DARTMOUTH
The cheapest ferry in England is that which takes you across from
Kingswear to Dartmouth. In point of fact, there are two: the pontoon-like
affair that plies from the ferry-slip, and the Great Western Railway’s
steamer, conveying passengers between Kingswear station and Dartmouth
Quay. The fare for one person is merely a humble halfpenny.
It is a romantic way of entering Dartmouth, which lies across there,
down by the water’s edge, with great hills rising in the background, and
the smoke from Dartmouth’s thousand chimneys ascending visibly, like
some great incense-offering. From this point of view you perceive the
essential justness of that ancient foreigner’s report when, sent to spy
upon the chances of surprising Dartmouth, he declared that the hills were
its walls.
And the story of Dartmouth is one of raids, made and suffered,
alternately. The kingdoms of England and of France might be at peace,
but the ports on either side of the Channel were often engaged in their
own private wars, and sent ships and men out to burn, pillage, and
slay; while between the English seaman and the Spaniard there existed
an enmity which neither treaties nor prudence could set at rest. The
gallant seaman of the age of romance, whether Frenchman, Spaniard, or
Englishman, was nothing less than a corsair: a murdering scoundrel who,
if he could appear in person at this day before his eulogists, would be
the most unwelcome of visitors from the great and glorious past. His only
recommendation is his undoubted courage and his exclusive patriotism. The
English sea-captains of Queen Elizabeth’s day had no more doubt of being
God’s avengers against the Spaniard than they had of the sun’s setting in
the west; and—although we do not hear so much of the views entertained by
the other side—the foreigners doubtless held equally bigoted opinions.
The merchant-adventurers of Dartmouth, such as the Hawleys and the
Roopes, whose monumental brasses may to this day be found in the ancient
churches of St. Saviour in the town, and St. Petrox at the Castle, were
embattled traders, whose captains knew what was expected of them, and
accordingly did not merely trade peacefully to foreign parts, but beat
about the seas in the hope of snapping up rich prizes; whether in time of
peace or war mattered little or nothing. Their piety and their ferocity
were equally remarkable, and they could find it easily possible to slit
a throat, or to make a whole ship’s company walk the plank, to the
tune of a thanksgiving psalm. It was a remarkable combination of good
qualities and defects, but after all not more remarkable than the doings
of such modern people as Rockefeller in America—who will, by illegitimate
trading and systematic lying, ruin thousands while posing before a Sunday
School—and of his fellows in England, whose names the law of libel will
not permit of being printed.
The daring seamanship and the unscrupulous methods of Hawley’s captains,
little better than pirates, enriched Hawley immensely, and the like may
be said of the Roopes and others. At times of national emergency Hawley
could, with an ease readily to be understood, lend his ships entirely for
warlike purposes, and probably his crews did not find the change from
their “mercantile” voyages very striking. In 1390, for example, as the
chronicler Stow informs us, his flotilla “took thirty-four shippes laden
with wyne to the sum of fifteen hundred tunnes.” It was probably of one
of Hawley’s captains that Chaucer was thinking when he described the
“shipman of Dartmouth,” one of the Canterbury Pilgrims setting out from
Southwark in 1383. This shipman, at any rate, had need of pilgrimage,
or some drastic purging course for the remission of sins, for he is
described as having sent many “home by water”; a polite way of saying
that he had murdered many upon the high seas by making them walk the
plank overboard.
The great John Hawley is represented in effigy on the floor of St.
Saviour’s church. He died full of years and honours in 1480, and his two
wives, Joan and Alice, are represented beside him. He looks a substantial
and honest merchant, a benevolent burgess, and everything respectable
and right worshipful, as though piracy were a word that had no meaning
for him. The interior of St. Saviour’s is further remarkable for the
Elizabethan gallery, panelled and elaborately ornate with the heraldic
shields of other old legalised pirates of the town, and for its beautiful
early sixteenth-century pulpit of most ornately carved, painted and
gilt stone: one of some eight or ten such pulpits in wood or stone to
be found in the surrounding districts, and nowhere else in England. The
extraordinary boldness, wealth, and high relief of the carving single
these remarkable pulpits out from anything else in the country; and their
gilding, their vivid red, blue, and green colouring, give them a gorgeous
and almost barbaric effect.
[Illustration: THE PULPIT, ST. SAVIOUR’S, DARTMOUTH.]
Probably as a direct result of the piratical doings of the Dartmouth
people, inviting reprisals, it was in 1481 considered advisable to
further strengthen the defences of the narrow entrance to Dartmouth
harbour; and the existing fortifications on either side were built. The
people of Dartmouth were clever enough to get this done at the expense
of the nation, the king agreeing to pay the cost, to the extent of £30
a year, out of the customs of Dartmouth and Exeter. The “stronge and
myghtye and defensyve new tower” then agreed upon to be built is the
existing castle. A chain was to be stretched across between this and
Kingswear every night, and although this has, of course, disappeared, the
places whence it was stretched are still to be seen.
Dartmouth as a port of call for liners died hard, but the last line of
steamships, the Donald Currie service to the Cape, went, and now it is
divided between being a favourite yachting station and the home of the
new Royal Naval College, which, transferred from its picturesque and
makeshift old home aboard the _Britannia_ and _Hindostan_, now crowns the
hill and nobly dominates the whole of Dartmouth in the great range of
buildings overlooking the Dart.
The ferryman who puts us across the Dart is full of information and as
full of regrets about the _Britannia_ and _Hindostan_, the new Naval
College, and the changed conditions of seafaring life, but with a
sardonic smile he thinks the cadets will learn their business as well
ashore as they have done afloat. “Why not?” he asks. “They don’t want
no sailors nowadays. There _was_ a time when a sailor was never without
his marline-spike an’ mallet. Now they’re all bloody Dagoes and Dutchies
in the merchant sarvice, an’ engineers and stoke-hole men, with cold
chisels, ’stead of knives, in the Navy. For a sailor—when there _were_
sailors, mind you—to be without his knife, why, he might every bit as
well up’n give his cap’n a clump auver th’yed, so he might. An’ up
_there_—” he jerked so contemptuous a thumb over his shoulder that it
was almost a wonder the new flagstaff on the new central tower did not
wilt—“up _there_ them young juicers is fed up with ’lectricity ’n things
no Godfearing sailorman in _my_ time never heerd of.”
Although it is designed in the Paltry Picturesque Eclectic Renaissance or
Doll’s House, style with ornamental fripperies and fandangalums galore,
the Naval College has the noblest of aspects, seen from down the harbour,
or across the Dart, from Old Rock Ferry. Planted on the wooded summit of
Mount Boone, the long range of buildings, backed by dark trees, sets just
that crown and finish upon Dartmouth which suffices to raise the scenic
character of the place from beauty to nobility. A curious feature of it
is the clock in the central tower, which rings seafaring time ashore: so
many “bells.” At sea the twelve hours are divided into three watches of
four hours each, with a “bell” to every half-hour. Thus the “bells” rise
with the half-hours to eight, when they begin again, with the completion
of the first half-hour of the new watch. In this manner, the “bells”
agree with shoregoing chimes only twice a day: at eight o’clock, morning
and night.
[Illustration: DARTMOUTH: THE “BRITANNIA” AND “HINDOSTAN,” AND THE NEW
NAVAL COLLEGE.]
[Illustration: FOSS STREET AND ST. SAVIOUR’S.]
The parish church of Dartmouth, oddly enough, is neither St. Saviour’s in
the town, nor St. Petrox at the castle, but St. Clement’s at Townstal,
on the hilltop, quite a mile distant. Many of the very old and very
fine fifteenth and sixteenth century overhanging and gabled houses
have in modern times been destroyed, some by fire and some in wanton
“improvements”; but Foss Street, looking along to St. Saviour’s, shows
what old Dartmouth was like. There are found ancient houses with windows
bracketed out upon strikingly artistic Renaissance carvings of lions and
unicorns; but the houses in that street are decrepit, and the Butter Walk
undoubtedly shows the best preserved old architecture. When we consider
that Dartmouth was once, as a whole, like this, it will sadly be realised
how grievous the change.
[Illustration: THE BUTTER WALK, DARTMOUTH.]
Dartmouth to-day is still a very busy place, and full of slummy little
alleys, and extraordinarily swarming with children. Amid all this
crowding and bustle of business there are always plenty of loafers
to lean over breast-high walls, contemplating the picturesque scene,
where houses crowd and cling to the very water’s edge, and old,
half-forgotten waterside towers stand, silent reminders of a bygone need
for watchfulness. At Bayard’s Cove in especial, the coal-lumpers, the
boatmen, and the generally idle sit on the quay walls in the sun, or lean
against them, keeping them up. The coal-lumpers work perhaps sixteen or
twenty hours at a stretch, coaling the steamers that come into port,
and then want no more work for a month. They laze away the days, run up
a score at the nearest pub, and groan if by chance they see another job
coming round the corner.