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By Root 699 0

around the Scottish coast at the time were the press gangs. The boom in trade and war and the premium it put on able seamen meant that shipowners often had to find more inspired methods of attracting a crew. At the end of long voyages, ships would frequently find themselves surrounded and boarded by gangs intent on kidnapping or coercing the sailors into work on other boats. Sometimes they acted for themselves; often they acted for the State. The navy, with its voracious hunger for manpower, had become the press gangs’ best customers by the time of the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars. The pressmen used every method, legal and illegal, at their disposal to find sailors, from searching the workhouses to plundering the country’s prisons. Most gangs relied on a steady supply of informers, and were prepared to consider almost anyone, including deserters, criminals, children and the disabled. An Act of 1704 declared that ‘Idle Persons, Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars…are hereby directed to be taken up, sent, conducted, and conveyed into Her Majesty’s service at sea.’ Later amendments to the Act provided for a suit of clothing to be given as a bribe to volunteers, though it made little difference, since the victims of impressment rarely went quietly.

The sailors, aware of the charmless fate that awaited them, took as much evasive action as possible. Some rioted, some capsized the press gang boats, and some feigned idiocy or injury (burning a fresh wound with vitriol to make it look like scurvy was, for a while, a favoured practice). Even when ashore, competent mariners were unsafe; press gangs patrolled the major maritime cities in search of recruits, while epidemics swept the docks. Fit and healthy men fled inland, or deserted as soon as they came on shore. By 1810, the Royal Navy employed around 150,000 men, many of whom, as one observer noted, were ‘so much disabled by sickness, death and desertion’ it was a miracle they sailed at all.

From Robert’s viewpoint, the press gangs were at best an inconvenience and at worst an active hazard. Most troublesome of all was the gangs’ habit of taking those who were, in theory at least, exempt from impressment. For a while, Orcadians were excluded from the press gangs’ depredations since they argued that their work on the sea was essential for the survival of the islands. But as the hunger for men increased, they too often found themselves duped into service on the boats. Robert, who often hired builders or sailors from Orkney, swiftly discovered that special pleading made not the smallest difference. On a number of occasions, he was forced to lurk several miles out from harbour to avoid the acquisitive habits of the press gangs. On another occasion, his sailors were only saved by the thoughtfulness of a female passenger on the lighthouse yacht. ‘With much fortitude and presence of mind,’ he wrote later in his diary, ‘she offered to conceal them under the state room bed, she lying on top and feigning illness. This plan succeeded so well that the affair was never suspected and the men got clear.’ The Stevensons found the practice of impressment exasperating, but no matter how much they pleaded that their men were needed for work on the lights, the gangs went on taking their quota time after time.

Nor was Robert exempt from the attention of the wreckers. When he complained to one of the local fishermen on Sanday about the conditions of his boat’s sails, the man replied slyly that if Robert hadn’t brought his lights, then all the islanders might have had better sails, better boats and a better life. Visiting mariners might have welcomed their efforts; the locals usually hated them. As Robert reported to John Gray, the Clerk of the NLB, in 1802, ‘You would hardly believe with what an evil eye the Wreck Brokers of Sanday view any improvement upon this coast, and how openly they regret it…You will readily see…how deeply their interest is concerned when I can assure you that since the erection of North Ronaldsay lighthouse, a period of about 12 years, upwards of Twenty Vessels have been