In November 1800 the Exe flooded and most of the parish of St. Thomas, the Exe Island, and the lands adjoining were inundated. The Exeter Flying Post (13th November) reported this truly disastrous event but devoted most of its column to the story of the rescue of Mr. Holland and his companions from a waterly grave:
"....two chaises, containing Mr. Holland, his wife, three daughters, his brother, and servants, attempted to enter the city from the Okehampton road.
"They proceeded on with some difficulty, until they reached that part of the road which opens onto the Exe;.... here the water was so high that it flowed over the backs of the horses, and reached nearly to the windows of the carriage. One horse having dropped dead, it was necessary immediately to cut the traces, so as to extricate the others from the carriage, and prevent, if possible, the whole from being carried off by the violence of the current.
"As the water continued rising, it was judged impossible to preserve the lives of the persons in the carriage, unless a boat could be procured from the quay, by which alone they could be relieved from their dangerous situation.
"On this occasion, we cannot speak too highly of the conduct of Mr. Phillips at the Hotel, by whose particular exertions the lives of Mr. Holland and his family were preserved - he ran to the quay, which was universally overflown, and after the greatest difficulty, procured a boat from Capt Thompson, the master of a merchant ship from Leith, this he hoisted on a slide, and, by the offer of liberal rewards procured three horse to draw it, with the greatest expedition, to the spot where the carriage remained; to attain which, they were obliged to make a long circuitous route, the other avenues being impassable from the height of the water. The boat, however, arrived just in time, for the persons were still sitting in the carriage, immersed above their middles, and so rapid did the water rise that they had scarcely been extracted from their situation....when the stream flowed over the roof.
"We are happy to add, that the ladies, &c. experienced no injury other than a universal wetting, and the horror which they must have experienced in being obliged to sit for so long in a situation, expecting every moment would put an end to their existence."
It's the way they tell 'em!
One chaise , a bit like Sancho Panza's donkey, has been lost, unnoticed by the narrator.
Mr. Holland, his wife, his three daughters, his brother and his servants seem to have shown remarkably little initiative. One imagines them all just sitting there getting a universal wetting and waiting to be drowned.
Why and how should one hoist a boat on a slide and pull it with horses?
Which brings us to Mr. Phillips at the Hotel, running, procuring boats and horses, and that slide and arriving like Dick Barton, in the nick of time!
Well, they don't make heroes like him these days!
Overflown and proceeding on are quaint but wrong.
Pity about that horse!
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