pressgang

• “When you pressgang interpreters to explain it and they fail, you blame the readers.”

  Your art « Squares of Wheat

• “Touchwood had scarcely extricated himself from this impediment, and again commenced his researches after the clergyman, when his course was once more interrupted by a sort of pressgang, headed by Sir Bingo Binks, who, in order to play his character of a drunken boatswain to the life, seemed certainly drunk enough, however little of a seaman.”

  Saint Ronan's Well

• “Then comes the narrative of James Caton of Bristol, who writes to complain that while transacting his business on the Bristol Exchange he is violently seized by a pressgang, with oaths and imprecations.”

  Castle Rackrent

• “He was allowed quarter of an hour for pressgang work, and sure enough he came back within a very reasonable time with a few spare hands, and then -- paddling and poling for dear life -- we glided swiftly through the tangled lily-pads and the green rosettes of the Singhara, and soon were _in medias res_ and fairly committed to the deep.”

  A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil

• “Sabz Ali and Satarah were promptly despatched on a pressgang foray, while I put to sea with the first-lieutenant to show that I meant business.”

  A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil

• “The immense levies made in France, one after the other, had converted the conscription into a sort of pressgang.”

  Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon

• “Sturdy, Ralph, shot by the pressgang on the _Britannia_,”

  The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore

• “Another, a "parcel of fellows armed with cutlasses like a pressgang," appeared at Dublin in 1743, where they boldly entered public-houses on pretence of looking for sailors, and there extorted money and drink.”

  The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore

• “While woman was thus invading man's province at sea, that universal feeder of the Navy, the pressgang, made little or no appeal to her as”

  The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore

• “One of these unfortunate men, after having successfully dodged the pressgangs for a fortnight, and living meanwhile in an unenviable state of anxiety, was pounced upon by some disguised members of a pressgang as he left the boarding house one evening.”

  Jack in the Forecastle or, Incidents in the Early Life of Hawser Martingale

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