THE DOWNS AND THE DEAL BOATMEN
It has been shown that the Goodwins have from the earliest times
greatly exercised the imaginations of all kinds of people, and that the
bones of countless dead have found sepulture there, but it would scarce
be supposed that any one would choose to be buried on the Goodwins. Yet
there are at least two instances known of such a strange choice; one
of them prominently recorded in the well-known--perhaps better known
by repute than actually read--Evelyn’s “Diary.” John Evelyn, in the
pages of that not very lightsome record, has an entry dated April 12th,
1705: “My brother-in-law Granville departed this life this morning,
after a long, languishing illness, leaving a son by my sister, and two
granddaughters. Our relation and friendship had been long and great.
He was a man of excellent partes. He died in the eighty-fourth year of
his age, and will’d his body to be wrapp’d in leade and carried downe
to Greenwich, put on board a ship, and buried in the sea betweene
Dover and Calais, on the Goodwin Sands, which was done on the Tuesday
or Wednesday after. This occasioned much discourse, he having had no
relation whatever to the sea.”
A similar interment took place forty-six years later, and forms the
subject of a paragraph in the _London Evening Post_ of May 16th, 1751:
“We have an account from Hamborg that on the 16th April last, about six
leagues off the North Foreland, Captain Wyrck Pietersen, commander of
the ship called the _Johannes_, took up a coffin made in the English
manner and with the following inscription upon a silver plate: ‘Mr.
Francis Humphrey Merrydith, died March 25th, 1751, aged 51;’ which
coffin the said captain carried to Hambourg and then opened it, in
which was enclosed a leaden one, and the body of an elderly man,
embalmed and dressed in fine linen. This is the corpse that was buried
in the Goodwin Sands a few weeks ago, according to the will of the
deceased.”
Much has already been said of the dangers of the Goodwins, but they
are not altogether evil. Like human beings, they are compact of good
and ill. Their useful and beneficent function is to provide a kind of
natural breakwater forming the roadstead famous for centuries in naval
and mercantile shipping annals as “the Downs”:
“All in the Downs the fleet lay moored,”
as the song goes, in Gay’s “Black-eyed Susan.”
Here, in the comparatively smooth water of this anchorage, stretching
from Walmer, past Deal, nearly to Sandwich, the navies of Rodney’s and
Nelson’s times gathered, either for strategical reasons or in stress
of weather. The Downs--whose name comes from _dunes_, referring to
the Goodwin Sands and the wild wastes of sand-dunes between Deal and
Sandwich--are safe and sheltered in all winds, except a southerly
gale; and thus in old times, when tempests blew from any other quarter,
all the shipping in the Channel made haste to ride out the storm in
these waters. In those times four hundred vessels were often seen
at once sheltering here; but steamships are less dependent upon the
weather, and, now that sailing-vessels are comparatively few, the Downs
are never so crowded as of yore.
The days when the Downs were crowded with many a ship that in the
fine old descriptive phrase--which really was description and not
imagination--“walked the water like a thing of life,” are long since
done, and now the vessels that in fewer numbers ride out the worst of
the Channel gales here are things of iron that sit deep and wallow
in the water like the tanks they really are; things of steam, with
a walking-stick by way of mast and quite innocent of bowsprit. They
are vessels in the truest and most exact form of the word, floating
tanks, made to hold things, not ships that sit upon the water, as the
old sailing-ships did, like swans, or, as the poet says, “walked the
water.” There are walks and walks, and I figure the gait of an old
frigate, or even of a barque or brigantine, under full canvas, not as
a pedestrian’s stride, but as the graceful carriage of a lady in a
spacious drawing-room.
The ’longshoremen of all these sixteen miles of roaring storm-bitten
coast between the Forelands are men of a courage and endurance proved
so long ago that it has become proverbial. Nowhere have those fearless
and staunch qualities been displayed to such a degree as at Deal. The
“Deal boatmen” are a race famous in the troubled annals of the sea.
Between their windy and exposed foreshore, from whose unprotected
beach no howling gale has been fierce enough to daunt their putting
off, between their shore and the Goodwins they have earned a hard-won
livelihood, or have dared the worst of weathers in life-saving, for
no reward. There is a nice distinction between the ’longshoremen of
Ramsgate and Margate and Dover, and those of Deal; for while all have
that “’longshore” appellation, only those of Deal are “boatmen.” All
own boats, it is true; but the boats of Deal are different from those
of the other towns, and only at Deal did the “hoveller” flourish.
It is to be feared the day of the hoveller is done, now that steam
is superseding sails. There are those who consider that the word
“hoveller” is a corruption of “hoverer,” and it was the business--
and a highly remunerative business too--of these men, in their stout
luggers, to put forth in stormy weather and cruise about amid the
tempest-tossed waters in search of distressed vessels that might wish
to be navigated into port. In these modern times of surveillance and
overmuch governing no man may, without a licence from the Trinity
House, or other port authorities, take a piloting job, and pilots
form a class of men who are chosen by examination and may only charge
according to scale. This is by no means to say that the law against
“illicit piloting” is not very frequently set at defiance. It is, in
spite of penalties; for, given a ship’s captain of a saving disposition
and a Deal boatman of pressing needs--and the boatmen of Deal are
too often in that category--a bargain is sure to be struck between
the two, when they are in hailing distance of one another, somewhere
out yonder in the Channel, for something under official rates; and
although the offender be not, in fact, licensed and has never gone up
for examination, he commonly knows the coast round between Deal and
Gravesend, and all its many shoals, swins, and swatchways, as well as
the certificated pilots, though it is not in human nature--in official
human nature, at any rate--to allow the truth of it.
But there is a vast difference in taking a vessel round the North
Foreland into London River, and in snatching her off the very edge of
the Goodwins on to which she is blundering in fog or storm. _That_
was the hoveller’s ostensible business of old, in conjunction with
the undeclared addition of smuggling. It was ever the smuggling, with
a good deal of rascally cable-slipping and prowling the seas for
wreckage, that made hovelling the fine and conscienceless trade it
may most fitly be described, and incidentally made the Deal boatmen
the finest sailors in the world. Their present-day representatives
are fallen upon the worst of times, and now that days and nights of
cruising these waters at their worst yields but an occasional job, the
Deal lugger is becoming something of a rarity, and even that other
peculiarly localised craft, the “knock-toe,” or galley-punt, does not
seem to be as numerous on the beach as of yore. The Deal lugger is no
longer built. It was a sailing craft, of some fifteen to twenty tons,
undecked except for a forepeak. The galley-punt is built to combine the
qualities of a rowing-boat and a sailing-vessel, and is thirty feet
long, with a beam of five feet, a single mast, stepped amidships, and
four oars.
The old story of Deal shows the boatmen of some two hundred years ago
to have been as thorough a crew of scoundrels as might have been found
along our coasts, except perhaps in the West, where the wreckers of
Cornwall were unsurpassed in cold-blooded, calculating ferocity. We
do not read of the ’longshoremen of the Kentish coast luring vessels
ashore, but we hear a very great deal of their heartless leaving the
shipwrecked to perish on the Goodwin Sands and busying themselves in
searching for valuable wreckage the while. Defoe, one of the greatest
and most industrious journalists who ever lived, whose amazing
fecundity staggers research, wrote and published a book called “The
Storm” in 1704. It described the great storm of 1703 and reflected
with just severity upon the inhumanity displayed here. “I cannot omit,”
he says, “that great notice has been taken of the townspeople of
Deal, who are blam’d, and I doubt not with too much reason, for their
great barbarity in neglecting to save the lives of abundance of poor
wretches; who, having hung upon the masts and rigging of the ships,
or floated upon the broken pieces of wrecks, had gotten ashore upon
the Goodwin Sands when the tide was out. It was, without doubt, a sad
spectacle to behold the poor seamen walking to and fro upon the sands,
to view their postures and the signals they made for help, which by
the assistance of glasses, was easily seen from the shore. Here they
had a few hours’ reprieve, but had neither present refreshment nor
any hopes of life, for they were sure to be washed into another world
at the reflux of the tide. Some boats are said to have come very near
them in quest of booty and in search of plunder, and to carry off what
they could get, but nobody troubled themselves for the lives of these
miserable creatures.”
“Those sons of plunder are below my pen,
Because they are below the names of men;
Who from the shores presenting to their eyes
The fatal Goodwin, where the wreck of navies lies,
A thousand dying sailors talking to the skies,
From the sad shores they saw the wretches walk;
By signals of distress they talk:
Here with one tide of life they’re vext,
For all were sure to die the next.
The barbarous shores with men and boats abound,
The men more barbarous than the shores are found.
Off to the shatter’d ships they go,
And for the floating purchase row.
They spare no hazard, or no pain,
But ’tis to save the goods, and not the men;
Within the sinking suppliants’ reach appear,
As if they mock’d their dying fear,
Then for some trifle all their hopes supplant
With cruelty would make a Turk relent.”
And thus, with indignation, he concludes:
“If I had any satire left to write,
Could I with suited spleen indite,
My verse should blast that fatal town,
And drowned sailors’ widows pull it down.
No footsteps of it should appear,
And ships no more cast anchor there.
The barbarous hated name of Deal shou’d die,
Or be a term of infamy.
And till that’s done, the town will stand
A just reproach to all the land.”
A bright contrast was afforded by the noble conduct of the Mayor of
Deal, one Thomas Powell, a slop-seller, who appealed successfully to
these callous wretches’ hopes of gain by offering five shillings a
head for every life saved. He had in the first instance entreated the
Customs House officials to put out to save them, but without success,
and the boats were refused; whereupon he and his mercenaries took them
by force. More than two hundred of the shipwrecked were thus rescued;
but even when brought ashore there was no shelter or food to be
procured for them by appealing to officials, and the generous Powell
was at the costs and charges of feeding, sheltering, and clothing the
castaways. Further, he buried those who died, and paid the travelling
expenses to Gravesend of the survivors.
Defoe’s biting indictment came home to the inhabitants of Deal, and,
after a considerable time for thinking it over, they grew angry and
resentful about it, in proportion to the truth of the charges. Thus we
find them on June 21st, 1705, despatching the following letter:
“Whereas there has been this day produced to us a book called the
‘Storm,’ printed in London in the year 1704, for G. Sawbridge, in
Little Britain, and sold by J. Nutt, near Stationers’ Hall, pretending
to give an account of some particular accidents that happened thereby.
We find, amongst other things, several scandalous and false reflections
unjustly cast upon the inhabitants of the town and borough of Deal,
with the malicious intent to bring a disreputation upon the people
thereof, and to create a misunderstanding between her Majesty’s
subjects which, if not timely confuted, may produce consequences
detrimental to the town, and tend to a breach of the peace. To the
end thereof, that the person who caused the publication thereof may
be known, in order to be brought to condign punishment for such his
infamous libel; we have thought fit, therefore, to appoint our Town
Clerk to proceed against him in a Court of Law, unless he shall within
the space of ten days thereof make known to us the person or persons,
and where he or they may be found, who furnished the libellous article
in the book commencing page 199 to the end of page 202, to which we
expect a truthful answer within the time specified.”
There followed upon this hectoring document the signatures of the then
Mayor, Jurats, and Corporation of Deal. But it proved to be all sound
and empty fury, for nothing came of it.
Such men as these were the ancestors of the Deal boatmen of to-day;
a race now very much down on its luck. The very town of Deal, one
may almost say, is a survival. The causes that conjured it up, or at
any rate, brought about its growth from a mere village, along the
unprotected stark shingle beach, have ceased to operate, and great
ships no longer sit for weeks in the Downs, awaiting a breeze, or
in any numbers ride out storms in that once providential anchorage,
all immensely to the profit of the purveyors of ships’ stores and to
that of the boatmen. Deal in those times was one vast general shop,
in which the mariner might buy anything, from anchors and cables,
down to “salthorse” and ships’ biscuits. Those days of pigtails,
hemp, and sails brought Deal to its time of greatest prosperity, and
the present-day appearance of the town still tells the tale of it.
Smuggling was then in its prime, and many a lugger constantly made
successful runs on dark starless nights, or crept cautiously across
Channel when the air was thick as a blanket with fog, under the very
bows of the frigates at anchor in the roadstead.
I do not know that the Deal boatmen of to-day think much of this
ancestry of theirs, or set much store by it. They are too much
concerned, poor fellows, in considering how they are to get a living in
these hard times; times particularly hard for them. But their daring
and accomplished launching of a galley-punt and their handling of it in
a seaway are exhibitions of craftsmanship impossible to be demonstrated
except by these men, who have the hereditary aptitude.
To a landsman, the launching of one of these heavy, lug-sailed,
undecked boats off such a beach as this, in a raging surf such as these
shores alone can know in time of storm, is a marvel. The breakers are
coming in snarling and screaming, in cruel, curving walls of water from
whose crests the wind whips off the stinging brine that flies through
the hurrying air in particles half in the likeness of sleet and half in
that of fog. Here, and at such times, if anywhere, is--
“The scream of a madden’d beach dragged down by the wave”--
so finely phrased by Tennyson, in _Maud_, to be heard.
A launch would seem impossible, but down the beach the galley-punt is
run, her keel scrunching through the pebbles with a hurrying roar that
rises even above the clamour of wind and waves, and in a moment she
is off, her crew of three leaping or tumbling in like jumping-jacks,
and in another moment she is clear of the breakers and heading out
to where some steamer is dimly seen rolling and pitching yonder in
the obscurity, flying a signal for the landing of the pilot, who has
brought her round from the port of London and has now finished his job
and is going home by train, as the custom is with pilots.
To such work as this did the Deal boatmen’s lives come: hard work, and
often hazardous; and, considering the casual nature of it, not well
paid. Landing a pilot is, or was, worth twenty-five to thirty shillings
or thereabouts, and it is obvious that this sum, casually earned and
divided among a crew of three, is a poor recompense. But even this
standby has been snatched away from the Deal boatmen since the Trinity
House has established a steam pilot-cutter at Dover, which cruises
about to land pilots from outward-bound ships at a fixed charge of £1.
It is an excellent institution from the pilots’ point of view, but it
is the last blow to the boatmen of Deal. Steam has ever been their
enemy.
Dirty weather is, perhaps, more than ever the opportunity of this hardy
and hard-bitten race, of whom it has been said that “every finger is a
fish-hook, every hair a rope-yarn, and whose blood is pure Stockholm
tar.” Mother Carey’s chickens--by which I mean, of course, the gulls--
are not more at home amid the mountainous waves at such times. They
cruise about in these dangerous seas in search of some captain who has
lost his way. It is exquisitely true that other people’s misfortunes
are their opportunity, and a ship likely without the aid of their
expert knowledge of these waters to come to grief on the Goodwins, or
other shoals, to say nothing of getting under the unkindly cliffs, is
like a choice bone to a hungry dog. I hope I do no injustice to these
men in the comparison. It simply discloses the measure of their needs
and of their prize. It is a desperate livelihood for these days for
them. The winter is hard, the summer season is short, and the fishing
and the money earned in taking visitors for a sail form but a scanty
and uncertain support for wives and children. Therefore, a ship in
difficulties is a godsend that is worth a good deal of cruising for,
and worth a good deal of hardship endured and bitter disappointments
suffered. But when that ship is picked up there are no more savage
and determined men to be found than these. They are embittered by
much fruitless quartering of violent seas, and spurred by the thought
of weeks of enforced idleness ashore, and by the spectre of empty
cupboards at home. A shipmaster in peril out there is their legitimate
prey, and they bear down upon him out of the driving spindrift as
saviours, at a price. These men, who would, and do, man the lifeboats
for life-saving with no after-thought for profit, are close dealers in
these cases, and if a ship-master declines, for reasons of economy,
their help, he may drive on sands or under cliffs or lose his ship in
any way that chance may dictate, and they will not lend a helping hand.
And quite rightly, too. Help under such circumstances is well worth the
paying for.
“Want any help, sir?” Thus, or in some such way, comes their hail as
their craft comes round in the eye of the wind and manœuvres carefully
in the swashing seas. It is odds whether the captain, asking perhaps
where he is, will be told, or whether he is flatly invited to “find
out,” in the extremely strong language of these parts. Perhaps he asks
“how much to take her into Ramsgate,” or whatever port he is making for.
“Twenty pounds”--or ten or fifteen, as the case may be, according to
his emergencies.
Bargaining is little use. An offer of half, or more, is pretty sure to
be curtly rejected, with “So long, captain; no time to waste.”
And then the bargainer almost invariably submits, ungraciously enough
with “All right, you ---- pirates,” or “beachcombers,” or something
equally offensive. Strong language is cheap on the seas, and no one
resents it, least of all the hovellers and the boatmen who have thus
gained their point: it is all the harassed master has left him, and
he may put his tongue to what strange curses he will, if it be any
satisfaction.
And then, at a carefully chosen moment, as the vessels large and small
set to one another in a peculiarly violent kind of maritime dance and
the boatmen’s little craft swings dizzily up on a wave alongside, a
rope is thrown and one of the galley-punt’s crew clambers breathlessly
aboard, dashes the brine from his eyes, and is ready to navigate his
charge through the seething waters as surely as a cab-driver takes a
fare through well-known streets. His companions, sitting like statues
in the boat, in streaming yellow oilskins, fade away like ghosts in the
turmoil, and make for home.
Such are at those times the men you will see lounging the summer days
on Deal beach and suggesting to visitors that it is a “fine day for
a sail.” It looks a lazy life, this lounging, with hands in pockets,
day after day, varied by an occasional turn with the tar-brush or
paint-pot upon boat or timbered shanty; but it is really a life of one
long waiting for something to turn up, and there is nothing else for it
but to lounge hands in pockets. And to do the Deal boatmen the merest
justice, they lounge extremely well. Do not mistake me: I do not mean
that they do it elegantly. The figure of your typical ’longshoreman,
bargelike and extremely solid, does not permit of that. No, I mean
that he absolutely abandons himself to it. There used to be in London,
and in society, the Bond Street and the Hyde Park lounge. I believe
the exquisite _insouciance_ thus indicated is long since extinct. No
one lounges now, in these days of motor-cars and general hustle; no
one, that is to say, except the ’longshoremen of Deal and elsewhere,
but here at Deal it is perfected. The lounge of Hyde Park--you may
see it represented in _Punch_, in many of du Maurier’s drawings--was
a graceful droop over the railings of the Row; but the lounger had
always in the look of him a curious mixture of world-weariness and
self-consciousness. He knew he was beautiful, as beautiful as his
tailor and toilet-club could make him. Now the ’longshoreman cannot
droop, gracefully or otherwise. He is not built that way. There is
about him a breadth of beam and an appalling negation of waist that
vehemently forbids the very thought of it. He is not beautiful, nor, on
the other hand, is he self-conscious. He is of that solid bulk, despite
his privations, poor chap, which makes the crazy old capstans on the
beach creak and complain, and the tarred shanties shiver when he leans
against them. And his costume has been the delight of serious artists
and comic for at least a century. His trousers, of some astounding
dreadnought material that might almost stand by itself, come a much
longer distance up his body than such articles of attire commonly do,
and end, according to the caricaturists, under his armpits. According
to the same unveracious authorities, they are invariably re-seated, and
with materials of an altogether alien colour from the original fabric
and generally with some uproarious pattern.