This doesn't really follow from the description in your parent comment, which claims that being impressed is worse than being a free sailor but better than being a free peasant. The logical conclusion from that is not that sailors would be lining up for Navy jobs if the Navy couldn't enslave them.
> Involuntary enslavement, whether permanent or temporary, is a terrible thing.
This point is more interesting. Note that the military is generally still enslaved today; leaving and disobeying are both illegal. The modern US military is not involuntarily enslaved, but it is voluntarily enslaved.
Should other employers also be allowed to employ voluntary slaves?
From my personal point of view the Colombian army is terrible, if one of their own combatants get shot in combat, they kill him and dress him in a uniform that resembles the one wore by guerrilla.
A week ago they bombed 8 kids and dressed them as guerrilla fighters [1] and it is suspected about two million people were killed in the last 20 years by the Colombian army.
My family belongs to a long line military and police men, so I get to know beforehand the new ways in which they are benchmarked. During the 2004 till 2012 administration the military and police men were required to have certain amount of blood liters per month [2].
1: https://colombiareports.com/duque-presented-bombed-minors-an...
2: https://washingtonmemo.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/colombia-the...
And for all the horrors described about life in the royal navy, it was often far better than life in the country. You got food. You were a member of a crew with rights and privileges. A laborer in farm country, or in a mine, was much worse off.