The Shipwreck Cannibals

by Adam Nightingale

  In March, Lord Harrington told Deane that the king had given him permission to investigate Gould and the ecclesiastics.

  The postmaster complained about Deane. He took issue with Deane’s ‘power to dispatch extraordinary packets’, and his practice of receiving his letters ‘directly from the vessels on arrival’ – a practice that the postmaster found ‘new and unprecedented’. In turn, Deane elevated the postmaster to an exalted place alongside Christopher Langman and Thomas Saunders as one of the most hated enemies and chief persecutors of his entire existence. Deane’s verdict on his neighbour was that he had, ‘born more ill treatment from this man, within these five months past than ever I bore from any private man in my life’.

  Harrington and the king backed the postmaster. John Deane was ordered to send his mail through the proper channels and stop the ‘dispatching of extraordinary packet boats’. Harrington ordered Deane to let the ‘post master at Ostend have timely notice of your intentions’. Deane felt betrayed. He agreed to Harrington’s first point but virtually refused to obey the second. He insisted that, ‘I must, for very good reason, desire to be excused putting any letters of importance into this post office’. He launched into a rant in ink that dripped with self pity and hovered on the edge of instability. ‘This evil strikes at my reputation,’ Deane wrote. Deane’s enemies were not just his enemies but ‘the enemies of our country and religion, raging and laying schemes for my destruction’. He ended the letter by offering to fall on his sword if he had proved to be an unfaithful servant. And should Harrington accept his resignation there was, in Deane, the sweet prospect of release from his present sufferings: ‘And as I, by this malicious representation must be rendered odious to my sovereign in whose cause I have long been a great sufferer, and am still daily […] I shall be happy to be relieved from Irish confederates and English smugglers.’

  Harrington ignored Deane’s offer to resign. There was very little censure or anger in Harrington’s reply. He gently reiterated his instructions to Deane to obey him in matters regarding the postal service.

  In March, John Deane was advised to act in defence of the English postal service when a packet boat was boarded by soldiers serving the Austrian emperor. The incursion was carried out on the pretext of looking for arms. The port master went straight to the Governor of Ostend and complained. The Marquis De Campo was no longer governor. Deane had little confidence in his replacement, dismissing him as a near imbecile. ‘Nothing can be said to the present governor that one would not say to a child,’ Deane wrote. The governor laughed at the port master. Deane was personally incensed at the search. It was a direct challenge to his own authority as only he was authorised to board British packet boats and search them. Harrington agreed and supported Deane in his complaint.

  In April, the governor fell ill and looked as if he might die. John Deane was apprehensive. He feared that the space left by the idiot governor would be occupied by a shrewd and ruthless Irishman joined at the hip to the hated local magistrates.

  There were further abuses of English vessels. John Deane was an eyewitness to an incident in which a customs house officer tried to seize an English captain’s expensive hat. The captain slashed his hat with a knife rather than let the customs officer take it. Deane reported the incident to Harrington.

  Deane would always act in favour of the English postal service when interfered with by a foreign power. But he still hated and mistrusted them and would seldom pass up an opportunity to belittle them to Harrington. Robert Daniels gave Deane a letter for safe keeping, prompting Deane to comment to Harrington on the irony of being entrusted with a letter when he was obstructed from ‘corresponding with safety’. Deane made reference to seamen actually being searched for letters he might have passed on to them. Deane corresponded with Harrington via the wife of a shipmaster in Dover, completely circumventing the Ostend postal service in direct defiance of Harrington’s wishes. Deane even admitted it to Harrington, his rationale being, ‘were it not for this it would be impossible to send it’. If Harrington was displeased then so be it. ‘Let the consequences be what it would,’ Deane wrote.

  The Irishman that John Deane feared would take the post of governor was Commandant Call O’Connor. The actual governor was still alive but by August, Call O’Connor was acting as the de facto governor in his stead. Deane disliked O’Connor for all the obvious reasons. He was a Catholic. He was a Jacobite. He was a drunk. But Deane particularly disliked O’Connor for an unnecessarily brutal streak he possessed. A point of dispute between the two men exposed a softer side to John Deane than the one that was normally on display during his time in Ostend. Deane had interceded in the case of two young men who had been arrested and sentenced to death. Deane did not believe that what they had done merited the gallows. He talked to O’Connor and was left with the impression that he had convinced the commandant to spare their lives. O’Connor hanged them both.

  Later that month, John Deane tried to send mail on the packet boat at the last minute, just before the packet boat sailed. The master of the boat refused to accept Deane’s mail, even when shown written orders. Deane gave the mail to an associate named Mr Hall for a second attempt to get the letters aboard with instructions to proceed to Calais if refused. Mr Hall was allowed to conduct his business with the postal service.

  In May, John Deane suffered further mail delays and excessive postage charges, the blame of which he laid at the feet of the postmaster.

  In September, Britain was held up to public ridicule in the streets of Ostend. The king had fallen out with the prince of Wales and had banished the prince and his family from St James’s Palace. The nature of the fallout was salacious ammunition to the enemies of the crown in Ostend. A manuscript arrived from England containing all the details of the humiliating rift in the royal family. Deane reported that the manuscript was read out ‘publically upon the market places between the hours of eleven and twelve o’clock […] to an audience of Irish and other enemies of our nation and government’. The crowd reacted with ‘the greatest satisfaction’. The man who took it upon himself to read the document aloud was the postmaster of Ostend.

  In April 1738 the liberties taken with British packet boats by foreign soldiers reached crisis point in an episode that threatened to become an international incident.

  According to the British, one afternoon in Ostend, between three and four o’clock, the English packet boat was boarded by a stranger. The crew of the packet boat did not know the man. He was Irish. The crew took him to be a sailor. The packet boat was approached by French soldiers. The soldiers boarded the vessel brandishing ‘muskets, bayonets and swords’, and took hold of the stranger. At some point John Deane was sent for. An officer of the packet boat ordered His Majesty’s colours to be hoisted. As the stranger was being dragged away, an attempt was made to interfere with the arrest by John Howell, a member of the crew. He was thrust away with the butts of the French soldiers’ muskets. In the middle of the confusion Deane had arrived and confronted De Graff, the soldier in command, on the waterfront.

  ‘You are overstretching your powers greatly,’ Deane said.

  De Graff said nothing in response. Instead, according to Deane, De Graff made ‘a flourish of his sword’.

  The exchange played itself out in front of an audience of 1,000 spectators attracted by the chaotic spectacle. Howell and the man pursued onto the boat were locked up in the local gaol. The fugitive was cleared and released by the magistrates. Howell remained incarcerated.

  The raid was interpreted as, ‘violence offered to the king’s colours’. It was a public slight to Britain. Lord Harrington wrote to Deane and Daniels. He assured Deane that he would do his best to seek proper redress. But the situation was complicated. Britain’s moral high ground was subverted by the fact that it had technically sheltered Irish fugitives. There were potential criticisms levelled at John Deane from Harrington, principally that he should have ordered the crew of the packet boat to give up the fugitive. Deane defended h
imself by pointing to his normally appalling relationship with the postal service: ‘They esteem me their enemy till in distress and they find no other friend.’ Deane complained of the unclear nature of what his responsibilities were supposed to be. Was it his priority to protect British subjects or hand over deserters to the authorities? There was a lack of clarity in his official orders. There were contradictory orders circulating around the ports as to what British officials were to do with deserters, particularly deserters who had once been British subjects. There were written orders in Dover that stated that it was illegal for British dignitaries to give sanctuary to ‘persons obnoxious to the government,’ especially ‘Irish deserters’. There were other slightly contradictory orders defining those denied sanctuary as ‘deserters and other obnoxious persons’. There was vagueness to the definition that bothered Deane and made it difficult to know how to properly execute his duties. The normally draconian Deane displayed a liberal pragmatism when it came to certain deserters who had originally hailed from Great Britain. Deane felt that, rather than handing them back to the ruling authorities, they ought to be encouraged to return to Britain and enlist in its armed forces. The deserters were often well-drilled, capable soldiers who might otherwise be forced to fight for a foreign power and potential enemy of Britain. The most likely destination for fugitives would have been the Irish regiment in France. ‘A good use may be made of these hard disciplined men at home,’ Deane argued to Harrington. From Deane’s perspective, to funnel so many soldiers back into a regiment so hostile to Protestant and Hanoverian interests was to sow into a whirlwind that Britain would surely one day reap.

  Commandant O’Connor’s version of the packet boat incident was predictably different from John Deane’s. Banks, an Irish Lieutenant serving in the French army, entered Ostend on the hunt for deserters. He sought an audience with O’Connor. Lieutenant Banks questioned O’Connor about a certain deserter he believed was hiding in Ostend. When the two men had finished talking the lieutenant sent for De Graff. Banks requested that De Graff get five more soldiers so that they might accompany him to apprehend the deserter. The seven armed men marched to the English packet boat where Banks believed the deserter was hiding. De Graff asked John Howell to hand the man over. Howell refused. De Graff saw a boat approaching the packet vessel. He believed that the design of the boat was to ferry the deserter away. De Graff boarded the boat and arrested the deserter and then arrested Howell for obstructing him. Howell was imprisoned by the magistrates. The deserter was kept in gaol overnight and discharged the following morning.

  O’Connor regarded Deane with a mixture of indifference and disdain. When he wrote up his own account of the packet boat incident he included a dismissive assessment of John Deane. He seemed to hold Deane in particular contempt for not talking to him face to face in the melee of recrimination and counter recrimination: ‘This consul Deane has not vouchsafed to make the least complaint to me, as everybody does, but himself: I would not have failed doing everybody justice, whence I concluded his complaints frivolous.’

  In June 1738 John Deane had met with a Captain Laye, who had been approved by Harrington as a deputy to Deane. His responsibilities were to act in Deane’s stead when he was away from Ostend. Deane was not impressed with the captain and recommended the brother of the king’s commissioner at Dunkirk, Daniel Day, as an alternative. Harrington approved the recommendation. Both Harrington and Deane were unaware of it, but between them they had selected Deane’s future successor.

  Lieutenant Banks was back in Ostend. Deane observed his movements. Banks met with two Ostend magistrates and Mr Ray the burgermaster at the townhouse. Together they searched through the records. A friend of Deane’s asked Lieutenant Banks what he was looking for. Banks said that he was on official business to investigate the packet boat incident and find ‘authentic certificates’ that got to the bottom of what had actually happened because Banks feared ‘England sought to make an affair of state of what had passed’.

  Deane believed none of this. His own theory was that Banks was present ‘in some Hibernian scheme for covering the commandant’s conduct’. Deane also believed that O’Connor intended to sacrifice De Graff to censure and disgrace, in order to protect his own position. O’Connor and Banks were working closely together. Deane reported that on entering Ostend, ‘all passengers that speak English, Scotch or Irish’ were taken to O’Connor. Any suspect passengers among those brought to O’Connor were sent on to see Lieutenant Banks. John Deane requested that Banks be interviewed. The matter would not be resolved while Deane was still governor.

  21

  Abused by this Madman

  On 4 September 1738 John Deane wrote: ‘It is with great reluctance that I set about the following representation. But to be silent might I think be mostly esteemed a crime both with regard to His Majesty and the public service.’

  Deane had sat down in hot blood to relay the details of a confrontation that had taken place earlier that morning.

  At six o’clock the post from England had arrived in Ostend. The mail was transferred to the post office. Deane sent a man for his letters. The man returned empty-handed. The man had been told that the post office was closed. It wasn’t certain when it would be open again.

  At seven o’clock John Deane sent his servant to the postmaster’s house wanting to know where his letters were. The postmaster replied that he would deliver John Deane’s letters when he pleased.

  Deane wanted his letters immediately so that he might quickly respond to any pending government business and send his replies back to England as soon as possible. The packet boat was due to leave Ostend between nine and ten o’clock in the morning. Deane wanted any replies that needed to be written to be on that boat.

  Deane went to the see the postmaster in person. He asked why he was behaving in such a manner. The postmaster exploded at Deane. He demanded to know who had told Deane of the mail’s arrival. The two men exchanged words. Deane sent ‘a notary public’ to ‘protest’ against the postmaster. The postmaster verbally abused Deane and then accused him of having perpetuated fraud by circumventing the Ostend postal service ‘by sending a packet to be sent into the post office at Bruges for Vienna’.

  The two men parted company.

  Deane went home and wrote his letter to Harrington.

  Concurrent to his dispute with John Deane, the postmaster had offended Ostend’s magistrates. Almost immediately after his altercation with Deane, the postmaster had either been summoned before the magistrates, or else had encountered them. Either way he received a humiliating dressing down over, ‘some unjustifiable practices on a letter of theirs’. The postmaster left the magistrates in state of near frenzy. He walked the streets of Ostend. His blood was up.

  John Deane finished writing his letter at half past eleven. He would post it later. He left his house and went for a walk. He encountered a customs official. The two men talked. The postmaster was nearby. He saw Deane and the customs official and walked towards them. He saluted the customs official in French. He spoke to John Deane in English and cursed him. The postmaster walked away from Deane. He stopped. He walked back toward Deane, turned around and then walked away swearing. John Deane said nothing to the postmaster but put his fingers to his mouth. The postmaster placed his hand on his sword. The two men parted company.

  Deane returned home and wrote a postscript to his letter describing the bizarre second encounter with the postmaster. Deane had had enough. He wanted Harrington to intervene conclusively in the matter of the unstable and obstructive postmaster. He wanted the postmaster’s head on a platter. Deane sent the letter via Calais. Once again he made the decision to exclude Robert Daniels from the correspondence. Deane waited for Harrington’s response.

  After the exchange, Deane felt optimistic. The speed of the delivery of the mail had increased. John Deane credited his protest with the change in the mail service. Deane wrote to Harrington supplying him with further details of the postmaster’s lunacies. He listed
three reputable people, including his own wife, who had been ‘abused by this madman’. Deane asked Harrington for an ‘order’ for the ‘consul of Brussels, directing the magistrates of this town to examine under oath’ witnesses present, mainly shop workers, who had observed the confrontation. Deane relayed to Harrington the gradual stages of his deteriorating relationship with the postmaster. He cited three people of good reputation who circumvented the postmaster to send mail, although Deane admitted that he was not certain whether any of them would ‘stand to it when called’.

  Harrington conducted his own investigation. He wrote to a certain dignitary for his opinion. The dignitary informed Harrington that the problem with the postmaster was that he did not come under British jurisdiction. The dignitary informed Harrington that the best person to sort the dispute out was His Majesty’s minister at Brussels. But the dignitary was not convinced that taking the matter any further would serve any decent purpose. The dignitary offered Harrington his own assessment of Deane: ‘I can have no opinion of the man,’ he said, yet warned Harrington that John Deane ‘may possibly give your Lordship trouble inconsiderably’.

  Harrington brought the matter before the king. Harrington asked the king his opinion as to whether a formal complaint against the postmaster at Ostend should be made. The king was opposed. The king did not want his government to take action in something that appeared to him to be a personal matter. The king dismissed the complaint as ‘to be of very little consequence’.

  Deane received the disappointing news but felt inclined to push a little further. He got a letter from Whitehall. The letter stated that Harrington, ‘was not disposed to trouble the king again’. It warned Deane that he would ‘do well to drop the matter entirely’. It was a redundant warning. John Deane had overstepped the bounds of his authority one too many times. With the casual dismissal of a monarch, John Deane’s career was over. He was recalled to England. He returned to his native country for the final time in October 1738.