared of very little use, and the Government of the king was reduced, like the Council of State of the Commonwealth, to pass Acts for the encouragement of seamen--in other words, to give them promises of security for prize-money. These produced some effect. At the same time, the king suspended the Navigation Acts which compelled a shipowner to man his vessels with Englishmen. This became in time the usual preliminary to a great war, for there were not enough seamen in England to man both the trading and the fighting fleet of the country when this latter was on a war-footing. The Government was so hard pressed that it made great efforts to secure Scotch sailors, but the measure did not prove wholly satisfactory. It was doubtful whether Scotch seamen could be lawfully pressed by the king in England. The war caused serious loss to the trade of the east coast of Scotland with the Continent, and as Scotchmen did not consider themselves concerned in the colonial quarrels of England, they were deeply aggrieved. Numbers of them undoubtedly fought in the Dutch fleets, where their pay was secure, which was far from being the case in the fleet of their own king. However, the Act for the encouragement of seamen produced a good effect, and by the spring of 1665 a really powerful fleet had been got together.