JACK RATTENBURY
WE do not expect of smugglers that they should be either literary or
devout. The doings of the Hawkhurst Gang, and of other desperate and
bloody-minded associations of free-traders, seem more in key with the
business than either the sitting at a desk, nibbling a pen and rolling a
frenzied eye, in search of a telling phrase, or the singing of Methodist
psalms. Yet we have, in the “Memoirs of a Smuggler,” published at
Sidmouth in 1837, the career of Jack Rattenbury, smuggler, of Beer, in
Devonshire, told by himself; and in the diary of Henry Carter, of Prussia
Cove, and later of Rinsey, we have learned how he found peace and walked
with the saints, after a not uneventful career in robbing the King’s
Revenue of a goodly portion of its dues as by law enacted. With the
eminent Mr. Henry Carter and his interesting brothers we have already
dealt, reserving this chapter for the still more eminent Rattenbury,
“commonly called,” as he says on his own title-page (in the manner of one
who knows his own worth), “The Rob Roy of the West.”
We need not be so simple as to suppose that Rattenbury himself actually
wrote, with his own hand, this interesting account of his adventures.
The son of a village cobbler in South Devon, born in 1778, and taking to
a seafaring life when nine years of age, would scarce be capable, in
years of eld, of writing the conventionally “elegant” English of which
his “Autobiography” is composed. But nothing “transpires” (as the actual
writer of the book might say) as to whom Rattenbury recounted his moving
tale, or by whose hand it was really set down. Bating, however, the
conventional language, the book has the unmistakable forthright
first-hand character of a personal narrative.
Before the future smuggler was born, as he tells us, his shoemaker, or
cobbler, father disappeared from Beer in a manner in those days not
unusual. He went on board a man-o’-war, and was never again heard of.
Whether he actually “went,” or was taken by a press-gang, we are left to
conjecture. But they were sturdy, self-reliant people in those days, and
Mrs. Rattenbury earned a livelihood in this bereavement by selling fish,
“without receiving the least assistance from the parish, or any of her
friends.”
When Jack Rattenbury was nine years of age he was introduced to the sea
by means of his uncle’s fishing-boat, but dropped the family connection
upon being lustily rope’s-ended by the uncle, as a reward for losing the
boat’s rudder. He then went apprentice to a Brixham fisherman, but,
being the younger among several apprentices, was accordingly bullied, and
left; returning to Beer, where he found his uncle busily engaging a
privateer’s crew, war having again broken out between England and France,
and merchantmen being a likely prey.
[Picture: Jack Rattenbury]
So behold our bold privateer setting forth, keen for loot and
distinction; the hearts of men and boys alike beating high in hope of
such glory as might attach to capturing some defenceless trader, and in
anticipation of the prize-money to be obtained by robbing him. But see
the irony of the gods in their high heavens! After seven weeks’
fruitless and expensive cruising at sea, they espied a likely vessel, and
bore down upon her, with the horrible result that she proved to be an
armed Frenchman of twenty-six guns, who promptly captured the privateer,
without even the pretence of a fight: the privateering crew being sent,
ironed, down below hatches aboard the Frenchman, which then set sail for
Bordeaux. There those more or less gallant souls were flung into prison,
whence Rattenbury managed to escape to an American ship lying in the
harbour. It continued to lie there, in consequence of an embargo upon
all shipping, for twelve months: an anxious time for the boy. At last,
the interdict being removed, they sailed, and Rattenbury landed at New
York. From that port he returned to France in another American ship,
landing at Havre; and at last, after a variety of transhipments, came
home again to Beer, by way of Guernsey.
He was by this time about sixteen years of age. For six months he
remained at home engaged in fishing; but this he found a very dull
occupation after his late roving life, and, as smuggling was then very
active in the neighbourhood, and promised both profit and excitement, he
accordingly engaged in a small vessel that plied between Lyme Regis and
the Channel Islands, chiefly in the cognac-smuggling business. This
interlude likewise soon came to an end, and he then joined a small vessel
called _The Friends_, lying at Bridport. On his first voyage, in the
entirely honest business of sailing to Tenby for a cargo of culm, this
ship was unlucky enough to be captured by a French privateer; but
Rattenbury escaped by a clever ruse, off Swanage, and, swimming ashore,
secured the intervention of the _Nancy_, revenue cutter, which recaptured
_The Friends_, and brought her into Cowes that same night: a very smart
piece of work, as will be readily conceded. Those were times of quick
and surprising changes, and Rattenbury had not been again aboard _The
Friends_ more than two days when he was forcibly enlisted in the Navy, by
the press-gang. Escaping from the more or less glorious service of his
country at the end of a fortnight, he then prudently went on a long
cod-fishing cruise off Newfoundland; but on the return voyage the ship
was captured by a Spanish privateer and taken to Vigo. Escaping thence,
he again reached home, to be captured by the bright eyes of one of the
buxom maids of Beer, where he was married, April 17th, 1801, proceeding
then to live at Lyme Regis. Privateering to the west coast of Africa
then occupied his activities for a time, but that business was never a
profitable one, as far as Rattenbury was concerned, and they caught
nothing; but, on the other hand, were nearly impressed, ship and ship’s
company too, by the _Alert_, King’s cutter. Piloting, rather than
privateering, then engaged his attention, and it was while occupied in
that trade that he was again impressed and again escaped.
He then returned to Beer, and embarked upon a series of smuggling
ventures, varied by attempts on the part of the press-gang to lay hold of
him, and by some other (and always barren) privateering voyages.
Ostensibly engaged in fishing, he landed many boat-loads of contraband at
Beer, bringing them from quiet spots on the coasts of Dorset and
Hampshire, where the goods had been hidden. Christchurch was one of
these smugglers’ warehouses, and from the creeks of that flat shore he
and his fellows brought many a load, in open boats. On one of these
occasions he fell in with the _Roebuck_ revenue tender, which chased and
fired upon him: the man who fired doing the damage to himself, for the
gun burst and blew off his arm. But Rattenbury and his companions were
captured, and their boat-load of gin was impounded. Rattenbury surely
was a very Puck among smugglers: a tricksy sprite, at once impudent and
astonishingly fortunate. He hid himself in the bottom of the enemy’s own
boat, and by some magical dexterity escaped when it touched shore: while
his companions were held prisoners. Nay, more. When night was come, he
was impudent enough, and successful enough, to go and release his
friends, and at the same time to bring away three of the captured
gin-kegs. In that same winter of 1805 he made seven trips in a new-built
smuggling vessel. Five of these were successful ventures, and two were
failures. In the spring of 1806 his crew and cargo of spirit-tubs were
captured, on returning from Alderney, by the _Duke of York_ cutter. He
was taken to Dartmouth, and, with his companions, fined and given the
alternative of imprisonment or serving aboard a man-o’-war. After a very
short experience of gaol, they chose to serve their country, chiefly
because it was much easier to desert that service than to break prison;
and they were then shipped in Dartmouth roads, whence Rattenbury escaped
from the navy tender while the officers were all drunk; coming ashore in
a fisherman’s boat, and thence making his way home by walking and riding
horseback to Brixham, and from that port by fishing-smack.
Soon after this adventure he purchased a share in a galley, and, with
some companions, made several successful trips in the cognac-smuggling
between Beer and Alderney. At last the galley was lost in a storm, and
in rowing an open boat across Channel Rattenbury and another were
captured by the _Humber_ sloop, and taken for trial to Falmouth and
committed to Bodmin gaol, to which they were consigned in two
post-chaises, in company with two constables. Travellers were thirsty
folk in those days, and at every inn between Falmouth and Bodmin the
chaises were halted, so that the constables could refresh themselves.
Evening was come before they had reached Bodmin, and while the now
half-seas-over constables were taking another dram at the lonely wayside
inn called the “Indian Queens,” Rattenbury and his companions conspired
to escape. Behold them, then, when ordered by the constables to resume
their places, refusing, and entering into a desperate struggle with those
officers of the law. A pistol was fired, the shot passing close to
Rattenbury’s head. He and his companion then downed the constables and
escaped across the moors; where, meeting with another party of smugglers,
they were sheltered at Newquay. Next morning they travelled horseback,
in company with the host who had sheltered them, to Mevagissey, whence
they hired a boat to Budleigh Salterton, and thence walked home again to
Beer.
Next year Rattenbury was appointed captain of a smuggling vessel called
the _Trafalgar_, and after five fortunate voyages had the misfortune to
lose her in heavy weather off Alderney. He and some associates then
bought a vessel called the _Lively_, but she was chased by a French
privateer and the helmsman shot. The privateer’s captain was so overcome
by this incidental killing that he relinquished his prize. After a few
more trips, the _Lively_ proved unseaworthy, and the confederates then
purchased the _Neptune_, which was wrecked after three successful voyages
had been made. But Rattenbury tells us, with some pride, that he saved
the cargo. In the meanwhile, however, the _Lively_ having been repaired,
had put to sea in the smuggling interest again, and had been captured and
confiscated by the revenue officers. Rattenbury lost £160 by that
business. Soon afterwards he took a share in a twelve-oared galley, and
was one of those who went in it to Alderney for a cargo. On the return
they were unfortunate enough to fall in with two revenue cutters: the
_Stork_ and the _Swallow_, that had been especially detailed to capture
them; and accordingly did execute that commission, in as thorough and
workmanlike fashion as possible, seizing the tubs and securing the
persons of Rattenbury and two others; although the nine other oarsmen
escaped. Captain Emys, of the _Stork_, took Rattenbury aboard his
vessel, and treated him well, inviting him to his cabin and to eat and
drink with him. Next day the smugglers were landed at Cowes.
“Rattenbury,” said the genial captain, “I am going to send you aboard a
man-o’-war, and you must get clear how you can.” To this the saucy
Rattenbury replied, “Sir, you have been giving me roast meat ever since I
have been aboard, and now you have run the spit into me.” He was then
put aboard the _Royal William_, on which he found a great many other
smuggler prisoners. Thence, in the course of a fortnight, he and the
others were drafted to the _Resistance_ frigate, and sent to Cork.
Arrived there, our slippery Rattenbury duly escaped in course of the
following day, and was home again in six days more.
The activities of the smugglers were at times exceedingly unpatriotic, in
other ways than merely cheating the Revenue, and Rattenbury was no whit
better than his fellows. He had not long returned home when he made
arrangements, for the substantial consideration of one hundred pounds, to
embark across the Channel four French officers, prisoners of war, who had
escaped from captivity at Tiverton. Receiving them on arrival at Beer,
and concealing them in a house near the beach, their presence was soon
detected and warrants were issued for the arrest of Rattenbury and five
others concerned. Rattenbury adopted the safest course and surrendered
voluntarily, and was acquitted, with a magisterial caution not to do it
again.
Every now and again Rattenbury found himself arrested, or in danger of
being arrested, as a deserter from the Navy. Returning on one of many
occasions from a successful smuggling trip to Alderney, and drinking at
an inn, he found himself in company with a sergeant and several privates
of the South Devon Militia. Presently the sergeant, advancing towards
him, said, “You are my prisoner. You are a deserter, and must go along
with me.”
Must! what meaning was there in that imperative word for the bold
smuggler of old? None. But Rattenbury’s first method was suavity,
especially as the militia had armed themselves with swords and muskets,
and as such weapons are exceptionally dangerous things in the hands of
militiamen. “Sergeant,” said he (or says his author for him, in that
English which surely Rattenbury himself never employed) “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.”
He then describes how he drew the sergeant into a parley, and how, in
course of it, he jumped into the cellar, and, throwing off jacket and
shirt, to prevent any one holding him, armed himself with a reaphook and
bade defiance to all who should attempt to take him.
The situation was relieved at last by the artful women of Beer rushing in
with an entirely fictitious story of a shipwreck and attracting the
soldiers’ attention. In midst of this diversion, Rattenbury jumped out,
and, dashing down to the beach, got aboard his vessel. After this
incident he kept out of Beer as much as possible; and shortly afterwards
was successful in piloting the _Linskill_ transport through a storm that
was likely to have wrecked her, and so safely into the Solent. He earned
twenty guineas by this; and received the advice of the captain to get a
handbill printed, detailing the circumstances of this service, by way of
set-off against the various desertions for which he was liable to be at
any time called to account.
Soon after this, Lord and Lady Rolle visited Beer, and Rattenbury’s wife
took occasion to present his lordship with one of the bills that had been
struck off. “I am sorry,” observed Lord Rolle, reading it, “that I
cannot do anything for your husband, as I am told he was the man who
threatened to cut my sergeant’s guts out.” Such, you see, was the
execution Rattenbury, at bay in the cellar, had proposed with his
reaphook upon the military.
Hearing this, and learning that Lady Rolle was also in the village, he
ran after her, and overtaking her carriage, fell upon his knees and
presented one of his handbills, entreating her ladyship to use her
influence on his behalf, so that the authorities might not be allowed to
take him. It is a ridiculous picture, but Rattenbury makes no shame in
presenting it. “She then said,” he tells us, “you ought to go back on
board a man-o’-war, and be equal to Lord Nelson; you have such spirits
for fighting. If you do so, you may depend I will take care you shall
not be hurt.” To which he replied; “My lady, I have ever had an aversion
to [sic] the Navy. I wish to remain with my wife and family, and to
support them in a creditable manner, {194} and therefore can never think
of returning.”
Her ladyship then said, “I will consider about it,” and turned off.
About a week afterwards, the soldiers were ordered away from Beer,
through the influence of her ladyship, as I conjecture, and the humanity
of Lord Rolle.
And so Rattenbury was left in peace. He tells us that he would have now
entered upon a new course of life, but found himself “engaged in
difficulties from which I was unable to escape, and bound by a chain of
circumstances whose links I was unable to break. . . . I seriously
resolved to abandon the trade of smuggling; to take a public-house, and
to employ my leisure hours in fishing, etc. At first the house appeared
to answer pretty well, but after being in it for two years, I found that
I was considerably gone back in the world; for that my circumstances,
instead of improving, were daily getting worse, for all the money I could
get by fishing and piloting went to the brewer.” Thus, he says, he was
obliged to return to smuggling; but we cannot help suspecting that
Rattenbury is here not quite honest with us, and that smuggling offered
just that alluring admixture of gain and adventure he found himself
incapable of resisting.
Adventures, it has been truly said, are to the adventurous; and
Rattenbury’s career offered no exception to the rule. There was,
perhaps, never so unlucky a smuggler as he. Returning to the trade in
November 1812, and returning with a cargo of spirits from Alderney, his
vessel fell in with the brig _Catherine_, and was pursued, heavily fired
upon, and finally captured. The captain of the _Catherine_, raging at
them, declared they should all be sent aboard a man-o’-war; but a search
of the smuggling craft revealed nothing except one solitary pint of gin
in a bottle: the cargo having presumably been put over the side. The
crew were, however, taken prisoners aboard the _Catherine_, and their
vessel was taken to Brixham. Rattenbury and his men were kept aboard the
_Catherine_ for a week, cruising in the Channel, and then the brig put in
again to Brixham, where the wives of the prisoners were anxiously
waiting. Next morning, in the absence of the captain and chief officer
ashore, the women came off in a boat, and were helped aboard the brig;
when Rattenbury and three of his men jumped into the boat and pushed off.
The second mate, who was in charge of the vessel, caught hold of the oar
Rattenbury was using, and broke the blade of it, and the smuggler then
threw the remaining part at him. The mate then fired; whereupon
Rattenbury’s wife knocked the firearm out of his hand. Picking it up, he
fired again, but the boat’s sail was up, and the fugitives were well on
the way to shore, and made good their escape, amid a shower of bullets.
They then dispersed, two of them being afterwards re-taken and sent
aboard a man-o’-war bound for the West Indies; but Rattenbury made his
way safely home again and was presently joined there by his wife.
The public-house was closed in November 1813, smuggling was for a time in
a bad way, owing to the Channel being closely patrolled; and Rattenbury,
now with a wife and four children, made but a scanty subsistence on
fishing and a little piloting. In September 1814 he ventured again in
the smuggling way, making a successful run to and from Cherbourg, but in
November another run was quite spoilt, in the first instance by a gale,
which obliged the smugglers to sink their kegs, and in the second by the
revenue officers seizing the boats. Finally, on the next day a
custom-house boat ran over their buoy marking the spot where the kegs had
been sunk, and seized them all—over a hundred. “This,” says Rattenbury,
with the conciseness of a resigned victim, “was a severe loss.”
The succeeding years were more fortunate for him. In 1816 he bought the
sloop _Elizabeth and Kitty_, cheap, having been awarded a substantial sum
as salvage, for having rescued her when deserted by her crew; and all
that year did very well in smuggling spirits from Cherbourg. Successes
and failures, arrests, escapes, or releases, then followed in plentiful
succession until the close of 1825, when the most serious happening of
his adventurous career occurred. He was captured off Dawlish, on
December 18th, returning from a smuggling expedition, and detained at
Budleigh Salterton watch-house until January 2nd, when he was taken
before the magistrates at Exeter, and committed to gaol. There he
remained until April 5th, 1827. In 1829 he says he “made an application”
to Lord Rolle, who gave him a letter to the Admiral at Portsmouth, and
went aboard the _Tartar_ cutter. In January 1830 he took his discharge,
received his pay at the custom-house, and went home.
Very slyly does he withhold from us the subject of that application, and
the nature of the _Tartar’s_ commission; and it is left for us to
discover that the bold smuggler had taken service at last with the
revenue and customs authorities, and for a time placed his knowledge of
the ins and outs of smuggling at the command of those whose duty it was
to defeat the free-traders. It was perhaps the discovery that the work
of spying and betraying was irksome, or perhaps the ready threats of his
old associates, that caused him to relinquish the work.
However that may be, he was soon at smuggling again, carried on in
between genuine trading enterprises; and in November 1831 was unlucky
enough to be chased and captured by the Beer preventive boat. As usual,
the cargo was carefully sunk before the capture was actually made, and
although the preventive men strenuously grappled for it, they found
nothing but a piece of rope, about one fathom long. On the very slight
presumptive evidence of that length of rope, Rattenbury and his eldest
son and two men were found guilty on their trial at Lyme Regis, and were
committed to Dorchester gaol. There they remained until February 1833.
Rattenbury’s last smuggling experience was a shoregoing one, in the month
of January 1836, at Torquay, where he was engaged with another man in
carting a load of twenty tubs of brandy. They had got about a mile out
of Newton Abbot, at ten o’clock at night, when a party of riding-officers
came up and seized the consignment “in the King’s name.” Rattenbury
escaped, being as eel-like and evasive as ever, but his companion was
arrested.
Thus, before he was quite fifty-eight years of age, he quitted an
exceptionally chequered career; but his wonted fires lived in his son,
who continued the tradition, even though the great days of smuggling were
by now done.
That son was charged, at Exeter Assizes, in March 1836, with having on
the night of December 1st, 1835, taken part with others in assaulting two
custom-house officers at Budleigh Salterton. Numerous witnesses swore to
his having been at Beer that night, sixteen miles away, but he was found
guilty and sentenced to seven years’ transportation; the Court being
quite used to this abundant evidence, and quite convinced, Bible oaths to
the contrary notwithstanding, that he was at Budleigh Salterton, and did
in fact take part in maltreating His Majesty’s officers.
Jack Rattenbury was on this occasion cross-examined by the celebrated Mr.
Serjeant Bompas, in which he declared he had brought up that son in a
proper way, and “larnt him the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten
Commandments.” (Perhaps also that important Eleventh Commandment, “Thou
shalt not be found out!”)
“You don’t find there, ‘Thou shalt not smuggle?’” asked Mr. Serjeant
Bompas.
“No,” replied Rattenbury the ready, “but I find there, ‘Thou shalt not
bear false witness against thy neighbour.’”
The injured innocent, like to be transported for his country’s good, was
granted a Royal Pardon, as the result of several petitions sent to Lord
John Russell.
The village of Beer, deep down in one of the most romantic rocky coves of
South Devon, is nowadays a very different kind of place from what it was
in Rattenbury’s time. Then the home of fishermen daring alike in fishing
and in smuggling, a village to which strangers came but rarely, it is now
very much of a favourite seaside resort, and full of boarding-houses that
have almost entirely abolished the ancient thatched cottages. A few of
these yet linger on, together with one or two of the curious old stone
water-conduits and some stretches of the primitive cobbled pavements, but
they will not long survive. The sole characteristic industry of Beer
that is left, besides the fishing and the stone-quarrying that has been
in progress from the very earliest times, is the lace-making, nowadays
experiencing a revival.
But the knowing ones will show you still the smugglers’ caves: deep
crannies in the chalk cliffs of Beer, that at this place so curiously
alternate with the more characteristic red sandstone of South Devon.