New England Almost Seceded over the War of 1812 (2012)

What would happen is they would drop coins into unsuspecting drinks in the local taverns and the drinker would suddenly find himself drinking and then touching the coin onto his lips on the last drink (something like that). So to avoid this the trend was to have drinking tankards with a glass bottom, so the drinker could check he was not being press-ganged into the navy.

ok did quick google and wiki does more service to this than my memory:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_shilling

Look at these lyrics from a 19th-century ballad (about, in fact, the battle of Trafalgar):

There was thirteen on the press-gang, they did my love surround

and four of that accursed gang went bleeding to the ground

My love was overpowered, though he fought most manfully

They dragged him through the dark, wet streets toward the Victory

http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/roud/2278

And for all the horrors described about life in the royal navy, it was often far better than life in the country. You got food. You were a member of a crew with rights and privileges. A laborer in farm country, or in a mine, was much worse off.

I'd add another recommendation, too, for anyone interested in that period of naval history - specifically, when it becomes reasonable to do so again, I'd recommend visiting both Constitution in Boston, and Constellation here in Baltimore. Constitution is the last surviving of the "six original frigates" referenced in Toll's title, and the oldest ship in the world still in commission; one of Constitution's sisters was the original Constellation, and her second-generation namesake here in Baltimore represents the final evolution of the design to which Constitution and her sisters were built.

Naval warfare in the Age of Sail is a minor interest of mine, enough so that I've read a good deal about it and even written a little. But nothing else I've found has given me the same sense of what those ships really were than walking their decks and being in their spaces has done.

Granted, even that isn't "real", in that visiting a museum can't possibly give a true sense of what it's like to serve or even go to sea aboard one of these ships in her time of greatness. But, short of signing aboard as a mate with one of the museums whose ships do still sail, I think visiting these ships is about as close as anyone can expect to come - and, either way, it's very much worth doing in its own right, for anyone who shares the interest.

this advantage of course dropped away in the age of missiles and jets but it still has many benefits to this day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

It's not really talked about much in the US either because it was ultimately much less significant than either the Revolutionary War or the Civil War--and, to the degree there was a winner at all, it wasn't the US.

1-0 for the good guys! Ca-na-da! Ca-na-da!

I'll show myself out.

There's even a Wikipedia article about it... which is rare because not much has happened down there except for one of my heroes Rick Danko.

(at the time of the raid, my family's respective sides were still to be in Ayrshire and Ulster for another hundred-and-fifty years or so—no historical connection to the event, or even the war excepting they probably had as much disdain for the British as Americans might have. Go figure.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_Port_Dover

Aside from jingoistic comic book like tales, we as a people rarely talk about the past.

The Brits fought the war with the units they didn't need for the much more important war with Napoleon.

That American don't remember their capital being taken and their most important government building burnt down by another nation is kind of funny however. And that's why nobody remember it, no movies about it.

Then the US spent the next 50 years fortifying their East coast to prevent it happening again those forts are where the Civil war eventually started.