The Secret Diary of Kitty Cask, Smuggler's Daughter

by Philip Ardagh

  Grabbing his coat from a hook by the open door, he ducked outside to join the men. “What are you waiting for?” he bellowed in the wind. I saw him being handed a lantern before the door was closed behind him.

  I felt my heart beat faster and a tingle of excitement reached my fingers. I knew what this meant. Tonight, the men of Minnock would not be smugglers, but wreckers!52

  Back in my room, by the light through the open door from the fire dying in the grate below, I pulled on my clothes over my tattered nightshirt and hurried back down the stairs. I patted and praised Sovereign, made him sit, and I reached for one of the storm lanterns hanging from a beam and lit it with a taper53 from the fire. Reaching up and wrapping one of my father’s scarves around me, I went out into the night, to follow at a distance. Jack Treviss, swinging his wooden leg in his stride, was at the rear.

  I was almost bowled over by the wind, it was so strong. No wonder the Frenchmen’s vessel was against the rocks! Sovereign’s howls from the house were snatched away the instant the wind whipped around my head. I followed the only path my father and his men could have taken.

  I reached Cannon’s Point and watched as a small procession of lanterns made their way down the treacherous cliff path, bobbing like glowing insects, to the beach below.

  I would not venture by that route even on the brightest summer’s day. On a dark and stormy winter’s night such as last night was, it would have been madness, and as foolish as signing one’s own death warrant54 or arm-wrestling with an octopus. Jago and my father’s men were used to such conditions and surefooted as mountain goats. Even Jack Treviss, the one-legged man, followed, slow but sure. Father forbade him from entering the cave at Hangman’s Cove, for fear of slowing the line when taking cargo in and out but, for a man with but one leg, he was steady and confident.

  I took the longer, safer, route but – from the terrible crashing of wood and cries of men, the likes of which I have never heard before – I knew that the wind and raging sea had brought a vessel onto the treacherous rocks. When I finally reached the shore, the wind had dropped considerably and the rain become a mere drizzle…

  …but nothing prepared me for the sight that awaited me. Jago had already divided the men into two parties: those trying to rescue the men and those salvaging the cargo. All was undertaken by the lights of the lanterns and a few hastily-lit fires. Jago’s attention was directed towards the cargo spilling from the wreck of the French vessel: crates and barrels, some bobbing in the sea, some smashed and useless on the needle-like rocks and some already ashore.

  Our Minnock men were roped together for safety: two human chains, one for guiding rescued sailors from man to man to shore, the other for passing cargo from vessel to beach. Just because the weather was the Frenchie’s enemy didn’t make it the Cornishman’s friend and, when it came to the cargo, my brother’s intensions were obvious and threefold: to gain as much booty as possible, as quickly as possible, as safely as possible.

  He was far too busy in the dark and noise and mayhem to notice me crouched behind a boulder at a safe distance. But, when dawn broke, I knew it was time to return home before he did. The wind and rain had dropped to nothing, and much of the cargo was already claimed and being carted off to be hid.

  Shocked and injured Frenchie sailors were huddled together in groups, tending to each other’s wounds, tearing clothes to make strips of bandage; using splintered pieces of their own wrecked vessel to make splints.

  I was jerrymumbling55 as I ran, not just from the wet and the wind but through the shock of what I’d seen. By the time I reached the cottage, I felt somewhat downhearted. I have always seen the people of Minnock as heroes, with my father at their head. They are free-traders, fighting an unjust system and redcoats who are in it as much for their own. But seeing those poor injured sailors filled me with sadness. Yes, my father’s gang rescued them, under Jago’s guidance, but might they have saved more of them had not the cargo also been on their mind?

  ____________

  26 Such geological arches, or their remains, can be found along the coast in the West Country, and the correct term for the remaining pillar of a fallen arch is actually a stack. One of the most famous arches is Durdle Dor in Dorset, near Lulworth Cove.

  27 Hanging was a public spectacle in England until the Capital Punishment Amendment Act of 1868, after which they took place in prisons, in private.

  28 Coffin.

  29 Life expectancy was far shorter than today. A poor person might be expected to die well before the age of forty.

  30 When a woman married in the eighteenth century, she virtually became the property of her husband, losing individual rights, and all that had been hers became his.

  31 Wetting a thumb and forefinger and using it to ‘pinch out’ the flame on the wick was considered less messy than blowing it out. (Not recommended! Don’t try it!) Richer folk had candle-snuffers for snuffing out – depriving the flame of oxygen – but not until the nineteenth century.

  32 In the late eighteenth century, it was discovered that, if planted in sand dunes, marram grass would catch sand in its leaves, and its roots would grow down and bind the sand, stopping the dunes being washed away and, therefore, stabilising the coastline. The grass was then deliberately planted all over the world for just such a reason.

  33 The patron saints of fishermen.

  34 No, not small boots, but valuable stolen goods or, in this case, illegally imported goods on which taxes were owed!

  35 The Devil appears regularly in Cornish myths and legends. In one, he is carrying a huge stone across the sky, to use to block the entrance to Hell. He is attacked by St Michael and the stone falls to the ground in a place then named Hell’s Stone - later Helston – as a result, where it’s said to have been built into the wall of The Angel Hotel!

  36 What he was doing.

  37 Grumpy person. Yes, more eighteenth century slang, and there’s plenty more to come.

  38 Nonsense.

  39 Simpleton/idiot.

  40 Village idiots used to be a regular sight in villages across the country. A person of low ability, they may have been mocked and teased in their role, but were also well looked after.

  41 Fool.

  42 Fooled/Had the wool pulled over his eyes/tricked.

  43 A sovereign was a gold coin, and a valuable one at that.

  44 A gold sovereign was worth a lot of money. No sovereigns were minted between 1604 and 1817, so the one Kitty’s dog found was from 1604 or even older.

  45 Bits and bobs washed ashore and deposited on the beach.

  46 Vessel.

  47 ‘A go dot and carry’ is eighteenth century slang for someone with a wooden leg. He goes (moves his wooden leg), lands it, leaving a dot, and then carries it (lifts it) to land it again, leaving another dot.

  48 He was asking what country’s flag the ship was flying.

  49 As sure as night will follow day. In other words, a certainty.

  50 Spyglass was a common name for a telescope, and glass was an abbreviation of that.

  51 There are many standing stones in Cornwall, erected by pre-historic people, their purpose lost in the mists of time. Many myths grew up about them, such as the one about a group of stones, called the Hurlers, on Bodmin Moor. These were said to be people turned to stone for playing games on a Sunday, the Lord’s day.

  52 There is much misunderstanding and myth about wreckers. Over the years the term has come to mean people who deliberately lured ships onto rocks, sometimes by lighting fires inland, tricking sailors into thinking they were warning beacons at the land’s edge, so they brought their vessels in too close to the shore where they were wrecked. This may have happened but was VERY rare. Wreckers were people who plundered the cargo from wrecked ships as soon as possible, often before the crew had been rescued or had the chance to escape.

  53 A long, thin piece of paper which, once alight, was used to light lamps and stoves.

  54 An official document authorising that someone may
be taken dead or alive.

  55 Shaking.

  All talk around the village is of the ship that was somehow blown ashore and wrecked upon the rocks. There are a goodly number of survivors, with the injured tended by our local doctor, Dr Treloon, and by the Reverend Glass. The others have been housed in the one place big enough to hold them: Hanson’s Boatshed.

  It has been agreed that the dead be buried here in a communal grave56 and that, at some future date, a memorial stone will be erected, though I have my doubts. There was remarkably little cargo to be salvaged in the light of day, though Ma Truttock did manage to find a barrel of port and became so glorious57 that she fell face down into the sand, or so the gossip goes. I have seen others reeling about the village today, as full as a goat,58 as though dancing to a silent tune, and take it that a few other such casks have washed ashore and been claimed and sampled in an instant.

  I made my way up to Cannon’s Point to look down upon the scene and came face to face with Mr Duggan.

  Mr Duggan is the chief exciseman in these parts, based in a harbour-side office, near the Customs House, in the nearby town of Fowle. A barrel of a man – more muscle than fat – he has little need for a neck, so his head seems to join his body without one, leaving just enough room for a jet-black neckerchief, looking not unlike a dead bat! He has a fearful scar running vertically above and below his right eye, though the eye itself – a piercing blue – is undamaged. There are many rumours as to how he got such an injury, the most popular being “poking his head in where it did not belong.” I would not say my father is afraid of him, but it is a foolish man, woman or child who is not, at the very least, wary of the chief exciseman.

  Uncle Jonah says that Mr Duggan is no oaf. He has a sharp mind to go with his bull-beef59 looks, which is why he should be doubly feared. He’s not like other excisemen who spend their time counting waves60 or making a great harvest out of little corn61. Duggan don’t just look. He sees.

  Flanked by two redcoats, Mr Duggan was standing ahead of me, studying the ground, prodding at it in placing with his walking cane. He saw me from the corner of his eye. “Here, you, girl!” he commanded. “What is your name?”

  “Kitty Cask, sir,” I replied without hesitation. I know it’s best not to lie when you don’t have to and, that way, you can’t be caught out by it.

  “Jon Cask’s girl? Well, what are you doing here, young Kitty Cask? Come to spy?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “I’ve come to look down upon the wreck. It be the talk of the village.”

  “You’re too late, girl,” said Mr Duggan.

  “The wind and sea has done its worst. You’ll see nothing more than floating planks, which I hardly think will raise the blood62.”

  “I see, sir,” I said and turned to leave. “Thank you, sir.”

  “If it was bodies you were hoping to see, save that for the hanging.”

  I stopped in my tracks, my feet upon the bouncy cliff-top turf.

  I turned back to face the ghastly Mr Duggan. “Hanging, sir?”

  “When I catch the men who stripped the vessel of all its pickings as the Jimmy Rounds floundered all around ’em,” he said.

  (Jimmy Rounds is what many men call Frenchies, on account of it sounding like Je me rends, which is what most Frenchies say if they face an Englishmen – and certainly a Cornishman – in a fight, for it means “I surrender!”)

  A gull screeched above me. Then another.

  “I don’t know what you mean, sir,” said I.

  The exciseman’s eyes met mine. “I’m sure you don’t, Miss Kitty Cask,” he said, “but that cargo should have been collected by my men and made safe under lock and key. Theft is theft and custom and excise duties are there to be paid.” He then turned his back on me and strode towards the headland.

  My father and his fellow smugglers laugh at how they run rings around Mr Duggan. I hear them talking sometimes when they think I am abed. But they know to watch out for Mr Duggan, for he is like a sleeping jellyfish. Get too close and he stings.63

  Arriving back home, I found Eliza cooking fish stew upon the range64.

  “Where’s thy been, Kit?” she asked. She always calls me Kit, as though I am a boy (for Kit is short for Christopher, like the saint).

  “For a walk,” I told her.

  “An’ you steered clear o’ the wreck as I bade65 you?”

  “Yes,” I said, for it were true. “I saw Mr Duggan, though.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “Yes, as if anyone could avoid his eye,” I said. I meant by day, of course, because by night my father keeps well beyond his sight!

  “And what were you about, Kit?” she asked, her eyes fixed on mine.

  “Like I said, I were walking.”

  She smiled her smile. “You always know more than you’re letting on,” she said, “but I never knows how much that be!”

  I laughed.

  At that moment, my father came into the house, my little sister Esme upon his shoulders, meaning that he had to bend his knees and she duck her head to fit beneath the lintel66. He must have returned this morning when I was about my walk.

  “Ah, Kitty!” he boomed when his eyes fell upon me. “I has a job for you!”

  “What is it?” I asked, excitedly.

  “I need you to go to the gospel-shop and give the old glue-pot a message,” he said.

  Eliza looked outraged and banged her spoon on the side of her cooking pot, exclaiming, “Jon Cask, you’ll burn in Hell if you talk in such a manner!”, for though ‘gospel-shop’ is harmless enough a word or two for a church, I’m not sure the Reverend Glass would take too kindly to being called a glue-pot67 – old or otherwise – despite it not being personal but the slang for any parson68!

  My father gave a cheeky grin and covered his mouth as though he were a naughty child.

  Eliza tried to hide her grin and over-concentrated on stirring the fish stew some more.

  I found the Reverend Glass in the church, looking far from happy.

  “Hello, Kitty,” he said. “A sad day, what with those poor souls lost so close to shore and to safety.”

  “Not too many of ’em, though, Reverend,” I said, thinking of our men roped together in the water, getting them to shore. “And they was Frenchmen,” I reminded him.

  “We are all equal in the eyes of God,” he said, which I found confusing because I know we pray for victory against the enemy in times of war, but I said nothing.

  “What about the Israelites?” piped up a squeaky voice I recognised at once, and from out behind the pulpit stepped Master James Treppen. You have never seen a boy so clean – a person so clean – and everything about him, from his hair to his skin to his nails, looks scrubbed and buffed to a shine. And his clothes? They are cut from a very different cloth to mine!

  “The Israelites?” asked Reverend Glass.

  “You say that we are all equal in the eyes of God, but aren’t the Israelites God’s chosen people?”

  “Our Lord did come from the Holy Land69,” the vicar said with a nod as though it were an answer. “What brings you here, Kitty?”

  “I have a message from my father,” I said, holding out a folded piece of paper70.

  “What does it say?” squeaked Master James Treppen.

  “Do you think I’ve been fed with a fire shovel?” I scowled.

  He looked at me, his face a blank. I was forgetting that, as the son of the local squire who owns much of the land about these parts71, he was not used to the sayings of us common folk!

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “For someone who knows all about the Israelites, I’m sure you can work it out, James,” I said.

  He gave me one of his looks. “You would need an exceptionally large mouth to be able to eat with a fire shovel,” he reasoned, “so you mean that you’re not a big mouth? You do not give away secrets?”

  “Or private communications between my father and the Reverend,” I said, with a nod. “See. It was not dif
ficult, was it?”

  The vicar laughed. He knew full well that this was no way for a fisherman’s daughter to talk to the squire’s son! But my mother had been a Treppen also – but, as a woman, would have inherited no land or money, even had she lived.

  “Will you come with me down to the harbour, Kitty?” piped James.

  “And why should I want to be seen with a young hemp72 like you?” I teased.

  “Because I have a sixpence to spend, Kitty Cask. That’s why!”

  “A bender73? Why didn’t you say so?” I cried. “Let’s go!” I nodded at the Reverend Glass. “Good day to you, Reverend,” I said.

  The Reverend smiled as he watched us go but, when I glanced back, I could see that he was already engrossed in my father’s message.

  With the church of St Andrew & St Peter at the top of the hill and the harbour down by the sea – for where else could it be? – it was quite a distance. Young James Treppen took it upon himself to run all the way and I wasn’t going to let him beat me!

  I’ve not much else to report about the day other than later I saw a group of redcoats, themselves the worse for drink, surrounding Ivy Thomas outside the dairy, jeering and calling her names. Sometimes I wish I were me brother and would give them what for! As much as I hate Mr Duggan, I respect that he’s trying to uphold the law, however wrong it be. But these men? They’re soldiers to the King, policing these shores, but many are just in it for themselves, using the law to their own ends. My father says that their corruption makes them worse than honest smugglers! And who am I to argue?