Why the press sought experienced sailors

The press especially wanted capable sailors and topmen who already knew the essentials of seamanship. Those men still needed to learn how to work with a new crew, but they could begin without basic training as sailors. The press also recovered deserters and limited bounty-hopping, in which a man repeatedly enlisted under new names to collect payments. A story about a publican who supposedly bought a pub with multiple bounties comes from his descendants and remains unverified. The claimed number of enlistments is explicitly doubted, although the story illustrates the incentives behind repeated desertion.