 There you are, reporting in progress, so you know. And we had a request, I mean, I think what we'll do is at the end we'll have questions you can put up your electronic hands and I'll invite you to answer the questions, ask the questions yourself rather than me reading them out. And in the meantime, I'm going to see if it's possible to allow you to turn on your cameras and to all feel like you are in an event. I'm not quite sure how to do that. So I may, I might have to do it. Paul, do you know if I promote everyone to panelists, will that complicate things? No, that's how, that should do it. It's actually give them camera and access. Okay. Do you have a problem there? I'm going to individually upgrade you all from attendee to panelist, which will give you the opportunity to have your camera on so that you can see each other and feel like you're more at an event. And we're going to try do that. So I'm going to do that one at a time. It'll just take me a moment. Just bear with me because this is all new. I'm starting to see some faces. I'm not looking at them though, because I'm concentrating on what I'm doing. And I think, I think I may have done it. So those of you who are happy to be visible and seeing may turn on your cameras. And even, I think, you know, I think you're even responsible enough to turn on your microphones. If you really do need to interrupt, but the way we'll do it is with the electronic hands and I will invite you individually to ask for questions at the end. And so with all of that ado, let's have no further and pass over to you, Paul, with our thanks. Alan, thank you very much for having me. Just before we start people, I will just say that should I notice that the connection gets a bit jumpy and that you may not have heard me. I will try and repeat myself. I'll do a test run with the first paragraph and then just make sure everyone can hear me and then I'll take it from there. It's very nice to be here. I have tried in vain for many years to try and get on this wonderful seminar series. So I'm absolutely ecstatic that I was invited this year to present my research on the Royal Naval Coast Volunteers. Great to see some familiar faces there, Catherine, lovely to see you and some new faces as well. This piece of research originated out of my PhD on the Crimean War, which I did it earlier on. You can find the details on that in my published work as well as the original manuscript held by Queens. It originated out of just a couple of breadcrumbs that I came across in preceding works on Ireland and the Crimean War by Brian Griffin and David Murphy. Just little hints and references to this force and I didn't know anything else about it. And again, finding breadcrumbs when reading the primary sources at the time, such as the newspapers around the United Kingdom. I went on a little journey over the last several years to really uncover it because it is something, it is a force that does not get a lot of attention at all in the historiographies, whether they be the naval or the maritime. Alan, you might just make sure all the mics are off there. The other thing would be, I should just say, that there's also things done on reserves generally. One does come across, I'm sure, and several of them will have published works, but a lot of them are under research, so I do hope that this adds to it. And then finally, I will add my thanks to the Society of Nautical Research and the Anderson Bequest Fund, which has helped me undertake some of the research to provide the information for you tonight. So let's begin. When it comes to the naval history of the Crimean War, the job subjects of operations in the several theatres, the ships and their officers predominate. Very little attention has been given to the manning of the navy or to the domestic services during those years. And I'll just share my screen while I'm here, just so that you can see what I'm actually talking about. That's any of me. That being said, these topics have been discussed briefly, i.e. the manning and the domestic defence services. And in the principle works in this area, that being said, these topics have, sorry, these are topics that have been discussed briefly in several general naval marathons, and histories of Britain and Ireland and Safson. I mean, when I say that, I mean histories of the Coast Guard or the one they reserve. In all cases, the focus has been on, has been on the Admiralty struggle. So when it comes to this period, the Crimean War period, the focus has been on the Admiralty struggle to get the fleets up to strength quickly in 1854 and to maintain and build capacity and capabilities during the war years. Commentary also includes the fact that the Baltic fleet was largely manned by thousands of experienced but aged Coast Guards, but also the critique of the Admiralty and the government, that the Admiralty and government received in Parliament in the piece of 1856. And those are the areas that you generally find referenced in the historiography of present relative to the Crimean War. And that critique that I mentioned, led to a very short, in the short term, the transfer of the Coast Guard to full Admiralty control and in the medium and long term to the creation of the Royal Naval Reserve. And we just get a couple of nods if you could hear me clearly there for that paragraph. Yeah, okay, great, I'll go on. So despite these various references to the problems around manning in the general histories, one key factor in the process of manning the Navy has remained largely not missed, made me the effort to establish a new home defense force during those years. And that is, of course, the Royal Naval Coast volunteers. This was a force that has, it's a force that which has also received its share of criticism from disgruntled MPs in 1856 and which has never received as just attention from naval historians despite existing for 20 years between 1853 and 1873 and comprising over 6,800 men at its peak. This is not to say that it has been helped to be ignored. Passing references to often disparaging can be found in several general naval and maritime histories and some recent dissertations in two histories of the Coast Guard and three works on our end of the Crimean War and in the works of JS Bromley. Yet no detailed study has yet been completed. The RNCV is not alone in this lack of scholarship as new research on Britain's various naval reserves, especially in the 19th century, remains limited to those previously cited works but also to articles more recently by John Owen and Ben Thomas and the dissertation of Jerome Davis. All of the works are decades old. Limits in their engagement are problematic due to a lack of citations or bibliography. It's a strange and recurring theme that one finds within the naval reserve historiographies and it's a shame because then it leaves one really wondering about what's been written in front of one. Regardless, during the years of 1854 to 56 while wartime naval operations at sea and on land were ongoing, the Admiralty via the Coast Guard was actively pursuing the government policy governed by the Naval Coast Volunteers Act of 1853 here and after the NCV Act to establish man and train the Royal Naval Coast Volunteers. As Bromley has shown, the origins of the RNCV can be traced back to the Siemens Register of 1696 and it's all part of this ethos of a sea militia and trying to create this entity over about 150 years and it can be charted through that 150 years via debates around the creation of said sea militia from Britain and Ireland's non-merchant marine seafarers. These ongoing debates were given platform in 1852 when in the wake of Louis Napoleon's coup and the onset of yet another French invasion scare and driven by longstanding manpower debates, the Admiralty formed a committee of inquiry to investigate the issues manning the fleets and to creating a viable reserve. Under the chairmanship of Admiral William Parker the committee investigated and made recommendations on not only the improvement of paying conditions and the overall mechanism by which sailors were created but also on the creation of a large wartime reserve of men who could promptly augment the fleet in a time of crisis. Many elements of the Parker Committee's report submits to government in early months 1853 were then incorporated into the NCV bill which was received its Royal Ascent on 11th of August 1853 and that laid the foundation for the creation of the new reserve one that would like the Royal Naval Reserve that succeeded it in 1860, at least initially, rely heavily upon the Coast Guard for its officers and thus recruitment, organization and pay and for its training, equipment, facilities and locations. So the NCV Act itself comprised 24 provisions that empowered and more importantly funded the Admiralty to raise a force of 10,000 men for a perceived cost of 50,000 pounds per annum. The force was to consist entirely of quote unquote seafaring persons who were not registered under the provisions of the registration acts and were exempt from the land militia service. Men were to be between the ages of 18 and 35 and would enroll for five years of service. For their peacetime service, they would receive a bounty of six pounds and installments at the date of their enrollment of every year of service. Once a year for 28 days, they then would then be trained principally in the great guns, but also in musket and cutlass. This was to be done under the superintendent of senior Coast Guard officers and at a time of year that would impact least upon those men, primarily fishermen and during which time they would receive regular seam and pay, but were also subject to naval discipline. Designated rendezvous for the collection of men were to be created along with transport arrangements to bring them to places of training or elsewhere in times of emergency. In such cases of emergency, quote unquote, all enrolled men were liable for service of float for one year and possibly two under royal proclamation only. During that period, they would not be sent further than a hundred leaks from the coastline of the United Kingdom and thereby consigning them solely at least in theory to coastal defense. Thereafter, they will be discharged. So that just gives you an overview of what, who these men and where, under what provisions they were to be brought together, how much money they would get. Anyone who's familiar with the British martial services of the 19th century will recognize how similar that whole thing is to the land militia and the service of the land militia with the months training and the bounty and so on and so forth. So it is very much an militia of the sea. So you can see where the template comes from. Owing to the small scale engagement of modern historians in the RNCB to date and thus the need for extensive research of the services, this paper is admittedly a limited study. Limited in scope chronologically as it only looks at the service's first three years of existence and limited methodologically as it only employs a bottom up perspective. Although its geographical focus is broad employing a four nations approach which serves to expand beyond the traditional Anglo-centric history of the Royal Navy to include and give greater attention to both to Ireland, Scotland, Wales as well. This approach as Naomi Lloyd-Jones and Maggie Smith have argued makes this article multi-perspective, multi-perspective and permits a quote unquote holistic or organic account of what was a British institution of both Great Britain and Ireland. This is done by utilizing a large cross section of contemporary national and local newspapers in addition to a selection of parliamentary minutes, reports and bills for context. It is the purpose of this paper to document the efforts to raise the RNCB starting in the first weeks of January 1854, just months before the war at Russia broke out and charting its development through the war years from that bottom up perspective before ending with a brief appraisal of those activities within the context of similar efforts to embody the predecessor and successor naval reserves. So that's the background and overview. So let's get into and let's involves of this. The organization of the RNCB. So it was established, the establishment of the new reserve began in earnest on New Year's Day 1854. So in ways much time of the passing of the act in August of the preceding year, once 54 rolls around there, they're straight out. And one can find that in the very first edition of the times of that year which reported that several officers had received new commissions in that very week and that they were to be quote unquote, born on the books of the fish guard under a Commodore superintendent, John Sherbrooke. The ship has been based at Woolwich Dockyard in London and it was there that the headquarters of the RNCB was effectively established under further superintendents of captain, superintendent Robert Smith. Additionally, it comprised six outstations and now I can actually proceed with my slides hopefully. There we go. So this is the way it was broken down. The whole United Kingdom was broken into six districts or what was termed outstations. You had one district for Ireland, one district for Scotland and England and Wales was subdivided into four districts each of which was overseen by a senior coast guard officer. I'll give you a bit more detail about where the boundaries lay as we go along. But as I said, Ireland and Scotland were their own distinct districts. The commanders of these were as a senior naval officers and they were Captain Robert Creakey in Scotland and in England and Wales there was Janice Baker, Henry Broadhead, William Sharingham and Peter Fisher and in Ireland there was Arthur William Journeyham. Each of these of the several stations and I include London and that also had a pay master assigned to them. These district commanders were all experienced officers with between 30 and 40 years in the service. They held the rank of captain in 1854. Most adjoined and served their years during the wars in France and had served on several ships and stations during the subsequent decades. Baker, Broadhead and Sharingham were all on ships books in the years preceding the establishment of yours N.C.P. With the latter two, with the latter sorry involved in surveying the British coasts. Journeyham and Fisher had been with Coast Guard for several years preceding, excuse me, while Creakey and his successor which was a Captain John Frazier from 1855 onwards were on half pay for over a decade receding. So we have a kind of a mix, a mixed bunch taking up these positions at the time but all very experienced officers. As an app shows together the officers' commands covered the entire coastline of Britain and Ireland. Evidently by assigning four officers to England and Wales, the Admiralty expected that that region or kingdom as it was referred to us at the time would provide the majority of the recruits. This was no doubt based upon the region's contributions to the regular Navy which was clearly illustrated in the 1852 census of the Navy which showed that England alone provided 79.7% of ratings in the Navy. Each of the three kingdoms were required to provide a quota for the now 10,000 strong force. And you'll see that on the next page. So again, up just up the top you see the six districts, the regions that they cover from to from kind of broken down by towns, cities. And down the bottom you'll see the a lot of quotas for the various districts. So we saw, we see that Scotland had to provide 1,500, Ireland surprised 1,000 and that remaining 7,500 broken down between the four ancient Welsh districts. What is apparent from contemporary reports in a cross section of newspapers is the method of recruitment was very hands-on and laborious for these officers. Not only did they have to travel throughout their districts on board ship and even upriver to inform will be recruits of the nature of service through public meetings and to invite them to join, but they also had to assess and enroll them. They're out that they had to establish rendezvous from whence the men will be collected for their annual trainings to collect their pay for annual bounty. Under the terms of the NCVAC, the definition of who was to be recruited into the new service was very vague being quote unquote, seafaring men and other who may be deemed suitable for the service. Consequently, the six officers were reported to have sought all manner of men, including seafaring people, watermen pilots and coasters, turf folk men and quote unquote, others engaged in various locations on the river and its shores, but it was fishermen who were the principal target and thus accounted for the majority of the men enrolled. So let's look into the strategies of these six recruiters. Between January 1854 and the summer of 1855, the several district commanders of the new NCV or really the six that I listed visited scores of coastal and even inland settlements connected to the seabed major rivers from Inverness all the way south around the coast of England and Wales to Preston in Britain and from Cork to Goway City in Ireland. So here you'll see this is where they were active. It's interesting in itself where there's gaps. Now I have to look, I haven't yet found real answers to this as to why they stopped and didn't go in certain ways. Now, maybe there's not reports that I'm finding. Obviously if I get, if and when I get into the Admiralty Report, so now at a later juncture, we may see more in something I throw light on that, but from the bottom-up perspective, the bottom-up analysis that I'm going to take into local and national newspapers, reports only report them being active within these spheres. In Scotland, this is particularly interesting because the recent work by then Thomas on the orange seat on the Royal Naval Reserve from about the 1870s into the 1930s shows that the majority of those recruits came from the Highlands and Highlands on the western coast of Scotland. So why we see this disparity, I don't know. In term, largely a certain answer can of course be found in the 1852 census when we think about where are the majority of Navy men coming from? And in Ireland especially and in Scotland to a degree, this is reflective. In Ireland for example, 52% of naval recruits in 1852 come from Cork alone down the very south of the country with a further 12 to 14% coming from the western coast. So he certainly is, Jeremy Hems very logically targeting the biggest area in Ireland's naval and maritime culture and recruiting grounds in that instance. But why Liverpool has left out this instance? Because I'd yet to find a report of Baker going to Liverpool. I don't know. A later report does say that activity, there was active recruiting there at some point but nothing is found in the reports and the newspaper reports in 1854-56. So again, there's still an awful long way to go with this but this I hope give you at least tantalizing insight into this particular force and how it was put together. So overall the approach employed by the officers was a three-fold one. It comprised giving prior notice to settlements of a forthcoming visit. So a letter to the local authority saying I'm coming to the area, I'm gonna be recruiting. This is much out for me. Conducting of a public meeting and a period of enrolment. Now the meeting was of course the most important of these for it was during this that most of the numerous recruiting strategies which I'm going to list now were employed by the officers. How exactly did they convince men to get into the force? Collectively these fall into carrot and stick categories. Excuse me. The former comprised the personal approach, clear and detailed information, use of regional rivalry, emphasis and government transparency, service within home waters only, a detailed description of pay and conditions. And the latter, the stick was the threat of imprisonment or some form of forced enrolment into naval service. Now the talks which are reported often add length in the local press, be it in England, Scotland, Wales doesn't matter, were more often attended by hundreds of local mariners. And they were most often taking place in a local prominent venue, usually where possible a town hall, but also in custom houses, sailor's homes, a variety of public halls and in one instance on the local pier. And the way the information again derived from the enabling legislation, it's usually the same thing as it is said by all six of the officers, was then a part of a relatively uniform man. The officers were all keen to clearly detail the terms and nature of the service, including the men's obligations in both times of peace and war and the paying conditions in both instances. They were also at pains to stress both the terms and natures of the service that they were all well above board. Nothing was to be hidden from them by the government and the services origins in an active parliament were often stressed. And because this is a very hallowed institution for Victorians, we see this in any studies, Victorian society, whatever it is today, whatever we think of parliament today, at the time we've seen as if it's from an active parliament that's coming into parliament, it's got a bit of legitimacy to it. All of the officers were also very open about the fact that in the event of a national emergency or war, the men could be drafted into the fleet for one or two years, but only by law proclamation. So again, illustrating this is in the act and there is a safeguard here. No one's going to be drafted in the willy-nilly. It's not down to just someone in Whitehall. So again, trying to put that again a bit more of a stamp on it of approval of sorts and legitimacy that it's active parliament in one hand and it's the queen on the other. Just trying to assuage any doubts, any fears. The possibility at a time when the UK was deeply engaged in blockading Russia and known to be short of men, no doubt impacted on what we recruit. So there's no references at this time in what I've seen to people say, well, we're at war now. So I'm definitely not enrolling. But we have to take it into account that you're being told that you can be called up in an emergency and people are saying, well, we're in a national emergency. Oh my God, we're called up. They weren't. This is the interesting thing that you was never mobilized because there was no threat to the home front. So no need, but obviously it would have played on people's minds. Considerable emphasis was naturally placed on the enrollment bounty of six pounds. It's not a poetry song. And it's something that Ben Thomas focuses an awful lot on in his study of the Royal Neighbor Reserve in the following years. Again, the people he's actually studying are fishermen in the Highlands and Islands. So it's very much the successes of the Royal Neighbor Reserve, many of which actually went into, from the Royal Coast volunteers in 73 would have gone in, folded into the Royal Neighbor Reserve in a year. So there's very much of synergy between our various researchers. But the sum offered on a bounty was very enticing for Royal Neighbor Reservists. So that would be very enticing for people in the 50s through the 70s in this case. To this was added, as well as getting your bounty, you could get travel allowances to get to and from your place of runway or train, while provisions and clothing were also to be provided during training periods. Men would also be eligible to attend Navy hospitals should they fall ill or be injured on training. So depending on which officer you're reading the reports of, some put more emphasis on this than others. So for example, Baker, and when he was speaking in Wales, he put an awful lot of emphasis on all these smaller benefits as well, especially at the Naval Hospital, trying to say, you can get a lot of things out of this. You will always be looked after, really come for the hard sell. But there's an awful lot there, an awful lot of benefits for these men should they enroll. So let's look at the caravlist in a bit more detail. So during recruitment, the officers were keen to influence men's feelings by highlighting past generation service. For example, during the last war, is it is a reference we see a lot, principally in the sea fenceables, while also encouraging men to protect their families and local communities. So very much an awful lot of, see a lot of references to, remember what your father did, remember what your grandfather did in the fenceables. And in some instances, the officers get mixed up and they keep calling the RNCV the fenceables, the sea fenceables. So you can see how much it is the success of that particular force. Regional rivalries were also to be used, between towns in a specific locality and between the four nations. So in Scottish newspapers, you see reports of Craigie saying, well, in the South of England, they're rolling up in their hundreds. Let's not let the side down in Scotland. We can do it better as well as them or better. And we see it in England too. We see the North England, they're talking about all well across the border there. They're all joining up. So let's not be outdone by the Scots. So we see that regional rifle being used. Familiar connections, again, were further developed through promises made by officers that the men would not serve far from Britain and Ireland would always be able to communicate with their families through the postal service. And officers also drew upon the assistance of local elites. And I'm sure this is overly surprising. Mayors were usually in attendance at the public meetings held in town halls and they would be joined by people from the local municipal authority, magistrates, local military and naval officers. And in Ireland, here's a nuance of this whole setup. Roman Catholic clergy were also brought out alongside the local gentry and they proved invaluable. Reports can be found of Irish Catholic clergy permitting journey him to post recruitment poster. Notice this on the church gates to speak to the congregations and of priests promoting the service within their churches. And lastly, of providing translation services to in Irish speaking areas. So that would have been very important. So down the south coast of Ireland, the west coast of Ireland these are the areas of the highest level of Irish speaking population, sometimes only speaking Irish. So to have a translator in the region to be able to provide that service was invaluable. And we also see that in North Wales in again the heartland of Welsh speaking peoples, the translation service were also needed. So those are our carrots. That's how we're enticing the men. But how are we gonna really cajole the men? Well, there's always the old age fear of imprisonment. Well, the carrot strategies form the core mechanism employed by these six officers. They were not remiss to utilize the potent stick. Britain, the British and Irish historiography are keen to stress that while the press meant remained available to the government throughout the 19th century by the 1850s, if not long before, both for the government and it had been deemed in politic to use it. Historians further argue that the failure to utilize it during the Crimean War proved that it was a dead letter. However, debates around the Manning of the Navy during the war showed that it was still seen by some contemporaries to be a viable option for the British state during public information events. All RNCV officers were keen to stress that the government, while it was loath to use impressments, if the men did not come forward voluntarily, they would have to use it. They would have to resort to it. Now, despite this conciliatory approach, many English communities openly refused to come forward by sharing them later encounters, declaring that they would rather await compulsion than go forward willingly at that time. No such sentiments have yet been found to be expressed in Scotland or Ireland. So there's a very diff, there's, we can see in the reports, there's a very different reception to this force depending on where one is actually reading the reports. So the South of England and England, Wales the whole, it's gonna be bad. It's gonna be good. And that is the reality. And there are various reasons for that and I'll go into that in a little bit now. So just a little bit on communication before I move to the successes and failures. Although hand-builds and circulars to local authorities and local newspapers were also issued, the personal approach was primarily used by the recruiting officers. First, and the reasons for this for two-fold. First, face-to-face and hands-on approach was primarily a method of recruiting right up to the First World War for both Army and Navy. Second, when dealing with these often isolated and close-knit communities and accessible personal approach was both advisable and useful. This was certainly seems to have been the case in both Ireland and especially Scotland where the RNCV was most successful and the reports of their officers' receptions were more numerous and complimentary in the papers. It was also highlighted to be a desirable trade in Wales. And by it being highlighted as a desirable trade it suggested that they didn't feel this particular officer Baker had it in him that he wasn't afraid of the locality that he wasn't able to speak to the people. So successes and failures. There were multiple factors that deeply affected the recruitment of the RNCV during the Crimean War. And the first was that it was voluntary and those people could and did say no, especially in England, Wales. The second was the limitation of this personal approach, it was mentioned or more specifically the person's personality. While all the recruiters were established naval officers at the rank of captain and had the same legislation and terms of service to draw upon their individual personalities and approaches played a key part. The differences were not only evident from the responses of the various maritime communities to the officers, but also the reports of their various public speeches. The ways in which the officers structured their speeches and where they placed the most emphasis on how they complimented would be volunteers and played to their interest and concerns is all evident in the newspaper reports. Two of the most contrasting examples of this are the successful engagement of Journeyham with the women folk at the Clata in Galway in February, 1854 and the very hostile reception that Captain Fisher received at Lowstoft the following month. In the fore instance, 300 men reportedly sought to enroll with Journeyham at Galway. And the women folk declared that they would shame their men into joining by volunteering themselves, should the men not come forward. While at Lowstoft, the government's proposal was denounced by the local mariners as claptraps and Fisher was actually faced by a hostile deputation from the local maritime community who had a lot of grievances that they wanted to air and said no way would they be joining this reserve because they didn't trust the government and they didn't like the identity and so on and so forth. Of all six districts Scotland was most successful with multiple newspaper reports and even the government claiming that it had met its quota of 1500 men by the summer of 1854. A few other reports even claimed that it exceeded its quota by 200 men. Ireland came second raising between 600 and 720 men depending what you read out of its total quota of 1,000. It's not bad. All this was in stark contrast to England and Wales which only provided one third of its 7,500 quota. This contrasting situation was due to three further factors. I know I don't listen to a lot of factors as we go along but unfortunately in details assessments such as this, this what we're going to have to deal with unfortunately but I do hope it's all clear as we go along. I hope my slides are helping. So what are those three factors that have led to such a poor uptake in England and Wales? Well, there are a couple of articles actually issued in the nautical magazine in 1858 by Captain Scheringham and he's looking back on this and he said the first of these was the considerable and unflinching distrust of the Admiralty and Government by maritime communities and especially in the south of England due to past and current policies, including oppressments. The second was a failure by local authorities and business owners especially in that area to encourage the fishermen to enroll and the third was that some fishermen perceived that to enroll was to then have their stable and valuable employment taken away they would lose their income. They felt they would lose out in a big way. So again, it was not perhaps explained to them enough that you will not be able to go on say your service, your active service, your summer camp as of where your 28 days of training outside of the fishing season for example but even if they were say called on board ship and active service they certainly felt that they would lose a lot of money. So they were working for big companies down the south of England making good regular incomes not like say the Crofter fishermen the part-time fishermen in Scotland and Ireland who were going to make more money out of their service. In terms of impressments due to its far large of maritime population and the greater proportion of merchant vessels in its ports in England especially southern England. So it bore the brunt back in the day of impressment and that had a long memory and a long memory that they didn't trust the government. So I'm moving towards the conclusion now and what I'm going to do as a part of my wrap up is to talk about the numbers actually involved. So we talked about the strategies to talk about where we talked about who did it. So let's see how much, how it's successful they actually weren't why and how or where I should say and how much. Finally, by way of inclusion is worth discussing the overall success of establishing and raising the RNC feature and the Crimean War. Through the analysis of the contemporary newspapers parliamentary debates and the 1859 Manning the Navy report, what is evidence, evidence is that the total number of men enrolled into the new service by the end of 1856 is actually debated. During the first year, as early as June, the press and even the First Lord, as I said were happily reporting that the force that actually met it's half of the establishment of 5,000 men enrolled allowing for a rounding up. A House of Lords report issued in 1856 claimed that by December of that year, 1854, 4,001 men had been enrolled. So that's on the left of your screen there. That's the has a lot of importantly claimed that. So if the press and the government were saying 1854, we got 5,000, we're in the kind of the same area. Also in 1856, just one month after that report, during the debates around the naval estimates and as part of a general critique of the Navy during the Crimean War, a Colonel Lewis Buck, conservative MP for North Devon declared during the naval estimates specifically that by March of that year, a total of 4,819 men had been enrolled. So again, we're kind of still within that 4,000 to 5,000 number. His figures allegedly came from a report that he requested, yeah, no doubt from the admins. However, these respectable and increasing ported wartime figures are contested by the published report of the 1858-59 Manning Commission. As you see in the second table, it declared that between 1854 and 1856, only 3,548 men had been enrolled. So we've got a bit of a gap here now about 1,000 to 1,500. The difference between the 1856 and the 1859 reports is substantial. And while the true figure cannot be said at present, it is most likely that owing to hindsight and the fact that it was a commission of inquiry that the latter figure of 3,548 is more accurate. An explanation of this disparity remains to be found. So I do hope to have an answer in years to come. Maybe on the next time I present this or research or if someone else could enlighten me through other research, please get in contact and we can come, we can shed some light on this. But at present, this is where we stand. Regardless of which final figure one uses and based upon the cross-section of contemporary newspaper as a torrent reviewed, one can be ready to be served but Scotland contributed at least its quotient of 1,500 men. Or by the 3rd of February, 1854, Craigie had reported to be enrolled. So some 600 men from between, from 29 settlements in Mauritius, Banffshire and Ninshire. This was followed by another 200 from Berkshire and East Lothian two weeks later. By June of that year, the Caledonian Mercury reported that he had just 200 men left to recruit. Ireland too seems to have done well with Journeyham reportedly and rolling up to 720 men by the end of 1855. Just a little bit of detail there on that. So putting all together various reports from various areas, I've pieced together numbers for Journeyham and same I've done for Sherry, Journeyham and Baker and the numbers are not great, but the reports, the extra reports of where they were and how much they got, where I can find them. Some they're not great and there seems to be a lot less coverage of the English and Welsh officers or yeah, English and Welsh officers than they were in Scotland and Ireland. So this leads to the four other districts being in Wales, which are supposed to provide 7,500 from the most populous regions of the UK and not doing so unfortunately. For one of the four officers were often were received in the towns and cities that they visited with crowds of up to 500 or 600 attending to see and hear them speak in the days after when they would have their enrollment periods, very little would actually turn up if anyone at all. The overall negative reception to the four officers by the maritime communities in Wales is an aspect of the 1854-1956 recruitment efforts that requires far more detail discussion than I can get here, as I've said. For now, all I can say is that the reception from Northumberland down to the South Coast and around to Wales ranged from lukewarm to outright hostile. In stark contrast, the 200 districts based upon the 1859 Manning report, this left England and Wales providing just about 1,300 men are 17% of its quota. So based upon those latter figures and just over one third of the total number recruited from the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, no firm total figures have yet been found. So again, if I look in some of the Scottish papers or the Irish papers, there are claims of 600 maybe or the 1500 in Scotland, but none of the English or Welsh papers could give an overall figure of what they thought had been recruited in those regions, which I find very strange and very unusual, but that's not the case. As there's some piecemeal figures that I was able to collect together from the various reports, just for sharing on Baker to give you an idea what they were pulling in in the various localities. Regardless of the actual numbers actually enrolled, any expectation that the RNCB could reach for establishment within one or even three years was hugely unrealistic for the contemporaries. And those criticisms of this state of affairs by both contemporaries in the 1850s and even by modern historians, and they do exist, the few references that can be found in some of the modern historiography, they did announce it. They say it was a flash of the pan kind of organization and it wasn't very successful and so on so forth. I think it's very unfair. And when you actually start drilling down into it as I've done here, we see that it actually was much more successful than it's been given credit for. And I do hope to show that more as I go along. And this was especially at a time when the United Kingdom was at war. So again, it has to be cut a bit slack on that score. The Navy was in a desperate need for men. A large portion of the merchant marine was tendered out to government and lucrative contracts and the specter of impressments still lived large over the maritime population. So all those things have to be taken into account when you've been looking at just this small period within the history of the organization. Yet as Jess Bromley highlighted, and others have also confirmed, this was not the first time or the last time that such unrealistic expectations were placed upon a naval reserve or the first or last time that an organization such as this had taken one or several years to reach anywhere near its establishment. For way back during the reign of William and Mary when the naval register, which I mentioned at the start was established in 1696, that register was meant to raise a force of 30,000 mariners for Britain and possibly Ireland. So I don't have to look into that. But only 13,000 men were raised in that first year. 13,000 are 30, it's 10, 10 out of percent. Only a further 4,000 joined by 1702, six years later. It was only, so about six out of six years of enrollment was only up to about 55%. And this was despite the men being paid about two pounds a year, double prize money and access to Greenwich Hospital. Over a century and a half later when the Royal Naval Reserve was established under active parliament, with an enrollment beginning in 1860, it had recruited just 5,000 men out of what was supposed to be 30,000 in its first 18 months. So 16% within 18 months. And it was only up to about 15,000 within its first six years. 15,000 so it got the halfway up in six years. So with those two benchmarks for the RNCV to be reached perhaps 27% of its strength if we take the 1859 figures or perhaps 40% if we take the eight parliamentary figures that I mentioned earlier, I'll just click back to them there. So if we're working off the 4,000 on the left, 4,000 or 10,000, that's pretty good. 40% within three years or even one year on that in that score or 35% if we go with the 1859 figures within the first three years. And by the way, if we go within that it has to be deemed as a great success. And to illustrate this further, the ability of journeying to enroll between 600 and 720 men by the mid 1850s was in itself a great feat when only 10 years later the total number of Royal Naval Reserve recruits and that's new recruits and reenrollments in the year of 1865, 1865 stood at only 294. So new enrollments and reenrollments of the Royal Naval Reserve in 1865 stood at 294 but 10 years earlier journeying and can enroll anywhere up to 600, 700 men. So of which in 1865, 187 were second class seamen. So the kind of stock that were being recruited in the 1850s. So huge drop in numbers as well in a different era, but again showing that there's a bit of strength there in the 1850s for the Coast volunteers. Finally, what this preliminary investigation of the Royal Naval Coast volunteers during its first three years, I think the Crimean War shows is that despite it being under research to date and being criticized or dismissed by contemporaries and multiple modern historians, the service represents a fertile ground for further study. One that when conducted using both multi-directional and diverse perspectives will provide an original and hugely informative insight into the operational realities of establishing and maintaining Britain's Naval Reserve in the long 19th century, but also the relationship between the British state and the various classes of Mariner, whom it saw as volunteer recruits, excuse me. This paper makes a small contribution in both these respects. The model used here is one that can and should be applied both the future studies of the RNCV and to all five of the reserve formed between 1822 and 1903. Whatever its failings between 1853 and 1873, or more specifically the failings of successive boards of Admiralty and governments of Whitehall to properly cultivate both that service and the coastal communities of the United Kingdom from whence it was derived, the Royal Naval Coast volunteers was a major developmental milestone in the creation of both today's Royal Navy and its Royal Naval Reserve. Thank you. Very good. Thank you very much, Paul. That was really, really interesting. And I don't know how to simulate applause. I think we've done enough experimenting with that. Thank you, Kat has done it. It's just visual applause that you so fully deserve. Yes, thanks for that. I wonder, before I open it up to questions to other people, if you could just help me out a little bit because I'm thinking to myself, I don't blame people for being distrustful, right? I mean, the timing of the Crimean War and this is not coincidental. And if you could be drafted in, then that's gonna be a serious threat. So what I'm wondering is, you say that it was never mobilized because there was no threat to the coast. What I'm wondering is if you could say more about what did these people actually do? I mean, if you recruited into this, you say there's reluctance to join and for good reason because of that fear, but what else were they meant to be doing? Tell us more about what a Naval Coast volunteer did. If you would. It's a good question. And at the time, it was one that still remained to be answered. And there's, when it got to 1856, that was part of the state that they used to beat the force with. It's like, well, they never got called out and they never did anything. So why are we paying 50,000 pounds a year to keep them going? One report, I did find reports of Craigie actually taking them out on their annual training. In and around Edinburgh. And it's the only reference I did find. So it's very strange that it was done. So they were taken on board a ship where they were supposed to be trained. Now, according to the legislation, they were supposed to be trained in fire arms, cutlass and basic weaponry. And effectively what was to be expected of them at the end of the day was there will be gunners. That's how it's gonna go. Theoretically, they're gonna be on the ship as able seamen and to be expected to do the basic things that a seamal do. Even now, that will begin in home waters. So working with in-home waters on naval vessels, they will be drafted on board as basic ratings and they will be trained in use of guns and the basic day-to-day operations of a regular racing. That's to me like not such a bad deal. And therefore, the recruitment problem seemed almost puzzling or am I being naive? It is puzzling. I mean, and again, it's something I'd love to, I can't wait to explore more once I can get into Q and take this further over the next few couple of years is to again follow on from this period, which seems to be a very positive, at least in Scotland and Ireland, that what are the numbers and from where and so on into the 60s and 70s, because what Ben Thomas is showing me and shows the rest of us from the 70s through the 1930s, the same cohort of Britain and Ireland's maritime community or specifically in the Highlands and Islands, the Fishermen, the Crossbreed Fishermen are falling over themselves to get into the Royal Naval Reserve as second-class seamen. And that's exactly what they are in this period. And it's the same in Ireland on the onset, again in the South and West Coast and Galway, specifically, there is a huge impact of the First World War on the local maritime community because they're all called up into the reserve. They all join in the 1890s, 1910s, when it's peace and they can get their six bob a year, 12 bob a year, and all of a sudden there's a nation, there's a huge war and they're all called off the Baltic, however, it made a huge impact. And we saw the same throughout the United Kingdom at the time in the Highlands and Ireland. Very good. So if they can be all joined in the Royal Naval Reserve, why aren't they joining the United States? Yeah, right. Good question. Okay. Any other questions from anybody or comments? Anybody would like to make? Hello. Sorry, can you hear me, Alan? Let's begin, Neil, go ahead. Yeah, thank you. Can I ask, Paul, this question of impressment interests me. So is it actually that they were threatened with the possibility of impressment to be put in the RNCV? Or that I can understand that there might, you know, you can maybe use a threat of impressment. If you don't watch out, you'll be impressed and you'll be sent out to the Baltic with a fleet or something like that. But it doesn't seem to me a very realistic threat that you'll, if you're impressed, just spend a full 20 days a year training with us. No, you're going to bang on. It's impressment into the regular Navy. That's the threat. So they're saying if the state can't guess the men it means to protect home waters and thus, you know, free up regular seamen to get into the Baltic and into the Black Sea and wherever, then they're going to pull you into the regular Navy. So that's what we're talking about, not... And that's what comes back to Alan's point, is like why wouldn't you take 28 days and six barb over five years to do practically nothing and risk and openly tell these recruiters, I'll take impressment, you come and get me. I'm not joining you voluntarily for six barb for five years. It doesn't make sense. But what it shows is how deeply ingrained distrust and hatred is. And again, like people like Brian Lavery are showing it in his book, Shield of Empire, that in 1866 and thereafter, you get a Royal Naval vessel turning up to the Shetlands and that's heading for the hills thinking they're going to be impressed. And it's 60 years since they were last impressed nearly. David, there's long memories, long memories in these communities at the time. And it's very evident even in the North of England around Sunderland and Newcastle that the communities are talking to each other. It's reported that Broadhead can't make any inroads with these people because they've got these long established inter-communal communication lines where if one village thinks this guy isn't for real, then everyone along the whole coast thinks he's not for real and they're not going to bite. So yeah, the fear is we're going to the Royal Navy but I think they're giving up a good chance for not doing so. Very good. There'll be a folk memory, obviously, which might be completely at odds with reality but that hardly matters. Good, thanks. Ian Stafford, you're there. You had a question. Oh, we can't hear you though. If you could. Oh, do I need to unmute you? Ask to unmute. How did the decision for the establishment of this come about? Is it based on some amote assessment of the danger to her mortars I need or is it a matter of treasury budgets? The establishment comes from the Parker Report, the Parker Committee Report of 1852 to 53. So if you read that in detail, if you read the work of J.S. Bromley, you'll see that there's an awful lot of appetite there and interest in creating some form of reserve beyond the Coast Guard. And they kept coming back to the thing of we've got thousands upon thousands of fishermen around the coast. We mobilized them as sensibles back in the last war. Surely, surely we can do something with these guys now. So it's a case of, well, we need a reserve of some description. We need to be able to beef up the Navy in an emergency. So let's create something. So what comes out of it, there's several forms of a force are pitched to the committee by people in the know, by senior officers and so on during that period of committee work. And out of that are recommendations in the report for let's do this form 10, 20, 30,000 fishermen into an abadi onto the Coast Guard and funded from the Treasury. And they can get away with it. They can convince the Admiralty and the Admiralty obviously convinces and government convinced the Treasury to let the money out. So 50,000, it's big money. But what we also see is it starts to decline as the years go on. When they're not getting the numbers in, that's getting slashed and slashed. And then they're only getting enough effectively to meet establishment costs. But still, they're running a force of about six and a half thousand by the mid-60s and about 10 or less grand a year, which is pretty economical. And that was the big argument they were saying. You pay these guys six pounds for five years as peanuts compared to keeping thousands of fully trained able semen on the books and keeping ships in the water. It's a much better deal. Okay, very good. I wonder if Kevin Ellsberg would come in from the cold and warm up and ask his question. Are you, can't, I can't hear you. I can't hear you. Something's gone wrong. There we are. It's the cold, you see. You got me. Okay. Sorry about that. I forgot to put the mic in. Yeah. This is cold out here in Norfolk this evening. So changing the weather. Paul, thank you very much. That was a great presentation. It's really a quick question sort of following on from Ian in a way. Do you have any data in terms of how much of an impact was brought into play, given particularly in the English regions, the recruitment was less than anticipated or the numbers didn't quite, you know, fulfill. From the reports, I mean, it's always mentioned. It's always mentioned again. Again, it's interesting when we view the structure of these reports. Again, where is it, where they place the emphasis. Some are really playing up the money. Some are playing up the community. And some, again, this is where we come back to the likes of Fisher. Really putting too much emphasis, I find. And maybe it's just, it's just the nature of what he was getting back from the crowds where he puts too much effort. It's just an impression. He's like telling them, you know, if you guys don't, you don't enroll today. Well, you're not the men I taught you where you're all, you're all yellow bell leader. He's effectively calling them out and it's very aggressive. And the report gets is very aggressive in the reports. And it's very jarring with the other five. So that's why I pull him up there in terms of the difference in presentation style and the personality of these officers. Again, it all comes down to the person and how they can present themselves. You read the reports from the papers and creaky has been held up as this really nice guy. He's got a great record. He's a, he's a native of Scotland. But you don't have to be a native necessarily because journey is an Englishman and he's doing great in the Southwest of Ireland and the most Irish of Irish places. So it's a case of like, he's the one, he's a great example of how much is being pushed. The other three, not pushing it as much. They're all mentioning it. Again, they're very keen not to hide things and they keep saying, we're very forthright with you with the government to be honest and the mayors are saying the same thing. It's all this whole thing that there's no subterfuge here. But of course, anyone who knows anything about the Crimean war period where they enrol the Lola dies for short term service and then they pay them off 56 when it gets tight on the purse strings. And that was a real kick in the teeth again because Palmerston and the Aberdeen government we're talking about we're going to be very honest with the mayors again. We're not going back to the, to the underhanded impression tactics of the French, the wars of the French. And they do something about the same again. And again, it's another kick in the teeth. So they're almost indicated in their lack of trust in these communities because they are, there is a stab, there's a stab not at the back, but in the front again by Palmerston 56 57 when he pays everyone off when he said he wasn't going to do it. So it's there. And it's always mentioned. And again, some are really hammering it. And most are not. I hope that answers your question. Thank you. I'm wondering. Now, you know, you had your map of the, of the recruitment and the, and there are gaps, right? Where they, they, they, they didn't bother. And you were speculating about why. And I'm just wondering if, if it's a, yeah, there we are. If that's a, if that's a pattern that's replicated, you know, in, in, in, in later decades, you know, in, in other, in other recruitment in other, in other periods. And if, you know, if this is an established pattern of it's particular to, to this period. And I don't know if you, if you, if you know, or, or, or speculate about that. I don't know. And I won't speculate at present. I need to delve more into the, into the nuts and bolts. Recruitment areas of the or in our, for example, to see where, because again, that's the successor organization. They run para. Okay. All right. For about 10 years. And then. The one CD has kind of folded into it. A second glass stock. So I'd be interested to see again. Yeah. Exactly. It doesn't seem to. So from the basic histories that I've read so far, there's a lot more in certain areas like Liverpool and Sunderland. There is very much a much better response in those areas. So again, they maybe see that particular organization is a bit more trustworthy. Some of the shipping firms are getting behind that sale from Sunderland. The pork master, for example, I think it was. He was reported to be standing up on that on the podium. And that's an organization that's. Wrote by both the board of trade and the Admiralty in tandem. So it's a strange kind of hybrid organization. And it seems to get a bit more traction in certain areas. But again, I said. It certainly has the flip. Carry on when it comes to Scotland, where we see only recruitment on the East coast. In the Crimean war years. And then when it comes to the or nor the 20 years later, it's, it's flipped to the sort of. West coast. More predominant. Interesting. Okay. Thank you. Kathy then. I'm just kind of thinking. Paul, thank you for the paper. It is really, really interesting. And I was just kind of thinking, I know we've had kind of discussions about. The lack of research on the coast guard. In particular. And just as you were speaking, I was also wondering, you know, you know, in some cases, there was, depending upon the coast guard officers. And how, how they worked with the communities. And we're seen to be, you know, trying to help the coast guard in particular. And just as you were speaking, I was also wondering. What perhaps were the relationship of. Some of these coastal communities with the, with the coast guard itself. Knowing that in some cases. There was. You know, a lot of them were seen to be. You're trying to help out fishermen, you know, as far as, as in. I'm not just a life saving, but. Like a lot of them were also operating as. Honorary. Agents for the shipwreck mariner society, for instance. So a lot, a lot of fishermen had joined the shipwreck mariner society. So that they would get help if they lost their boats or nets or they had. You know, a lot of people were talking about the kind of relationship that might have been set up. So I'm thinking of a, of a few that were actually up in. In WIC, for instance. Outside of the area that, that you're showing the recruitment. But in some cases with some coast guard. You know, even though they were the bad guys, because of stopping, smuggling, you know, that. As you know, On the port side of the front. So that might be shipwreck mariners or pushing for harbors of refuge and that sort of sort of thing at this time. So I'm just going to kind of throw out there, you know, kind of thoughts and. It is a very important point. It's something that doesn't come up in the reports at the time, but it's something that I found in the 58 and 59. Commission report. They start looking into it not. sharing them are called up to report on it and its activity and how many, and that's where he gives his details, saying, I really struggled, I really struggled to get guys from the south of England. He gives those three points that I made earlier on, the factors that he felt were really impacting. And it's in that report that, yes, the Coast Guard officers are mentioned and it's where they start saying, yes, there is a lot of distrust to them and there's an acrimony between, there's a tension between those Southern English communities and the Coast Guard, or exactly what you said, the anti-smuggling issues. So in certain areas, in Ireland, it's quite the opposite. Dara Bruncardi, he's described the Coast Guard in this era, at least as being held up quite well in the post-Napoleonic smuggling eras. They're seen as living within the community and are rescuers of the fishermen. So they're actually seeing very well. And I kind of theorized that perhaps this is partly the reason why the RNCB was also well received, not only for the money, but as an adjunct to the Coast Guard. It's trained on the Coast Guard. It's officered by the Coast Guard. It's brought about by the Coast Guard. They run the Coast Guard stations and things like that. It has a big relationship with them. So again, you flip that back to the south of England again, if you've got a population that has a negative perception and relationship with the Coast Guard, it's not going to have a good relationship with its adjunct force. So yeah, it would have played as to have played a factor and unfortunate factor. Interesting. Thank you. Good. Good. Right. Well, thank you very much, Paul. You've kicked us off really, really well, I think, for the start of this year's seminars. So we're all very grateful. I certainly am. I certainly appreciate you taking up the invitation and being willing to lead, you know, and let us into the new academic year. So I think unless anybody interrupts me, I'm going to invite everybody, at least those with the cameras on, to do the visual applause thing again, because it's well deserved. And we will, well, as I say, just to express our gratitude and hope to look forward to the next meeting and wish you all the best in your ongoing project. And just before you go, I'll say two things. And if anyone has any information on the RNC, you would like to talk to me about it in any way, my contact details there on the end of the slides. And please drop me an email or contact me by Twitter at any point. I would also say that this paper is actually to be published in Mariners Mirror next month in November. So if there's any details here you want to get a bit more on or you want to recap over this, please feel free to pick it up. And everything I said is in there and a little bit more. Well, we certainly will, I'll look forward to that. Yeah, I just.