they were employed elsewhere or in taking the wounded to the hospital,
except _James Carley_, who was with the bread-wagon; but he could say
no more than that he saw Shortland come down “with his hands in his
breeches’ pockets”; and _William Wakelin_, who deposed to Shortland
pushing one of the prisoners (James Reeves).
_John Bennett_, store clerk. “I heard Captain Shortland tell the
prisoners in the market-place to go back to their different prisons,
and say how sorry he should be to use force.... Some minutes after a
musket went off, and soon after many others. I was then so near Capt.
Shortland that I am sure I should have heard it had he given the orders
to fire; but I did not, nor did I hear an order from anybody. I did not
see the charge.”
_John Collard_, sergeant of the 1st Somerset Militia, heard Shortland
give the order to charge. “An order was then given to fire on them (the
prisoners); I heard the word given to fire by some one; I think the
word given was in my rear.... The prisoners were crying out ‘Fire!’
I could not then see Captain Shortland. I did not look out for him.
I had something else to think of when the order to fire was given.
Two or three men fired; immediately they obeyed the order; one musket
was discharged first, and one or two very soon after.... I think the
soldiers fired over their heads; then some prisoner or prisoners said,
‘You---- why don’t you fire? You have nothing but blank cartridges.’
Afterwards the firing became general, and the prisoners were driven
into the yard. I heard no word of command for the second firing; the
firing was not in a volley, but in small numbers at a time.... I know
nothing of what happened afterwards in the prison yard.”
_Stephen Lapthorn_, private in the 1st Somersetshire Militia. “I heard
an order given to fire, but don’t know who gave it. I can’t say whose
voice it was; am not sure whether it was from the prisoners or the
military.... I heard Major Joliffe give orders to cease firing.”
_John Soathern_, private in the Derby Militia. “We went close to the
railings; my bayonet pricked them; when we got there, the prisoners
began throwing stones; one stone struck me. Just then the firing
commenced. After some time Capt. Shortland came in front and said,
holding his hands up, ‘For God’s sake, men, cease firing.’ Captain
Shortland was not near me when it commenced. The order to fire was
given on the left, and it passed through the ranks one after another.”
_Lieutenant Avelyne_, of 1st Somerset Militia. “When I came into the
Market Square with Captain Shortland the prisoners had burst No. 1 gate
and were rushing through in a crowd.... Capt. Shortland went forward
to speak to them.... The soldiers did not charge by my order, nor
did I hear Capt. Shortland order it. I considered myself under Capt.
Shortland’s orders.... I heard the first musket fired. I could not
see where it was fired from.... There was at first a single shot, and
almost instantly after several others were fired. I heard no distinct
order to fire.... I did not go into the prison yard.”
_Lieutenant Fortye_, of 1st Somerset Militia. “My guard took up the
firing from others without any orders.”
_Cornelius Rowe_, prisoner. “I saw the military come down the square
and heard Capt. Shortland order them to charge.”
_Thomas Tindale_, prisoner. “I heard Captain Shortland give orders
to fire ... he gave orders twice to fire. I was not ten steps from
him when I heard him. I heard every word he said; I saw him plainly;
the firing commenced by one musket first, then two, and afterwards a
whole volley. The firing began when Captain Shortland gave the word
the second time. I heard him tell the soldiers to fire low. He was
then standing inside the muzzles of the foremost muskets. When I heard
the order to fire I was about the middle of gate No. 4; the soldiers
charged up to the railings and then fell back four or five paces, when
Capt. Shortland gave the order to fire.”
The evidence of Captain Shortland has been already given. He denied the
truth of Gatchell’s statements that he had run down the yard; and as to
that of Hubbard, he would only admit that he had pushed, not struck him.
In reviewing the depositions it appears evident that the American
witnesses were hostile to the Governor, and that their bitterness
of feeling coloured their testimony. There is evidence that Captain
Shortland entered the inner yard, though he denied it; but that Major
Joliffe was there is certain, and it cannot be admitted that he acted
with the promptitude that he should have displayed. It is certain that
by this time the soldiers had got out of control, and it was no doubt
difficult to restrain them.
Captain Shortland was not really a brutal Governor, and the barbarities
of which he was accused were not barbarities at all, but the exercise
of very necessary discipline. But he was lacking in capacity for such a
responsible post, at such a time.
So the British Government must have considered him, for he was promoted
to be Superintendent of Port Royal Dockyard in Jamaica, where he died
of yellow fever in 1825.
The most thoroughly reliable authority for the “massacre” is the
“Message from the President of the United States, transmitting a Report
of the Secretary of State, prepared in obedience to a Resolution of
the House of Representatives of the 4th inst., in relation to the
Transactions at Dartmoor Prison, in the month of April last, so far
as the American Prisoners of war, there confined, were affected by
such Transactions,” January 31, 1816, “Read and ordered to lie upon
the table,” Washington, 1816. Next come “The Prisoners’ Memoirs, or
Dartmoor Prison; containing a Complete and Impartial History of the
entire captivity of the Americans in England, from the commencement
of the late War between the United States and Great Britain, until
all Prisoners were released by the treaty of Ghent. Also a particular
detail of all the occurrences relative to that Horrid Massacre at
Dartmoor, on the fatal evening of the 6th April, 1815. The whole
carefully compiled from the Journal of Charles Andrews, a Prisoner in
England from the commencement of the War, until the release of all the
Prisoners.” New York, 1815.
According to him 269 American prisoners died on Dartmoor between April,
1813, and 20 April, 1815, and twenty-one succeeded in making their
escape.
Waterhouse (Henry), _Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, confined
at Dartmoor Prison_. Boston, 1816.
He arrived at the Dartmoor Prison but a short while before the
outbreak. His account confirms that of Andrews. He gives the
Remonstrance of the prisoners on the hasty and hardly impartial manner
in which the Commissioners investigated the circumstances.
_The Dartmoor Massacre_, by I. H. W. (Isaac H. Williamson, of New
Jersey), 1815. This is, however, a mere rhymed account, based on the
narrative in the Boston papers and the _New York Commercial Advertiser_
of 6 June, 1815. “Being the Authentic and Particular Account of the
tragic Massacre at Dartmoor Prison in England, on the 6th April last
(1815), in which sixty-seven American sailors, prisoners there, fell
the victims to the jailor’s revenge, for obtaining their due allowance
of bread which had been withheld from them by the jailor’s orders.”
Melish (John), _Description of Dartmoor Prison_. Philadelphia, 1815.
He confirms the account of Andrews, and insists that the examination
was not properly and honestly carried out; and he asserts positively
that Capt. Shortland gave the order to fire.
Justin Winsor, in his _Narrative and Critical History of America_, has
treated of the matter in a temperate spirit.
I subjoin the names of those killed and those wounded.
/Killed/: _John Haywood_, _Thomas Jackson_, _John Washington_,
_James Mann_, _Joseph Toker Johnson_, _William Leverage_, and _James
Campbell_.
/Wounded/: _Thomas Smith_, needed amputation of the thigh.
_Philip Ford_, severely wounded in the back. _John Gray_, arm had
to be amputated. _Robert Willet Tawney_, required to have the thigh
amputated. _James Bell_, bayonet wound in the thigh. _Thomas Truely_,
gun-shot wound in thigh and other serious injury. _Joseph Beyeck_,
gun-shot wound in the thigh, through which the ball passed. _John
Willet_, fractured hip and shattered upper jaw. _James Esdell_,
gun-shot wound in the hip. _Henry Montcalm_, gun-shot wound in the
knee. _Frederick Howard_, gun-shot wound in the leg. _William Penn_,
gun-shot wound in the thigh. _Robert Fittey_, gun-shot wound in the
penis. _Cornelius Garrison_, gun-shot wound in the thigh. _Edward
Whittlebanks_, bayonet wound in the back, producing paralysis in the
lower extremities. _James Turnbull_, amputated arm. _Stephen Phipps_,
bayonet wounds in abdomen and thigh. _James Wells_, gun-shot fracture
of sacrum and gun-shot fracture of both bones of the left arm. _Caleb
Codding_, gun-shot wound of the leg. _Edward Gardner_, gun-shot
fracture of left arm. _Jacob Davis_, gun-shot wound of the thigh. _John
Hagabets_, gun-shot wound of the hip. _Peter Wilson_, gun-shot fracture
of the hand. _John Perry_, gun-shot wound of the shoulder. _John
Peach_, gun-shot wound of the thigh. _John Roberts_, gun-shot wound of
the thigh. _John Gair_, amputated thigh. _Ephraim Lincoln_, gun-shot
wound of the knee. _John Wilson_, bayonet wound. _William Blake_,
bayonet wound.
The rest were not seriously wounded.
CAPTAIN JOHN PALK
In the forties and fifties no man was better known as a character in
Tavistock and on the Moor than Captain Palk, or, as he was usually
designated, Quaker Palk. He was a sturdy, thick-set man with a shrewd
face, sharp keen eyes, and hair short cut and turning grey.
He began life as a miner on his own account at Birch Tor and Vitifer,
between the Warren Inn and Moreton Hampstead. To any man travelling
over Dartmoor along the main road to the latter town, crossing that
portion of the Moor where rise the headwaters of the West Webburn, the
aspect of the valley and hillsides must appear strange, welted as they
are with old streamworks and mine-heaps. Just beyond the inn are the
remains of the King’s Oven; this was the ancient _Furnum Regis_, the
tin-smelting place, which tin was the royal due. Here there is a large
pound, in one portion of the arc of which are the remains of a circle
of upright stones, enclosing a cairn and the relics of a kistvaen; a
beautiful flint scraper has been found wedged between the stones of the
kistvaen. The oven itself has been destroyed, and the stones carried
off for the construction of the buildings of Bush Down Mine, which are
hard by, but are now in ruins. On the highest bit of the down is a rude
ancient cross called Bennett’s Cross, with W.B. on the face, carved
in modern letters, to indicate that it forms one of the boundaries of
Headland Warren. It is also a boundary mark of the parish of North
Bovey, and of the ground over which the rights belonging to Vitifer
Mine extended. The mine works are of many ages, some very ancient,
overgrown with heather and gorse bushes; others are more recent and
show raw and white against the turf and heather. Above the sources of
the Webburn rises Birch Tor, crowned by a grey cairn, its flanks dense
with whortle bushes, that supply richer and larger purple berries than
almost any Moor slope. Birch Tor is connected with Challacombe Common,
a swelling hill to the south, by a neck of land that has been cut
through by miners, thereby destroying the first portion of a remarkable
series of stone rows leading to a menhîr. The cuttings of the searchers
after tin to the west are deep, and here nest ravens to this day. The
slender stream that trickles down the depression feeds the Webburn.
From the neck of land can be discerned to the east the remarkable
enclosure of Grimspound, pertaining to the Early Bronze period.
As already said, John Palk worked as a miner “on his own hook” at Birch
Tor, and found a good deal of tin. Finding that he needed capital he
induced the Davys of Cornwall, who were his kinsmen, to enter into
partnership with him. Richard Davy was subsequently M.P. for Cornwall.
The Davys became then possessors of the mines of Vitifer and Birch Tor.
Call after call was made on them for money to develop the mines, and
the returns were insignificant. They became impatient, and considered
the venture unprofitable. On one occasion, when their patience was
exhausted, Palk visited them, and showed as usual an unsatisfactory
balance sheet, and made a demand for more money.
Richard Davy was angry, and exclaimed, “Hang it, Palk, I wish you
would take the confounded business off our hands, and make what you can
of it,” and they offered it to him for a ridiculously small sum.
Quaker Palk hummed and hah’d, said, “Friend, I am a poor man, and
cannot raise so much, but by the blessing of the Lord I would like to
try to earn a bit of bread from it to put into my mouth. Will thee not
bate the price to the level of my means?”
Eventually he bought the whole rights over Vitifer and Birch Tor. This
was precisely what he had been aiming at. He knew that there was plenty
of tin there, but he had hitherto avoided following out the “keenly”
lodes, and exploited only the poor veins.
No sooner was the right his own than the complexion of the mine
altered, and he is computed to have made from £60,000 to £80,000 out of
it, and he retained Vitifer and Birch Tor mines to his death. He also
secured rights in Drake Walls, and he had a smelting house there and
also in Crown Dale, below Tavistock on the Tavy.
Being flush of money, he erected Palk’s Buildings in Tavistock as well
as several other houses, and he bought Baggator farm in Petertavy, and
Narrator in Sheepstor parish.
Quaker Palk was a sturdy teetotaller, and a lecturer on the subject,
but when he came out to Vitifer, he would call in at the Warren Inn,
then kept by a man named Warne, himself an interesting character, and
mix himself a stiff glass of grog. On one occasion he had taken out
with him Mr. John Pearce of Tavistock, and they entered the tavern.
Pearce noticed that Captain Palk, in helping himself to brandy, put
his hand round the glass, to hide the quantity he poured in, but when
the brown liquid rose above his palm, Mr. Pearce stared and uttered an
exclamation.
“Ah, John Pearce,” said Palk, “I tell thee that the Warren Inn is the
highest public-house in all England, and one must live up to one’s
elevation.”
On his return to Tavistock he would as likely as not appear on a
platform and harangue on total abstinence.
The story is told, I believe, of Captain Palk, that on his marriage he
opened a drawer, drew out a pair of breeches, flung them to his wife
with, “Molly, put them breeches on.”
“Why, John, be thou mazed?”
“I tell thee, thou hast sworn to obey. Put them on this moment.”
After some further remonstrance and hesitation, the wife complied.
“How dost thou think they fit thee, Molly?”
“Why, John, not at all.”
“Then, Molly, never thee try to wear ’em, as long as we are together.
The breeches pertain to me, and to me only.”
In driving to Vitifer one winter’s day, the snow came on, and on
mounting Merripit Hill he and his horse were exhausted, and could no
longer face the snow-laden blast, and he drew aside into a sand-pit
that opened on to the road. The snow accumulated, a drift was formed,
and they would have been buried, had not some miners passing come to
the rescue and extricated him and his trap and horse.
He had some stout Moor men working under him. Joe Hamlyn had mined at
Birch Tor for seventy-five years in 1864. Jacob German had been on the
same works for sixty years, and had left them only once, and that for
a single month to do navvy’s work on the line to Moreton from Newton
Abbot.
Palk liked a hare, when he could get one, and Jacob could generally
provide him with one.
“Oh, Jacob,” Palk would say, “I hope thou hast not been poaching.”
“Poaching!” Jacob would exclaim; “Lord, sir, if a hare runs across the
road, I may knock un on the head, I reckon, and no one say nort.”
“I should like to know just where it was--as a study in nat’ral
history.”
“Well, if you must know, Cap’n, it were in Buckland-on-the-Moor, Squire
Bastard’s woods.”
“I dare say, friend, it will be all the fatter and better eating.”
In these Buckland Woods larch grew finer than almost anywhere else in
England, and the timber was obtained thence for Vitifer and Birch Tor
mines. Some forty years ago, as much as a hundred and twenty feet of
timber was got out of a single tree.
“Well,” said Palk, “I’ve had Squire Bastard’s larch wood and obliged
him. The trees grew too thick. Hares there too thick. It’s a favour to
him to thin them out for me. One hand washes the other.”
Palk was an assiduous attendant at the Quakers’ Annual Meetings, both
in Devon and in Cornwall. That of Cornwall was held at S. Austell, and
it fell at the time when the hay was cut, and that was frequently wet,
so that a rhyme was commonly repeated to caution the farmers:--
Now varmer, now varmer,
Take care ov your hye.
For ’tes the Quakkers’ gurt meetin’ to-dye.
At one of these gatherings, when the monthly advices to the members
were being read out, and there was one specially enjoining forbearance
from “vain sports,” up rose a lately-joined member, and with an anxious
voice inquired what these vain sports embraced. “Now,” said he, “Do’ee
reckon that kissing the mydens (maidens) in the hye (hay) be a vain
sport?--vor my part I can’t see it.”
There was unquestionably a vast amount of roguery in the mining
business in Devon and Cornwall. Salting a mine, so as to induce
capitalists to embark their money in one, was by no means an uncommon
practice. But occasionally a specialist was too sharp to be taken in.
“Ah!” said one, handling the ore that professed to have been raised in
a new mine on Dartmoor, “Carnbrea tin. How the dickens did that find
its way up here?”
Originally the tin was worked by a small company of adventurers with
very simple machinery, and the adventurers shared the profits among
themselves. The tin lodes on Dartmoor are thin, and in my opinion and
in that of those who know best, will never pay for expensive working
with costly plant. But little men, working for themselves, have made
mining pay there. The abandoned engine-houses, huge wheels, and
stamping pans show where large ventures have everywhere proved to be
failures.
Chaw Gully, that runs up between Birch Tor and Challacombe Down, is one
of the most interesting examples of “old men’s workings” that there
are upon Dartmoor. It extends about half a mile. In places it is some
forty feet deep, and two or three hundred feet wide. In the bottom are
several circular shafts, lined with stones dry-laid, which communicate
with a dip formerly used for drainage purposes. There are no “jumper”
marks on the rocks in Chaw Gully. In following the shallow lode of tin
the old adventurers must have torn out the rock with wedges. Sometimes
fire was applied to the rock and then water was dashed on it to crack
it; as softened by the heat it was more easily worked. Another system
of splitting the granite was to cut a groove on the surface of the
rock, fill that with quicklime, and then throw on water. The swelling
of the lime rent the rock.
The old works in Chaw Gully were taken in hand by Captain Palk, who
deepened and successfully worked a shaft there. A good deal of money
was made, but “the eyes of the mine were picked out,” and it is now,
like nearly all the Dartmoor mines, a “knacked bal,” a picture of
desolation, and the ravens now build in the chasm, on a ledge of the
rock.[54]
Palk was intimate with Jonas Coaker, the “Poet of the Moor,” as he
styled himself. His poetry was, however, only rhyme, and that often bad.
“What’s the difference between poetry and blank verse?” asked one miner
of another.
“Why, the difference be this,” was the reply. “Ef you say,
He went up to the mill-dam
And falled down slam,
that, I reckon, be poetry. But ef you say instead,
He went up to the mill-dam
And falled down wop,
that’s blank verse. Knaw now, do ’ee?”
This was Jonas Coaker’s conception of poetry. He was born at Hartland,
Post Bridge, on 23 February, 1801, as he sang:--
I drew my breath first on this moor;
There my forefathers dwell’d.
Its hills and dales I’ve traversed o’er,
Its desert parts beheld.
As a young man he worked on the Moor building new-take walls, and he
esteemed himself almost as highly in this capacity as in knocking out
verse. Later he became taverner of the Warren Inn, that at that time
stood on the opposite side of the road to its present position. The
miners frequented it, and they were rough customers, drinking hard,
fighting and dancing. On one occasion they broke out into mutiny
against Jonas, because he would serve out no more drink; they drove
him from the house, and he was compelled to “hidey-peep,” as he termed
it, on the Moor, whilst they emptied his barrels. On another occasion
two miners fought in the tavern, with a fatal result for one of them,
but the survivor was let off with three weeks’ imprisonment, mainly on
Jonas’s evidence, for he was able to establish gross provocation.
In an evil hour for himself, Jonas pulled down the old inn and built,
at his own cost, the new Warren Inn on the opposite side of the road.
Now it happened that the old inn had been on common land of the parish
of North Bovey, but where he had built the new inn was on Duchy
property. Down on him came the agent for the Duchy, but not till the
house was complete, and the last slate nailed on, and said to him, “Now
you are on Duchy land you shall pay rent for the inn you have built on
_our_ land, without our gracious permission.”
Towards the end of his life Jonas became very infirm and blind;
his memory began to fail, and he accounted for this by saying that
as he had always possessed a genius for poetry, he supposed he had
overwhelmed his brain with too much study. He died on 12 February,
1890, and is buried at Widdecombe. I say no more of him here, as I
gave his life and stories about him in my _Dartmoor Idylls_, 1896.
There is as well a memoir with his portrait in Mr. Burnard’s _Pictorial
Records_, already quoted.
After having made such success with his mines about the Upper Webburn,
Quaker Palk became reckless in his speculations, and was soon heavily
involved. He was kept on his feet by Mr. Bailey, of Plymouth, and Joe
Matthews, who bought Palk’s holding of Birch Tor Mine. He died suddenly
9 February, 1853, aged fifty-nine years.
I think, but cannot be sure, that it was of John Palk that the story
was told of two old folks, returning from the funeral, when one said to
the other, “Sure and he was a very charitable man.”
“I reckon he were,” replied the other. “He always had three eggs boiled
to his breakfast, and gave away the broth.”
His wife survived him thirty-one years, and died in Plymouth 24 May,
1884, aged eighty-five years.
RICHARD WEEKES, GENTLEMAN AT ARMS AND PRISONER IN THE FLEET
In the parish of South Tawton, about three miles from the village
and church, and midway on the west road to North Tawton, stands the
ancient and interesting mansion of North Wyke.[55] A house so named
was there as early as 1243,[56] but experts are at variance as to the
age of the several parts of the existing structure. It formed an inner
court, two sides of which were stables and offices, and a front court
enclosed within high walls, and with gate-house, porter’s lodgings, and
domestic chapel. Though the house itself lies in a somewhat sheltered
situation, the drive down from the lodge commands a lovely prospect;
and from the top of North Wyke Quarry a panorama of three-quarters of a
circle extends over miles of undulating country, from the blue sky-line
of Exmoor to the three conspicuous heights of the north-east angle of
Dartmoor--Yes Tor, Belstone, and Cosdon--the last crowned with a cairn
from which beacon fires have flared out many a warning message to arm
against a foe, both before and since the coming of the Armada. From
Belstone Cleave bursts forth the river Taw that borders the North
Wyke lands for fully a mile and a half of its course. After rushing in
foaming stickles from under Peckettsford _alias_ Packsaddle Bridge, but
before reaching Newlands Weir, the river is joined by a meeker stream
that bounds North Wyke on another side. There is said to have been much
fine timber on the land before the alienation of the estate, the story
of which may now be related.