A crowd with a heavy timber stood outside King’s Lynn’s gaol in December 1814. Inside were imprisoned sailors. Their supporters intended to batter down the door and release them, but Mayor Lionel Self supposedly stepped into their path. Anyone breaking through, he declared, would first have to get through his body. The crowd withdrew.
It is a splendid story of mayoral courage, spoiled by an awkward footnote. The historian who recorded it also acknowledged another account: the gaol had been broken open and the prisoners freed. Behind these conflicting versions lay a wage dispute that brought sailors into confrontation with the corporation and soldiers into the town.
A ship stopped for higher wages
Charles Mackie’s Norfolk Annals, compiled from newspaper accounts, records the disturbance under 9 December 1814. Sailors, accompanied by other people, forcibly removed some of the crew from a vessel preparing to sail. Their demand was for “a general rise of wages”. The ship’s name and destination remain unidentified, as do the existing wage and the amount demanded. Nevertheless, the wording suggests that the men wanted an improvement extending beyond one crew.
Taking men off a departing vessel gave the demand force. A master could resist pressure over wages if he could find enough sailors willing to accept his terms. Preventing those men from sailing made that harder. In a harbour dependent on favourable winds and tides, delay could be costly.
The reference to other participants also suggests support beyond the sailors immediately involved. Their identities are unknown. We cannot assume that they were all waterfront workers, or that everyone in the crowd shared the same grievance.
The attack on the gaol
According to Henry Hillen’s history of Lynn, published in 1907, alleged ringleaders were arrested and lodged in the borough gaol. Their supporters then disarmed special constables, taking away their staves, and obtained a large piece of timber to use against the prison door. A dispute over employment had become an attempt to wrest prisoners from the authorities.
Hillen describes Self placing himself in front of the door and defying the crowd. The sailors, impressed by his courage, supposedly hesitated and abandoned the attack. Yet Hillen’s language is openly theatrical, and his source for the mayor’s speech is identified only as “Armes”. We should treat the words as an attributed recollection, rather than a verified transcript.
His footnote introduces the competing evidence. Giving testimony to the Municipal Corporations commissioners in 1833, the town clerk reportedly stated that the gaol had been entered and the prisoners released. That evidence still needs checking in its original form, but Hillen’s acknowledgement prevents the heroic version from standing unchallenged. Self may have confronted the crowd. Whether he successfully prevented the rescue is another question, and the available accounts do not settle it.
Soldiers in the market place
The authorities summoned military assistance. Mackie names the Brunswick Hussars from Norwich and the Freebridge and Lynn Legion as the forces that ended the disturbance. Hillen describes a “German Legion” drawing up before the Town Hall with swords drawn, followed by dragoons. The accounts agree that troops intervened, although their differing names for the formations require further checking.
Hillen adds a curious complication. Instead of concentrating on the sailors, the soldiers began quarrelling among themselves, and one formation was withdrawn during the night. He supplies no reason for their disagreement. The detail gives his narrative an almost comic turn, but it remains a claim from a later account.
Three alleged rioters were subsequently taken under cavalry escort to Norwich Castle. Removing them from Lynn put them beyond the immediate reach of their supporters. Mackie reports that the offenders received two months’ imprisonment at the Norfolk Assizes in July 1815. Their names and exact charges have not yet been established.
What did the sailors gain?
The strike occurred during an unsettled transition from war towards peace. Napoleon had suffered his first defeat, but Britain remained at war with the United States. As late as June 1814, Parliament heard that impressment of seamen continued because of that conflict, although on a reduced scale. Peace was not arriving everywhere at once.
That setting helps explain the uncertainty surrounding maritime employment, but it does not establish why Lynn’s sailors chose this moment to act. The surviving accounts record a demand for higher wages, without saying whether it followed a proposed reduction or dissatisfaction with an established rate. Nor do they reveal a permanent union behind the action.
The sailors’ cooperation is more clearly visible than their organisation. They stopped men sailing and rallied around arrested colleagues. What happened to their wage claim is harder to discover. The accounts tell us that troops restored order and prisoners were sentenced. They do not tell us whether the ship eventually sailed at the old rate, or whether its crew secured another shilling.
© James Rye 2026
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References
Hillen, Henry J. History of the Borough of King’s Lynn. Vol. 2. King’s Lynn: East of England Newspaper Company, 1907, 524–25. https://archive.org/details/historyofborough02hill.
Mackie, Charles. Norfolk Annals: A Chronological Record of Remarkable Events in the Nineteenth Century. Vol. 1. Norwich, 1901. Entry for December 9, 1814. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34439/34439-h/34439-h.htm.
United Kingdom. House of Commons. “Impressment of Seamen.” Hansard, June 1, 1814, vol. 27, cols. 1038–39. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1814/jun/01/impressment-of-seamen.