Bates, at the age of eighteen, was a full-fledged sailor, hailing from New Bedford, Massachusetts, where his father, a soldier of the Revolution, lived. In the spring of 1810, after a voyage that terminated at Belfast, Ireland, Bates went across to Liverpool looking for a berth on a ship bound to America. While there awaiting a chance to ship, the boarding-house was visited by a press-gang that included an officer and twelve men, who gathered in all the likely looking seamen. Bates produced his papers, authenticated by the Collector of Customs in New York, but was cursed for his pains and taken to a house kept for the purpose by the Admiralty, where he went through the form of an examination by a British lieutenant, who at once decided that Bates was an Irishman, and the “protection” papers fraudulent. So Bates was sent, on April 27, 1810, on board the ship _Princess_, where he found sixty of his countrymen impressed in like fashion. A few days later, on the occasion of a funeral which took nearly all the officers ashore, these Americans knocked the bars from the porthole of the room where they were confined and were forming in line to plunge through it and swim for liberty, when they were detected. For this they were nearly all frightfully flogged, a few escaping (including Bates) because ordered to another ship before their turn came. Bates was taken to the _Rodney_, where he was exhibited to all the boats’ crews by her commander, Captain Bolton, who told the crews that if ever the Yankee was allowed to get into any one of the boats the entire crew should be flogged. Thereafter the _Rodney_ was sent to the Mediterranean, where the life of Bates as compared with that of the unfortunates sent to the African and other fever coasts, was bearable. Bates notes that the ship provided two books for each ten men of the crew. One was an abridged life of Nelson, and the other the prayer-book of the Church of England. Bates did not approve of the service of that church, but the boatswain’s mates “were required to carry a piece of rope with which to start the sailors” when ordering them to attend church-service as well as to any work. So he went through the forms when piped to prayers. And when the band played “God Save the King,” the mates were particular to see that the Yankee took off his hat.