Yet while ships were again and again prevented from putting to sea because, though their complements were numerically complete, they had only one or no seaman on board, and hence were unable to get their anchors or make sail; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1478--Capt. Boys, 14 April 1742; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1512--Capt. Bayly, 21 July 1796, and Captains' Letters, _passim_.] while Bennett, of the _Lennox_, when applied to by the masters of eight outward-bound East-India ships for the loan of two hundred and fifty men to enable them to engage the French privateers by whom they were held up in the river of Shannon, dared not lend a single hand lest the pressed men, who formed the greater part of his crew, should rise and run away with the ship; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1499--Capt. Bennett, 22 Sept. 1779.] Ambrose, of the _Rupert_, cruising off Cape Machichaco with a crew of "miserable poor wretches" whom he feared could be of "no manner of use or service" to him, after a short but sharp engagement of only an hour's duration captured, with the loss of but a single man, the largest privateer sailing out of San Sebastian--the _Duke of Vandome_, of twenty-six carriage guns and two hundred and two men, of whom twenty-nine were killed; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt. Ambrose, 7 July and 26 Sept. 1741.] and Capt. Amherst, encountering a heavy gale in Barnstable Pool, off Appledore, would have lost his ship, the low-waisted, over-masted _Mortar_ sloop, had it not been for the nine men he was so lucky as to impress shortly before the gale. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Capt. Amherst, 12 Dec. 1744.] Anson regarded pressed men with suspicion. When he sailed on his famous voyage round the world his ships contained only sixty-seven; but with his complement of five hundred reduced by sickness to two hundred and one, he was glad to add forty of those undesirables to their number out of the India-men at Wampoo. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt. Anson, 18 Sept. 1740, and 7 Dec. 1742.] These, however, were seamen such as the gangs did not often pick up in England, where, as we have seen, the able seaman who was not fully protected avoided the press as he would a lee shore.