Attacks on the gang, made with deliberate intent to rescue pressed men from its custody, were by no means confined to Barking. The informer throve in the land, but notwithstanding his hostile activity the sailor everywhere had friends who possessed at least one cardinal virtue. They seldom hung back when he was in danger, or hesitated to strike a blow in his defence.
There came into Limehouse Hole, on a certain day in the summer of 1709, a vessel called the _Martin_ galley. How many men were in her we do not learn; but whatever their number, there was amongst them one man who had either a special dread of the press or some more than usually urgent occasion for wishing to avoid it. Watching his opportunity, he slipped into one of the galley's boats, sculled her rapidly to land, and there leapt out--just as a press-gang hove in sight ahead! It was a dramatic moment. The sailor, tacking at sight of the enemy, ran swiftly along the river-bank, but was almost immediately overtaken, knocked down, and thrown into the press-boat, which lay near by. "This gather'd a Mob," says the narrator of the incident, "who Pelted the Boat and Gang by throwing Stones and Dirt from the Shoar, and being Pursued also by the Galley's men, who brought Cutlasses in the Boat with them to rescue their Prest Man, the Gang was at last forc'd to betake themselves to a Corn-lighter, where they might stand upon their Defence. The Galley's men could not get aboard, but lay with their Boat along the side of the Lighter, where they endeavouring to force in, and the Gang to keep them out, the Boat of a sudden oversett and some of the Men therein were Drown'd. Three of the Press-Gang were forc'd likewise into the Water, whereof 'tis said one is Drown'd and the other two in Irons in the New Prison. The remaining part of the Gang leapt into a Wherry, the Galley's men pursuing them, but, not gaining upon them, they gave over the Pursuit." The pressed man all this while was laughing in his sleeve. "He lay on the other side of the Lighter, in the Tender's boat, whence he made his escape." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1437--Capt. Aston, 10 Aug. 1709.]
In their efforts to restore the freedom of the pressed man, the sailor's friends did not confine their attention exclusively to the gang. When they turned out in vindication of those rights which the sailor did not possess, they not infrequently found their diversion in wrecking the gang's headquarters or in making a determined, though generally futile, onslaught upon the tender. Respectable people, who had no particular reason to favour the sailor's cause, viewed these ebullitions of mingled rage and mischief with dismay, stigmatising those who so lightheartedly participated in them as the "lower classes" and the "mob."