Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley (4 page)

Read Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley Online

Authors: Kenneth Roberts,Jack Bales,Richard Warner

Tags: #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc., #Nottingham (Galley) - Fiction, #Transportation, #Historical, #Boon Island (Me.) - Fiction, #Boon Island, #18th Century, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc - Fiction, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc, #Shipwrecks, #Fiction, #Literary, #Sea Stories, #Historical Fiction, #Shipwrecks - Maine - Boon Island - History - 18th Century - Fiction, #test, #Boon Island (Me.), #General, #Maine, #History

 
Page 11
and commissioned the Reverend Samuel Wilson to publish "An Abstract Of Consul Deane's Narrative," which described the captain as "a pious Gentleman ... who wished the great Salvation ... should be commemorated ... [and] that the Mercy should not be forgotten, but from year to Year be acknowledged with suitable Gratitude and Praise."
28
Captain Deane died at his home in Wilford in 1761 at the age of eighty-three. In his will he made provision for a commemoration of the wreck of the
Nottingham Galley
in New England, a generous sum for that purpose to be granted to Doctor Miles Whitworth of Boston, whose father had died as a consequence of the disaster.
29
The following year the younger Whitworth chose to reprint the original 1711 edition, the version Captain Deane had tried to suppress all of his life.
30
Since then it has been reprinted twice more, once by William Abbatt for the
Magazine of History and Biography
in 1917 and again by Mason Smith in 1968.
31
Smith's is a modern photo-offset edition published in just two hundred and fifty copies for book collectors. It contains an interesting physical description of Boon Island.
Because it was the first edition printed in modern type, the Abbatt version has become a favorite for reprint in more recent anthologies of shipwrecks and sea disasters, for example, R. Thomas's
Remarkable Shipwrecks, Fires, Famines, Calamities, Providential Deliverances, and Lamentable Disasters on the Seas,
first printed in 1835 and reprinted as
Interesting and Authentic Wrecks
in 1970, and G. W. Barrington's
Remarkable Voyages and Shipwrecks
.
32
The most recent popularization directed to shipwreck enthusiasts is Keith Huntress's 1975 volume,
Narratives of Shipwrecks & Disasters, 15861860
. According to the editor, "the genesis of this anthology was the chance purchase ... of a battered copy of R. Thomas's
Remarkable Shipwrecks
."
33
There are no analytic or scholarly accounts of the wreck of the
Nottingham Galley
except for the highly regarded legal history
 
Page 12
by A. W. Brian Simpson,
Cannibalism and the Common Law
. Surprisingly inaccurate, Simpson claims that the Deane and Langman versions "in general are not in conflict," and although seemingly judicious, he relies upon the Langman account to explain the sequence of events. He also badly miscalculates the length of the crew's stay on Boon Island, dating the rescue in September rather than early January, ten months rather than twenty-four days after the wreck.
34
Two notable works of fiction deal with Captain Deane and the wreck of the
Nottingham Galley
. In 1870 author of juvenile literature W. H. G. Kingston wrote
John Deane of Nottingham,
a work that confounds fact and fiction.
35
It is a fanciful tale that spins for Deane a Robinhood-like youth as a butcher's apprentice and deer poacher who joins the navy when forced to flee Nottingham. Kingston uses actual ships and commanders of the period to construct a career leading to Deane's promotion to captain by Admiral Rooke after the battle of Gibraltar. Though he may well have served in the navy in the ratings, the admiralty papers show no evidence that Deane ever served as an officer, and it is unlikely that such an attainment would have gone unrecorded in this period. Moreover, had the captain been promoted for bravery in battle, he certainly would have used it to his advantage later in life. Even the most casual reader would find it hard to recognize the wreck of the
Nottingham Galley
in Kingston's book, for it bears little resemblance to the original accounts. Nonetheless, Kingston has had a lasting impact on Deane's biography, for local historians have passed on "knowledge" gained from his book.
Kenneth Roberts's work is quite different. A native of Maine familiar with Boon Island and accounts of the wreck of the
Nottingham Galley,
Roberts is true to his sources. He was an uncommonly principled borrower of historical material who was careful not to make central historical figures leading characters in his
 
Page 13
novels. The fictional aspects of
Boon Island
are largely devoted to creating a milieu for the development of the characters, among them Miles Whitworth, who is used as the narrator. The captain remains a shadowy, though honorable and strong, figure, not unlike the person he actually seems to have been.
During his lifetime, Captain Deane's account of the
Notttingham
disaster prevailed, for he had outlived his opponents and possessed the resources and desire to promote his own version of events. Indeed, he even attempted to maintain control after his death by making a provision in his will for posthumous publication by Whitworth. Interestingly, Deane's tombstone in the Wilford churchyard records only that the captain "commanded a Ship of War in the Czar of Moscovy's service," that he "was appointed by His Britannick Majesty, Consul for the Ports of Flanders and Ostend," and that he "retired to this village in the year 1738."
36
But the captain could not manage publication from the grave, and it is ironic that all accounts since his death have been based on the narrative published originally by his brother Jasper in 1711, the account the captain had labored so diligently to suppress. Though attached to the old captain, Miles Whitworth apparently preferred Jasper's version because of the way it depicted his father. Others have found the first-person narrative of that account more authentic, dramatic, and compelling, which may explain why it has endured since Deane's death in every collection and anthology. It is perplexing that such a literate man, so protective of his reputation, wrote nothing about himself for posterity and that he did not have the foresight to consider that he might be remembered best in works of fiction. Yet, this too adds to the mystery of Captain John Deane.
 
Page 14
Notes
1. Duke Francis Stephen married Maria Theresa in 1731. Though he lost the throne of Lorraine in 1736, he was compensated with the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. In 1745 he was elected Holy Roman Emperor.
2. John Deane to George Tilson, 26 August 1731, PRO SP 77 / 78 (Public Record Office, State Papers). Deane had just republished the account of the disaster:
A Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Nottingham Galley & Co., first Publish'd in 1711, Revis'd and Reprint'd with additions in 1727, and now Re-publish'd in 1730. By John Deane, Commander
(London, 1730).
3. J. B. Firth wrote that "the adventures and sufferings of the crew of the
Nottingham Galley
were as well known in the days of Queen Anne as the story of the sufferings of the crew of the
Bounty
were later in the century" (
Highways and Byways in Nottinghamshire
[London: Macmillan, 1916], p. 31).
4. Kenneth Roberts,
Boon Island,
reprinted herein; first published by Doubleday in 1956.
5. See my "Captain John Deane: Mercenary, Diplomat, and Spy," in
People of the Sea,
ed. Lewis Fischer and Walter Minchinton (St. Johns, Newfoundland: International Maritime Economic History Association, 1992), pp. 15773.
6. Captain John Dean(e),
A Narrative of the Sufferings, Preservation, and Deliverance of Capt. John Dean and Company; in the Nottingham Galley of London, cast away on Boon-Island, near New England, December 11, 1710
. Published with an introductory note by Jasper Dean, dated August 2, 1711, Horsly-Down (London: R. Tookey, 1711). Reprinted herein.
7. Information about the deposition is included in
A True Account of the Voyage of the Nottingham-Galley of London, John Dean Commander, from the River Thames to New England, near which Place she was cast away on Boon-Island, December 11, 1710, by the Captain's Obstinacy, who endeavored to betray her to the French, or run her ashore with an account of the Falsehoods in the Captain's Narrative, and a Faithful Relation of the Extremities the Company was Reduc'd to for Twenty-four Days on that Desolate Rock, where they were forced to eat their Companions who had died, but at last were wonderfully deliver'd. The whole attested upon Oath by Christopher Langman, Mate, Nicholas Mellen, Boatswain, and George White, sailor in the said Ship
(London: S. Popping, 1711). Reprinted herein.
8. Captain John Deane,
A Narrative of the Sufferings,
pp. 22, 39 herein.
9. Langman, Mellen, and White,
A True Account,
pp. 4243, 6061, 58 herein. Langman even argued that Deane "barbarously told the children in his lodging, he would have made a frigasy of them, if he had had 'em in Boon Island."

Other books

House Justice by Lawson, Mike
Urien's Voyage by André Gide
Venus in Blue Jeans by Meg Benjamin
Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith
Mania by Craig Larsen
The Fourth Horseman by David Hagberg
December by Phil Rickman
Sharing Sirius by Shona Husk
Dirty Weekend by Gabrielle Lord