STARLINGS ON THE ESTUARY, 1879

From The Western Times 17th January 1879:

"Never within the memory of the oldest man have so many starlings been seen as were observed here last week.   The plantation and the cliffs, so far out as they were covered with scrub and thorn, offered a capital shelter for them,  but they were worried all day long by hundreds of boys.   Then,  extending from the Coastguard Station to the Black Battery,  especially on Wednesday and Thursday of last week, there were thousands of these birds stretching along in a line with high water mark hunting for anything in the shape of garbage they could find among the seaweed.  So cowed and weakened did they seem with the cold East wind that they could easily be run down as a great many of them were,  as were also grey and black birds.   But on Friday their fear got the better of their judgement, and instead of stopping within the shelter of our cliffs they flew across the river in large flocks,  in the direction of Starcross, where exposed to the full blast of the East wind,  they must have perished in large numbers."

Nowadays the great murmurations are to be seen, and heard, in the reedbeds above Topsham.   What did the writer mean by 'grey and black birds'?   Did he mean blackbirds?  How times have changed!  These days all the boys of  a January Exmouth are indoors gazing at television or other screens instead of being in pursuit of cowed and weakened birds.   Which activity is the most pernicious I wonder?   Did anybody eat starlings?  It wouldn't have been 'garbage', a nice word with a first meaning of the entrails of animals, that the starlings were finding in the seaweed on the tideline.  And did they fare that much worse in the reedbeds of Starcross to which they fled?   More questions than answers!  

THE FISHING WOMEN OF TEIGNMOUTH

In the summer of 1773,  the twenty-one year old Fanny Burney famously came to stay in  Teignmouth and  kept up her journal there.  To her young eyes one of the wonders of the place was the shocking dress of the women employed at pulling in the seine.  "Their dress,"  she writes,  " is barbarous,  they have stays half-laced and something by way of handkerchiefs about their necks;  they wear one coloured flannel or stuff petticoat; no shoes or stockings,  notwithstanding the hard pebbles and stones all along the beach;  and their coat is pinned up in the shape of a pair of (trousers) leaving them wholly naked to the knee."

She also recorded that there was a rowing match that summer between the women of Teignmouth and the women of Shaldon.

This lively sketch of  bare footed women working at the nets and the evidence that women were rowing the Teignmouth fishing boats  leads one to conclude that in the eighteenth century the women of East Devon were a particularly hardy and independent sisterhood prepared to tackle anything.   There is also to be considered William Maton's account of girls ploughing at Starcross some twenty years later.    These 'mannish' activities were probably the consequence of  many men being away for long months with the Fleet or with the Newfoundland fishery .  

THE BOUNCING SAILOR

From Woolmer's Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, February 25th 1815.

"UNPARALLELLED TEMERITY

"On Saturday last,  as some sailors were strolling in the path-fields leading from Budleigh Salterton to the Signal-house near that place,  they observed a pretty large fish,  called a hake,  washed in by the waves upon the beach below,  and though a fish of little value,  each felt an emulation to secure the prize.   The spot on which they stood was nearly a hundred feet in height above the level of the beach,  from which the cliff rises in an almost perpendicular direction.   Several of them instantly ran to a point from which steps are cut in the cliff,  but one of them,  resolving to reach the beach sooner than the rest,  and setting one hand on the edge of the cliff, turned himself round with his back to the sea and actually precipitated himself down the side of the cliff:;   about five and twenty feet from the bottom, providentially his foot struck against a small ledge of rock,  when his body turned round,  and rebounding with velocity,  he was thrown upon his face and hands, on the beach,  at a few feet distance (sic) from the base of the declivity.   Instead of being killed with the tremendous fall,  he instantly sprang up,  to the utter astonishment of his companions and ran off in pursuit of the fish."

The Gazette does not tell us if the bouncing sailor managed to catch his hake!

SMUGGLERS AT BUDLEIGH, 1835

It was a moonlit, blustery night, Tuesday 1st December 1835, and the smuggling fraternity of East Devon had planned an audacious run on the coast just to the Exmouth side of Budleigh Salterton.   Some fifty or sixty men, gathered on the beach towards midnight.   John Batchelor, the chief boatman of the Coast Guard at Budleigh,  had spotted a cutter manoeuvring suspiciously in the offing and had summoned his commander,  Lieutenant William Noble Clay RN.  Lieutenant Clay, with great courage, hastened alone to the beach beneath the westward cliffs where he found a boat ashore and the smugglers busy.  He twice fired his pistol over the heads of the men on the beach.  Some of them fled but others came towards the lieutenant saying, "Seize him!" and "Give it to him!"  They were armed with guns, pistols and bludgeons.  They tied up Clay, hand and foot, and took his cutlass and his pistol from him and some of them beat him and injured him.   He asked them not to beat him and asked one who seemed to be the leader of the smugglers to return his pistol.   The ringleader, who was probably William Rattenbury of Beer, son of the smuggler Jack Rattenbury, pointed to his own pistol.  "This is not your pistol, it is mine,"  he said,  "and damned well loaded  it is."    By now John Batchelor had arrived on the beach and a Budleigh baker called Perriam.  The smugglers surrounded Batchelor and took Perriam by the waistcoat and put a pistol to his head.  Batchelor, however, stood his ground and fired his pistol and then fired a blue light as a signal  and, at this, the smugglers saw the game was up and fled into the night.  John Batchelor untied Lieutenant Clay who, bloodied but unbowed, then had the satisfaction of seizing the smugglers' boat where were 52 kegs of brandy and, no doubt, other smuggled goods.   Batchelor next went to the station house and fired a rocket to alert the countryside and the affray was concluded.

This story is taken from Trewman's Exeter Flying Post , 30th March, 1836.

THE STARCROSS REGATTA OF 1835

From The Devonshire Chronicle and Exeter News,  15th August 1835:

"STARCROSS AND EXE REGATTA

"This took place on Thursday last, the town of Starcross and the River Exe presenting a most animated appearance on the occasion.  The Regatta was under the distinguished patronage of the Earl of Devon, whose seat, Powderham Castle, is near the town but whose attendance on Parliamentary duties prevented his being present.   Lady Dantze was the Lady Patroness and S.T. Kekewich Esq. and Capt. Peard R.N., Stewards; and they were assisted by an active and zealous Committee, by whom the most judicious arrangements were made.

"The Public Breakfast took place at Southwold's Courteney Arms Inn,  and was admirably served to a large and fashionable assemblage, a band of music being stationed in an adjoining gallery and playing during this very elegant affair as well as throughout the afternoon.  The weather was delightful and with a fine breeze, and in front of the town and gaily dressed lay Lord Lisle's Yacht and the Transit, E.L.Kemp Esq."

The day seemed to have been a great success except perhaps for the Steward's Race which was "admirably contested" but during which "the Fanny came in contact with a Pilot Boat, and sunk, (sic) but the crew were saved."

How different Starcross must have been, before the railway came, when all the houses looked straight out onto the Estuary.   The dignity of a local Earl made this the most 'fashionable' regatta on the river with, clearly, many of the great men and women of the time wanting to be there.    Lady Dantze, whose husband was competing, was of a family that had prospered with the woollen trade and brought the mills to Ottery.  Samuel Trehawke Kekewich Esq had recently served as the conservative MP for Exeter and is famous in local history because, in 1826, four men ringing a chime of bells in his honour at Saint Michael's Church, Alphington were struck by lightning,  one of them killed.  Captain George Peard RN lived at Exminster and, as a lieutenant, had sailed with Sir Frederick Beechey's Expedition to the Pacific and the Arctic and had brought back artefacts now in the RAMM..

No doubt they all glittered in the August sunshine.  This was assuredly a very elegant and fashionable assembly!

ARTHUR L SALMON'S "SUNSET BY THE EXE"

These verses, written by Arthur L Salmon under the title ‘Sunset by the Exe’ first appeared just before Queen Victoria died.    I have copied them from the book Downalong the Exe by J M Slader,  (West Country Handbooks 1966).   Slader writes, “Before returning to Exeter climb atop Great Haldon.  The view covers the whole estuary of the Exe and the hills as far as Honiton and the confines of Somerset.  Haldon Belvedere erected about 1780, by Sir Robert Palk in memory of his geat friend Stringer Lawrence is a well known landmark.  The last time I stopped here I thought of those enchanting verses by Arthur L Salmon.  Was it here that they were written?  Was this the inspiration?”

Well maybe!   But my own guess is that verses entitled “Sunset by the Exe” were probably inspired on the East bank rather than the West.   “Sunrise by the Exe” would be another matter.

SUNSET BY THE EXE

     

The flood of light falls lingeringly

Where Exe flows out to meet the sea,

And through my heart the flood of dream

Flows deeper with the deepening gleam.

The sun hath touched with loving hand

The stretch of sea, the bars of sand,

And on each crying sea-bird’s wing

His kisses still are quivering.

The world of  spirits opens wide-

The sea of soul that hath no tide;

A moment’s vision comes to me

Where Exe flows out to meet the sea.

I pass with sunset’s passing gleam

Into the life that does not dream;

The secret guarded gates unfold

Unto the self that grows not old.

In moments thus, from youth to eld,

Too briefly given, too long withheld

The soul is snatched from time and place

To boundless peace, to boundless space.

The years that come with stain and soil,

For years of hope,  the years of toil.

Pass by and leave no least impress

Upon this inmost consciousness.

Where Exe flows forth to meet the sea

This message hath been granted me;

The soul, though fast asleep it lie,

Grows never old,  can never die.

BY GENTLE WATERS

To stand silently by gentle waters

is fleetingly to taste

a peaceful end to time,

questions no longer,

doubts resolved.

Sunlit or starlit,

these spread waters

mirror eternal skies

where you and I

hold no investment.

Rejoice though,

however to be defined,

rest will come.

We shall be rocked in our long sleep

by gentle waters.