John Deane was replaced as commercial consul for the ports of Flanders and Ostend by Daniel Day, the man he had personally recommended to Harrington as his deputy.
Deane’s last letter to Harrington was brief, formal and humble in tone:
I promise, God willing, to embark with my family for England this evening and from the first convenient place of landing shall make the best of my way to Wilford near Nottingham where your Lordship’s commands will always find me.
22
1746
T he irony of John Deane’s dismissal was that it had left him financially secure for perhaps the first time in his life. Deane’s service was rewarded with a generous government pension. By the time of his retirement, John Deane was wealthy enough to buy land, build property and collect rent. Financial security was arguably all John Deane had ever really wanted. He had never sought to be famous. His adventures had always been a means to an end. Whenever John Deane had been dragged into the limelight it was usually by tragic default. It took him an age to learn the value of self-publicity and when John Deane had revealed in print the intimate details of his extraordinary life after Boon Island, it had been mostly in state documents never intended for public consumption. John Deane was an extraordinary writer but a reluctant one it seemed. In his government dispatches he never gave any personal details beyond those pertaining to the task in hand. No family correspondence of John Deane’s appears to have survived. No contemporary likeness of him exists. The rest is semi-darkness, a prosaic pastoral existence interrupted by the odd moment of extreme drama.
Four elements had propelled Deane through a lifetime of adventure: the need to make money, a genuine sense of duty, an authentic (if somewhat Old Testament-inflected) Protestantism and a finely tuned instinct for conspiracy. The latter element dovetailed with a paranoid streak that had ultimately neutered John Deane’s usefulness as a government employee. In his time, Deane had seen plots and conspiracies both where they had existed and where they had not. His enemies of choice had always been the Jacobites. His public and private nightmare was a Jacobite invasion of his beloved homeland. He had successfully exposed Jacobites but had also been written off as a demented Cassandra. He had investigated indistinct and phantom Jacobite plots at the behest of a paymaster more obsessed than even he appeared to be. So there must have been a perverted sense of vindication when, in 1745, all of Deane’s fears took substance in the form of a Jacobite army travelling unopposed through England and marching towards Nottingham.
In 1743 Charles Edward Stuart, the son of James III, arrived in Scotland with foreign backing. The French had provided two warships to take the Stuart prince to Scotland. The ships were badly mauled by storms, compromising what help the French had offered. But Charles Stuart was physically present on British soil and soon became a flesh and blood rallying point for the Jacobite Highland clans. Over the course of the following year, Charles Stuart began to build an army and won a victory over Hanoverian forces at the battle of Prestonpans.
In England, as an army was being assembled to take the fight to Scotland, Nottingham played its part in providing soldiers for the oncoming conflict. The Duke of Kingston had raised 200 mounted troops, many of whom were recruited from Nottingham. The soldiers were paid for by the town’s aristocracy and its wealthy citizens. Kingston and the Duke of Newcastle gave £1,000 each. Lords Middleton, Byron, Howe and Cavendish gave £200 each. Other wealthy gentlemen from the locality donated £200. John Deane was among the contributors. The recruits were physically short men as a dragoon could not be taller than five feet eight. Many were butchers’ apprentices. The recruits would become Kingston’s 10th Light Horse.
On 12 October 1745 Nottingham’s market place filled up with soldiers. The regiment constituted 500 Dutch soldiers and 200 English. On 13 October the regiment advanced towards Scotland.
In November 1745 Charles Stuart felt empowered and emboldened enough to march on London. He led 5,000 men across the Scottish border and into England. The soldiers making their way north and their enemies marching south seemed to miss one another. The Jacobites marched through Carlisle and Manchester on their way to take London and oust George II from the throne of England. By December, Charles Stuart and his Highland army had arrived at Derby, less than fifteen miles from Nottingham.
Nottingham feared that it would be plundered. A wealthy couple buried their valuables in an oat sack in their yard. Many in Nottingham were angry that the local government had previously dismantled its old siege defences.
Charles Stuart had hoped to ignite English Jacobite fervour as he led his army towards the capital. He had hoped to arrive in London with a great and well-armed host. But English Jacobites stayed indoors, or else simply did not exist in numbers vast enough to risk raising their heads above the parapet. Charles Stuart and his Highlanders occupied Derby for two days before retreating from the Midlands and marching back to Scotland.
On 17 April 1746 the two armies met at the field of Culloden. By this stage in the conflict, Charles Stuart had withdrawn from his own soldiers. He let them fight without him. What happened over the course of the day simultaneously confirmed and negated the two schools of thought regarding the Jacobite threat. On the one hand the old Hanoverian nightmare had come true. The Jacobites were on sovereign British soil with an army. On the other hand, the reality of the Jacobite threat proved to be tragically overinflated. The Jacobites were undisciplined, poorly equipped and divided among themselves. It took the British Army one hour to slaughter their opponents, killing and wounding between 1,500 and 2,000 Jacobites, while losing only 50 men. When the soldiers that John Deane had helped pay for returned to Nottingham, they were lauded as heroes. A kettle drum, a flag and a flagstaff would be placed opposite the entrance to the council chambers to commemorate Nottingham’s part in the victory. Over 100 years later, in one of the Victorian chronicles of the history of Nottingham, two butchers’ apprentices were praised for having killed ‘fourteen of the enemy with their own swords’ at Culloden. The reality was far more squalid. Kingston’s Light Horse were held in reserve for a portion of the battle. When the clan McDonald broke and ran, Kingston’s Light Horse were sent in pursuit. They encountered a group of Irish mercenaries who held their ground, kept their discipline and engaged the Light Horse. In electing to fight back, the Irish proved too fierce for Kingston’s mounted soldiers. Kingston’s men left the Irish alone and ran down and killed escaping Highlanders. Families of the Jacobite combatants were watching the battle. Kingston’s mounted soldiers turned on them and killed women and children. They rode into Inverness and killed Jacobites there. Kingston’s Light Horse carried on their murderous pilgrimage the length and breadth of the road to Inverness.
Whether John Deane knew what his money had actually paid for, or whether he embraced the official version of events is not known. His thoughts on Culloden are not recorded. But had he been fully aware of the atrocities he had funded, how would he have reacted? John Deane believed in honour in warfare. When Deane had fought in the Great Northern War he had held his ally, the Count de Buss, and the Italian mercenaries he had commanded in utter contempt for burning five timber boats and killing the crew. One can only speculate as to whether John Deane would have been able to arrest his deep-rooted hatred of the Jacobites enough to extend to their civilian dead the same military objectivity.
23
Mr Miller
T here was one more moment of drama left for John Deane to endure. It was brief and created a final headline for the veteran of Boon Island. In 1748 John Deane was attacked and robbed on his own estate. The attack took place in daylight. The thief took everything of monetary value on Deane’s person. Deane’s coat sported some fancy sleeve buttons, which the thief cut off. The thief’s Christian name was not recorded. His surname was Miller. He was arrested soon after the theft. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to hang. Nottingham’s executions invariably took place on a permanent scaffold just outside the town atop a ridge known as Gal
lows Hill. Miller was hanged publicly alongside a highway robber. Prior to death, it was customary to parade the condemned through the street in chains, either on foot or on the back of a cart. Hanging was a crude science in the 1700s. In Nottingham it meant being thrown off a cart with a short rope tied around the neck. Death would occur after approximately fifteen minutes of strangulation. A large crowd would always attend a public hanging. It is not known whether John Deane watched Mr Miller’s execution.
A Mr Miller was hanged alongside a highway robber for a violent assault perpetrated on John Deane. Illustration by Stephen Dennis
24
Last Will and Testament
Although Deane appeared to have written very little during this last period of his existence, there was one official document that cast small spots of light on his private life during his final years. In 1755 John Deane drafted his will.
There was a disjointed and fractious family to provide for. John Deane made provision for his sister Martha and her daughter Mary in the event that Martha died, the implication being that Martha was a widow as her husband was not mentioned at all. John and Sarah Deane had no children of their own. Deane made provision for his heir. Mary, John Deane’s niece, the only surviving child of his brother Jasper, stood to inherit her uncle’s estate when Sarah died. In the meantime, on John Deane’s death, a yearly sum was to be paid to Mary from the interest on £100 from his estate. Deane seemed to regard Mary as profligate as the sum came with a warning to spend the money responsibly and not to ‘waste it’. The conditions attached to Mary’s children receiving money were strict. Mary’s husband Edward, his children, and possibly Mary, clearly did not get on with Sarah Deane. There appeared to have been a serious dispute in the past. Consequently, once John Deane was dead, if Mary and Edward wanted their annuity, they needed to keep their distance from Sarah. A legal cordon was placed around Sarah to protect her. Edward and Mary were forbidden from venturing within 40 miles of John Deane’s wife or they would not receive their money. Deane made arrangements to have the news of his death delivered to Mary and Edward, and the conditions of his will physically taken to them, a measure employed to prevent his relatives coming to Wilford and harassing Sarah Deane. Any money afforded to Mary and Edward’s children was at Sarah Deane’s discretion until the children reached their twenty-first birthdays.
John Deane made generous provision for Sarah. He referred to her in the document as, ‘my beloved wife’, and, ‘my said loving wife’. Sarah was to receive ‘all and singular my personal estate’, and after tax, ‘the rents of profits of all my said lands and tenements’, so long as she remained a widow. But Sarah’s remarriage or death would result in John Deane’s trustees taking over the estate in the event that it had not been administered.
Deane set aside £5 to be distributed in the first month of every year among the poor of Wilford for as long as his wife was alive. Deane made it a condition of his will that whoever might buy his estate would ‘stand up for the general interests of’ the population of Wilford and ‘not seek to oppress’ them. His namesake and nephew John Deane Broughton, the son of his sister Martha, was to receive £20 to be paid within a year of John Deane’s death.
Two years later, John Deane amended his will in the light of the death of one of his four trustees. He appointed a new trustee. But something seemed to have happened in the intervening time that obliged, forced, or provoked Deane to modify his previous generosity to certain family members. He reduced the amount of money he had ceded to his sister Martha. The £20 he had bequeathed to his nephew was altered to ‘a few pounds and no more’. A sum of £100 from which he would give money to the poor was reduced to £25, although the poor of Wilford would still receive their £5 per year every January, presumably until the £25 ran out. Whether the changes in the will were necessitated by some alteration in his finances or whether he was punishing all and sundry for unrecorded offences is not currently known.
The events of Boon Island still weighed heavy on John Deane and he felt a powerful obligation to provide for one of the shipwreck’s indirect casualties. Miles Whitworth was the son of Charles Whitworth, Deane’s late friend and business partner. Miles Whitworth lived in New England. In his will John Deane arranged for £100-worth of goods to be bought in London and shipped to America and given to Miles, presumably to sell or dispose of as Miles saw fit. Deane bequeathed three personal items to Miles: a silver hilted sword, three volumes of sermons and a pair of pistols. Deane placed great value on the pistols. He recorded in his will that the weapons had ‘saved my life in the year one thousand seventeen hundred and twenty upon the River Volga’. It was a tantalising hint at a lost anecdote of close-quarter survival from Deane’s time in exile transporting timber from Kazan to Lagoda Lake.
In August 1761 John and Sarah Deane died within a day of one another. There were no children to survive them. Husband and wife were buried together in St Wilfrid’s cemetery. Their epitaph reads:
Here lieth the body of John Deane, Esq, who from the year 1714 to 1720 commanded a ship of war in the Czar of Muscovy’s service; after which, being appointed by his Britannic Majesty Consul for the ports of Flanders and Ostend, he resided there many years. By His Majesty’s leave retired to this village in year 1738, where he died August the 18th, 1761, in the 82nd year of his age. His wife, Sarah Deane, lies here also interred who departed this life August 17th, 1761, Aged 81.
The tombstone makes no reference to Boon Island.
Epilogue
In intermittent fits and starts, the potency of Captain John Deane’s fame lasted into the twentieth century.
In 1762 Miles Whitworth reprinted the 1711 version of the Boon Island tragedy.
In 1870, the novelist W.H.G. Kingston wrote John Deane: Historic Adventures by Land and Sea. The novel was a work of fiction, an adventure story for boys. Anecdotes in the novel that had no basis in fact would soon be reported as true. For example, John Deane fought in the War of Spanish Succession under Admiral Sir George Rooke where he was promoted to the rank of captain. Deane was present at the liberation of Gibraltar. Deane feuded with his brother. The reason for the feud was revenue lost during the shipwreck at Boon Island. Kingston described the consequences of the disagreement as John and Jasper Deane walked across Nottingham to attend dinner at their sister’s house:
On their way, some remarks made by Dr Jasper irritated John Deane, as he considered them unfair and unjust, and angry words were heard by some of the passers-by, uttered by him to his brother. They reached the door together. A flight of stone steps led to it from the street. Unhappily, at this moment the doctor repeated the expressions which had justly offended the captain, who declared that he would not allow himself to be addressed in so injurious a manner. As he spoke he pushed impatiently past his brother, who at that moment stumbled down the steps. The doctor fell; and as Captain Deane stooped to lift him up, to his horror, he found that he was dead! Rumour, with her hundred tongues, forthwith spread the report that the fire-eating captain had killed his brother. The verdict however of the jury who sat to decide the case was, that Dr Jasper Deane had died by the visitation of God.
Although it is almost certain that there was no truth in the story, the anecdote became the most salacious tall tale believed wholesale by those who would periodically excavate John Deane’s history.
In 1899 John Deane’s History of The Russian Fleet during the Reign of Peter the Great was published by the Navy Records Society. The society had no idea of the true identity of the document’s author.
In 1917 the Jasper Deane account of the Boon Island shipwreck was republished in The Magazine of History and Biography.
Kingston’s novel went out of print. Deane’s pamphlets were no longer in circulation.
In 1934 John Deane was identified as the author of History of the Russian Fleet.
In New England a renewed interest in John Deane was fanned into flame by a local novelist. In 1956 Kenneth Roberts, a native of Maine, wrote a fanciful but forensic
ally accurate novel about the wreck of the Nottingham Galley called Boon Island.
On Boon Island itself a few of the Nottingham Galley’s cannons were discovered by scuba divers. The cannons were resting on a ledge 25 feet below the surface of the ocean. In 1994 the University of New England decided to remove the cannons, their decision hastened by a rumour that Massachusetts salvage hunters were on their way to claim the antique weapons for themselves. The cannons are the only surviving physical evidence that the Nottingham Galley ever existed.
Kenneth Roberts’ novel went out of print but was republished by the University Press of New England in 1996. The new edition of Boon Island contained reprints of John Deane’s, Jasper Deane’s and Christopher Langman’s accounts of their Boon Island experiences. The novel fell out of print for a second time.
At the time of writing John Deane is probably better known in New England than he is in his own country. In Britain he has been largely forgotten when at one time, trailing only behind William Bligh’s misadventure on the Bounty, the wreck of the Nottingham Galley was perhaps the most notorious English naval scandal of the eighteenth century. Even in Nottingham and its neighbouring Wilford village, John Deane is barely known. Two houses that Deane had had built in the 1730s still survive, yards away from the church in which he is buried. His tombstone is easy to find. The inscription is still legible but the grave rarely visited.
Appendix 1
John Deane in Fiction 1
The Shipwreck Cannibals Page 19