The Shipwreck Cannibals

by Adam Nightingale

  The relations between Deane’s allies became strained, manifest in a rift between Robert Daniels and the Marquis De Campo. Tension was endemic. ‘Jealousy and suspicion abound here,’ Deane reported. He complained that, ‘I am frequently cursed by drunken sailors’, and that, ‘some of better fashion whisper as I pass by’. Deane was convinced that there were elements in Ostend that were trying to glean information about him through his servant. His public response to all of this was to look unconcerned and avoid ‘all disputes or giving offence’. Privately, Deane wilted. He seemed particularly upset that his vast naval experience had failed to win him any respect or confederacy among fellow seafarers.

  In December rumours spread around Ostend that the English king was dead. John Deane had to write home to confirm that this was not the case in order that he might scotch the incendiary gossip. A ship that Deane was convinced was a smuggling vessel left Ostend. The boat was supposed to be transporting tallow but it took two men to row a single cask aboard, effort not commensurate with the cargo. The cargo was loaded between midday and one o’clock in the afternoon, the time when virtually everybody in Ostend was sitting down to dinner. Deane believed that the illicit cargo was money. He passed the information on to his superiors.

  Deane’s own relations with the Marquis De Campo showed signs of wear and tear. Deane complained of De Campo’s neglect regarding certain matters of harbour management. Deane had tried to instruct De Campo as to the correct manner in which he should be going about his duties. He had received De Campo’s assurance that he would put Deane’s instructions into practice. Nothing was done. Deane felt frustrated.

  A degree of mutual suspicion had infected the relationship between John Deane and the Marquis De Campo. It needed to be dealt with. De Campo liked English food. Deane arranged a dinner for De Campo. By necessity, also present at the dinner was the despised burgermaster and his wife. The dinner was a partial success, easing the tensions between Deane and De Campo but at the expense of a portion of John Deane’s pride. Deane was forced to humble himself, bite his tongue and weather a degree of gentle derision from his dinner companions. Deane’s religion was the subject up for ridicule. Deane complained that he was ‘teased’ regarding the state of his soul. He tried to change the subject. He swallowed their mockery for diplomacy’s sake but took solace in the private contempt he felt for their primitive grasp of theology.

  As 1728 ended and the New Year commenced, Deane’s financial position had not changed. He complained once again to his superiors about fiscal circumstances he described as ‘miserable’. He asked for money or credit. Deane’s concerns had become increasingly dominated by finance and his correspondence with Lord Townsend took on an unprecedented, increasingly bold and indignant tone. He invoked his years of service to Townsend in a virtual demand for redress: ‘and that I, after being seven years under your Lordship’s patronage, and desiring only bread, should be neglected is really very grievous, being confident that on every occasion I have, even at the hazard of my own life, obeyed your Lordship’s commands’. Deane concluded his letter to Townsend with an apology for the nature of his request for money. But the flavour of the apology was tokenistic, Deane’s sense of betrayal temporarily outweighing any sense of deference to his patron.

  The beginning of 1729 was a period of stasis brought on by hostile weather conditions. The winter weather was fierce. Trade had virtually ground to a halt. Hardly any English ships had bought or sold anything. The only news that John Deane felt fit to report concerned a tobacco ship that had come to grief when it had run aground.

  In February the winter was still holding commerce to ransom but by March John Deane was embroiled in a fresh controversy. A Dutch court had banned imports of grain. On a personal level the news did not particularly concern Deane as grain was not an enormous English export. But Deane was obliged to play his part martialling a legal response to Holland’s aggressiveness. The actions of the Dutch courts unified a normally fractious community. English merchants and Dutch merchants affected adversely by the court order were bonded in opposition to it. John Deane was all of a sudden useful to the community he had been at perpetual loggerheads with. He tried as best he could to collate everyone’s grievances in a single petition, confident that the courts would overturn the Dutch embargo.

  By March, tensions had not abated. Three English ships had been seized. The ships were released but their cargo of corn was retained by the Dutch. On top of this, John Deane had to field the new influx of tittle-tattle doing the rounds in Ostend. According to the rumour mill this time, British-ruled Jamaica had fallen to the Spanish.

  As John Deane reached the end of his first year in Ostend his principle concern was neither the state of Jamaica or English grain exports. It was, as it had been from the beginning of his tenure, money. Deane had performed his duties faithfully, and for the most part successfully. But he was virtually penniless. Deane had been forced to let a valued servant go who had been in his employ for a decade. The loss of the servant further reduced his social status, engendering diminished respect among his enemies and his peers. He wrote yet another impassioned plea to Townsend asking for money. The tone was less accusatory than his last correspondence on the subject had been. It was heartfelt but there was a thinly veiled ultimatum, albeit one born of genuine desperation:

  So if your Lordship don’t please in some way to consider and assist me, I must of necessity soon follow, for I freely own I cannot be content to spend the rest of my days here in indolence which appears to me like dying by inches, and leave either myself or my family exposed to beggary in old age.

  19

  The Duke of Lorraine

  John Deane served in Ostend for ten years. Less than halfway through his tenure things had changed for the better and for the worse. By 1731 Deane had won his battle for wages. On top of the consulage he was allowed to collect, Deane was paid £200 per year plus expenses. Deane had brought a considerable degree of reform to Ostend. The consequence of reform was unpopularity and enemies. When harried and besieged, John Deane could always rely on the support of Lord Townsend; even when they disagreed. Even when John Deane overstepped the mark in terms of propriety, the bond was always a strong one and difficult to sunder. But Townsend had fallen.

  Walpole and Townsend’s relationship had been gradually disintegrating. Townsend’s wife had died. The end of the blood bond that united the two statesmen placed something of a distance between them. The second catalyst for the rift was Townsend’s deep-seated belief in an alliance with France as the key to Britain’s stability. The alliance had been established by the Treaty of Hanover at the conclusion of the War of Spanish Succession. From Walpole’s point of view the treaty was a temporary pragmatic necessity, not something to be clung to in perpetuity. Townsend believed in the treaty as if it were holy writ. From Walpole’s perspective Townsend’s attitude lacked forward thinking and was somewhat fossilised. For Walpole, political flexibility was the key to the nation’s survival and prosperity. If Townsend were to remain entrenched with regard to the Treaty of Hanover then he was of no more use to Walpole.

  The prime minister would not move directly against Townsend but he would not support him as he had done in the past. Townsend’s constant banging of the drum for the Treaty of Hanover was gradually alienating the majority of his political contemporaries. All Walpole had to do was withdraw his patronage and protection, and wait for Townsend to step down when it became obvious to the secretary of state just how isolated he had become. Townsend’s political career ended when he lost the confidence of the king. The catalyst was a public argument between Townsend and the duke of Newcastle. When the king sided with Newcastle, Townsend resigned and retired to Norfolk. Townsend was replaced as secretary of state for the north by William Stanhope, the 1st Earl of Harrington.

  Lord Harrington had inherited John Deane, he hadn’t recruited him. From Harrington’s perspective the relationship between the two men would be more formal, distant and professional. Ha
rrington would be subject to the sort of demands for redress that Deane had routinely laid at the feet of Townsend. Deane’s future complaints would be listened to and weighed fairly but Deane would not be indulged in the same way he had been by Townsend. And John Deane would learn to his cost that there was a point beyond which even he could not push.

  Deane’s last great fall from grace took place in the autumn of 1738. He would be permitted one final triumph before his life of adventure ended for good.

  By the summer of 1731 John Deane had settled into the role of a spectacularly unpopular man representing the interests of a resented nation. Deane had just returned from France and had almost immediately run into conflict with the packet boat, the ship that transported and delivered mail between Ostend and England. Deane had sent a man to the packet boat with a letter for a Mr Casey, the mate onboard. Casey was instructed by Deane, ‘for the good of His Majesty’s service not to proceed to sea with the mail you may expect this day, but wait till you hear further from me’. Deane punctuated his order with a threat: ‘Your compliance here is expected as you will answer the contrary at your peril.’ The letter went on to order Casey not to talk to his compatriots about why he had delayed the packet boat. Deane’s reason for ordering the packet boat to be delayed was that he was waiting for intelligence from another boat and, if the intelligence necessitated a response, he wanted to send a letter to Lord Harrington as quickly as possible. Casey’s response was to ignore Deane’s orders and set sail at the proper time. Deane summoned Casey to give account for his disobedience. Casey ignored Deane’s summons.

  Both Deane and Casey represented the interests of Great Britain but each man clearly hated the other. The rest of Ostend seemed united in their mutual fear and suspicion of the English. Feelings towards the English were hostile at the best of times but the presence of an ‘English frigate and Brigantee’ at Dunkirk inflamed existing hostility. Despite the presence of the English navy at Dunkirk, Deane reported that the British in Ostend were, ‘much resented by all degrees of men here, as if the affront (as they call it) had been done to this place’. Deane perceived that ill feeling toward the British was such that Ostend would ‘gladly come under’ French rule. But concerns about internal divisions and international tensions were of secondary importance during summer 1731. One event eclipsed everything else. Francis Stephen, the Duke of Lorraine, and his wife were coming to Ostend. The Flemish port was in a mad state of preparation for the visit.

  The Duke of Lorraine was visiting a number of ports in the Netherlands. The nature of the visit, at the duke’s insistence, was incognito. There were to be no ‘public honours’ but nobody took the Duke of Lorraine’s order seriously. Each port was keen to impress the duke and hopefully win his support and patronage. Each port sought to outdo the other in ‘magnificent entertainments’.

  While Ostend prepared for the advent of the Duke of Lorraine, John Deane was obliged to justify his actions in trying to delay the packet boat. Deane’s decision had not been met with the universal approval of his superiors. Deane invoked his three decades’ experience of giving and taking orders. In doing so he was asserting his right to make the kind of independent judgment he had just made if it was in the national interest. The fact that the packet boat’s mate had defied him caused Deane to write a particularly strident assertion of his own moral superiority and right to be obeyed absolutely: ‘[…] and as to the mates, I have in my time commanded hundreds, not to say thousands such as they are, and shall for this day never put myself on a par with them’. Deane wrote on, invoking his faithful and often poorly rewarded service to two successive monarchs. He invoked his relationship with Townsend and the freedom the former secretary of state had afforded Deane in allowing him to give orders with the expectation of having them obeyed. Deane accused the packet boat trade of fraud on account of sending out more packet boats than was necessary. Deane quoted an official who had granted him permission to stop packet boats if necessity demanded it. He even cited a precedent where a packet boat had been stopped before. Deane waited for Harrington’s ruling as to whether he had acted within or beyond his authority.

  The Duke of Lorraine arrived in Ostend in August 1731. The British staged a mock naval battle in the harbour to amuse the duke. The duke was suitably entertained. The British took their turn wining and dining the duke. John Deane was present at the dinner and for a single evening was relieved of his pariah status.

  The Duke of Lorraine knew who John Deane was. He sought Deane out and spoke with him for an hour. The duke knew about Deane’s service in Peter the Great’s navy. He knew about Boon Island. He asked Deane numerous questions and when he had finished his gentle interrogation the duke asked Deane if he might have a one of his Boon Island pamphlets. John Deane had had his Narrative of the Nottingham Galley reprinted in 1730 and presented the duke with a copy the following morning.

  The duke was clearly taken with John Deane. He dovetailed in and out of Deane’s company for the remainder of his stay in Ostend. Deane for his part was like a pig in mud. When writing up his account of his encounter with the Duke of Lorraine he tried to maintain a veneer of professionalism. Deane spoke of his being ‘determined to be in the way and make what observations that I could’, but could not help luxuriating in the status bestowed upon him by the duke and the annoyance it caused his enemies. He wrote, ‘You’ll be pleased to observe that all in the India scheme are extremely jealous of me …’. Deane’s foreign enemies demonstrated their envy by neglecting to invite Deane ‘either onboard the ships or to the townhouse’. It hardly mattered. Deane was able to spend more time with the Duke of Lorraine when the duke was entertained at Governor De Campo’s residence.

  As the duke of Lorraine prepared to leave the port, presents were exchanged. The duke received silk from the Company at Ostend. The duke distributed gifts, singling out those who had fought in the mock battle for particularly generous treatment. John Deane was pleased. He believed that his encounter with the duke meant that ‘some use would be made (or at least attempt to be made) of his Highness in favour of this company’.

  The entire encounter was replete with irony. In those few days Deane had proved more of a diplomat than any other Englishman present. What had facilitated his briefly exalted status was his legacy of cannibalism, survival and fighting for profit for a foreign king.

  20

  Irish Confederates

  and English Smugglers

  1738 was John Deane’s final year of employment. Once again he had reprinted the Boon Island narrative. It would be the last time in his life that he would republish his most favoured account of his best-known adventure. But there were no more aristocrats who would take an interest in a despised consul’s antiquated feats of survival. By the year’s end, John Deane would be finished. He would set fire to his last bridge, arresting any chance of further advancement. He would condemn himself to a long retirement in England. Deane had survived everything Boon Island and the Russian winter could throw at him. He had survived the mercurial whims of a treacherous tsar. The Swedes could not kill him at sea and the Russians and their Jacobite allies in the East had singularly failed to crush him on land. In the end, what finally did for Captain John Deane was a running dispute with the postmaster in Ostend.

  Deane had, ‘for eight years and odd months […] lived in a friendly manner’ with the postmaster. For two of those years John Deane lived directly opposite the postmaster’s house. During that time, the postmaster had observed that many people came and went from Deane’s residence on what appeared to be secret and possibly remunerative business. The postmaster offered his services to Deane. Deane promised nothing but encouraged the postmaster that he ‘may on some future occasion’ be of service to him. The day never came. In time, John Deane befriended and occasionally confided in the postmaster’s brother. The postmaster felt slighted and from that point on began to regard John Deane as more of an enemy than a friend.

  The first disquieting clue as to the postmaster’s n
ewborn hostility was a change in the hours that he did business. The postmaster altered the times he made up the mail for England. He ensured that English mail was sorted at the same time as the Irish mail, a practice John Deane felt deeply uncomfortable with.

  In a very short space of time, Deane’s relationship with the postmaster would take on the hue of a virtual blood feud. Deane referred to the postmaster in a letter as, ‘malicious’ and ‘babbling’. Deane was convinced that there was a serious risk of the postmaster interfering with his mail. Deane also believed that there was a conspiracy among the postal service to keep him in the dark as to when the packet boat was about to sail. As a consequence, John Deane sent his letters to Lord Harrington via Calais. When the packet boat arrived, rather than wait for his post to be delivered to him via the postmaster, John Deane would collect his mail directly from the boat. When writing about his strategy for dealing with the postal service, John Deane circumvented the English minister to Brussels, Robert Daniels, in his dispatches, leaving him out of the loop and communicating exclusively with Harrington on the subject.

  Deane continued to act as a spy. January 1737 saw ‘more than an ordinary’ amount of ‘English ecclesiastics at this town’. Leading them was John Gould, ‘an Irish papist.’ Deane acquired a handwriting sample from Gould and the names of contacts in London Deane thought Gould was secretly corresponding with.

  John Deane believed that the postmaster had delayed his mail on purpose. In early February Deane had sent a letter to a London agent containing a bill for £8 14s. He was disturbed to discover that the letter and the bill ‘came not to hand till 24 February’. Deane believed that the postmaster had delayed the mail on purpose. It was the latest snipe in the war of attrition the postmaster appeared to have declared on John Deane.