the cheapest ferry in england is that which takes you across from kingswear to dartmouth. in point of fact, there are two: the pontoon-like affair that plies from the ferry-slip, and the great western railway’s steamer, conveying passengers between kingswear station and dartmouth quay. the fare for one person is merely a humble halfpenny.
it is a romantic way of entering dartmouth, which lies across there, down by the water’s edge, with great hills rising in the background, and the smoke from dartmouth’s thousand chimneys ascending visibly, like some great incense-offering. from this point of view you perceive the essential justness of that ancient foreigner’s report when, sent to spy upon the chances of surprising dartmouth, he declared that the hills were its walls.
and the story of dartmouth is one of raids, made and suffered, alternately. the kingdoms of england and of france might be at peace, but the ports on either side of the channel were often engaged in their own private wars, and sent ships[172] and men out to burn, pillage, and slay; while between the english seaman and the spaniard there existed an enmity which neither treaties nor prudence could set at rest. the gallant seaman of the age of romance, whether frenchman, spaniard, or englishman, was nothing less than a corsair: a murdering scoundrel who, if he could appear in person at this day before his eulogists, would be the most unwelcome of visitors from the great and glorious past. his only recommendation is his undoubted courage and his exclusive patriotism. the english sea-captains of queen elizabeth’s day had no more doubt of being god’s avengers against the spaniard than they had of the sun’s setting in the west; and—although we do not hear so much of the views entertained by the other side—the foreigners doubtless held equally bigoted opinions. the merchant-adventurers of dartmouth, such as the hawleys and the roopes, whose monumental brasses may to this day be found in the ancient churches of st. saviour in the town, and st. petrox at the castle, were embattled traders, whose captains knew what was expected of them, and accordingly did not merely trade peacefully to foreign parts, but beat about the seas in the hope of snapping up rich prizes; whether in time of peace or war mattered little or nothing. their piety and their ferocity were equally remarkable, and they could find it easily possible to slit a throat, or to make a whole ship’s company walk the plank, to the tune of a thanksgiving psalm.[173] it was a remarkable combination of good qualities and defects, but after all not more remarkable than the doings of such modern people as rockefeller in america—who will, by illegitimate trading and systematic lying, ruin thousands while posing before a sunday school—and of his fellows in england, whose names the law of libel will not permit of being printed.
the daring seamanship and the unscrupulous methods of hawley’s captains, little better than pirates, enriched hawley immensely, and the like may be said of the roopes and others. at times of national emergency hawley could, with an ease readily to be understood, lend his ships entirely for warlike purposes, and probably his crews did not find the change from their “mercantile” voyages very striking. in 1390, for example, as the chronicler stow informs us, his flotilla “took thirty-four shippes laden with wyne to the sum of fifteen hundred tunnes.” it was probably of one of hawley’s captains that chaucer was thinking when he described the “shipman of dartmouth,” one of the canterbury pilgrims setting out from southwark in 1383. this shipman, at any rate, had need of pilgrimage, or some drastic purging course for the remission of sins, for he is described as having sent many “home by water”; a polite way of saying that he had murdered many upon the high seas by making them walk the plank overboard.
the great john hawley is represented in effigy on the floor of st. saviour’s church. he[174] died full of years and honours in 1480, and his two wives, joan and alice, are represented beside him. he looks a substantial and honest merchant, a benevolent burgess, and everything respectable and right worshipful, as though piracy were a word that had no meaning for him. the interior of st. saviour’s is further remarkable for the elizabethan gallery, panelled and elaborately ornate with the heraldic shields of other old legalised pirates of the town, and for its beautiful early sixteenth-century pulpit of most ornately carved, painted and gilt stone: one of some eight or ten such pulpits in wood or stone to be found in the surrounding districts, and nowhere else in england. the extraordinary boldness, wealth, and high relief of the carving single these remarkable pulpits out from anything else in the country; and their gilding, their vivid red, blue, and green colouring, give them a gorgeous and almost barbaric effect.
probably as a direct result of the piratical doings of the dartmouth people, inviting reprisals, it was in 1481 considered advisable to further strengthen the defences of the narrow entrance to dartmouth harbour; and the existing fortifications on either side were built. the people of dartmouth were clever enough to get this done at the expense of the nation, the king agreeing to pay the cost, to the extent of £30 a year, out of the customs of dartmouth and exeter. the “stronge and myghtye and defensyve new tower” then agreed upon to be built is the existing castle. a chain was to be stretched across between this and kingswear every night, and although this has, of course, disappeared, the places whence it was stretched are still to be seen.
dartmouth as a port of call for liners died hard, but the last line of steamships, the donald currie service to the cape, went, and now it is divided between being a favourite yachting station and the home of the new royal naval college, which, transferred from its picturesque and makeshift old home aboard the britannia and hindostan, now crowns the hill and nobly dominates the whole of dartmouth in the great range of buildings overlooking the dart.
the ferryman who puts us across the dart is full of information and as full of regrets about the britannia and hindostan, the new naval college, and the changed conditions of seafaring life, but with a sardonic smile he thinks the cadets will learn their business as well ashore as they have[176] done afloat. “why not?” he asks. “they don’t want no sailors nowadays. there was a time when a sailor was never without his marline-spike an’ mallet. now they’re all bloody dagoes and dutchies in the merchant sarvice, an’ engineers and stoke-hole men, with cold chisels, ’stead of knives, in the navy. for a sailor—when there were sailors, mind you—to be without his knife, why, he might every bit as well up’n give his cap’n a clump auver th’yed, so he might. an’ up there—” he jerked so contemptuous a thumb over his shoulder that it was almost a wonder the new flagstaff on the new central tower did not wilt—“up there them young juicers is fed up with ’lectricity ’n things no godfearing sailorman in my time never heerd of.”
although it is designed in the paltry picturesque eclectic renaissance or doll’s house, style with ornamental fripperies and fandangalums galore, the naval college has the noblest of aspects, seen from down the harbour, or across the dart, from old rock ferry. planted on the wooded summit of mount boone, the long range of buildings, backed by dark trees, sets just that crown and finish upon dartmouth which suffices to raise the scenic character of the place from beauty to nobility. a curious feature of it is the clock in the central tower, which rings seafaring time ashore: so many “bells.” at sea the twelve hours are divided into three watches of four hours each, with a “bell” to every half-hour. thus the “bells” rise with the half-hours to eight, when they begin again, with the completion of the first half-hour of the new watch. in this manner, the “bells” agree with shoregoing chimes only twice a day: at eight o’clock, morning and night.
the parish church of dartmouth, oddly enough, is neither st. saviour’s in the town, nor st. petrox at the castle, but st. clement’s at townstal, on the hilltop, quite a mile distant. many of the very old and very fine fifteenth and sixteenth century overhanging and gabled houses have in modern times been destroyed, some by fire and some in wanton “improvements”; but foss street, looking along to st. saviour’s, shows what old dartmouth was like. there are found ancient houses with windows bracketed out upon strikingly artistic renaissance carvings of lions and unicorns; but the houses in that street are decrepit, and the butter walk undoubtedly shows the best preserved old architecture. when we consider that dartmouth was once, as a whole, like this, it will sadly be realised how grievous the change.
dartmouth to-day is still a very busy place, and full of slummy little alleys, and extraordinarily swarming with children. amid all this crowding and bustle of business there are always plenty of loafers to lean over breast-high walls, contemplating the picturesque scene, where houses crowd and cling to the very water’s edge, and old, half-forgotten waterside towers stand, silent[179] reminders of a bygone need for watchfulness. at bayard’s cove in especial, the coal-lumpers, the boatmen, and the generally idle sit on the quay walls in the sun, or lean against them, keeping them up. the coal-lumpers work perhaps sixteen or twenty hours at a stretch, coaling the[180] steamers that come into port, and then want no more work for a month. they laze away the days, run up a score at the nearest pub, and groan if by chance they see another job coming round the corner.
