Had life afloat in the days of the Great War been quite as terrible as it is often depicted as having been, the volunteer element of trained seamen could hardly have existed, nor could the glamour of the sea have brought so many raw volunteers as it did. When a ship was commissioned, the first step was advertising for men. The advertisements were specious and alluring enough; but the captain’s character generally had most influence on the response; and all the essential seamen element, unless they had spent all their money, were pretty wary as to who they shipped with. To be sure it did not take the seaman long to lose his money. On a ship paying off he received a considerable accumulated sum, and every kind of shark and harpy was on the lookout to relieve him of it. He got gloriously drunk and so remained while the money lasted, and in this condition the press-gang often got him. The press-gang was a legalised form of naval conscription. In theory any seafaring man who could be laid hands on might be taken; in practice all was fish that came to the press-gang’s net. The press-gang, armed with cudgels and cutlasses, used to operate at night, generally in the naval towns,[69] but at times also further afield. It laid hands upon all and sundry, hitting them over the head if they resisted. A cargo secured, the men were taken on board and kept between decks under an armed guard pending examination by the captain and surgeon. Certain people, such as apprentices or some merchant seamen, were exempt and had to be liberated. Badly diseased men were also let loose again. Verminous and dirty folk were scrubbed with a brutality which created subsequent cleanly habits. Their clothes were either fumigated or else thrown away altogether, and fresh clothing supplied from the “slop chest” at so much off their pay. If within a fortnight the pressed man cared to call himself a volunteer he received a bounty; but, whether he volunteered[70] or not, once aboard the ship there he remained till death or the paying off of the ship years later. It was this confinement to the ship which led to so much agitation, and was made one of the principal grievances of the mutineers at Spithead. On the side of the authorities it has to be remembered that had any man been allowed ashore he would certainly never have been seen again, at any rate, so long as he had any money. In most fleets also, an attempt at a substitute was made by allowing ship to ship visiting. Such visits invariably resulted in drunken bouts and subsequent floggings. Nelson went further--he instituted theatricals on shipboard. It is generally clear that--very crudely, of course--the authorities were not blind to the desirability of relieving the tedium of imprisonment on board ship.