On the 14th October his Grace the Duke of Richmond, master of the ordnance, arrived at Lowestoft, accompanied by his son Lord George Lenox and surveyed the works.
In February, 1782, Lord North, Prime Minister, and all the other officers of State belonging to his administration, were under the necessity of resigning their respective employments on account of the American war. The many miseries which the nation was involved in, in consequence of this unhappy war, and the opposition which ministers met with in the House of Commons, as being the authors of these calamities, occasioned an entire new ministry to be formed. The Marquis of Rockingham was made Prime Minister; who, dying soon after was succeeded by the Earl of Shelburne; Admiral Kepple was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, in the room of Earl of Sandwich; General Conway was made Commander-in-chief of His Majesty’s forces in the room of Lord Amherst; and the Duke of Richmond master of the Ordnance in the room of Lord Townsend. These circumstances are necessary to be remembered, as they account for the different noblemen and officers visiting the town in so short a space of time, in order to survey the works and review the troops.
Among the various methods made use of in order to alarm the coast on the approach of an enemy were the following: July 18, 1782, about ten at night General Tryon caused skyrockets to be let off at the several places of Caister, Gorleston Heights, Lowestoft East Battery, Pakefield, and Covehithe, intending thereby to communicate an alarm from Caister and Covehithe, the two most distant places, in the same manner as was practised by lighting up beacons. This method was found to answer exceedingly well, as intelligence could by these means be communicated from Caister to Covehithe in two minutes. September 5, another experiment was made use of by the General to convey an alarm in case the enemy should approach in the night near Lowestoft; which was to set fire to a stack of about fifty faggots of furze, upon a hill, in the bounds of Gunton, and to let off four large skyrockets, so as to be seen at Caister, Hopton camp, Somerly Hall, (the head quarters) and East Ness. September 16, another experiment made, was by firing a signal gun from the East Battery at Lowestoft; to set fire to a stack of furze in the Church lane, and let off some skyrockets. The same methods were made use of at Bawdsey Cliff, and at the several different stations between here and Caister (one of which was the foregoing at Lowestoft) when it was found that an alarm was conveyed in this manner from Bawdsey to Caister, fifty miles, in eleven minutes. September 17, an experiment by daylight was made in making a great smoke. This signal was answered from the camp at Hopton. Another signal was given from the East battery to East Ness, by flash of gun, September 25, an experiment was made to convey an alarm to Norwich from the coast, the camp on East Heath, and from the camp at Herringfleet, by firing skyrockets and cannon, which were answered by other rockets, and platoons of musketry upon Mousehold Heath, Norwich. After which, beacons of piles of wood, were set fire to on Herringfleet and Mousehold Heath. October 9th a similar experiment was made at seven o’clock in the evening. A chain of signals, by skyrockets and fire beacons, were displayed successively from Coxford lodge, near Houghton, Swanton Novers, near Melton Constable; the heights above Attlebridge; and Mousehold Heath, Norwich; to Herringfleet (near the head-quarters at Somerly). These several modes of conveying alarms, in case of an actual invasion, were the most practicable and speedy that could then be made use of in this part of the country.
November 11th, 1784, the camp upon Hopton common broke up, and the Cambridgeshire militia having joined the Light Infantry that had been encamped upon the common at Southwold, went into the winter quarters in Cambridgeshire. At the same time the camp also at Caister broke up, and went into winter quarters at Lynn. And on the 12th the camp upon East Heath broke up, when the troops, together with the 10th Regiment of Foot from Hopton, went into winter quarters at Yarmouth, Gorleston, and Lowestoft. The enemy had not once attempted to carry their intended descent into execution. As the war was terminated on the 20th January following, by a general peace, the fortifications which had been so lately erected in Lowestoft, at a great expense, were allowed to fall into decay.
On the 23rd July, 1785, at four o’clock in the afternoon, Major Money, of Crown Point, near Norwich, ascended from the public gardens in that city, in a car suspended from an air balloon. When arrived at a considerable height, he was not only carried above the clouds, but by a change in the current of air, was driven over Lowestoft, and forced many miles over the sea. About six o’clock, the Major with the balloon fell upon the water, where, after experiencing the most astonishing dangers with the greatest fortitude and presence of mind, he was taken up by a cutter between eleven and twelve o’clock that night, about eighteen miles to the east of Southwold; and the next morning landed safe at Lowestoft, to the great surprise and joy of his friends and the country in general.
SECTION X.
The rise and progress of the herring fishery have been previously mentioned and further discussion would be superfluous, were it not to represent more clearly the attempts that were made by some new adventurers, who resided at Dunbar, Caithness, and other places in Scotland; at Liverpool, in the western part of England; and at the Isle of Man, in the Irish Channel; in order to deprive the town of the benefits arising from this antient fishery, and to monopolise them wholly to themselves.
The declining state of the herring fishery at Lowestoft was apparent about the year 1776, that the inhabitants began to entertain alarming apprehensions concerning it. This decline may be attributed to the new adventurers and the war with France and Spain.
The merchants at Lowestoft, in the year 1776, had formed a scheme for sending boats to the coast of Scotland, to fish for the large fat herrings which frequent those seas in great quantities, with the design of bringing them to Lowestoft, to be dried and cured, in the manner practised with herrings caught on the Lowestoft coast. By this means an intercourse was opened between the Lowestoft and Scotch people. In consequence whereof, inquiries were made respecting our mode of curing herrings, and the advantages which we received from the fishery; premiums were offered to our fishermen to entice them to repair to Scotland, during the herring season, to instruct those people in the methods of catching and drying the herrings; and persons were also sent from Scotland to Lowestoft to take dimensions of our fish-houses, their manner of construction, etc., and as they had obtained every information necessary for their purpose, fish-houses were immediately erected in Scotland, the fishery was established there and prosecuted with vigour, and Lowestoft was threatened with the annihilation of its antient branch of commerce, which had been its support for many centuries. The adventurers at Liverpool and the Isle of Man having at the same time formed a design of introducing the art of drying and curing herrings at those places, the same as in Scotland, the like methods were practised by them as were made use of by the Scotch. But all these designs of the Scotch, however alarming they might appear at first, were of short duration; for the heat of the weather during the fishing season, and the fat and oily quality of their herrings, rendered the fish difficult to cure, and unpleasant to the taste; and consequently their schemes were frustrated. But at Liverpool, and particularly at the Isle of Man, the case was very different. In these places the fishery continues a considerable part of the year, the herrings are taken in prodigious quantities at a small expense, and are not of that oily quality as those are which frequent the coast of Dunbar and Caithness, and consequently are capable of being better cured than those which are caught on the eastern coast of Scotland.
Nevertheless it was generally allowed that the western herrings, though preferable to those caught on the coast of Scotland, in that they were more capable of being properly cured, were yet greatly inferior in quality to those either of Lowestoft or Yarmouth. But notwithstanding the superior quality of the Lowestoft herrings, considerable orders were given for the western fish; and in consequence of the low price they could be afforded at, found a more speedy sale than those from Lowestoft, not only at all the markets in England, but at those also of the different Italian ports in the Levant. The diminution of the price of herrings, especially when accompanied with an increase of their size, were recommendations which had so great an influence with the generality of purchasers of that commodity, that they more than balanced the far superior qualities of richness of colour and excellency of flavour, which have always so remarkably distinguished the Lowestoft herrings above those from any other place.