In September 1744 the press gang of the Royal Sovereign was informed that a deserter was hiding in the Fountain tavern off Rag Fair, in the heart of the seafaring quarter of London's east end. Led by the flamboyant and braggart Hamilton Montgomery, the ship's mate who sported a ‘lac'd hat’, the gang entered the pub and commandeered ‘a man in a sailor's habit’ who happened to be singing a sea shanty. A scuffle ensued in which the landlord, one Robert Wallis, was wounded and a ganger was pummelled to the ground by a group of local curriers who had come to the seaman's rescue. The seaman was eventually taken, but the gang swore revenge for the affray. They returned the following morning, threatening ‘to have the landlord's blood, cut his Head off, chop him to pieces, & be the Death of him’. They ransacked the house while searching for Wallis, ran their cutlasses through the bedding in an attempt to find their quarry, and sword-whipped the local headborough who had attempted to raise a posse against them. When one of their men was arrested and taken to Clerkenwell prison, the press gang collected reinforcements and secured his rescue, admonishing the turnkey for ‘taking in a King's man’. ‘Damn your Blood, you rascall’, they swore at the turnkey, ‘if ever you take in another we will cut you all to pieces, and pull down your Gaol to the Ground’.