NATIONAL SERVICE IN THE PAST.—IL WHEN THE FLEET FAILED.
" rERE were great searchings of heart" among the little Channel ports during the summer of 1690. Disunion—not to say downright treachery—had paralyzed the action of the fleet ; the French had the command of the Channel; the days of the Hundred Years' War seemed to return when no port was safe unless by its own exertions. Macaulay has given us the general history, but the imminence of the danger and the dauntless spirit in which it was met are well illustrated from the records of a little Dorset port, one of the "'two little fisher towns" of which Clarendon spoke so contemptuously during the great Civil War.
On June 21st, 1690, a special meeting of the Council was held in the little Elizabethan Guildhall of Poole, which then stood in the now vacant space in Fish Street. The business was more serious than was at all customary. "For the better securing the town against the dangers threatened to this town by the French, a common enemy to the Kingdom, now having a very great fleet of ships in sight of this place." So runs the agenda paper. "In sight of this place," and very possibly in sight of this Council Chamber, there, across the long stretch of harbour, beyond the line of sand-hills which forms the breakwater, in the western horn of Poole Bay, where the wavy line of the Purbecks breaks into isolated chalk stacks, lie seventy-eight great men-of-war and twenty-two fire-ships, the mighty fleet of Admiral Tourville. The town is undefended, for the wall which turned back Prince Maurice in his triumphant march through Dorset was razed to the ground by the King's order at the Restoration. Half the able-bodied men are away on the annual fishing voyage to Newfoundland. But there is no panic. These men are not easily frightened. The fierce courage of the old pirates has been reinforced by the stubborn spirit of the Calvinistic Puritan, and both arc directed by the resource of the sailor. The great Civil War is fresh in memory, and there are men in the town who knew Bingham and Ashley and that brilliant partisan, Frank Sydenham, who can speak of the leaguer of Corfe and the storming of Wareham and Abbotsbury, of the defence of Lyme and the relief of Taunton. And if this were not so, men who, year in, year out, can run their little brigs to Newfoundland and back, facing the fogs and gales of the sad Atlantic, the chance of the early or late icebergs, and, last and most dreaded, the Sallee rovers that wait for the returning fishing fleet—such men are not to be easily taken aback. Disko Troop of the We're Here is the type of the old Newfoundland skippers, and they, like Glam in the Iceland story, are not to be scared at bugbears. The city fathers coolly consider the position. The big ships are of course harmless, and a boat attack at that distance and with such a harbour is not likely to be risked. But the French can easily land a strong party—as they did afterwards at Teignmouth—march round inland, and attack the town on the north side. The town ditch is some defence, running across the neck of the peninsula where now the double railway gates half choke the traffic, but the solid causeway at the town-gate must be looked to and watch must be kept both there and at the entrance to the harbour.
Resolutions are passed accordingly.
" Imprimis. An extraordinary watch of thirteen every night (every man in his own person if at home and of ability of body) do watch at such places as the captain of the watch for every night shall think fit." If at home—he may be away on the Newfoundland voyage—otherwise in his own person— no paying substitutes here.
" Item. That four great guns be placed and mounted at the town-gates to secure that part of the entrance to the town."
The next item is too long for insertion, but it amounts to this. Every man who has more weapons—blunderbusses, muskets, fowling-pieces, pistols, or what not—than are
sufficient for his own, or his friends' use, is to bring them to the Town Hall, and the expense of cleaning and making good, with the cost of the needful ammunition, is to be met by a special rate, to be levied " as the law shall allow."
Finally. " That four men be appointed as a sea-watch or guard, two of which to go in the King's scout, and two to be at the Castle of Brownsea, the former to give notice of any approaching danger, and the others, on such notice, or sign, by firing a gun to give notice to the town." The Castle at Brownsea—the old block house of Henry VIII.—commands the entrance to the harbour, so that a boat attack would be provided against.
One would like to have seen the collection of surplus weapons—the duck-guns, fowling-pieces, and the like, for use originally against the wild fowl for which the harbour was famous down to our own times—but now and afterwards ready to be used with practised skill against " the common enemy to the Kingdom."
Tourville, however, passed on to his victory at Beachy Head, to his triumphant sail up and down the Channel, to the sack of poor little Teignmouth, and finally to his utter defeat at La Hogue, so splendidly told by Macaulay.
But, lest the resolutions of the Council should be considered to be words only, it may be well to give an example or two of what the Poole men were capable of in defence of their coasts.
A swarm of French privateers had been fitted out to prey upon the English shipping under the aegis of the great Tourville, and they hung upon the Dorset coasts eager to snap up anything, even the little fishing craft that ventured afloat. The victory of La Hogue did not put an end to this trouble, for in 1694 one of them seized a Weymouth boat off Lulworth Cove. Peter Jolliffe, member of an old Poole family, was out with two more men in The Sea Adventurer' when he saw the privateer's seizure, and, at once attacking him, rescued the prize, and by skilful seamanship drove the Frenchman ashore, where the country people captured the crew. A gold medal was presented to the plucky skipper by King William IlL himself with this inscription :- " His Ma'ties gift as a reward to Peter Joliffe of Poole for his good service agt. the Enemy in retaking a Ketch of Wey- mouth from a French Privateer and chaceing the said Privateer on shoar near Lulworth in ye Isle of Purbeck, where shee was broken in peeces. 1694."
Jolliffe's cousin, William Thompson, performed an even more daring exploit, for with one man and a boy he not only beat off a privateer of sixteen hands and mounting two brass guns, but followed her up and, using his firearms with the skill of an old gunner, wounded half the crew, including the captain and the lieutenant, and actually captured the ship. The Lords of the Admiralty sent him a gold medal and chain and granted him the vessel he had taken. The spirit of self-help was strong in these men, and the temporary failure of the fleet brought out qualities which were only in abeyance. But the weapons and the training which enabled them to be used so well belonged to a peculiar state of things which no longer exists. The specialization of modern weapons and the centralization of authority have put the old rough-and-ready fighting and the old spirit of independent action quite out of date. The hearts of the men may be as good as ever. The fishing boats still go out to fish off the ironstone promontory that a sudden gale in the Channel may turn into a deadly lee-shore, and to man fails when the thunder of the gun calls out the lifeboat; but courage without weapons and without training is but as the strength of which Horace writes: "Via consul expers mole ruit sus."
All the more reason why the Government, which alone can provide the weapons and the drill, should utilize the fine material before it is too late. "Rust," said the Scythian ambassadors to Alexander, "consumes the hardness of iron."
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