Peace was not wholly welcome either to the younger officers or to some of the sailors. In 1815, as in 1763 there were some who openly expressed their regret. One example is a parody of Dibdin, entitled _The Midshipman’s Lamentation_. It begins ‘What is it to you if my eye I am piping?’ If the peace is a fact he trembles to think what his next station will be: ‘Four years of my time I’ve served and better, But what’s that to me? Why, it’s not worth a groat. Besides, to the purser I am a great debtor-- I have not yet paid for my cockt hat and coat.’ No resource will be left him except to turn shoe-black: ‘How oft in the cabin I’ve studied navigation Out of a book writ by John Hamilton Moore, But now I’m afraid I shall soon take my station With my brushes and black ball close to my door.’ (_Madden Collection_, Cambridge.) A sailor took a more cheerful view of the situation: ‘When I was on the yard the topsail for to furl, The pilot came on board and said “There’s peace with all the world”; But if war should come again I’m damned if I won’t enter, And for my country and my king my life and limb I’ll venture.’ (Fragment communicated by Sir J. K. Laughton.) As at every peace, there were complaints that when the sailor was no more needed a thankless country turned him adrift to starve. _The British Tars_ enforces this moral (p. 316). Sailors who remained in the service had a different cause of complaint, namely, the increasing strictness of discipline in minor matters. ‘About 1806,’ says Clowes, on the authority of Lord Dundonald, ‘undue prominence began to be assigned to what is still vulgarly called in the service “spit and polish.” Too much importance was attached to “the brightening of brass heads, of bitts, and capstan hoops,” and too little to the condition of the ship as a fighting machine’ (_Royal Navy_, v. 19). After the peace this tendency increased, and the discomforts of a sailor’s life in a smart ship with a martinet for her captain became the theme of several ballads. _The Fancy Frigate_, _The Saucy Scylla_, and _The Vanguard_ are examples of this (pp. 316-21). An older grievance now ended. Impressment had risen to its height during the great war with France. In a volume of Northumbrian Minstrelsy published by the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne are many songs referring to the press-gang. ‘Here’s the tender coming pressing all the men! Oh, dear hinny, what shall we do then? Here’s the tender coming off at Shields’ bar, Here’s the tender coming full of men-of-war.’ Another is a woman’s lament: ‘Oh, the lousy cutter, They’ve taen my laddie frae me, They’ve pressed him far away foreign Wi’ Nelson ayont the salt sea. ‘They always come in the night, They never come in the day; They always come in the night And steal the laddies away.’