JACK RATTENBURY, SMUGGLER—BEER
The name of Beer is famous in smuggling annals, for it was in the then
rather desperate little fisher-village that Jack Rattenbury, smuggler,
who lies in Seaton churchyard was born, in 1778. Smugglers and highwaymen
in general are figures that loom dimly in the pages of history, and,
like figures seen in a fog, bulk a good deal larger than they ought. But
the famous Jack Rattenbury is an exception. He does not, when we come to
close quarters with him, diminish into an undersized, overrated breaker
of laws. Instead, he grows bigger, the more you learn: and a great deal
may be learned of him, for he printed and published the story of his life
in 1837.
It seems that he was the son of a Beer shoemaker, who, by going for a
sailor and never being heard of again, vindicated the wisdom of that
proverb which advises the cobbler to stick to his last. Young Jack
Rattenbury never knew his father. He began his adventures at nine years
of age, as boy on a fishing-smack, and then became one of the crew of
a privateer which set out from Brixham during the war with France and
Spain, to prey upon the enemy: meeting instead, at the very outset,
with a French frigate, with the unexpected result that privateer and
crew were speedily taken, as prize and prisoners, to Bordeaux. Escaping
on an American ship, he at last reached home again, and engaged for a
time in fishing. But fishing was poor employment for an adventurous
spirit, and Rattenbury soon found his way into smuggling. He first took
part in the exploits of a Lyme Regis boat, trading in that illegitimate
way to the Channel Islands, and then found more lawful employment on
a brig called _The Friends_, of Beer and Seaton. But the very first
trip was disastrous. Sailing from Bridport to Tenby, for culm, he
again experienced capture: by a French privateer on this occasion. The
privateer put a prize-crew of four men on the brig, with orders to take
her to the nearest French port. “Then,” says Rattenbury, “when the
privateer was gone, the prize-master ordered me to go aloft and loose the
main-topgallant sail. When I came down, I perceived that he was steering
very wildly, through ignorance of the coast, and I offered to take the
helm, to which he consented, and directed me to steer south-east by
north. He then went below, and was engaged in drinking and carousing with
his companions. They likewise sent me up a glass of grog occasionally,
which animated my spirits, and I began to conceive a hope, not only of
escaping, but also of being revenged on the enemy.”
The artful Rattenbury then steered up to Portland, and when the master
asked what land it was, replied “Alderney.” Presently they came off St.
Aldhelm’s Head, and were distinctly suspicious when told it was Cape La
Hogue.
“We were now within a league of Swanage, and I persuaded them to go on
shore to get a pilot. They then hoisted out a boat, into which I got
with three of them. We now came so near shore that people hailed us. My
companions began to swear, and said the people spoke English. This I
denied, and urged them to hail again; but as they were rising to do so,
I plunged overboard, and came up the other side of the boat. They then
struck at me with their oars, and snapped a pistol at me, but it missed
fire. The boat in which they were now took water, and finding they were
engaged in a vain pursuit, they rowed away as fast as possible, to regain
the vessel.”
Rattenbury swam ashore and sent messengers, with the result that the
_Nancy_, revenue cutter, went in pursuit of the brig and, recapturing
her, brought her into Cowes the same night.
He was then forcibly enlisted in the Navy by the Press Gang, and,
escaping from His Majesty’s service, went cod-fishing off Newfoundland.
Returning, the ship he was on was captured by a Spanish privateer and
taken into Vigo. Escaping with his usual dexterity, he reached home
and added another thrilling item to his hazardous career by getting
married, April 17th, 1801. After a quiet interval of piloting, he
resumed smuggling, in earnest; with the usual ups and downs of fortune
incidental to that shy trade.
Having made several successful voyages, and feeling pretty confident,
he went ashore to carouse with some friends in one of the old taverns
of Beer. In the same room were a sergeant and several privates of the
South Devon Militia, among others. “After drinking two or three pots
of beer,” he says, “the sergeant, whose name was Hill, having heard my
name mentioned by some of my companions, went out with his men, and soon
they returned again, having armed themselves with swords and muskets.
The sergeant then advanced towards me and said, ‘You are my prisoner.
You are a deserter, and must go along with me.’ For a moment I was much
terrified, knowing that if I was taken I should, in all probability, be
obliged to go aboard the fleet; and this wrought up my mind to a pitch of
desperation. I endeavoured, however, to keep as cool as possible, and in
answer to his charge, I said, ‘Sergeant, you are surely labouring under
an error; I have done nothing that can authorise you in taking me up or
detaining me. You must certainly have mistaken me for some other person.’”
This shows us, pretty clearly, that some one must have written
Rattenbury’s reminiscences for him. He probably was incapable of such
book-English, and certainly would not have spoken anything else than
the broadest of Devonshire speech. However, he describes how he drew
the sergeant into a parley and how, while it was going on, he jumped
through a trap-door into the cellar. “I then threw off my jacket and
shirt, to prevent any one from holding me, and having armed myself with a
reaping-hook and a knife, which I had in my pocket, I threw myself into
an attitude of defence at the entrance, which was a half-hatch door, the
lower part of which I shut, and then declared that I would kill the first
man that came near me, and that I would not be taken from the spot alive.
At this the sergeant was evidently terrified; but he said to his men,
‘Soldiers, do your duty; advance and seize him.’ To which they replied,
‘Sergeant, you proposed it; take the lead and set us an example, and we
will follow.’ No one offered to advance, and I remained in the position I
have described for four hours, holding them at bay.”
The sergeant sent for aid, but before that arrived the women of Beer
rushed in with an artful story of shipwreck, attracting the soldiers’
attention. Rattenbury, seizing the opportunity, dashed among them,
half-naked, and escaped to the beach, where he hastily took boat and went
off to his own vessel, and safety.
In 1806 he, his crew, and his cargo of spirit-tubs were captured by
the _Duke of York_ cutter, when returning from Alderney. He was fined
£100, and with his companions was sentenced to the alternative of
imprisonment or service on board a man-o’-war. They chose the sea, and
were accordingly shipped aboard the brig _Kate_, in the Downs; but soon,
while the officers were all more or less drunk, he found an opportunity
of escaping, and was presently home again.
The smuggling exploits of this master of the art were endless. Perhaps
the most amusing—to the reader, at any rate—is that incident at Seaton
Hole, where, one dark night, going up the cliff with a keg on his back,
one of a cargo he had just landed, he was so unfortunate as to stumble
over a donkey, which began to bray so horribly that, what with his
trumpeting and the noise of the smuggler’s fall, a Revenue officer,
sleeping at the post of duty, was aroused, and seized forty kegs, nearly
the whole of that run.
After serving three terms of imprisonment for smuggling, and for being
unable to pay a fine of £4,500, Rattenbury’s many adventures came to an
end in 1833. His later years were devoted to fishing and piloting, and
between whiles, to composing his reminiscences. In those pages you read
this rather pitiful little note: “The smuggler gratefully acknowledges
the kindness of the Right Honourable Lord Rolle, who now allows him one
shilling per week for life.” What lavish generosity!
That was a picturesque village in which this Old Master and prime
exponent of smuggling lived. The one street led steeply down to the
sea, with a clear rivulet purling along the gutter, with quaint pumps
at intervals and bordered by cob cottages. The peasant women sat at the
doors making the pillow-lace of Devonshire, and the children, for lack
of better toys, played the great game of “shop” with the fish-offal in
the kennel.
[Illustration: BEER.]
But the old Beer of this picture has vanished, and a new and smart
village has arisen in its stead, with just two or three of these
characteristic survivals, to make us the more bitterly regret that
which we have lost. The place that was so inspiring for the artist has
become an impossibility for him, except, at the cost of veracity, he
dodges the Philistine surroundings of those surviving “bits.” One little
circumstance shall show you how artificial this sometime unconventional
and simple village has become. When it was the haunt of painters, there
was none who loved Beer so much as, or visited it more constantly than,
Hamilton Macallum, who died here, aged fifty-five, in 1896. He had
endeared himself to the people, and they and some of his brother artists
combined to set up the bronze tablet to his memory that stands in the
tiny pleasure-ground or public garden in the village street. And here
is the sorry humour of it, that shows the damnable artificiality of the
times, which has spoiled so much of Old England. The “public garden”
is kept locked through the winter and the spring, lest the children go
in and spoil it; and only thrown open when the brief visitors’ season
begins. There could be no more bitter indictment.
There was once a humble little church in this same street of Beer. A
very humble church, but in keeping with the place. And now? Why a large
and highly ornate building, infinitely pretentious and big enough for a
cathedral, has arisen on the site of it. It is, however, still in keeping
with Beer, for as deep calls unto deep, so across this narrow street
pretentiousness bids “how d’ye do” to pretence.
There are polished marble pillars in this new church of Beer, where
there should be rough-axed masonry, and a suburban high finish in place
of a rustic rudeness; and the sole relics of what had once been are the
two memorial tablets, themselves sufficiently rural. One is to “John,
the fifth sonn of William Starr of Bere, Gent., and Dorothy his wife,
which died in the plauge was here Bvried 1646.” John Starr was one of a
family which, about a century earlier, had become owners of a moiety of
the manor. The house he built in Beer street bears on one chimney the
initials “J. S.” and on another a star, in punning allusion to his name.
The other memorial in the church is to “Edward Good, late an Industrious
fisherman, who left to the Vicar and Churchwardens for the time being and
their successors for ever TWENTY POUNDS in TRUST for the Poor of this
Parish. The interest to be Distributed at Christmas in the proportion
of two thirds at BEER and one at SEATON. He died November 7, 1804, in
sixty-seventh year of his Age.”
Of the four industries of Beer—stone-quarrying smuggling, fishing, and
lace-making—the shy business of smuggling has alone disappeared. Those
who do not carry their explorations beyond the village street will see
nothing of the stone-getting, for the quarries lie away off the road
between Beer and Branscombe, where, in a cliff-like scar in the hillside
they are still busily being worked.
It must be close upon two thousand years since building-stone was first
won from this hillside, for the quarries originated in Roman times. Since
then they have been more or less continually worked, and although the
ancient caves formed by the old quarrymen in their industry have long
been abandoned for the open working, they exist, dark and damp, and not
altogether safe for a stranger, running hundreds of yards in labyrinthine
passages into the earth. It is of Beer stone that the vaulting and the
arches of the nave in Exeter Cathedral were built, 600 years ago; it was
used, even earlier in the crypt of St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster;
in Winchester Cathedral, and many other places; and to-day is as well
appreciated as ever, huge eight and ten-ton blocks being a feature in
the trucks on the railway sidings down at Seaton. It greatly resembles
Bath stone in its fine texture, but is of a more creamy colour and, while
softer and more easily worked when newly quarried, dries harder.
In ancient times the stone was shipped from the little cove of Beer,
which was thus no inconsiderable place. To improve it, in the words of
Leland: “Ther was begon a fair pere for socour of shippelettes, but ther
cam such a tempest a three years sins as never in mynd of man had before
bene seene in that shore”; and so the pier was washed away, and the
fragments of it are all that is to be seen in the unsheltered cove at
this day.
The fishermen of Beer are a swarthy race, descended, according to
tradition, from the crew of a shipwrecked Spanish vessel, who found the
place almost depopulated by that plague of which John Starr was a victim.
They and their trawlers, which you see laboriously hauled up on the
beach, are in the jurisdiction of the port of Exeter.
Here, in the semicircular cove, the summer sea laps softly among the
white pebbles, as innocently as though it had never drowned a poor
fisherman; and the white of the chalk cliffs, the equal whiteness of the
sea-floor and the clearness of the water itself give deep glimpses down
to where the seaweed unfurls its banners from rock and cranny, where
the crabs are seen walking about, hesitatingly, like octogenarians, and
jelly-fish float midway, lumps of transparency, like marine ghosts. The
sea is green here: a light translucent ghostly green, very beautiful
and at the same time, back of one’s consciousness—if you examine your
feelings—a little mysterious and repellent, suggesting not merely crabs
and jelly-fish, but inimical unknown things and infinite perils of the
deep, sly, malignant, patiently biding their time. The green sea has not
the bluff heartiness of the joyous blue.
The little cove, enclosed as it is by steep cliffs, looks for all the
world like a little scene in a little theatre. You almost expect a
chorus of fishermen to enter and hold forth musically on the delights of
seine-fishing, but they only suggest to the contemplative stranger that
it is “a fine day for a row,” and ask, in their rich Devonian tones, if
you want a “bwoat.”
The white cliffs of Beer are crannied with honeycombings and fissures,
banded with black flints, and here and there patterned with ochreous
pockets of earth, where the wild flowers grow as though Dame Nature
had been making the workaday place gay with bedding-out plants for
the delight of the summer visitors. The visitors are just that second
string to their old one-stringed bow of fishing the deep blue sea,
which the fishermen sorely need to carry them through the twelve months
that—although most things that existed in the nineteenth century have
been changed—still make a year; and the visitors who are taken out
boating beyond the cove to see the smugglers’ caves are never tired of
hearing of Jack Rattenbury, whose tale I have already told.