impressment

Provides accounts of men who were taken against their will and forced into service within the British Navy or aboard pirate ships during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Herman Melville's classic novel "Billy Bud" along with eight shorter stories; and includes introduction, textual and explanatory notes, and chronology.

Featured in this volume are "Billy Budd", Melville's posthumously published novella, the story of the rivalry between a handsome sailor and his demonic captain; the tale of the apathetic "Bartleby, the Scrivener; " the riveting "Benito Cereno", the story of a slave ship mutiny written at the time of the Amistad case and "The Town-Ho's Story", a chapter from Melville's masterpiece, "Moby Dick".