impressment

     Impressment was one of the main causes of the War of 1812, fought between the British and the young United States.  To impress someone was basically to kidnap him--usually from a port town or somewhere near a waterfront or dock. He might have been hit on the head or drugged in a tavern first. When the victim woke up, he was on a ship, out at sea--and in the British navy.  Unless he thought he could swim to shore, he was pretty much stuck with being a sailor. The navy, at the time, still flogged the disobedient and mutinous, so he probably quickly learned to work on a ship. The British had been doing this in England, but it caused a lot of outrage when they tried it in the United States, completely ignoring its status as an independent nation. The British burned the White House, but the United States won the war--the war Francis Scott Key wrote about in "The Star-Spangled Banner".