HER MAJESTY'S BROAD R., DAWLISH, 1843.

In the mad March days of 1843 another ambitious smuggling endeavour came to light in the neighbourhood of Dawlish

 "On Saturday morning the wind was very fresh from the eastward, and the tides unusually high - this untoward circumstance caused part of a cargo of contraband spirits, which had been sunk, to wash ashore, which as matter of course was discovered by the coast guard service on duty, which immediately made them on the alert, and in the course of the day and the succeeding day and night several kegs washed ashore, and as soon as the storm abated the service put off in their boat in quest of the remainder of the booty, which they very soon got scent of, being a number of kegs lashed together into what is called a raft, but from its being entangled in the rocks they were unable to take it up.

However, they have taken every precaution to secure it, by setting a buoy over it, bearing her Majesty's broad R, and in a few days the whole of this valuable cargo, which is a very serious loss no doubt to the speculators engaged in it, will be landed and conveyed to her Majesty's stores in Exeter, much to the annoyance of the would-be free traders, and very little to the profit of the men in the preventive service."

I have written of Preventive Officers using the 'broad arrow' to designate confiscated goods but this time it is the "broad R."  perhaps beneath the crown like in the royal cipher, painted on a buoy over a 'raft' of moonshine brandy.

I could not find many references to this broad R. but it apparently was to be found everywhere. I found this snippet from Tom Paine:   "Is not the G.R. or the broad R. stampt on every thing?  Even the shoes, the gloves, and the hats which we wear, are enriched with the impression and all our candles blaze a burnt offering."

The last few words of this report pointing out the annoyance of the "free traders" and the "very little to the profit"  of the preventive service seem to me to suggest the columnist, like so many people, had a secret sympathy with the smugglers.  I, however, am sure the preventives were upright men,  pleased and proud of themselves for having thwarted the "free trade" and that they rejoiced to deliver so much brandy into store at Exeter.  Perhaps, at least one keg stayed in Dawlish:  - broached by accident?

Source: The Western Times, 4th March,  1843

"NOSING", TORQUAY, 1842.

"Great dissatisfaction is felt in the neighbourhood of Hope's Nose in consequence of the Preventive men coming across a store of tubs which had been landed there early in October.

"It is said that one of the parties split, and that his daughter took her station on a rock in front of the cave, and the Preventive men walked right in and took the tubs.

"The honest man had his conscience smitten, and was obliged to split to ease it,  he having been engaged in runs for fourteen years and upwards, and now doing the illicit in the matrimonial line at Torquay, the expenses of which caused him to "nose".  The men of the "moonshine" are very indignant at being done out of the results of a successful run."

A nose, like a snitch or a snout is, as every schoolboy knows, common as a noun and means a police-informant, or in this case an H.M.Customs informant. 

NOSING was The Western Times' (12th November 1842) title to this piece,  here used as a verb. To split, meaning more or less the same, is not felt to merit quotation marks.  Of course it is the location, Hope's Nose, that inspired the choice of words.

Hope's Nose is said to be a form of Hoop's Nose, so called because of the shape of  this headland although it seems more of a hook than a hoop. 

The Preventive Men came by sea. (I assume) The informer's daughter stood on a rock to betray the cache of tubs.  Her father was doing the illicit in the matrimonial line,  (horrible euphemism!)  How did the Times' correspondent know all these details?  It is pretty clear where his sympathies lay.

Men of the moonshine, I find admirable.  It would make a good title for a novel about smugglers.

"Moonshine signifies smuggled spirits, which were placed in holes or pits and removed at night" - Notes and Queries, May 1884.

A BOAT MADE OF THE SLIGHTEST MATERIALS, SIDMOUTH, 1842.

 The Sidmouth correspondent to The Western Times of Saturday, 9th April 1842 reported: 

"On Friday, there was a large quantity of illicit brandy  landed about a mile to the east of this town, unperceived  by the coast-guard of the adjoining stations.

"The smugglers left behind them a boat used in landing their cargo from some larger vessel, and which was evidently made with a calculation as to its probable loss, it being made of the slightest materials, and not painted,  It is in the possession of the coast-guard, and marked with the broad arrow." 

For a second consecutive month (see my last blog!) the coastguard stations at Sidmouth and Weston did not notice a ship delivering a cargo of brandy to, on both occasions it can only have been, Salcombe Mouth.  The ship would have shown no lights and the crew would have made no noise and would perhaps have navigated by what the National Trust calls 'the day-mark', the great, white, man-made area of flint stones high on Dunscombe(?) cliff, which would also serve, most nights, as a night-mark.  (Does anyone know when this 'mark' was made?)

This is the first time I have read of smugglers using a cheap-and-cheerful, dispensable, unpainted boat 'made of the slightest materials' which could be abandoned on the beach to amaze and dismay the excisemen.  The boat must at least have been sturdy enough to serve as a lighter.

The customs officers of Sidmouth and Weston seem seldom to have found any kegs of illicit brandy to mark with the ordnance's famous crow's foot.    Does one sense a lack of urgency?     

 

      

SMUGGLING, SIDMOUTH, 1842.

 "SIDMOUTH. - Smuggling. - At an early hour on the 4th inst, there was a considerable quantity of illicit foreign brandy landed between Sidmouth and Salcombe coast guard stations, which appears to have been done in a cool and business-like manner, as it has been clearly ascertained that the smugglers brought their waggons convenient to  the place of landing, and fed their horses prior to their departure.

"When the occurence came to the knowledge of the coast guard they went in pursuit, but without success."

*

It's impossible to resist blogging a report on smugglers even when it is as brief and unsatisfactory as this from The Western Times of 12th March 1842.

By Salcombe is meant Salcombe Regis.  The Salcombe coastguard station was farther to the East at Weston Mouth.  I guess the waggons brought to a place convenient to the place of landing must have used the old quarry track above Southcombe Farm but, wherever, the brandy must still have been worked up the cliff.

Why is waggon a so much more satisfying word than wagon?

A SMUGGLERS' CACHE

Smuggling provides one of those fascinating subjects ,as for example, highway robbery and piracy, where so many romances are spun that it's hard to receive a sharp image of the way things were.  The Exeter newspaper, The Express and Echo of April 26th, 1963 tells how Forestry Commission workers 'ploughing' on Salcombe Hill found two limestone slabs hidden beneath the turf in a field 'near the top of the hill leading down to the village' of Salcombe Regis.   Beneath these slabs was a chamber ten foot square and twelve foot deep.   A team of local worthies investigated the hole and concluded that this was a hiding place for contraband goods landed at Salcombe Mouth.  

The investigators were a retired parson, the Reverend R.J. Reed, living in Newton Poppleford, a local archaeologist, Mr R. E. Wison and a certain Mrs S.H.M. Pollard.   They noted that the floor was of compressed earth and flints and that the diggers of it had scattered the earth 'to avoid drawing attention' to the chamber. It would be a satisfaction to know if a more detailed account of their discovery was published.  Is there anybody out there who knows, for example, exactly where was this cache?

Stories of hidden contraband abound but hard evidence of where it was hidden is thin on the ground (or under it!).   Clearly such a hidey-hole as this would be a safer place to stash goods than a farmer's barn or a church tower,  although there is no doubt these too were used.  There was a legend, no more than that, in the estuary village of Lympstone, which was infamously involved with smuggled goods coming across the Exe, that the carriers routinely hid their contraband in the deep ditches that run parallel to Wotton Lane.   This seems to make sense in that no greedy farmers or pious parsons needed to be involved.

In this same Express and Echo article, the writer, Frank Cole, quotes J.R.W. Coxhead, the writer on local smuggling, as saying:   'some half a dozen (such caches) have been found in the Branscombe area since the turn of the century.'  (That century not the last one!!)   Again it would be pleasing to see some hard evidence of such finds.   None seem to have been ploughed up recently.

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.

JACK RATTENBURY IN EXMOUTH

In February 1821 the mate of the revenue cutter 'Scourge' , at anchor in Lyme Bay, managed to lure the notorious and seasoned smuggler 'Jack Rattenbury', then 42 years of age, aboard his vessel by telling him that there was a spyglass of his on board the cutter which Jack might like to collect by rowing out.

Jack Rattenbury should have known better but he rowed out to the cutter to collect his spyglass. He took with him his two little boys, one five, the other nine years of age. Once aboard he found not only the mate of the 'Scourge' but also the captain of the 'Lyme Packet', who was a fellow smuggler turned informant, and a deputation officer waiting there to arrest him.

Jack Rattenbury later wrote:

"It is impossible for me to describe my feelings on finding myself trepanned in such a manner and when the deputation officer desired me to go below I positively declared that I would not; and when one of the men asked me what I was going to do with the boys... being goaded to madness by the question, I replied in a rage, 'Throw them overboard if you like, and drown them, for you might as well do so as to take their father from them in such a clandestine manner.'"

But the officers did not drown the young Rattenburys. They set the boys ashore and half an hour later the 'Scourge' made sail for Exmouth with Jack aboard. At Exmouth a coach was waiting to carry him under guard to Exeter and so to prison.

THE SMUGGLERS' WAY

We know that smuggled goods that had been landed in Babbacombe Bay regularly came overland from Combe Cellars on the Teign to Lympstone on the Exe. This was a distance of some ten miles, across two rivers and over hilly country. The journey was made at night.

Looking at the map the route they took seems pretty clear. The goods would have been rowed across the Teign to Luxton’s Step and there strapped to ponies that the smugglers led through Bishopsteignton and up across the side of Little Haldon to join the ancient Dort Way that leads by way of Greenaway Lane and so by deep and narrow paths to Kenton. It is hard to see how Kenton could have been circumvented and no doubt there was a good measure of:”Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by.” in that place.

Then somehow the goods were brought to the shores of the Estuary on or near the Powderham estate and there they were loaded into boats and rowed across the tide to Lympstone where, tradition has it, they were offloaded either at Sowden End or Parsonage Stile depending on which route seemed the safer. The smugglers signalled to each other across the river , so it is said, by lanterns shone, on the Eastern side, from the tops of the cliffs. From Lympstone, 'that notorious haunt of smugglers' the goods were carried, with ever more confidence, up-country.

It must have been exciting work, travelling through the night with smuggled goods , over hills and through dark woods, but it would seem these midnight folk carried on their trade largely undisturbed by the Excisemen.

THE EXECUTION OF A SMUGGLER

In the Exeter Flying Post for the tenth of August 1814 was reported the hanging of William Vincent, a smuggler who, with other smugglers, had murdered an exciseman. The murder had taken place nine years before on the beach near Churston Ferrers. The exciseman was called Thomas Wills. The news of William Vincent’s grisly execution must have made chilling reading for the many in Lympstone and Kenton and elsewhere on the Estuary who were working hand in glove with the free traders of the coast ferrying the contraband goods across the Exe on their way up country.

The evidence against William Vincent was strong enough for him to be found guilty at the Exeter Assizes and he was sentenced to be hung by the neck at the Devon Gaol Drop on Saturday the third of August. The prisoner, however, had a knife with which, very early in the morning of the fatal day, he tried to cut his own throat, “but not so effectually as to deprive him of existence.” He was carried to the execution platform on a bed and with not much life left in him. When the hangman turned him off, “the blood gushed from his wound, flowing over his body and arms which rendered it a most shocking sight to the spectators.” After his bleeding corpse had dangled for the prescribed time it was taken to the Devon and Exeter Hospital for dissection.

The parson sighed, put down his paper and reached for the brandy.

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SMUGGLING ON THE ESTUARY

I had always been tempted to discount the tales of smuggling in the Estuary. In my village there are tales of hidy holes and tunnels and sliding panels galore. It seemed to me that no one would make a landing up the Estuary when it was so much easier to land contraband on the seacoast. At Exmouth was a gallant naval officer commanding a preventive cutter and it seemed unthinkable that contraband goods would come up the channels of the Exe.

Well I was sort of right but I was very wrong. I was reading Mr H J Trump’s book about Teignmouth when the following quote leapt from the seventy third page:

Coombe Cellars had always offered a safe and easy means of Transit for Tobacco and Tubs landed anywhere west, the smugglers passing over Lower Haldon… and from thence by bye roads to Powderham, where Boats have been in readiness to tow the Goods…to Lympstone on the River Exe at any time after dusk, tide permitting. Lympstone is as free and open from Contrabandists as any smuggler could wish… consequently a notorious haunt of Smugglers who are in constant communication with groups at…. Teignmouth, Coombe Cellars, Bishopsteighnton and even the Bristol Channel.

It was an eureka moment! The sbove was written in 1857, towards the end of the days when smuggling was rife. The Inspecting Commander for the Exmouth District was writing to the Board in London. No goods were being landed up the Exe but they were certainly being given a safe conduct across the Estuary by way of the ancient passages from Powderham to Parsonage Style and to Sowden End, thence on their way up country.. The hidy holes and sliding panels and perhaps even tunnels of Lympstone, that NOTORIOUS HAUNT OF SMUGGLERS, helped them on their way.