In 1781, again, a "stout lad of 17" was pressed at Waterford because, as a piper, he was considered likely to be "useful in amusing the new-raised men"; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1501--Lieut. Collingwood, 18 March 1781.] and as late as 1807 a gang at Portsmouth, acting under orders from Capt. Sir Robert Bromley, took one Madden, a blind man, because of his "qualification of playing on the Irish bagpipes." His affliction saved him. He was discharged, and the amount of his pay and victualling was deducted from Sir Robert's wages as a caution to him to be more careful in future. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1544--Capt. Sir Robert Bromley, 1 Dec. 1808.] Perhaps the oddest reasons ever adduced in justification of specific acts of pressing were those put forward in the cases of James Baily, a Gosport ferry-man who was pressed on account of his "great inactivity," and of John Conyear, exempt passenger on the packet-boat plying between Dartmouth and Poole, subjected to the same process because, as the officer responsible ingenuously put it when called to book for the act, if Conyear had not been on board, "another would, who might have been a proper person to serve His Majesty." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1451--Capt. Argles, 4 May 1807; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2485--Capt. Scott, 13 March 1780.] An ironical interest attaches to the pressing of John Hagin, a youth of nineteen who cherished an ambition to go a-whaling. Tramping the riverside at Hull one day in search of a ship, he accidentally met one of the lieutenants employed in the local impress service, and mistaking him for the master of a Greenland ship, stepped up to him and asked him for a berth. "Berth?" said the obliging officer. "Come this way;" and he conducted the unsuspecting youth to the rendezvous. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1455--Capt. Ackton, 23 March 1814.]