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,[24] 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[25] 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[26] 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[27] 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[28] 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[29] children, for lack of better toys, played the great game of “shop” with the fish-offal in the kennel.
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[30] 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[31] 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[32] 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[33] 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[34] 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.
