ABSTRACT
A critical factor in any society's capacity to wage war is its efficiency in mobilising resources for deployment against the enemy. In the dynastic and imperial struggles between the European states in the eighteenth century, Britain emerged as the dominant naval power, an ascendancy based to a large extent on her ability to employ more ships and seafarers than rival powers. As Britain was formally at war in twenty-six years of the half-century following the outbreak of the War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739, shipowners and seafarers were regularly faced by the uncertainties inherent in periods of hostilities. By the mid-eighteenth century, seafarers constituted a large and distinctive group, an occupational division that was expanding with the overall growth of trade, probably at a faster rate than the population as a whole. Seafarers of all abilities were related to employers in a relatively unrestricted market, their labour generally, although not always, procured by the payment of a wage.
