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 the Black Prince privateer, 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 hours back, 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 rope under 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 could pick 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 stayed there 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 goes about 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 were therefore 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.

CHAPTER XIII

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.”