Ch. 3.4. Primary Source: Naval Impressment, the Knowles Riot of 1747, and Samuel Adams’s Response

For three days, from November 17 to 19, 1747, Boston saw the largest riot of the colonial era in the mainland colonies before the events of the Revolutionary era began in 1765. This uprising occurred during a visit to the Boston harbor by a British naval squadron, which was stopping on its way to the West Indies (i.e., the Caribbean) during the War of Austrian Succession (1740-48). The riot began after the squadron’s commander, Commodore Charles Knowles, in order to man his ships, sent out a “press gang,” which seized 46 Boston men from the harbor area, mostly those with relevant skills, such as boatmen and mariners.

This practice of “naval impressment,” or the forced conscription of men for the navy, was a common practice of the British navy throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries–the age of sail and wooden ships when Britain became the world’s foremost maritime power. The British navy “impressed” seamen mostly in the British Isles themselves, where the total population of mariners was larger than in the colonies, and where port communities were more accustomed to this method of conscription–though there too it often provoked resistance and violence. The space is lacking here to fully explain this practice, but suffice it to say that the navy always found it hard to keep its ships fully manned, both because skilled mariners could usually find higher-paying work on civilian commercial vessels, and because mariners feared the navy’s harsh discipline and very high mortality rates; the latter were especially high on ships sailed to tropical areas such as the Caribbean, where Knowles’s squadron was headed. Yet naval officers and British authorities usually felt that military necessity justified the practice.

During the Knowles riot a mostly working-class mob seized control of much of the city, captured a number of naval officers and sailors, and held them hostage. By Nov. 19 Massachusetts royal governor William Shirley (1741-49, 1753-56) was able to negotiate their release in return for the release of the impressed Boston mariners.

On Nov. 23, just a few days after the riot, the 26-years-old Samuel Adams made his debut in Boston politics by publishing an anonymous pamphlet about these events, in which he expressed his opposition to naval impressment. Among other aspects of this practice that incensed Adams was the fact that an act passed by the British Parliament and signed into law in June, 1746, had prohibited most impressment (with exceptions allowed in cases of urgent need) in Britain’s colonies of the West Indies–its “Sugar Islands”–but without limiting impressment in North America in the same way.

Adams would go on to write many, mostly anonymous articles for the Boston press, first in a weekly newsletter, the Independent Advertiser, which Adams himself published from 1748 to 1749, and then in other newspapers. Often using Lockean and similar “natural law” arguments in favor of consensual government and of a right to resist unjust authority, Adams became a leading critic of British colonial government, and among the first to articulate many of the ideas and arguments of the Revolutionary era.

Address to the Inhabitants of Massachusetts-Bay and Especially of Boston, by a Lover of His Country

My design, in publishing the following thoughts, is to inspire the minds of people in this province, especially in this town, with a proper sense of imminent danger [that] their lives and liberties are in, if some effectual methods are not speedily… pursued to redress the injuries done to the inhabitants of this province (more especially of this town) in the repeated attacks upon both, by illegal and unwarrantable assemblies of officers and seamen belonging to his Majesty’s ships of war.

We have last week had a fresh insult upon our liberties from a number of officers and seamen belonging to his Majesty’s ships now in this harbor, who deprived some of the inhabitants of their liberty, in carrying them by force and arms on board said ships…

When I reflect on the consternation the inhabitants of this town were in last Tuesday morning, I don’t in the least wonder that the people came together in mutual defense, and had they gone no further they could not justly have been blamed. For when they are suddenly attacked without the least warning by those unknown to them I think they are treated as if they were in a State of Nature, and they have a natural right to treat their oppressors as under such circumstances [i.e., to fight back].

And when it is considered that the immediate sufferers, were people of the lowest rank (though I think full as useful as their neighbors, who live at ease upon the produce of their labor) it is not at all surprising that their resentment grew up into rage and madness, which soon… vented itself in an indecent, illegal and riotous manner upon the government, who, they weakly imagined, could immediately redress their wrongs, and punish the [offenders]. [But] every prudent thinking man knew [that this] could not be done, and consequently, there could not be a prudent, thinking man among them.

I was heartily sorry to see [that] the town did not rise in arms for the defense and support of the government…, though I am persuaded that if the civil authority had fully exerted itself it would have been sufficient [to restore order]. For lack of which, the town (in some measure) incurred the displeasure of the legislature. But I hope the aspersion is sufficiently wiped off, by their unanimous vote last Friday evening, and the general appearance of both gentle and simple under arms, the next day, to safeguard his excellency the governor upon his return from the castle, to which he thought fit to retire. And I hope his excellency has now a better opinion of us, and is fully convinced that his apprehensions were (in some respects) groundless…

Everyone, I suppose, is well acquainted that impressing of seamen to serve on board his Majesty’s ships of war has been long in practice. But it could never yet have the force of law, although often attempted. And I’m sorry to hear there are any (as I am informed there are some of stature and influence among us) who are so abandoned in their principles, such tools to arbitrary power, such slaves to their present petty advantages, as to have the impudence to defend the arbitrary and illegal conduct of those who have been the perpetrators of our late sufferings, and the confusion and disorder consequent upon them, by asserting “that pressing has been so long a custom as to become a part of the Constitution.”

If it is true in fact, that there is anyone so lost to all sense of goodness and so abandonly vicious, as to advance such a detestable doctrine, I wish from my soul [that] it was in my power, as much as it is in my will, to make it a part of that Constitution, that he should be obliged to serve as a common seaman, for seven years, on board the worst ship of war, and under the worst commander [that] the King has in his service, without its being known, he was placed there as a reward of his merits.

I grant it is a difficulty, the legislature of Great Britain could never yet surmount, how to man the navy, without laying the subject under the heavy (not to say intolerable) grievance, they are obliged to suffer by impressing. But this I must leave to those, whose proper business (I wish I could say interest) it is, to find out some method, whereby they may relieve the subject and support the naval strength, which is the glory and defense of the nation. [I] shall now consider it as it stands related to the plantations in general, and this province in particular.

With respect to the plantations in general, the burden is vastly greater than in Europe, as they are but infant settlements the growth of which very much depends, on the little (and very much limited) trade they are permitted to carry on. But more especially if it’s considered when the inhabitants of the plantations are impressed on board the King’s ships, and carried away from their families and friends, there is scarcely one in a hundred ever returns, which is not the case in England, where the ships generally once a year return to be docked or repaired, when the seamen often have liberty to go on shore for a while, and visit their relations and friends. Whereas the poor and friendless Americans are turned over to other ships, and never suffered to breathe their native air, which together with the cruel usage they frequently meet with (too horrid to be described) often, if not always, breaks their hearts, as it now almost breaks mine to think on it.

This is what every one of the plantations suffer, except the Sugar Islands, which are protected by a special Act… When I consider in addition to the hardships upon the plantations in general, the great losses the trading part of this province has met with by sea; the captivity of many hundreds of her inhabitants by the French and Indians upon the frontiers: the lives lost and immense sums spent in defense of his Majesty’s province of Novia Scotia; and above all the blood and treasure spent in the [conquest] of Louisbourg [Canada] for the Crown of Great-Britain [in 1745]– an action, which I am sure, must ever be remembered to the Glory of New England; and which we have the strongest assurances from his Majesty, makes us acceptable in his sight.

I say, when I consider these peculiar discouragements, and how this town seems to be distinguished from other trading towns upon the continent, and as it were singled out for the officers and seamen of his Majesty’s ships to prey upon, I can’t help being extremely surprised that the legislature has never yet (at least to my knowledge) remonstrated our grievances to the crown, and petitioned his Majesty that in his great goodness he would take pity on us, and effectually secure us for the future against any such hardships and cruelties.

And why we should not merit a protection against impresses a much as the Sugar-Islands, I’m at a loss to conceive. For it may be considered that this province is the natural and necessary barrier to all the colonies round us, and that we have in fact been at almost the whole expense, both of men and money, for their defense and protection against the incursions of the French and Indians from Canada, since the commencement of the war with France. To which if we add the great return to our mother country of new ships annually built in this province and chiefly navigated by seamen of our own breeding, very few of whom escape being impressed as soon as they arrive in Europe, I think we have the most just plea that any people ever had for a special protection…