That Dartmouth seamen early became famous is abundantly proved by the circumstance that it was a captain hailing from this western port who was selected by the immortal Chaucer as one of the characters to ride in company with the Cook, Prioress, Doctor of Physic, the Franklin, the Frere, and all the rest of that band of Canterbury pilgrims of long ago. Amongst the many “pen portraits” he has given us, few, probably, excel in strength and truth that of the Shipman “of Dertemouthe”; which, after reading the history, and conning the traditions of the town in the stirring times of long ago, one can readily accept as typical of many of the men who, pirates though they were, did their part to fight the battles of England, and uphold the noblest traditions of a sturdy seafaring race.
DARTMOUTH
Chaucer extenuates nothing as he writes (painting a picture of the man, his day, and surroundings at one and the same time):
A Shipman was ther, wonynge fer by weste;
For ought I woot he was of Dertemouthe.
He rood upon a rouncy as he kouthe,
In a gowne of faldyng to the knee.
A daggere hangynge on a laas hadde he
About his nekke under his arm adoun.
The hoote somer hadde maad his hewe al broun;
And certeinly he was a good felawe.
Ful many a draughte of wyn hadde he y-drawe
Fro Burdeuxward whil that the Chapman sleepe,
Of nyce conscience took he no keepe.
If that he faught, and hadde the hyer hond;
By water he sente hem hoom to every lond.
But of his craft to rekene wel his tydes,
His stremes and his daungers hym bisides,
His herberwe and his moone, his lodemenage,
Ther nas noon swich from Hulle to Cartage.
Hardy he was, and wys to undertake:
With many a tempest hadde his berd been shake;
He knew wel alle the havenes, as they were,
From Gootland to the Cape of Fynystere,
And every cryke in Britaigne and in Spayne.
His barge y-cleped was the Maudelayne.[E]
[E] Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Macmillan’s Globe Edition).
The picture that Chaucer thus paints of the “Shipman of Dertemouthe,” though it probably was a portrait, nevertheless was also true of the seamen in those far-off times of almost every sea-going nation, when the right of the ocean was ever that of the strongest, and the only law that obtained with the sea-dogs of England, France, Holland, or Spain was that of might. Whatever the squeamish amongst historians or moralists may say, the bold sea rovers were a natural evolutionary growth of the life on the coasts, and those of Dartmouth amongst the best. But half-a-day’s sail in a swift craft away across the Channel lay a portion of France not less fitted by Nature to breed pirates and later on privateers than the fretted coast lines of Devon and Cornwall with their myriad coves and refuges, to which the bold seamen could retreat with their plunder, or to make good the damage of battle or breeze. Just as the sister counties we have mentioned bred their hordes of sea-rovers, so did the coasts of Brittany and Finistère. The instinct of piracy and wrecking dominated both English and Bretons alike, and indeed it was well for England that the bold spirits of Cherbourg, St-Malo, Morlaix, and Brest (to mention but a few places where such dwelt) were counterparted by those of Dartmouth, Plymouth, Fowey, and Penzance.
The men of these ports not only fought when compelled, but (to quote an old chronicle) “lusted exceedingly after the blood and treasure of the French corsairs, and other sea rovers.” That the men of Dartmouth were as doughty fighters ashore as afloat is testified by Walsingham (amongst others) in his Chronicle. In this vivid, and let us hope veracious, record one finds an account of the attack upon Dartmouth by Du Chastel, who planned a descent upon the south-western coasts generally, as well as an attack upon Dartmouth in particular, in revenge for the depredations of the men of that port on the Breton coast. The news of Du Chastel’s intention seems to have leaked out, for when some hundreds of Bretons had been landed with the intention of attacking from the land side at the same time that their friends made an attempt from the sea, the former found that the men of the Dart were prepared to receive them, having entrenched themselves to the number of several hundred behind a deep ditch.
The women of the town seem to have borne an Amazonian part in the defence of their hearths and homes, for we learn that they fought stoutly, “using slings with dire effect, so that many of the invaders, both knights and common men fell beneath their missiles into the said ditch.” These and many others were summarily killed by the men, who appear to have given no quarter even if it were asked. On this occasion as on many others the men of Devon proved themselves as well able to defend their homes and possessions as to ravage and take those of other people, and the French, after losing upwards of 400 killed and wounded, and leaving another 200 or so of their comrades prisoners in the hands of the Dartmouth folk, were compelled to seek refuge in their ships as best they could, and ultimately to abandon the idea of attacking other towns on the coast, and return to their own shores.
Scarcely a year elapsed, however, ere the Bretons were back again, and this time, unhappily for the men of the Dart, the news of their coming did not precede them. Dartmouth was surprised, an entrance was forced, the town burned, and many—both men and women—were slain. Thus, in the stirring times of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, ebbed and flowed the fortune of piratical warfare between the hereditary foes of the sea-coasts of Brittany and Devon.