IN THEE STAITS SERVIS
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ing the bad winter weather, stimulating both trade and privateering; though as our
period wore on navies increasingly sought to maintain operations during the win
ter. The following spring the race was re-run. Manpower was critical to national
survival and shortages were ubiquitous.
During the Anglo-Dutch alliance the emigrant seamen were no longer aiding an
enemy, but concern over the numbers still prompted the English Privy Council's
attention. Nonetheless, securing the return of seamen even from an allies' fleet
could be difficult.31 In 1691 a 'highly displeased' William III had a Royal Navy
captain twice reprimanded for pressing British seamen resident at Rotterdam. The
practise was 'contrary to all methods, and in open breach of the laws of all
nations'.3- Doubtless William's anger was due to the theft of the hard-pressed
Dutch navy's manpower resources from under their very noses, as much as the
infringement of the stronger of his two territories on the weaker.
The British and Dutch naval recruitment systems are usually classified as fun
damentally opposite: the British method as 'unfree' compulsion and the Dutch as
'free' or voluntary. In the British case this is clearly based on the infamous press
but tends to ignore the place of volunteers that has been conclusively demonstrat
ed by N.A. M. Rodger, B. Capp and J.D. Davies.33The volume of British serving
abroad was sufficient enough for the press to be extended to foreign merchantmen
and warships. James, Duke of York's General Instructions to Captains1663, spelt
out that any foreign ship met with was to be searched for English seamen; a prac
tice that often embroiled the British with neutrals.34 In the Downs, January 1694,
the Swedish warship Hope was boarded by a party of four British seamen from
Garland. The Swedish crew forcibly ejected them. Later, by way of reprisal, the
Swedish lieutenant, Nils von der Wyk (the senior officer in the absence of the cap
tain in London), was lured ashore and severely beaten by the British captain
Robbeson and then imprisoned. Hope s remaining officers had her main battery
loaded for action.35 With Anglo-Dutch relations improved from the late 1670s,
more tact and sensitivity might produce the desired result: Captain Wyborne told
Pepys around 1680 that he had found 52 Englishmen aboard a large Dutch war
ship 'which (according to practice) he demanded as our King's subjects from her
captain'. The latter was willing to surrender all his English crew, but 30 or more
had wives in Holland: Wyborne 'thought it reasonable to leave them' and only
took about 20 men.36
By the present period of study, the use of force was deemed incompatible with
the Dutch concept of freedom. The Dutch did, however, occasionally use force
against prisoners of war and enemy seamen (merchant and naval) at sea. In 1652
the crew of an English prize were dispersed amongst the Dutch Mediterranean
squadron and denied shore leave to prevent their escape.37 Sweeping down the
English east coast in 1652, Maarten Tromp took fishing and merchant crews off
their ships and forced the vast bulk into Dutch service. One Dover skipper had all
his crew taken including his son. He later managed to go aboard Tromp's flag
ship in an attempt to get his men back, but
'he could not prevail, but Tromp would have persuaded him to have served, promising very
great terms to him, but he refused, and had only his son away with him. [The Dutch are so]
weakly manned: that they take all the English they can, and force them to serve them.' 38
