It is impossible to resist the strong suspicion, in all this and other talk in the autobiography, of buying and building newer and larger vessels, that the Carters were financed by some wealthy and influential person, or persons, as undoubtedly many smugglers were, the profits of the smuggling trade, when conducted on a large scale and attended by a run of luck, being very large and amply recouping the partners for the incidental losses. But the loss of the fine new cutter, on her first voyage, at St. Malo, must have been a very serious business.
After another interval of success with the smaller cutter they had earlier used, with spells ashore, “riding about the country getting freights, collecting money for the company, etc., etc.,”another fifty-ton cutter was purchased, mounting nineteen guns. That venture, too, was highly successful, and “the company accordingly had a new lugger built, mounting twenty guns.” Horrible to relate, Captain Harry, “being exposed to more company and sailors of all descriptions, larned to swear at times.” This is bad hearing.
In a French prison
Obviously in those times there was a good deal of give and take going on between the Customs and those smugglers who smuggled on a large scale, and the Carters’ vessels must in some unofficial way have ranked as privateers. Hence, possibly, the considerable armament they carried. The Customs, and the Admiralty too, were prepared to wink at smuggling when services against the foreign foe could be invoked. Thus we find Captain Harry, in his autobiography, narrating how the Collector of Customs at Penzance sent him a message to the effect that theBlack Princeprivateer, from Dunkirk, was off the coast, near St. Ives, and desiring him to pursue her. “It was not,” frankly says Captain Harry, “a very agreeable business”; but, being afraid of offending the Collector, he obeyed, and went in pursuit, with two vessels. Coming up with the enemy, after a running fight of three or four hours, the lugger received a shot that obliged her to bear up, in a sinking condition; and so her consort stood by her, and the chase was of necessity abandoned. Presently the lugger sank, fourteen of her crew of thirty-one being drowned.
In January 1788 he went with a cargo of contraband in a forty-five-ton lugger to Cawsand Bay, near Plymouth, and there met with the most serious reverse of his smuggling career, two man-o’-war’s boats boarding the vessel and seizing it and its contents. He was so knocked about over the head with cutlasses that he was felled to the deck, and left there for dead.
“I suppose I might have been there aboute a quarter of an hour, until they had secured my people below, and after found me lying on the deck. One of them said, ‘Here is one of the poor fellows dead.’ Another made answer, ‘Put the man below.’ He answered again, saying, ‘What use is it to put a dead man below?’ and so past on. Aboute this time the vessel struck aground, the wind being about east-south-east, very hard, right on the shore. So their I laid very quiet for near the space of two hours, hearing their discourse as they walked by me, the night being very dark on the 30 Jany. 1788. When some of them saw me lying there, said, ‘Here lays one of the fellows dead,’ one of them answered as before, ‘Put him below.’ Another said, ‘The man is dead.’ The commanding officer gave orders for a lantern and candle to be brought, so they took up one of my legs, as I was lying upon my belly; he let it go, and it fell as dead down on the deck. He likewayse put his hand up under my clothes, between my shirt and my skin, and then examined my head, saying, ‘This man is so warm now as he was two hoursback, but his head is all to atoms.’ I have thought hundreds of times since what a miracle it was I neither sneezed, coughed, nor drew breath that they perceived in all this time, I suppose not less than ten or fifteen minutes. The water being ebbing, the vessel making a great heel towards the shore, so that in the course of a very little time after, as their two boats were made fast alongside, one of them broke adrift. Immediately there was orders given to man the other boat, in order to fetch her; so that when I saw them in the state of confusion, their gard broken, I thought it was my time to make my escape; so I crept on my belly on the deck, and got over a large raft just before the mainmast, close by one of the men’s heels, as he was standing there handing the trysail. When I got over the lee-side I thought I should be able to swim on shore in a stroke or two. I took hold of the burtons of the mast, and, as I was lifting myself over the side, I was taken with the cramp in one of my thighs. So then I thought I should be drowned, but still willing to risk it, so that I let myself over the side very easily by a rope into the water, fearing my enemies would hear me, and then let go. As I was very near the shore, I thought to swim on shore in the course of a stroke or two, as I used to swim so well, but soon found out my mistake. I was sinking almost like a stone, and hauling astarn in deeper water, when I gave up all hopes of life, and began to swallow some water. I found a ropeunder my breast, so that I had not lost all my senses. I hauled upon it, and soon found one end fast to the side, just where I went overboard, which gave me a little hope of life. So that when I got there, could not tell which was best, to call to the man-of-war’s men to take me in, or to stay there and die, for my life and strength were allmoste exhausted; but whilst I was thinking of this, touched bottom with my feet. Hope then sprung up, and I soon found another rope, leading towards the head of the vessel in shoaler water, so that I veered upon one and hauled upon the other that brought me under the bowsprit, and then at times upon the send of the sea, my feete were allmoste dry. I thought then I would soon be out of their way. Left go the rope, but as soon as I attempted to run, fell down, and as I fell, looking round aboute me, saw three men standing close by me. I knew they were the man-of-war’s men seeing for the boat, so I lyed there quiet for some little time, and then creeped upon my belly I suppose aboute the distance of fifty yards; and as the ground was scuddy, some flat rock mixt with channels of sand, I saw before me a channel of white sand, and for fear to be seen creeping over it, which would take some time, not knowing there was anything the matter with me, made the second attempt to run, and fell in the same manner as before. My brother Charles being there, looking out for the vessel, desired some Cawsand men to go down to see if they couldpick up any of the men, dead or alive, not expecting to see me ever any more, allmoste sure I was ither shot or drowned. One of them saw me fall, ran to my assistance, and, taking hold of me under the arm, says, ‘Who are you?’ So as I thought him to be an enemy, made no answer. He said, ‘Fear not, I am a friend; come with me.’ And by that time, forth was two more come, which took me under both arms, and the other pushed me in the back, and so dragged me up to the town. I suppose it might have been about the distance of the fifth part of a mile. My strength was allmoste exhausted; my breath, nay, my life, was allmoste gone. They took me into a room where there were seven or eight of Cawsand men and my brother Charles, and when he saw me, knew me by my great coat, and cryed with joy, ‘This is my brother!’ So then they immediately slipt off my wet clothes, and one of them pulled off his shirt from off him and put on me, sent for a doctor, and put me to bed. Well, then, I have thought many a time since what a wonder it was. The bone of my nose cut right in two, nothing but a bit of skin holding it, and two very large cuts on my head, that two or three pieces of my skull worked out afterwards.”
The difficulty before Captain Harry’s friends was how to hide him away, for they were convinced that a reward would be offered for his apprehension. He was, in the first instance, taken to the house of his brother Charles, and stayedthere six or seven days, until an advertisement appeared in the newspapers, offering a reward of three hundred pounds for him, within three months. He was then taken to the house of a gentleman at Marazion, and there remained close upon three weeks, removing thence to the mansion called Acton Castle, near Cuddan Point, then quite newly built by one Mr. John Stackhouse. He was moved to and fro, between Acton Castle and Marazion, and so great did his brothers think the need of precaution that the doctor who attended to his hurts was blindfolded on the way. And so matters progressed until October, when he was shipped from Mount’s Bay to Leghorn, and thence, in 1789, sailed for New York. It was in New York that the Lord strove mightily with him, and he was converted and became a member of the Wesleyan Methodist communion. After some considerable trials, he sailed for England, and finally reached home again in October 1790, to his brother Charles’s house at Kenneggey. His reception was enthusiastic, and he became in great request as a preacher in all that countryside. But in April 1791 he tells us he was sent for “by a great man of this neighbourhood” (probably one of those whom we have already suspected of being sleeping-partners in the Carters’ business), and warned that three gentlemen had been in his company one day at Helston, when one said, looking out of window, “There goes a Methodist preacher”; whereupon another answered, “I wonder how Harry Carter goesabout so publicly, preaching, and the law against him. I wonder he is not apprehended.” The great man warned him that it might be a wise course to return to America. “And,” continues Captain Harry, “as the gent was well acquainted with our family, I dined with him, and he brought me about a mile in my way home; so I parted with him, fully determining in my own mind to soon see my dear friends in New York again. So I told my brothers what the news was, and that I was meaning to take the gent’s advice. They answered, ‘If you go to America, we never shall see you no more. We are meaning to car on a little trade in Roscoff, in the brandy and gin way, and if you go there you’ll be as safe there as in America; likewayse we shal pay you for your comision, and you car on a little business for yourself, if you please.’ So,” continues this simple soul, “with prayer and supplication I made my request known unto God.” And as there appeared no divine interdict upon smuggling, he accepted the agency and went to reside at Roscoff, sending over many a consignment of ardent liquors that were never intended to—and never did—pay tribute to the Revenue. All went well until, in the troubles that attended the French Revolution, he was, in company with other English, arrested and flung into prison in 1793. And in prison he remained during that Reign of Terror in which English prisoners were declared by the Convention to rank with the “aristocrats” and the “suspects,” and weretherefore in hourly danger of the guillotine. This immediate terror passed when Robespierre was executed, July 28th, 1794, but it was not until August 1795 that Harry Carter was released. He reached home on August 22nd, and appears ever after to have settled down to tilling a modest farm and leaving smuggling to brothers John and Charles.
Jack Rattenbury
Wedo 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 thatRattenbury 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 severalapprentices, 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.
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 calledThe 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 theNancy, revenue cutter, which recapturedThe 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 aboardThe Friendsmore 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 theAlert, 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 theRoebuckrevenue 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 hidhimself 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 theDuke of Yorkcutter. 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 andanother were captured by theHumbersloop, 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 theTrafalgar, 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 theLively, but she was chased by a Frenchprivateer 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, theLivelyproved unseaworthy, and the confederates then purchased theNeptune, 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, theLivelyhaving 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: theStorkand theSwallow, 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 theStork, 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 beenaboard, and now you have run the spit into me.” He was then put aboard theRoyal 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 theResistancefrigate, 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. Presentlythe 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 theLinskilltransport through a storm that was likely to have wrecked her, and so safely intothe 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 creditablemanner,[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 brigCatherine, and was pursued, heavily fired upon, and finally captured. The captain of theCatherine, 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 theCatherine, and their vessel was taken to Brixham. Rattenbury and his men were kept aboard theCatherinefor 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 WestIndies; 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 sloopElizabeth 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 atBudleigh 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 theTartarcutter. 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 theTartar’scommission; 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 menwere 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 occasioncross-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 earliesttimes, 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.
The Whisky Smugglers
Amodernform of smuggling little suspected by the average Englishman is found in the illicit whisky-distilling yet carried on in the Highlands of Scotland and the wilds of Ireland, as the records of Inland Revenue prosecutions still annually prove. The sportsman, or the more adventurous among those tourists who roam far from the beaten track, are still likely to discover in rugged and remote situations the ruins of rough stone and turf huts of no antiquity, situated in lonely rifts in the mountain-sides, always with a stream running by. If the stranger is at all inquisitive on the subject of these solitary ruins, he will easily discover that not only are they not old, but that they have, in many cases, only recently been vacated. They are, in fact, the temporary bothies built from the abundant materials of those wild spots by the ingenious crofters and other peasantry, for the purpose of distilling whisky that shall not, between its manufacture and its almost immediate consumption, pay duty to the revenue authorities.
This illegal production of what is now thought to be the “national drink” of Scotland and Ireland, is not of any considerable antiquity, for whisky itself did not grow popular until comparatively recent times. Robert Burns, who may not unfairly be considered the poet-laureate of whisky, and styles it “whisky, drink divine,” would have had neither the possibility of that inspiration, nor have filled the official post of exciseman, had he flourished but a few generations earlier; but he was born in that era when whisky-smuggling and dram-drinking were at their height, and he took an active part in both the drinking of whisky and the hunting down of smugglers of it.
One of the most stirring incidents of his career was that which occurred in 1792, when, foremost of a little band of revenue officers, aided by dragoons, he waded into the waters of Solway, reckless of the quicksands of that treacherous estuary, and, sword in hand, was the first to board a smuggling brig, placing the crew under arrest and conveying the vessel to Dumfries, where it was sold. It was this incident that inspired him with the poem, if indeed, we may at all fitly claim inspiration for such an inferior Burns product:
THE DE’IL’S AWA’ WI’ THE EXCISEMANThe De’il cam’ fiddling thro’ the town,And danc’d awa’ wi’ the exciseman;And ilka wife cry’d, “Auld Mahoun,I wish you luck o’ your prize, man.”We’ll mak’ our maut and brew our drink,We’ll dance, and sing, and rejoice, man;And monie thanks to the muckle black De’il,That danced awa’ wi’ the exciseman.There’s threesome reels, and foursome reels,There’s hornpipes and strathspeys, man;But the ae best dance e’er cam’ to our lan’,Was—the De’il’s awa’ wi’ the exciseman.
THE DE’IL’S AWA’ WI’ THE EXCISEMAN
The De’il cam’ fiddling thro’ the town,And danc’d awa’ wi’ the exciseman;And ilka wife cry’d, “Auld Mahoun,I wish you luck o’ your prize, man.”
We’ll mak’ our maut and brew our drink,We’ll dance, and sing, and rejoice, man;And monie thanks to the muckle black De’il,That danced awa’ wi’ the exciseman.
There’s threesome reels, and foursome reels,There’s hornpipes and strathspeys, man;But the ae best dance e’er cam’ to our lan’,Was—the De’il’s awa’ wi’ the exciseman.
Whisky,i.e. usquebaugh, signifying in Gaelic “water of life,” originated, we are told, in the monasteries, where so many other comforting cordials were discovered, somewhere about the eleventh or twelfth century. It was for a very long period regarded only as a medicine, and its composition remained unknown to the generality of people; and thus we find among the earliest accounts of whisky, outside monastic walls, an item in the household expenses of James the Fourth of Scotland, at the close of the fifteenth century. There it is styled “aqua vitæ.”
A sample of this then new drink was apparently introduced to the notice of the King or his Court, and seems to have been so greatly appreciated that eight bolls of malt figure among the household items as delivered to “Friar James Cor,” for the purpose of manufacturing more, as per sample.
But for generations to come the nobles and gentry of Scotland continued to drink wine, and the peasantry to drink ale, and it was only with the closing years of another century that whiskybecame at all commonly manufactured. We read that in 1579 distillers were for the first time taxed in Scotland, and private stills forbidden; and the rural population did not altogether forsake their beer for the spirit until about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Parliament, however, soon discovered a tempting source of revenue in it, and imposed constantly increasing taxation. In 1736 the distillers’ tax was raised to 20s.a gallon, and there were, in addition, imposts upon the retailers.
It might have been foreseen that the very natural result of these extortionate taxes would be to elevate illegal distilling, formerly practised here and there, into an enormously increased industry, flourishing in every glen. Only a very small proportion of the output paid the duties imposed. Every clachan had its still, or stills.
This state of things was met by another Act which prohibited the making of whisky from stills of a smaller capacity than five hundred gallons; but this enactment merely brought about the removal of the more or less openly defiant stills from the villages to the solitary places in the hills and mountains, and necessitated a large increase in the number of excisemen.
Seven years of these extravagant super-taxes sufficed to convince the Government of the folly of so overweighting an article with taxation that successful smuggling of it would easily bring fortunes to bold and energetic men. To do so was thus abundantly proved to be a directprovocation to men of enterprise; and the net result the Government found to be a vastly increased and highly expensive excise establishment, whose cost was by no means met by the revenue derived from the heavy duties. Failure thus becoming evident, the taxes were heavily reduced, until they totalled but ten shillings and sixpence a gallon.
But the spice of adventure introduced by illegal distilling under the old heavy taxation had aroused a reckless frame of mind among the Highlanders, who, once become used to defy the authorities, were not readily persuaded to give up their illegal practices. The glens continued to be filled with private stills. Glenlivet was, in especial, famed for its whisky-smugglers; and the peat-reek arose in every surrounding fold in the hills from hundreds of “sma’ stills.” Many of these private undertakings did business in a large way, and openly sold their products to customers in the south, sending their tubs of spirits under strong escort, for great distances. They had customers in England also, and exciting incidents arose at the Border, for not only the question of excise then arose, but that of customs duty as well; for the customs rates on spirits were then higher in England than in Scotland. The border counties of Northumberland and Cumberland, Berwick, Roxburgh, and Dumfriesshire were infested with smugglers of this double-dyed type, to whom must be added the foreign contrabandists, such as the Dutchman, Yawkins, who haunted thecoasts of Dumfriesshire and Galloway with his smuggling lugger, theBlack Prince, and is supposed to be the original of Dirk Hatteraick, in Scott’s romance, “Guy Mannering.”
The very name of this bold fellow was a terror to those whose duty it was to uphold law and order in those parts; and it was, naturally, to his interest to maintain that feeling of dread, by every means in his power. Scott tells us how, on one particular night, happening to be ashore with a considerable quantity of goods in his sole custody, a strong party of excisemen came down upon him. Far from shunning the attack, Yawkins sprang forward, shouting, “Come on, my lads, Yawkins is before you.”
The revenue officers were intimidated, and relinquished their prize, though defended only by the courage and address of one man. On his proper element, Yawkins was equally successful. On one occasion he was landing his cargo at the Manxman’s Lake, near Kirkcudbright, when two revenue cutters, thePigmyand theDwarf, hove in sight at once, on different tacks, the one coming round by the Isles of Fleet, the other between the point of Rueberry and the Muckle Ron. The dauntless free-trader instantly weighed anchor and bore down right between the luggers, so close that he tossed his hat on the deck of the one and his wig on that of the other, hoisted a cask to his maintop, to show his occupation, and bore away under an extraordinary pressure of canvas, without receiving injury.
So, at any rate, the fantastic legends tell us, although it is but fair to remark, in this place, that no practical yachtsman, or indeed any other navigator, would for a moment believe in the possibility of such a feat.
To account for these and other hairbreadth escapes, popular superstition freely alleged that Yawkins insured his celebrated lugger by compounding with the Devil for one-tenth of his crew every voyage. How they arranged the separation of the stock and tithes is left to our conjecture. The lugger was perhaps called theBlack Princein honour of the formidable insurer. Her owner’s favourite landing-places were at the entrance of the Dee and the Cree, near the old castle of Rueberry, about six miles below Kirkcudbright. There is a cave of large dimensions in the vicinity of Rueberry, which, from its being frequently used by Yawkins and his supposed connection with the smugglers on the shore, is now called “Dirk Hatteraick’s Cave.” Strangers who visit this place, the scenery of which is highly romantic, are also shown, under the name of the “Gauger’s Leap,” a tremendous precipice.
“In those halcyon days of the free trade,” says Scott, “the fixed price for carrying a box of tea or bale of tobacco from the coast of Galloway to Edinburgh was fifteen shillings, and a man with two horses carried four such packages.”
This condition of affairs prevailed until peace had come, after the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The Government then, as always,sadly in need of new sources of revenue, was impressed with the idea that a fine sum might annually be obtained by placing these shy Highland distillers under contribution. But there were great difficulties in the way. The existing laws were a mere dead letter in those regions, and it was scarce likely that any new measures, unless backed up by a display of military force, would secure obedience. The Duke of Gordon, at that period a personage of exceptionally commanding influence with the clansmen, was appealed to by the Government to use his authority for the purpose of discouraging these practices; but he declared, from his place in the House of Lords, that the Highlanders were hereditary distillers of whisky: it had from time immemorial been their drink, and they would, in spite of every discouragement, continue to make it and to consume it. They would sell it, too, he said, when given the opportunity of doing so by the extravagantly high duty on spirits. The only way out of the difficulty with which the Government was confronted was, he pointed out, the passing of an Act permitting the distilling of whisky on reasonable terms.
The result of this straightforward speech was the passing of an Act in 1823 which placed the moderate excise duty of 2s.3d.a gallon on the production of spirits, with a £10 annual license for every still of a capacity of forty gallons: smaller stills being altogether illegal.
These provisions were reasonable enough, butfailed to satisfy the peasantry, and the people were altogether so opposed to the regulation of distilling that they destroyed the licensed distilleries. It was scarce worth the while of retailers, under those circumstances, to take out licenses, and so it presently came to pass that for every one duly licensed dealer there would be, according to the district, from fifty to one hundred unlicensed.
And so things remained until by degrees the gradually perfected system of excise patrols wore down this resistance.
In the meanwhile, the licensed distillers had a sorry time of it.
Archibald Forbes, many years ago, in the course of some observations upon whisky-smugglers, gave reminiscences of George Smith, who, from having in his early days been himself a smuggler, became manager of the Glenlivet Distillery. This famous manufactory of whisky, in these days producing about two thousand gallons a week, had an output in 1824 of but one hundred gallons in the same time; and its very existence was for years threatened by the revengeful peasantry and proprietors of the “sma’ stills.” Smith was a man of fine physical proportions and great courage and tenacity of purpose, or he could never have withstood the persecutions and dangers he had long to face. “The outlook,” he said, “was an ugly one. I was warned, before I began, by my neighbours that they meant to burn the new distillery to theground, and me in the heart of it. The Laird of Aberlour presented me with a pair of hair-trigger pistols, and they were never out of my belt for years. I got together three or four stout fellows for servants, armed them with pistols, and let it be known everywhere that I would fight for my place till the last shot. I had a pretty good character as a man of my word, and through watching, by turns, every night for years, we contrived to save the distillery from the fate so freely predicted for it. But I often, both at kirk and market, had rough times of it among the glen people, and if it had not been for the Laird of Aberlour’s pistols I don’t think I should have been telling you this story now.”
In ’25 and ’26 three more small distilleries were started in the glen; but the smugglers succeeded very soon in frightening away their occupants, none of whom ventured to hang on a second year in the face of the threats uttered against them. Threats were not the only weapons used. In 1825 a distillery which had just been started at the head of Aberdeenshire, near the banks o’ Dee, was burnt to the ground with all its outbuildings and appliances, and the distiller had a very narrow escape of being roasted in his own kiln. The country was in a desperately lawless state at this time. The riding-officers of the Revenue were the mere sport of the smugglers, and nothing was more common than for them to be shown a still at work, and then coolly defied to make a seizure.
Prominent among these active and resourceful men was one Shaw, proprietor of a shebeen on the Shea Water, in the wilds of Mar. Smugglers were free of his shy tavern, which, as a general rule, the gaugers little cared to visit singly. Shaw was alike a man of gigantic size, great strength, and of unscrupulous character, and stuck at little in the furtherance of his illegal projects. But if Shaw was a terror to the average exciseman, George Smith, for his part, was above the average, and feared no man; and so, when overtaken by a storm on one occasion, had little hesitation in seeking the shelter of this ill-omened house. Shaw happened to be away from home at the time, and Smith was received by the hostess, who, some years earlier, before she had married her husband, had been a sweetheart of the man who now sought shelter. The accommodation afforded by the house was scanty, but a bedroom was found for the unexpected guest, and he in due course retired to it. Mrs. Shaw had promised that his natural enemies, the smugglers, should not disturb him, if they returned in the night; but when they did return, later on, Shaw determined that he would at least give the distillery man a fright. Most of them were drunk, and ready for any mischief, and would probably have been prepared even to murder him. Shaw was, however, with all his faults, no little of a humorist, and only wanted his joke at the enemy’s expense.
The band marched upstairs solemnly, in spite of some little hiccoughing, and swung into thebedroom, a torch carried by the foremost man throwing a fitful glare around. The door was locked when they had entered, and all gathered in silence round the bed. Shaw then, drawing a great butcher’s knife from the recesses of his clothes, brandished it over the affrighted occupant of the bed. “This gully, mon, iss for your powels,” said he.
But Smith had not entered this House of Dread without being properly armed, and he had, moreover, taken his pistols to bed with him, and was at that moment holding one in either hand, under the clothes. As Shaw flourished his knife and uttered his alarming threats, he whipped out the one and presented it at Shaw’s head, promising him he would shoot him if the whole party did not immediately quit the room; while with the other (the bed lying beside the fireplace) he fired slyly up the chimney, creating a thunderous report and a choking downfall of soot, in midst of which all the smugglers fled except Shaw, who remained, laughing.
Shaw had many smart encounters with the excise, in which he generally managed to get the best of it. The most dramatic of these was probably the exploit that befell when he was captaining a party of smugglers conveying two hundred kegs of whisky from the mountains down to Perth. The time was winter, and snow lay thick on field and fell; but the journey was made in daytime, for they were a numerous band and well armed, and feared no one. But the localSupervisor of Excise had by some means obtained early news of this expedition, and had secured the aid of a detachment of six troopers of the Scots Greys at Coupar-Angus, part of a squadron stationed at Perth. At the head of this little force rode the supervisor. They came in touch with the smugglers at Cairnwell, in the Spittal of Glenshee.
“Gang aff awa’ wi’ ye, quietly back up the Spittal,” exclaimed the supervisor, “and leave the seizure to us.”
“Na, faith,” replied Shaw; “ye’ll get jist what we care to gie!”
“Say ye so?” returned the excise officer hotly. “I’ll hae the whole or nane!”
The blood rose in Shaw’s head, and swelled out the veins of his temples. “By God,” he swore, “I’ll shoot every gauger here before ye’ll get a drap!”
The supervisor was a small man with a bold spirit. He turned to his cavalry escort with the order “Fire!” and at the same time reached for Shaw’s collar, with the exclamation, “Ye’ve given me the slip often enough, Shaw! Yield now, I’ve a pistol in each pocket of my breeches.”
“Have ye so?” coolly returned the immense and statuesque Shaw, “it’s no’ lang they’ll be there, then!” and with that he laid violent hands upon each pocket and so picked the exciseman bodily out of his saddle, tore out both pistols and pockets, and then pitched him, as easily as an ordinary man could have done a baby, head over heels into a snow-drift.
Meanwhile, the soldiers had not fired; rightly considering that, as they were so greatly outnumbered, to do so would be only the signal for an affray in which they would surely be worsted. A wordy wrangle then followed, in which the exciseman and the soldiers pointed out that they could not possibly go back empty-handed; and in the end, Shaw and his brother smugglers went their way, leaving four kegs behind, “just out o’ ceeveelity,” and as some sort of salve for the wounded honour of the law and its armed coadjutors.
Not many gaugers were so lion-hearted as this; but one, at least, was even more so. This rash hero one day met two smugglers in a solitary situation. They had a cart loaded up with whisky-kegs, and when the official, unaided, and with no human help near, proposed single-handed to seize their consignment and to arrest them, they must have been as genuinely astonished as ever men have been. The daring man stood there, purposeful of doing his duty, and really in grave danger of his life; but these two smugglers, relishing the humour of the thing, merely descended from their cart, and, seizing him and binding him hand and foot, sat him down in the middle of the road with wrists tied over his knees and a stick through the crook of his legs, in the “trussed fowl” fashion. There, in the middle of the highway, they proposed to leave him; but when he pitifully entreated not to be left there, as he might be run over and killed in the dark, theyconsiderately carried him to the roadside; with saturnine humour remarking that he would probably be starved there instead, before he would be noticed.
Smugglers hiding goods in a tomb
The flood-tide of Government prosecutions of the “sma’ stills” was reached in 1823–5, when an average of one thousand four hundred cases annually was reached. These were variously for actual distilling, or for the illegal possession of malt, for which offence very heavy penalties were exacted.
Preventive men were stationed thickly over the face of the Highlands, the system then employed being the establishment of “Preventive Stations” in important districts, and “Preventive Rides” in less important neighbourhoods. The stations consisted of an officer and one or two men, who were expected by the regulations not to sleep at the station more than six nights in the fortnight. During the other eight days and nights they were to be on outside duty. A ride was a solitary affair, of one exciseman. Placed in authority over the stations were “supervisors,” who had each five stations under his charge, which he was bound to visit once a week.
George Smith, of Glenlivet, already quoted, early found his position desperate. He was a legalised distiller, and paid his covenanted duty to Government, and he rightly considered himself entitled, in return for the tribute he rendered, to some measure of protection. He therefore petitioned the Lords of the Treasury to thateffect; and my lords duly replied, after the manner of such, that the Government would prosecute any who dared molest him. This, however, was not altogether satisfactory from Smith’s point of view. He desired rather to be protected from molestation than to be left open to attack and the aggressors to be punished. A dead man derives no satisfaction from the execution of his assassin. Moreover, even the prosecution was uncertain. In Smith’s own words, “I cannot say the assurance gave me much ease, for I could see no one in Glenlivet who dared institute such proceedings.”
It was necessary for a revenue officer to be almost killed in the execution of his duty before the Government resorted to the force requisite for the support of the civil power. A revenue cutter was stationed in the Moray Firth, with a crew of fifty men, designed to be under the orders of the excise officers in cases of emergency.
But the smugglers were not greatly impressed with this display, and when the excisemen, accompanied with perhaps five-and-twenty sailors, made raids up-country, frequently met them in great gangs of perhaps a hundred and fifty, and recaptured any seizures they had made and adopted so threatening an attitude that the sailors were not infrequently compelled to beat a hasty and undignified retreat. One of these expeditions was into Glenlivet itself, where the smugglers were all Roman Catholics. The excisemen, with this in mind, considered that thebest time for a raid would be Monday morning, after the debauch of the Sunday afternoon and night in which the Roman Catholics were wont to indulge; and accordingly, marching out of Elgin town on the Sunday, arrived at Glenlivet at daybreak. At the time of their arrival the glen was, to all appearance, deserted, and their coming unnoticed, and the sight of the peat-reek rising in the still air from some forty or fifty “sma’ stills” rejoiced their hearts.
But they presently discovered that their arrival had not only been observed but foreseen, for the whole country-side was up, and several hundred men, women, and children were assembled on the hill-sides to bid active defiance to them. The excisemen keenly desired to bring the affair to a decisive issue, but the thirty seamen who accompanied them had a due amount of discretion, and refused to match their pistols and cutlasses against the muskets that the smugglers ostentatiously displayed. The party accordingly marched ingloriously back, except indeed those sailors who, having responded too freely to the smugglers’ invitation to partake of a “wee drappie,” returned gloriously drunk. The excisemen, so unexpectedly baulked of what they had thought their certain prey, ungraciously refused a taste.
This formed the limit of the sorely tried Government’s patience, and in 1829 a detachment of regulars was ordered up to Braemar, with the result that smuggling was gradually reduced to less formidable proportions.
The Celtic nature perceives no reason why Governments should confer upon themselves the rights of taxing and inspecting the manufacture of spirits, any more than any other commodity. The matter appears to resolve itself merely into expediency: and the doctrine of expediency we all know to be immoral. The situation was—and is, whether you apply it to spirits or to other articles in general demand—the Government wants revenue, and, seeking it, naturally taxes the most popular articles of public consumption. The producers and the consumers of the articles selected for these imposts just as naturally seek to evade the taxes. This, to the Celtic mind, impatient of control, is the simplest of equations.
About 1886 was the dullest time in the illicit whisky-distilling industry of Scotland, and prosecutions fell to an average of about twenty a year. Since then there has been, as official reports tell us, in the language of officialdom, a “marked recrudescence” of the practice. As Mr. Micawber might explain, in plainer English, “there is—ah—in fact, more whisky made now.” Several contributory causes are responsible for this state of things. Firstly, an economical Government reduced the excise establishment; then the price of barley, the raw material, fell; and the veiled rebellion of the crofters in the north induced a more daring and lawless spirit than had been known for generations past. Also, restrictions upon the making of malt—another of the essential constituents from which the spirit is distilled—were at this time removed, and any one who cared might make it freely and without license.
Your true Highlander will not relinquish his “mountain-dew” without a struggle. His forefathers made as much of it as they liked, out of inexpensive materials, and drank it fresh and raw. No one bought whisky; and a whole clachan would be roaring drunk for a week without a coin having changed hands. Naturally, the descendants of these men—“it wass the fine time they had, whateffer”—dislike the notion of buying their whisky from the grocer and drinking stuff made in up-to-date distilleries. They prefer the heady stuff of the old brae-side pot-still, with a rasp on it like sulphuric acid and a consequent feeling as though one had swallowed lighted petroleum: stuff with a headache for the Southerner in every drop, not like the tamed and subdued creature that whisky-merchants assure their customers has not got a headache in a hogshead.
The time-honoured brae-side manner of brewing whisky is not very abstruse. First find your lonely situation, the lonelier and the more difficult of access, obviously the better. If it is at once lonely and difficult of approach, and at the same time commands good views of such approaches as there are, by so much it is the better. But one very cardinal fact must not be forgotten: the site of the proposed still and its sheltering shieling, or bothy, must have a water-supply, either from a mountain-stream naturally passing, or by an artfully constructed rude system of pipes.
A copper still, just large enough to be carried on a man’s back, and a small assortment of mash-tubs, and some pitchers and pannikins, fully furnish such a rustic undertaking.
The first step is to convert your barley into malt; but this is to-day a needless delay and trouble, now that malt can be made entirely without let or hindrance. This was done by steeping the sacks of barley in running water for some forty-eight hours, and then storing the grain underground for a period, until it germinated. The malt thus made was then dried over a rude kiln fired with peats, whose smoke gave the characteristic smoky taste possessed by all this bothy-made stuff.
It was not necessary for the malt to be made on the site of the still, and it was, and is, generally carried to the spot, ready-made for the mash-tubs. The removal of the duty upon malt by Mr. Gladstone, in 1880, was one of that grossly overrated and really amateur statesman’s many errors. His career was full of false steps and incompetent bunglings, and the removal of the Malt Tax was but a small example among many Imperial tragedies on a grand scale of disaster. It put new and vigorous life into whisky-smuggling, as any expert could have foretold; for it was precisely the long operation of converting the barley into malt that formed the illegal distiller’s chief difficulty. The time taken, and the process of crushing or bruising the grains, offered some obstacles not easily overcome. The crushing, inparticular, was a dangerous process when the possession of unlicensed malt was an offence; for that operation resulted in a very strong and unmistakable odour being given forth, so that no one who happened to be in the neighbourhood when the process was going on could be ignorant of it, while he retained his sense of smell.
Brought ready-made from the clachan to the bothy, the malt was emptied into the mash-tubs to ferment; the tubs placed in charge of a boy or girl, who stirs up the mess with a willow-wand or birch-twig; while the men themselves are out and about at work on their usual avocations.
Having sufficiently fermented, the next process was to place the malt in the still, over a brisk heat. From the still a crooked spout descends into a tub. This spout has to be constantly cooled by running water, to produce condensation of the vaporised alcohol. Thus we have a second, and even more important, necessity for a neighbouring stream, which often, in conjunction with the indispensable fire, serves the excisemen to locate these stills. If a bothy is so artfully concealed by rocks and turves that it escapes notice, even by the most vigilant eye, amid the rugged hill-sides, the smoke arising from the peat-fire will almost certainly betray it.
The crude spirit thus distilled into the tub is then emptied again into the still, which has been in the meanwhile cleared of the exhausted malt and cleansed, and subjected to a second distilling,over a milder fire, and with a small piece of soap dropped into the liquor to clarify it.
The question of maturing the whisky never enters into the minds of these rustic distillers, who drink it, generally, as soon as made. Very little is now made for sale; but when sold the profit is very large, a capital of twenty-three shillings bringing a return of nine or ten pounds.
But the typical secret whisky-distiller has no commercial instincts. It cannot fairly be said that he has a soul above them, for he is just a shiftless fellow, whose soul is not very apparent in manner or conversation, and whose only ambition is to procure a sufficiency of “whusky” for self and friends; and a “sufficiency” in his case means a great deal. He has not enough money to buy taxed whisky; and if he had, he would prefer to make his own, for he loves the peat-reek in it, and he thinks “jist naething at a’” of the “puir stuff” that comes from the great distilleries.
He is generally ostensibly by trade a hanger-on to the agricultural or sheep-farming industries, but between his spells of five days at the bothy (for it takes five days to the making of whisky) he is usually to be seen loafing about, aimlessly. Experienced folk can generally tell where such an one has been, and what he has been doing, after his periodical absences, for his eyelids are red with the peat-smoke and his clothes reek with it.
Dragoons dispersing smugglers
Perhaps the busiest centre of Highland illicitwhisky-distilling is now to be located in the Gairloch, but anything in the shape of exact information on so shy a subject is necessarily not obtainable. Between this district and the Outer Hebrides, islands where no stills are to be found, a large secret trade is still believed to exist. Seizures are occasionally made but the policy of the Inland Revenue authorities is now a broad one, in which the existence of small stills in inconsiderable numbers, although actually known, is officially ignored: the argument being that undue official activity, with the resultant publicity, would defeat itself by advertising the fact of it being so easy to manufacture whisky, leading eventually to the establishment of more stills.
The illegal production of spirits does, in fact, proceed all over Great Britain and Ireland to a far greater extent than generally suspected; and such remote places as the Highlands are nowadays by no means the most favourable situations for the manufacture. Indeed, crowded towns form in these times the most ideal situations. No one in the great cities is in the least interested in what his neighbour is doing, unless what he does constitutes a nuisance: and it is the secret distiller’s last thought to obtrude his personality or his doings upon the notice of the neighbours. Secrecy, personal comfort, and conveniences of every kind are better obtained in towns than on inclement brae-sides; and the manufacture and repair of the utensils necessary to the business are effected more quickly, less expensively, andwithout the prying curiosity of a Highland clachan.
It follows from this long-continued course of illegal distilling that the Highlands are full of tales of how the gaugers were outwitted, and of hairbreadth escapes and curious incidents. Among these is the story of the revengeful postmaster of Kingussie, who, on his return from a journey to Aberlour on a dark and stormy night, called at Dalnashaugh inn, where he proposed to stay an hour or two. The pretty maid of the inn attended diligently to him for awhile, until a posse of some half-dozen gaugers entered, to rest there on their way to Badenoch, where they were due, to make a raid on a number of illicit stills. The sun of the postmaster suddenly set with the arrival of these strangers. They were given the parlour, and treated with the best hospitality the house could afford, while he was banished to the kitchen. He was wrathful, for was he not a Government official, equally with these upstarts? But he dissembled his anger, and, as the evening wore on and the maid grew tired, he suggested she had better go to bed, and he would be off by time the moon rose. No sooner had she retired than he took the excisemen’s boots, lying in the inglenook to dry, and pitched them into a great pot of water, boiling over the blaze.