The deficiency of men was, as we have seen, supplied by using the criminals of the gaols. Bounty money was also liberally offered, the authorities realising that a few pounds ready money were likely to be a valuable bribe to a man out of luck. The _St. James’s Chronicle_ remarks at the beginning of the war, “Five pounds bounty, and two pounds extra from the Corporation of London; surely no tars can be found backward.” In 1770 the Government had offered thirty shillings a head, which was augmented by various towns; London offering forty shillings additional, and Edinburgh forty-two shillings. In 1788 a prohibition forbidding seamen to serve in foreign navies was issued, and in 1791 the bounty money of London rose to two pounds for an ordinary seaman, and sixty shillings for an able seaman. The city added twenty shillings to the one, and forty shillings to the other at the beginning of the war in 1793. And in 1795 the total bounties in some places even amounted to thirty pounds a head! In 1795 an Act was passed demanding levies of men from the whole country, the proportions varying according to the size of the county or port; from Yorkshire more than a thousand were demanded. In addition to this the pressgang was hard at work, and the monstrous injustice perpetrated by it makes one wonder how, even in times of greatest stress, it could have been allowed. The difference between an ordinary press and a “hot press” was that in the latter all protection was disregarded, and men of every sort, even apprentices usually protected by law, were seized and carried off to serve, utterly regardless of mercy. The odd part of it is that, when it was found to be inevitable, the men who had been taken against their will plucked up spirit and performed their duties well. John Ashton in _Old Times_ quotes a number of cuttings from _The Times_ of 1793 and 1794 giving details of these presses. “The press in the river Thames for the three last days has been very severe. Five or six hundred seamen have been laid hold of.” (February 18, 1793.) “A hot press has, for the last two nights, been carried on from London Bridge to the Nore; protections are disregarded, and almost all the vessels in the river have been stripped of their hands.” (April 26, 1793.) “Sailors are so scarce that upwards of sixty sail of merchant’s ships bound to the West Indies, and other places, are detained in the river, with their ladings on board; seven outward bound East Indiamen are likewise detained at Gravesend, for want of sailors to man them.” (January 7, 1794.) “That part of Mr. Pitt’s plan for manning the navy, which recommends to the magistrates to take cognizance of all idle and disorderly people, who have no visible means of livelihood, may certainly procure a great number of able-bodied men who are lurking about the Metropolis.” (February 11, 1795.)