What If: American impressment of British sailors

[GlobalHumanism]

We know that one of the major catalysts for the War of 1812 was the involuntary impressment of American sailors into Royal Navy service. But what if the situation was the opposite? Say Britain doesn't board American merchant vessels to capture the able bodied and it was instead the Americans that did this around roughly the same time?

As far the conditions for this to happen, let's say its still 1812 and the American War Hawks want to precipitate a British DOW as means to rallying the country for an eventual invasion of Canada.
How plausible is this and would the British Parliament actually react with a DOW?

 

[Mike Stearns]

So the Americans are dumb enough to interfere with the British Navy during a time of war? This ends badly.....

 

[Albert Blake]

So the Americans are dumb enough to interfere with the British Navy during a time of war? This ends badly.....

In what way?

 

[Dolan]

So the Americans are dumb enough to interfere with the British Navy during a time of war? This ends badly.....

Not when they done that after 1945

 

[Reydan]

But this misses the point of why the British were impressing. They needed sailors for the Napoleonic War at the time - hence the system. The US has no such urgent need for vast numbers of sailors.

 

[jonathan hanson]

Given the truely pathetic size of the u.s. navy at the time impressing British sailors would have been a special kind of stupid

 

[mrmandias]

There is no motive for the US to do this. Also, there was an actual dispute about whether individual subjects could give up their allegiance and become us citizens. But there is no argument that British sailors on British ships were somehow actually Americans.

 

[ennobee]

Actually in one way, the USA was already 'impressing' 'British' saylors:

As I understand it the move behind the British boarding US ships and impressing the sailors was that by British worldview a British subject was anyone who WAS BORN in England or it's colonies while in the US worldview anyone LIVING in the US was a US citizen, regardless where he was born. Thus the US going to was with Britain in 1812 was about the rights of US 'immigrants'. Of course those 'immigrants' more then often were English born and moved to the US before 1776. However, even if they had moved as late as 1810, they were still considered 'American' by the Americans and 'British' by the British.

 

[Dave Howery]

while it wasn't impressment and wasn't into the USN, the US merchant marine was doing a fine job of luring British sailors away from the RN with higher pay and generally better conditions. The US was going through and economic and shipping boom in the 1812 period, and pay for general sailors and laborers of all types was pretty high, due to demand for both. It wasn't just the RN either... during the war, one of the semi-amusing things that happened was that the Brits suffered a steady trickle of desertion from their ground forces to the US, soldiers lured by high wages for day laborers. British POWs were allowed to seek work, and were so happy to do so that they were allowed to do so without guards!

 

[mrmandias]

this discussion will be easier to keep straight if we remember that 'impressing' means 'drafting.' It was a form of conscription, it wasn't voluntary.

 

[9 Fanged Hummingbird]

The problem behind the premise, besides the obvious power disparity that would discourage the US from attempting such a thing, is that historically the US Navy of this time didn't draft anybody, let alone press them into service in the same manner the British were prone to doing. It was a small navy consisting of volunteers only, no need nor desire for dubious foreign conscripts. Foreign volunteers were more than welcome of course, but that's a different matter.

 

[Reydan]

If people are interested there was a good discussion of Impressment and why it was such an issue in a recent episode of In Our Time on BBC radio.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01q95s0

 

[VictorLaszlo]

while it wasn't impressment and wasn't into the USN, the US merchant marine was doing a fine job of luring British sailors away from the RN with higher pay and generally better conditions. The US was going through and economic and shipping boom in the 1812 period, and pay for general sailors and laborers of all types was pretty high, due to demand for both. It wasn't just the RN either... during the war, one of the semi-amusing things that happened was that the Brits suffered a steady trickle of desertion from their ground forces to the US, soldiers lured by high wages for day laborers. British POWs were allowed to seek work, and were so happy to do so that they were allowed to do so without guards!

It wasn't all that hard to pay more than the RN, virtually everyone did if he wanted to have his ships manned, the HEIC e.g. paid 50 to 60 shillings a month for able seamen compared to the RN's 20 and did so on time instead of paying up to 6 months in arrear. Of course those arrear payments in the RN were deliberate to make desertion from the RN even less attractive. Underpaying members of the armed forces seems to have been something of a constant in the history of British armed forces, at land, on the seas and later in the air. Even in WWII a simple G.I. earned more than a British junior officer, which led to the well known complaint among the latter regarding US forces stationed in the UK: "Overpaid, oversexed and (sadly) over here."