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.

THE HERON AND THE GOLDFISH

It is six o'clock in the morning.

The fish are in their pond.

They look all round their little world.

They do not look beyond.

They find a fly to feast upon

How glad are they to feed!

The youngest says, “O lucky day!”

The oldest says, “Indeed!”

They flick their fins in the sunlight

which is an act of folly.

They flash their splendid golden flanks.

The world, they think, is jolly.

The herons have lived on the Western bank

since Ex’ter built her wall

but sometimes one will cross the tide 

and condescend to call.  

The herons have been at Powderham

since Harold lost an eye

but now and again one flaps this way

and drops in from on high.

Oh,  noble is the heron

and stately is her flight!

She looks down on the suburbs

as a noble creature might:

the emerald of little lawns,

of bushes, trees and fronds,

the ruby rose, the sapphire phlox,

the diamond garden ponds.

“O do not leave me, fellows mine!”

So speaks the youngest fish

“I would not stay here all alone!”

The heron grants his wish.

It is six o'clock in the morning,

or maybe a minute more,

and all the fish who once swam here

ride high in the heron’s craw.

A CASUAL DROWNING, 1815.

On Sunday 6th August 1815, a couple of months after the Battle of Waterloo and a couple of weeks after the excitement of Napoleon being off Brixham aboard the Bellephoron, four people, a manservant and three women servants, were enjoying a quiet day's boating on the Estuary.   They had hired an Exmouth boat skippered by a  fifteen year old boy.   In the evening they found themselves in the Bight where the great colliers were moored and a sudden squall of wind drove their boat in such a way that it fouled the hawser of one of the ships lying there.   The boat was upset and a young woman was drowned.   The others were helped aboard the collier by the 'active exertions' of the crew.

As well as being squally weather, it was probably that time of ebb when the infamous 'race' is running    Even today,  when there are no colliers' hawsers to plague us,  many a small boat gets into a tangle in that part of the river.

 The report does not tell me,-  I am reading this in the Woolmer's  Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of August 12th 1815, -   but I imagine that these were four young people from a local household enjoying the one day in the week when they were allowed out.   We are not told the name or age of the girl who died.  She was, after all, only a servant!

It is no doubt perverse to feel much sympathy with someone whose death took place two centuries ago when there are so many contemporary tragedies shouting for our attention but I am in a melancholy mood today so I am wondering what this lost 'young woman' was like.  One moment she was perhaps laughing, chatting, joking, the next she was fighting for her life in the chilly waters of the Exe encumbered by her impossible Regency petticoats.  Was she still a teenager?  Was she pretty?  Did she have a sweetheart to weep for her or aged parents to grieve?    The distance and the very casualness of the newspaper report somehow make her sad death seem all the sadder.



  

WHAT IF?

What if it were to be decreed
by our all powerful Mother of Parliaments no less
that the Exe Estuary should become an Area of Outstanding Wildness
with not a dwelling within a mile of the tideline,
the distance to be carefully measured by government officials,
and all the people, simple and gentle, to be humanely removed,
as,  I am told, happened in the South Hams in World War Two,
and the buildings,  the beautiful with the tatty,  to be pulled down stone by stone and brick by brick
and the railways to be broken and all those rails and sleepers dragged away
and the cycle paths to be taken elsewhere and recycled
and all things plastic, concrete, tarmacadamed to be hunted down and rubbished
and stiff penalties to be strictly imposed on trespass,
especially on anyone who introduced any kind of electrical device or petrol engine
with death by hanging to be the fate of any one found sneaking in and driving an offroad vehicle
or carrying a shotgun
and the tides to be left to fight back into the ancient inlets
and the birds and the beasts to be given dominion
and the flora be given permission to flourish
and only a very few privileged people, but not their dogs,
of whom I would be one and, okay, you can be one too,
would have all the fun of walking and boating about here?

Well, I only ask what if?