The Royal Navy could not afford to cripple merchant shipping for immediate manpower gains. Merchant trade sustained the economy and political support that funded the fleet, while merchant vessels kept a large pool of sailors employed during peacetime. Before the War of Jenkins' Ear, the comparison gives the peacetime Navy fewer than 15,000 men and the merchant marine more than 35,000. After that war, the Navy had just over 17,000 against a merchant marine of nearly 41,000. After the Seven Years' War, the respective figures were about 18,500 and roughly 50,000 to 51,000. Merchant service thus maintained much of the skilled labor available when the Navy expanded for war. Taking whole crews and losing their ships would damage naval finance and the future supply of trained seafarers. Impressment did occur, although many of its most vivid stories appear to have survived because they described exceptional incidents.
Chapter · 32:45-34:20
The merchant marine was the Navy's peacetime reserve
Trade made naval spending politically possible, while the much larger merchant sailor pool preserved the skilled manpower that wartime fleet expansion needed.