H. J Holt Esq. of Exmouth, was keen on wildfowling. The Western Times of 14th January 1837 tells the story how, the week before, he went up the river in his shooting boat:
"On a sand-bank, near the Green Ores, he saw what he at first took for a heap of snow; but by the help of his glass discovered to be nine wild swans, squat and pluming themselves."
His customary boatman, Old Jack, was not with him, 'only a boy, whose strength at skulling could hardly stem the strong ebbing tide'. Nevertheless H. J. Holt managed to kill one of the swans with his swivel gun loaded with duck-shot:
...down he tumbled from a great height. What a flapping, splashing and dashing, the wing being only broken - but with a smart whack from the small gun he sung out and died. Oh! it was a snow-white beauteous bird, and such a one as Leda loved. It is now in the hands of a famous bird-stuffer in Exeter."
I remember seeing what was possibly the last of the Exe duck punts, but this was a one-man version built like a kayak, complete with an ancient , dangerous-looking swivel gun, buoyed in the Lympstone moorings in the sixties. The owner, I thought, was a bad-tempered, little man. He would disappear before sunrise. I don't know if he ever killed anything. Today to shoot at a swan, even a wild one, seems barbaric but Mr. Holt was clearly proud of his kill. He probably wrote the piece!
'The Green Ores' sound wonderfully exotic - pure poetry! Ores here means weed. It is, I think, a local, that is to say a West-Country, dialect word. The swans were probably up-river near what is now called Greenland.
H. J Holt , Esq is now long dead and buried but his beauteous swan might still be floating around somewhere. Ars longa, via brevis!
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