The Shipwreck Cannibals

by Adam Nightingale

  O’Connor had not yet arrived but had sent advanced word to Deane. O’Connor had arranged that ‘all letters for him might be taken in to’ Deane. There were three letters sent in advance of O’Connor that the Irishman had offered as a sign of good faith. Deane intended to copy the letters, retain the originals and send the duplicates to Townsend. But a little of Townsend’s reticence seemed to have rubbed off on Deane. Deane made preparations to intercept O’Connor the moment he arrived, ‘from the first minute in order to prevent him disposing of any letter without letting me have a sight of them’. He wrote to Townsend stating: ‘I shall keep both the man and original letters till I receive your Lordships’ further command.’

  The three letters were from Henry Stirling, Admiral Gordon and Captain Hay. The letters contained a reference to £20,000 and mentions of ‘a certain man’ who had been ‘very busy in the Rebellion of 1718’, who for the past seven years had been going backwards and forwards from Russia to England. Although the man was not named, Deane believed he knew him. He was a Jabobite of whom Deane had always harboured suspicions. Deane wrote to Townsend requesting that the man be arrested at Gravesend, detained and examined. As far as O’Connor’s credibility was concerned, the three letters were a promising down payment.

  Eventually O’Connor arrived in Amsterdam with more letters. O’Connor was ready to be put to work. But almost as soon as he had come to Amsterdam, a letter arrived from Dr Consett, Deane’s friend in St Petersburg. The letter had been written in a hurry and warned of a possible problem with O’Connor. A woman had approached the Jacobite General Peter Lacey and had denounced O’Connor as a traitor. The woman had an immoral reputation and Lacey refused to believe anything scandalous she had to say about his cousin. John Deane pressed O’Connor as to how this situation might have come about. O’Connor, who had previously ascribed his motives for betraying the Jacobite cause as being rooted in the love of a good woman, admitted that he had got drunk and had sex with the lady in question. In those post-coital moments, half asleep and half awake, he had said something incriminating. Deane was mortified and somewhat embarrassed. He wrote to Townsend justifying his choice of O’Connor, insisting that he had properly vetted him in relation to his sobriety and that ‘no man is more cautious of transacting affairs with men that are drunk than I am’.

  A drunken indiscretion nearly destroyed Edmund O’Connor’s career as a spy when he spoke in his sleep to a lady of dubious virtue. Illustration by Stephen Dennis

  John Deane detained O’Connor for eight days while he waited for instructions from Townsend as to what to do next. O’Connor tried to make himself useful and copied out Jacobite letters that Deane forwarded to Townsend. In that time, O’Connor talked extensively with Deane. He advertised his indispensability, dropping the names of members of the Jacobite high command, stating that he was ‘very well-known’ by Gordon in Bordeaux and Archdeacon in Rotterdam, Jacobites for whom he had letters. He offered to go and see Archdeacon to deliver his letters in person. He assured Deane that he could get more information out of Archdeacon that way. He then proposed to go to Bordeaux, Spain and then on to Ireland if Townsend would permit him, gathering information en route. He had even heard that the Jacobites had an extensive cache of weapons hidden in Ireland. He would return and relay everything he had learned to Townsend and Deane.

  John Deane was quite taken with the proposal. Deane was particularly interested in a name in one the letters in O’Connor’s dispatch addressed to Peter Lacey. The name was O’Donovon, an extremely well-connected Jacobite currently resident in the west of Ireland. O’Connor was friends with O’Donovon and perfectly willing to betray him.

  O’Connor was winning Deane’s confidence back after the inebriated sexual indiscretion in Russia. Deane was excited about the possible damage O’Connor might do to the Jacobites and was happy to promote O’Connor’s cavalier proposal if it meant hurting their cause. In his letter to Townsend, Deane championed O’Connor afresh, mentioning that the Irishman had expressed a desire to convert from Catholicism to Protestantism. For O’Connor’s part, if he was going back to Ireland, and if he was going to betray his countrymen and close friends risking his life in the process, he needed a royal pardon. If that was not possible, he required some form of official diplomatic documentation from Townsend that might deflect the possibility of retaliatory violence if he were to be caught.

  Townsend quickly put aside his initial misgivings about O’Connor. The Viscount was as taken with O’Connor’s bold proposition as Deane was and gave Deane permission to ‘dispatch him as soon as possible with his letters’. Townsend approved the pardon. He sent a courier to Deane with £100 for O’Connor. John Deane was to be keeper of the purse. Townsend gave Deane full authority to control the flow of money as he saw fit. Townsend was keen for O’Connor to get going as soon as possible. He suggested a contingency plan if O’Connor’s true purpose was discovered by their enemies before the Irishman left them. Deane was to give O’Connor a reward and his pardon, and then O’Connor was to go to ground for five or six months. Townsend emphasised to Deane the importance of thoroughly interviewing O’Connor on his return from Spain and Ireland, and milking every drop of information he could provide from the Jacobite heartlands.

  It was September. October was agreed as the best time for O’Connor to begin his journey. Townsend sent a further £100. The viscount tried to pre-empt anything that might go wrong with O’Connor’s mission. He recommended Mr Stanhope, the English ambassador in Madrid, as a trusted man to whom O’Connor could deliver his intelligence if it was too dangerous to return to Deane. Townsend was concerned about O’Connor carrying large amounts of money across Europe. Townsend suggested that Deane give half the allotted money to the Irishman. Then Townsend instructed Deane to take a playing card, cut it in half and give it to O’Connor. The other half of the card and the rest of the money was to be taken to Townsend who would forward card and money to Stanhope in Spain. When O’Connor arrived in Spain, whoever approached him with the other half of the card could be trusted and would give the Irishman the rest of his money. Townsend was keen to establish correspondence between Deane and Stanhope. Townsend’s attention turned to O’Connor in Ireland. The Viscount was particularly interested in the weapons O’Connor had referred to. Townsend wanted to know where they were. He wanted them seized and would remunerate O’Connor generously if he could discover their whereabouts. Townsend suggested a £500 reward. Come October, John Deane sent Edmund O’Connor on the first stage of his journey. He was to go to Rotterdam and see Archdeacon. Things progressed without suspicion on the part of the Jacobite. O’Connor delivered letters to Archdeacon and was given letters for O’Connor to take back to William Hay. O’Connor copied the letters and sent them to Deane in Amsterdam.

  Townsend received news from Spain that disturbed him. An ally had been taken in his bed by the Spanish authorities who had forced their way into his room and imprisoned him in a castle in Granada. In the light of this news, sending O’Connor to Spain now seemed disproportionately risky to the viscount. Townsend sent Deane alternate orders regarding the Irishman. He wanted Deane to instruct O’Connor to ‘skulk about in Holland or any other place’ and for the Irishman to ‘settle a correspondence with you that you may always know how to write to him’. O’Connor was effectively being put on ice until Townsend could figure out how best to use him without unnecessarily endangering his life. O’Connor had not yet received his pardon. The pardon had been approved. Townsend had the document with him and was anxious to pass it on to the Irishman. All he needed to know was how to correctly spell the Irishman’s Christian name.

  O’Connor had been busy in Rotterdam. There was a lot of confused activity. O’Connor tried his best to keep Deane informed. An unnamed man from France had arrived with a letter for ‘their man at Rotterdam’. O’Connor told Deane, who then instructed O’Connor to get the messenger drunk and get him talking. There was a letter from Gordon. There was an Irish clerk present whom O’Connor
knew. O’Connor obtained a handwriting sample of Archdeacon’s French clerk and a sample of Archdeacon’s seal. O’Connor discovered the route the correspondence between Archdeacon and his friends in Russia would take. The Irishman was doing very well but was conscious of outstaying his welcome and arousing Archdeacon’s suspicion. Nevertheless, Deane instructed him to stay where he was and further win Archdeacon’s confidence.

  O’Connor did as ordered. Deane’s instincts proved correct. Archdeacon seemed quite taken with O’Connor and asked the Irishman if he would accompany him to Spain. Deane was excited. He did not yet know that Townsend was losing confidence in the Spanish venture. Deane wrote to Townsend approving the arrangement the viscount had made with Stanhope. Deane had faith in O’Connor and the Spanish mission. In contrast with Townsend, Deane’s approach to the possibility of failure in Spain was to prepare O’Connor to succeed somewhere else. O’Connor was in correspondence with William Hay. Deane encouraged the Irishman to ‘flatter’ Hay ‘and desire he would mention his name to his brothers’. William Hay’s brothers lived in Italy. Deane was guiding O’Connor to pave the way to be of use in Italy if things in Spain did not go well.

  O’Connor observed more comings and goings in Rotterdam. There was another anonymous man who came to see Archdeacon. The stranger was from the north of England; tall, between 20 and 30 years old, level-headed and reticent.

  O’Connor had eight days before he was due to travel to Spain and there was much to accomplish before he departed. There was a clan of Jacobites who flocked around a lieutenant. The lieutenant was either Spanish or Italian and carried a heavily locked leather bag with him. The lieutenant and his cronies were notably excited about something O’Connor had not yet discovered. O’Connor had befriended the lieutenant and was to drink tea with him. Deane instructed O’Connor to go one step further and take the lieutenant round Rotterdam: ‘Show him some rarity, separate him from the clan and then “attack him with the bottle”.’ The last visceral instruction was John Deane’s exquisite euphemism for getting a victim hammered on alcohol and encouraging him to talk, a favourite technique of Deane’s for extracting sensitive information.

  Deane received the dispatch from Townsend effectively aborting the Spanish mission. O’Connor’s trip to Ireland also seemed to be in question. Deane was stunned. He sent a reply respectfully imploring Townsend to change his mind. Deane stressed the time. He believed that such an opportunity might not present itself to O’Connor again. He even offered to accompany O’Connor on the Ireland chapter of his journey if that would help. Deane gave the letter to O’Connor. He ordered O’Connor to deliver the letter to Townsend in person. Deane hoped that the Irishman’s presence, earnestness and enthusiasm would sway things. Deane sent O’Connor on his way him giving a new name to travel under: William Wilson.

  Deane seemed beset by worries. He had received word from St Petersburg that Dr Consett was suffering persecutions at the hands of the Jacobites. Deane’s promise to educate the son of the publican Trescod was weighing on him. Deane asked Townsend if he could help in any way in either situation. ‘It has never been my method to neglect my absent friends,’ he told Townsend. Deane had also been thinking about his own future. The business with O’Connor was exciting and important but in financial terms it was only an adjunct to his responsibilities in St Petersburg and would, one way or the other, soon be over, then once again John Deane would be unemployed. John Deane was worrying about ageing. He had already written to Townsend and diplomatically asked for work, or else a pension, ‘to move beyond the dreadful apprehension of want in old age’.

  Deane waited for O’Connor to return. He wrote two letters to Townsend. Deane was determined to get his way in the matter of O’Connor and Spain. Punctuating the letter with more of the obsequious praise he was wont to include in his correspondence with Townsend, Deane offered further suggestions as to how to make O’Connor’s mission a possibility. Once again he politely asked for further work once his part in the O’Connor business had run its course.

  O’Connor and Townsend met. Townsend liked the Irishman. He found O’Connor, ‘plain in what he says and does not pretend to more knowledge of things than he really has’. As Townsend talked to O’Connor he learned that while the Irishman certainly moved in exalted Jacobite circles he was never taken into the heart of Jacobite confidence, was never told the designs of the letters he was carrying or was ‘employed in the manner of any intrigues’. But O’Connor and Townsend’s conversation led to a misunderstanding that perplexed O’Connor somewhat. Townsend had either disregarded, or hadn’t received John Deane’s assessment that O’Connor wanted to convert from Catholicism to Protestantism. Townsend talked to the Irishman, ‘as supposing him a rigid papist’, prompting Deane to reassure Townsend that, ‘I find his aversion to superstition had been of some standing and have provided him with some books of divinity’.

  Despite seeing O’Connor for himself, Townsend was still opposed to sending him to Spain where the Irishman might be in danger, or else expose the breach in Jacobite intelligence. Townsend was not completely hostile to the idea of using O’Connor in Ireland. But the viscount would not hastily commit to an Irish adventure. ‘It may be managed as well a month or two hence as now,’ he would tell Deane. Townsend felt that once he had returned to England he would be in a better position to oversee a safer entry into Ireland for O’Connor.

  Townsend sent O’Connor back to Deane. Deane was to make sure O’Connor passed his time there without raising suspicion. Both men were to keep their eyes and ears open and gather intelligence. Deane was to create a system of communication with O’Connor in the event that O’Connor be sent anywhere on Jacobite business. They were to do this until Townsend left Hanover. Townsend had O’Connor’s pardon. He didn’t give it to O’Connor but sent it separately to John Deane to keep. Townsend’s logic was that ‘it would be wrong he should have such a paper on him, till it is time for him to make up of it’.

  Considering his exalted position in the British government and place on the European stage, and also considering how much he feared and hated the Jacobites, Townsend was surprisingly squeamish about the possibility of genuine harm coming to O’Connor in pursuit of a mission that could have seriously damaged Jacobite efforts. John Deane was far less concerned about sending Edmund O’Connor into the heart of the lion’s den. Deane was a soldier who had carried out and issued orders that had resulted in the loss of men’s lives. Townsend wasn’t. Deane had known hardship and seen death in many of its cruel manifestations. Lest it ever be forgot, he had eaten human flesh to stay alive. John Deane was clearly more comfortable with hard decisions of this nature. He was certainly more comfortable with sending O’Connor into situations that might result in his capture, torture or execution than Townsend appeared to be. But Deane also seemed to take O’Connor’s boldness at face value. He respected it. After all, it was O’Connor who had encouraged the Spanish venture in the first place. He wanted to do it, and if he was successful, the rewards for the Irishman would be astronomical. Deane clearly liked O’Connor. There was something oddly paternal in the way Deane schooled O’Connor in the ways of Georgian espionage. The two men copied and forged letters together and Deane told Townsend of how O’Connor would insist on ‘my transcribing some paragraph which I had read to him of your Lordship’s letter’. The ‘paragraph’ was presumably the viscount’s handwritten reassurances of O’Connor’s clemency; a comforting mantra for the Irishman. Like a father Deane tried to ‘instil frugality and caution’ into O’Connor. On the subject of money, Deane was not in complete agreement with Townsend’s doctrine of generosity towards the Irishman. Deane advised against giving O’Connor too much money, as the Irishman’s reputation among his friends and family was that of being perpetually broke. There was also a practical logic to withholding funds from O’Connor: ‘It will keep him more dependent and less exposed to temptation.’ O’Connor, for all his good intentions, had a hedonistic streak in him. But John Deane’s ultimate p
ronouncement on Edmund O’Connor was that he was ‘not without notions of honour, gratitude and generosity’. This was most evident in an oft repeated refrain O’Connor would offer up to Deane: ‘Tell me what you will undertake and I will do it.’

  Deane wanted O’Connor to be active. He felt that keeping him hidden was counterproductive. Deane wanted to send O’Connor among the Jacobites in Bruges or Bordeaux where he might re-establish his credibility and gather intelligence that could illuminate what was being planned in Spain and Ireland. But O’Connor and Deane’s time together was almost at an end. The rest of October was a flurry of activity that promised a great deal but ultimately didn’t really amount to very much. Deane travelled to The Hague to see Townsend. Golovkin was spotted in a nearby town before sailing to Germany. Suspicious people came and went in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, all observed and reported by Deane and O’Connor. Deane got an associate of Archdeacon’s drunk and wheedled information out of him about Jacobite movements to Spain, still something of an obsession with Deane. All the time John Deane itched to take O’Connor off his leash and let him accompany some such group of promising Jacobites or another to some incriminating destination. But Deane was under perpetual constraint by Townsend; forbidden from using O’Connor as he thought best. Yet Deane’s relationship with Townsend and respect for his judgement was good and the confidence was reciprocated. Although the O’Connor adventure had, chiefly because of Townsend’s caution, yielded less than it had promised, the viscount was pleased enough with Deane to allay a deep-rooted fear in the English captain, that of unemployment and destitution. At last, Townsend offered Deane the prospect of future service. The good news elicited from Deane a paragraph of particularly obsequious thanks in a letter to his patron.