The muster-books examined cover several months, during which many 'prest' men were discharged and some managed to desert, so that the total was never present at anyone time. That total amounts to 1782. It is certain that even this is larger than the reality, because it has been found impossible--without an excessive expenditure of time and labour--to trace the cases of men being sent from one ship to another, and thus appearing twice over, or oftener, as 'prest' men. As an example of this the _Minotaur_ may be cited. Out of twenty names on one page of her muster-book thirteen are those of 'prest' men discharged to other ships. The discharges from the _Victory_ were numerous; and the _Ardent_, which was employed in keeping up communication with the ships off Brest, passed men on to the latter when required. I have, however, made no deductions from the 'prest' total to meet these cases. We can see that not more than 1782 men, and probably considerably fewer, were impressed to meet the increase of the navy during the greater part of 1803. Admitting that there were cases of impressment from merchant vessels abroad to complete the crews of our men-of-war in distant waters, the total number impressed--including these latter--could not have exceeded greatly the figures first given. We know that owing to the reduction of 1802, as stated by Sir Sydney Smith, the seamen were looking for ships rather than the ships for seamen. It seems justifiable to infer that the whole number of impressed men on any particular day did not exceed, almost certainly did not amount to, 2000. If they had been spread over the whole navy they would not have made 2 per cent. of the united complements of the ships; and, as it was, did not equal one-nineteenth of the 39,600 seamen ('blue-jackets') raised to complete the navy to the establishment sanctioned by Parliament. A system under which more than 37,000 volunteers come forward to serve and less than 2000 men are obtained by compulsion cannot be properly called compulsory. The Plymouth reporter of _The_Naval_Chronicle_ does not give many details of the volunteering for the navy in 1803, though he alludes to it in fluent terms more than once. On the 11th October, however, he reports that, 'So many volunteer seamen have arrived here this last week that upwards of £4000 bounty is to be paid them afloat by the Paying Commissioner, Rear-Admiral Dacres.' At the time the bounty was £2 10s. for an A.B., £1 10s. for an ordinary seaman, and £1 for a landsman. Taking only £4000 as the full amount paid, and assuming that the three classes were equally represented, three men were obtained for every £5, or 2400 in all, a number raised in about a week, that may be compared with that given as resulting from impressment. In reality, the number of volunteers must have been larger, because the A.B.'s were fewer than the other classes.