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Conditions for the average sailor in the Royal Navy were very bad, and pay was low. Especially during wartime, it was impossible to fully staff the Navy with volunteers, a problem worsened by desertion. The Impress Service was formed to force sailors to join the navy, based legally on the right of the King to call men to military service. The Impress Service in turn utilized "press gangs" to do the convincing, duping, kidnapping, or otherwise forcing sailors into Navy service. Corruption was rife, as press gangs could be bribed in order to bypass a "candidate".
Impressment was criticized as oppressive and unjust, but was tolerated for over a century in Britain due to the necessity of crewing the Royal Navy with England under constant threat of invasion from the continent.
In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Royal Navy aggressively reclaimed British deserters posing as sailors of any other Navy, both by halting and searching merchant ships, and in many cases, by searching American port cities. Since it was difficult to tell whether a sailor was British or American, the Royal Navy "accidentally" impressed over 6000 American sailors during the early 1800s. This was one of the factors leading to the War of 1812 in North America.
British impressment ended after 1815.