Must! what meaning was there in that imperative word for the bold smuggler of old? None. But Rattenbury’s first method was suavity, especially as the militia had armed themselves with swords and muskets, and as such weapons are exceptionally dangerous things in the hands of militiamen. “Sergeant,” said he (or says his author for him, in that English which surely Rattenbury himself never employed) “you are surely labouring under an error. I have done nothing that can authorise you in taking me up, or detaining me; you must certainly have mistaken me for some other person.”
He then describes how he drew the sergeant into a parley, and how, in course of it, he jumped into the cellar, and, throwing off jacket and shirt, to prevent any one holding him, armed himself with a reaphook and bade defiance to all who should attempt to take him.
The situation was relieved at last by the artful women of Beer rushing in with an entirely fictitious story of a shipwreck and attracting the soldiers’ attention. In midst of this diversion, Rattenbury jumped out, and, dashing down to the beach, got aboard his vessel. After this incident he kept out of Beer as much as possible; and shortly afterwards was successful in piloting the Linskill transport through a storm that was likely to have wrecked her, and so safely into the Solent. He earned twenty guineas by this; and received the advice of the captain to get a handbill printed, detailing the circumstances of this service, by way of set-off against the various desertions for which he was liable to be at any time called to account.
Soon after this, Lord and Lady Rolle visited Beer, and Rattenbury’s wife took occasion to present his lordship with one of the bills that had been struck off. “I am sorry,” observed Lord Rolle, reading it, “that I cannot do anything for your husband, as I am told he was the man who threatened to cut my sergeant’s guts out.” Such, you see, was the execution Rattenbury, at bay in the cellar, had proposed with his reaphook upon the military.
Hearing this, and learning that Lady Rolle was also in the village, he ran after her, and overtaking her carriage, fell upon his knees and presented one of his handbills, entreating her ladyship to use her influence on his behalf, so that the authorities might not be allowed to take him. It is a ridiculous picture, but Rattenbury makes no shame in presenting it. “She then said,” he tells us, “you ought to go back on board a man-o’-war, and be equal to Lord Nelson; you have such spirits for fighting. If you do so, you may depend I will take care you shall not be hurt.” To which he replied; “My lady, I have ever had an aversion to [sic] the Navy. I wish to remain with my wife and family, and to support them in a creditable manner, [194] and therefore can never think of returning.”
Her ladyship then said, “I will consider about it,” and turned off. About a week afterwards, the soldiers were ordered away from Beer, through the influence of her ladyship, as I conjecture, and the humanity of Lord Rolle.
And so Rattenbury was left in peace. He tells us that he would have now entered upon a new course of life, but found himself “engaged in difficulties from which I was unable to escape, and bound by a chain of circumstances whose links I was unable to break. . . . I seriously resolved to abandon the trade of smuggling; to take a public-house, and to employ my leisure hours in fishing, etc. At first the house appeared to answer pretty well, but after being in it for two years, I found that I was considerably gone back in the world; for that my circumstances, instead of improving, were daily getting worse, for all the money I could get by fishing and piloting went to the brewer.” Thus, he says, he was obliged to return to smuggling; but we cannot help suspecting that Rattenbury is here not quite honest with us, and that smuggling offered just that alluring admixture of gain and adventure he found himself incapable of resisting.
Adventures, it has been truly said, are to the adventurous; and Rattenbury’s career offered no exception to the rule. There was, perhaps, never so unlucky a smuggler as he. Returning to the trade in November 1812, and returning with a cargo of spirits from Alderney, his vessel fell in with the brig Catherine, and was pursued, heavily fired upon, and finally captured. The captain of the Catherine, raging at them, declared they should all be sent aboard a man-o’-war; but a search of the smuggling craft revealed nothing except one solitary pint of gin in a bottle: the cargo having presumably been put over the side. The crew were, however, taken prisoners aboard the Catherine, and their vessel was taken to Brixham. Rattenbury and his men were kept aboard the Catherine for a week, cruising in the Channel, and then the brig put in again to Brixham, where the wives of the prisoners were anxiously waiting. Next morning, in the absence of the captain and chief officer ashore, the women came off in a boat, and were helped aboard the brig; when Rattenbury and three of his men jumped into the boat and pushed off. The second mate, who was in charge of the vessel, caught hold of the oar Rattenbury was using, and broke the blade of it, and the smuggler then threw the remaining part at him. The mate then fired; whereupon Rattenbury’s wife knocked the firearm out of his hand. Picking it up, he fired again, but the boat’s sail was up, and the fugitives were well on the way to shore, and made good their escape, amid a shower of bullets. They then dispersed, two of them being afterwards re-taken and sent aboard a man-o’-war bound for the West Indies; but Rattenbury made his way safely home again and was presently joined there by his wife.
The public-house was closed in November 1813, smuggling was for a time in a bad way, owing to the Channel being closely patrolled; and Rattenbury, now with a wife and four children, made but a scanty subsistence on fishing and a little piloting. In September 1814 he ventured again in the smuggling way, making a successful run to and from Cherbourg, but in November another run was quite spoilt, in the first instance by a gale, which obliged the smugglers to sink their kegs, and in the second by the revenue officers seizing the boats. Finally, on the next day a custom-house boat ran over their buoy marking the spot where the kegs had been sunk, and seized them all—over a hundred. “This,” says Rattenbury, with the conciseness of a resigned victim, “was a severe loss.”
The succeeding years were more fortunate for him. In 1816 he bought the sloop Elizabeth and Kitty, cheap, having been awarded a substantial sum as salvage, for having rescued her when deserted by her crew; and all that year did very well in smuggling spirits from Cherbourg. Successes and failures, arrests, escapes, or releases, then followed in plentiful succession until the close of 1825, when the most serious happening of his adventurous career occurred. He was captured off Dawlish, on December 18th, returning from a smuggling expedition, and detained at Budleigh Salterton watch-house until January 2nd, when he was taken before the magistrates at Exeter, and committed to gaol. There he remained until April 5th, 1827. In 1829 he says he “made an application” to Lord Rolle, who gave him a letter to the Admiral at Portsmouth, and went aboard the Tartar cutter. In January 1830 he took his discharge, received his pay at the custom-house, and went home.