A stout-hearted fellow named Browne, who hailed from Chester, would have made Caradine a fitting mate. "Being impressed into the sea service, he very violently determined, in order to extricate himself therefrom, to mutilate the thumb and a finger of his left hand; which he accomplished by repeatedly maiming them with an old hatchet that he had obtained for that purpose. He was immediately discharged." [Footnote: _Liverpool Advertiser_, 6 June 1777.] Such men as these were a substantial loss to the service. Fighting a gun shoulder to shoulder, what fearful execution would they not have wrought upon the "hereditary enemy"! It did not always do, however, to presume upon the loss of a forefinger, particularly if it were missing from the left hand. Capt. Barker, while he was regulating the press at Bristol, once had occasion to send into Ilchester for a couple of brace of convicts who had received the royal pardon on condition of their serving at sea. Near Shepton Mallet, on the return tramp, his gangsmen fell in with a party armed with sticks and knives, who "beat and cut them in a very cruel manner." They succeeded, however, in taking the ringleader, one Charles Biggen, and brought him in; but when Barker would have discharged the fellow because his left forefinger was wanting, the Admiralty brushed the customary rule aside and ordered him to be kept. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1528--Capt. Barker, 28 July 1803, and endorsement.] The main considerations entering into the dispatch of pressed men to the fleet, when at length their period of detention at headquarters came to an end, were economy, speed and safety. Transport was necessarily either by land or water, and in the case of seaport, river or canal towns, both modes were of course available. Gangs operating at a distance from the sea, or remote from a navigable river or canal, were from their very situation obliged to send their catch to market either wholly by land, or by land and water successively. Land transport, though always healthier, and in many instances speedier and cheaper than transport by water, was nevertheless much more risky. Pressed men therefore preferred it. The risks--rescue and desertion--were all in their favour. Hence, when they "offered chearfully to walk up," or down, as the case might be, the seeming magnanimity of the offer was never permitted to blind those in charge of them to the need for a strong attendant guard. [Footnote: In the spring of 1795 a body of Quota Men, some 130 strong, voluntarily marched from Liverpool to London, a distance of 182 miles, instead of travelling by coach as at first proposed. Though all had received the bounty and squandered it in debauchery, not a man deserted; and in their case the danger of rescue was of course absent. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1511--Capt. Bowen, 21 April 1795.] The men would have had to walk in any case, for transport by coach, though occasionally sanctioned, was an event of rare occurrence.