I moved to Devon when my children were
small and then spent a lot of time with them pottering around on Westward Ho!
beach. On clear days there was always Lundy
in the distance, looking appealing but unattainable. I didn’t take the boys there
for years because the responsibility of supervising two boys on the deck of a
ship for two hours terrified me. So we didn’t
make our first crossing until both of them were
We set off from Bideford early one morning on
the Oldenburg and sailed downriver
towards Appledore and the open sea. And
that was when I heard the story of Thomas Benson for the first time.
Before it reaches Appledore the Oldenburg passes Knapp House. Tucked in
a valley that leads down to the water the house and grounds are now a campsite
and activity centre, but in the 18th century it was home to Thomas
Benson, landowner, merchant trader, High Sheriff of Devon, Member of Parliament
and in his spare time, smuggler, fraudster and notorious villain.
Benson inherited the family fortune in 1743
and soon became the leading merchant trader operating from the port of
Bideford. His vessels exported woollen goods to the America colonies and
brought back tobacco from Maryland and Virginia. Each year, his fishing fleet sailed to the
Newfoundland cod banks. When France
became an ally of Spain and joined the war against England he fitted out one of
his ships as a man-of-war and operated as a privateer – a legalised pirate - with
some success.
Wishing to strengthen his position still
further, Benson entered politics. After presenting
a magnificent silver punch bowl to the Corporation he was elected unopposed as MP
for Barnstaple in 1747. It put him in an
ideal position to land a lucrative government contract to transport convicts to
the American colonies. But operating
within the law didn’t prove lucrative enough – or perhaps thrilling enough –
for Benson. Following a brush with
Customs officers over unpaid import duties on his tobacco cargoes he became involved
with various crimes including breach of contract, smuggling, tax evasion and
finally an insurance fraud that involved the scuttling of his own ship, The Nightingale.
When this last fraud was exposed, Benson
fled, abandoning the ship’s captain – John Lancey – to his fate. Benson lived
out the rest of his life in Portugal, while Captain Lancey faced a trial,
conviction and execution for a crime that Benson has instigated.
It’s a sad, sorry tale and yet I had no
plans to write anything based on it until
the MPs expenses scandal and the banking
crisis set me thinking. It occurred to me that things hadn’t changed nearly
as much as one might have hoped in two and a half centuries. Power still corrupts and the innocent still
suffer at the hands of the guilty.
Fifteen years after moving back to north
Devon Hell and High Water was published.
Ideas for novels sometimes have a very long gestation period!
3 comments:
Nothing changes! The rich get richer....
Not the only example from that area you could use :-) and nothing changes, things just move in time.
And you produced a splendid tale! Yes, the more one reads of history, the more one realises that fantasies of a better past are just that.
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