The Secret Diary of Kitty Cask, Smuggler's Daughter

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  My name is Kitty Cask. That’s Kitty short for Katherine with a ‘K’, but I’ve never had anyone call me by that name. My home is in Cornwall1, and it’s one of a cluster of cottages clinging to the hillsides in the village of Minnock where the river flows out into the English Channel.

  The French call the Channel ‘La Manche’, because they think the strip of water looks like a coat sleeve. Trust them to think of fashion! A Frenchie2 is more interested in the cut of his trousers than in ruling the waves! It’ll always be the English Channel, ’cause it’s OUR sea, though calling it the Cornish Channel would be better still! Sometimes angry, with raging white waters, it tosses aside boats like my little sister, Esme, throws her toys from her cradle, wind howling like when Esme has a tooth comin’ through. But, more often than not, it is our friend and provider, even if it can never be tamed.

  Most of us living in these parts earn our daily bread3 from the sea. My father says that’s because very little of Cornwall is more than a day’s walk from the coast, “so long you don’t turn right and end in Devonshire!”4. These are exciting times, so I’ve decided to keep a diary of all that’s occurring; putting on paper my thoughts and memories and the comings and goings in our village by the waves.

  ____________

  1 Cornwall is the most westerly county in England, with the county of Devon its immediate neighbour to the east. Sticking out into the sea, it has the North Atlantic Ocean on its northern shores and the English Channel on its southern.

  2 The French had been traditional enemies and rivals of the English (and Cornish*) for many centuries.

  *Many Cornishmen (and women) saw – and see – Cornwall as separate to the rest of England.

  3 Not literally bread, of course. Fishing, trading and – in this instance – some rather illegal activities.

  4 The next in-land county.

  Most of our menfolk are fishermen or work the tin mines5 with the knockers6, but mining is seasonal work, so many miners turn their hands to other things when needs must. Then there are those amongst us who do not belong: the King’s men. These are the redcoats7 and the excisemen8 they support, who work for the Exchequer9. It is their job to make sure that everyone pays the duty – the tax on some of the cargo that comes in by sea. They are about as welcome here as an eel down a trouser-leg, especially as most of them are bullies and thieves and keep for themselves some of what they supposedly ‘rescue’ for the Crown.

  My Uncle Jonah explains it this way:

  “What should happen to, say, brandy, when it’s brought into the country is that the price of the brandy and the price of transporting should be added together and then a little added on top for the man who sells it, to earn his living.”

  No one can argue with that. That’s only fair!

  “But no. Rich men and governments like to tax happiness to make it harder for poor men to be as happy as they are. So items which makes people happy, such as that brandy or silks or sot-weed10, aren’t sold that way. No, the Government charges a duty – a tax – on top, when it comes into the country. So the Exchequer’s purse gets fuller than a glutton’s11 corporation12, at the expense of the working man.”

  My uncle’s right. ’Tis a proper disgrace, especially when duty is even charged on SALT13, which we all need to eat to stay alive!

  “These taxes are called customs and collected at the Customs Houses at the ports and harbours, but it’s a most unfair custom if you ask me! And, to top it all, there’s another tax called excises, collected to pay towards some war or other, long forgot or yet to come!

  “Now, this don’t seem fair and proper to some folk, so they try to sneak in such cargo under the noses of the greedy excisemen without them being aware. This way, the poorer folk get to enjoy their pleasures a little cheaper, see? And this is why such folk call themselves free-traders, but the excisemen don’t see it that way. They think of them as common criminals and call ’em smugglers. But condiddling14 it ain’t!”

  Uncle Jonah speaks the truth! It’s all very well for them stiff-rumps15, with their high-paid positions and fancy clothes. But what about us? Well, as for me, I’m proud to say I’m a smuggler’s daughter.

  By that, I mean my father is a smuggler. My mother was a lady – some might have called her a blue-stocking16 – a true and proper lady from a grand family in a grand home, and she taught me the reading and the writing, which few can do in Minnock, ’cept Squire Treppen, the priest, and a handful of officials with self-important titles, strutting around like birds who’ve had their fill of seed. Since she died, me and my sister Esme have been mothered by Eliza, my brother being grown17. Some see Eliza simply as a cinder-garbler18 but she’s acted as everything from housekeeper to friend.

  But don’t get me wrong. She’s not all sweetness and light. I once saw her take a belt to her own boy – also a grown man now – and give him a right clapperclawing.19

  My father’s name is Jon without the ‘h’, as was his father’s and his father’s before him, all the way back to when Jonah was livin’ in that whale20, or so my namesake uncle Jonah would have it. And by day, that is all that others call him. (No one ever calls my Uncle Jonah ‘Jon’ for short, for that would be far too confusing!)

  By night, however, the villagers go by different names and, in all my short life, I have never heard them mix the two. My father’s name by night is ‘Captain’, which shows just where he sits in the order of things: he’s the one to give the orders and none give them to he. He carriers a pair of poppers21, one on each hip, tucked inside his belt, all hid beneath that great long coat of his.

  My Uncle Jonah is ‘Patch’, and our nearest neighbour, Robert Treggan, ‘Goose’. The reasons for these names are less clear to me, but the reason for giving them is obvious: should a redcoat or exciseman hear them calling out to each other in the dark, when they are about their less lawful pursuits, their identities will not be revealed!

  ____________

  5 Mining began in Cornwall in the Bronze Age and reached its height in the nineteenth century.

  6 Mythical creatures, either pixie-like or souls of dead miners, heard knocking in other parts of the mine. Miners would often leave a small part of their pasty ‘for the knockers’. A Cornish pasty was – and is – cooked meat and vegetables in a folded pastry case. (Once they may have been savoury at one end and sweet at the other, for a complete meal down the tin mine.)

  7 Soldiers, who wore bright red uniforms. The whole idea of a uniform back then was to BE SEEN, not to act as camouflage.

  8 The excise men were in charge of ‘customs and excise’ – the taxes and tariffs people had to pay when importing certain goods.

  9 The Government’s funds.

  10 Eighteenth century slang for tobacco. You’ll find Kitty uses a LOT of slang in this diary!

  11 Greedy eater.

  12 Big, fat tummy.

  13 The word salary comes from the Latin word for salt, because Roman soldiers received some of their pay in salt, it was so vital.

  14 Stealing (More eighteenth century slang!).

  15 Haughty, stuck-up folk.

  16 A knowledgeable woman.

  17 A grown man: a grown-up.

  18 A female servant.

  19 Thrashing/beating.

  20 A story from the
Old Testament of the Bible.

  21 Flintlock pistols.

  Just got back from my uncle’s cottage over by Hangman’s Cove. There’d be no point in bringing in cargo to Minnock itself, where Mr Duggan, the exciseman with his offices on the harbour over at Fowle, can walk right down to the water’s edge and position his soldiers along the shoreline. No, my father and his companions need to bring in the tax-free, duty-free, excise-free goods into a cove, surrounded by craggy cliffs near impossible to climb down. And which any greedy, snooping exciseman imagines to be too steep and difficult for smugglers to climb up. Little do they know! They are as much in the dark as a blindfolded mole!22

  There is a cave down on the beach of Hangman’s Cove, its entrance well-hid by boulders, which has a passageway through the rocks which leads up to the clifftop, by which the smugglers come and go. This be ideal for moving contraband23 by moonlight!

  This is very different to Cawsand24, where I hear there are fifty free-trader boats taking regular trips to and from the Continent, as bold as brass and as bright as day!

  Today, however, there was nothing to see but a few seals.25 Come breeding-time, they’ll rest up on the beach but today, with winter come, I only glimpsed a few out at sea; their bobbing smooth-grey heads like floating cannonballs. But they looked at me and I looked at them and we each knew that this is where we all belong.

  ____________

  22 Moles aren’t completely blind, of course, just very short-sighted.

  23 Goods imported or exported illegally, without the payment of taxes.

  24 Cawsand was the regular haunt of well-known smuggler Harry Carter. Customs services reckoned that, in 1804 alone, over 17,000 kegs of spirit were landed there. That’s an average of over 46 kegs a DAY!

  25 Grey seals, dolphins, basking sharks and even minke whales can all be seen on certain parts of the Cornish coast.

  Hangman’s Cove got its name not from actual gallows where men were hanged. My father says in his grandfather’s day, there were two stone arches jutting out into the water, formed naturally by waves wearing away rock over thousands of years. They’ve long since crumbled and been washed away, leaving nothing but two stone pillars we calls the Stacks.26 But those arches reminded men of gallows and the hangman, and the name remains.

  Some folk still like attending a good hanging27. It’s a day out and chance to show and cheer and wave your fist, or clap and cheer and dance a jig, depending on who it is who’s dangling, of course. But I don’t like ’em when it’s one of our own, and steers well clear even if the others go to show support. Some men call hanging ‘going up the ladder to sleep’ to make it sound less dreadful. Perhaps they’re the ones who may be afeared that they’ll one day end up on the end of a rope themselves.

  Uncle Jonah makes light of it, saying we all end up in an eternity box,28 one way or another, and become the diet of worms! But I hope I die in my sleep aged 130, surrounded by my family29… not that I ever plan to marry and lose it all.30

  But there are some things we do at Minnock of which I’m NOT so proud, and last night was one of them.

  The wind was up and the windows rattled in their frames like my old Gran’s teeth. The gate to our scrawny patch of garden at the front banged on its broken hinge and destroyed all chance of sleep. The candle guttered by my bed then was snuffed out as if by an invisible thumb and finger.31 Tufts of marram grass32, that thick and scrawny grass that seems to thrive in the salt air, waved like anemones beneath the waves pulled by tidal waters. Then came the rain, lashing like the preacher’s righteous tongue. (When the Reverend Glass gets preaching, even St Peter and St Andrew33 – the saints in the stained-glass window – look guilty!)

  When the wind began howling, Sovereign began howling too. He’s a scrawny mutt but the best. He’s grey with black and white blotches or white with grey and black blotches. (Uncle Jonah and I cannot agree.) My dad won’t have a dog because the last thing he needs is a yelp or a bark to giveaway his whereabouts when moonraking.

  Moonraking is another name for free-trading, and gets its name from one of the ways we’ve fooled those foolish excisemen over the years.

  The story goes that there were a group of free-traders who hid their casks of smuggled brandy in the local village pond, dug deep to accommodate this hidden booty34. They did this at night, of course, to try to keep away from prying eyes. One night, however, when one of their number was pushing the final cask beneath the surface, an exciseman appeared like the Devil35, as if from nowhere, and demanded to know what he was at36.

  The exciseman was a right surly-boots37 who had little time for tilly-tally,38 so the smuggler knew that he must think quick! Seeing the full moon reflected in the pond and aware of the pole in his hand, he spoke as though he were a mopus.39

  He gave a toothy grin and tried to look as best he could like a village idiot40 of old.

  “I is tryin’ to catch that great silver coin, master,” he said, stabbing at the Moon’s round disk reflected on the water’s surface, causing it to turn to ripples, “but it’s ’arder than it looks.”

  The exciseman laughed at the fool. “You’re trying to rake the moon, you hanktelo41!” he roared. “Away with you!” and kicked him up the behind.

  But it was the exciseman himself who’d been hoodwinked.42 The brandy was under his money-seeking nose without his even knowing it! And the name moonraker stuck.

  My father needs to be able to slip in and out, hither and thither, as silently as a knife can gut a fish, and just as quick. Sovereign would be nothing but a hindrance at his side. When first he came to us, the pup was called Mutt. He is neither one breed nor the other but, on first meeting him, my Uncle Jonah picked him up and looked him square in the eye, declaring him to be one hundred percent Cornish. When I asked him how he could be so sure, he pronounced that it should be obvious to anyone who knows anything about dogs.

  “You can tell a dog’s intelligence by looking it in the eye,” he said, “and Mutt, here, is a very intelligent dog indeed.”

  “So he must be Cornish?”

  “That he must,” my uncle nodded.

  And he proved his intelligence and acquired his name43 when he made a precious find: a gold sovereign44 mixed amidst the flotsam and jetsam45 on the shore.

  “Only a Cornish dog could find you such a treasure,” Uncle Jonah declared. He reckons it was from a Spanish galleon46 or a pirate ship, but I’m not some little girl fool enough to believe such childish tales. And surely Spanish coinage is gold doubloons? But Mutt was a much praised dog that day, and Sovereign he became.

  There was no full moon last night as he howled along with the wind, the gate banged, the windows rattled, the rain lashed down, and my candle guttered. Then I heard the cries and, leaping from my bed and running to the window, I saw a cluster of men hurrying to our cottage, lanterns waving. The old navy man Jack Treviss was easy to spot amongst them, what with his being a go dot and carry!47 He had trouble keeping up with them, though, his peg-leg slowing him down.

  I sat at the top of the stairs and watched my big brother, Jago, open the door to Tom Tregowan, a man who looks slipperier than an eel at the best of times but was now soaked to the skin and gleaming by lamplight. His night-name be Flint.

  “We’re here to see the Captain,” he said, “There’s a ship in trouble out by Cannon’s Point.” His crooked teeth reminded me of the gravestones in our tiny cliff-top churchyard.

  “The Captain’s not here,” said Jago. He’s a full-grown man and a handsome one at that, with a few day’s growth of stubble on that square jaw of his. “Do you know the ship?”

  “It’s too difficult to identify in this weather. We can’t make out no name.”

  “Its colours?” asked my brother.48

  “French,” said Flint.

  “You’re sure?”

  “As days.49 Despite this weather so foul, I could make it out clear with the glass50.”

  “How low in the water?” asked Jago, for as to how low a vessel sat
was an indication of how heavy it was, and whether it was laden with cargo or returning home empty.

  “Low,” said Flint.

  There were mutterings of agreement from those behind him. “Mighty low.”

  “Do you think it might be one of our friends from the continent?” asked Jago. He meant those helping with the smuggling from Europe.

  “We need to speak with your father –” repeated Tom Tregowan.

  “Like I said, he’s not here,” said Jago. There was a certain menace in his voice, as though he was daring these older men to stand up to him. My brother can be quite a bully. I should know. When we were younger, he would frighten me with tales of standing stones51, or twist my arm to make my skin burn. “What would you ask him if he were here?” he demanded. “Do you want to know if we should light a beacon on the headland to warn them off the rocks?”

  “Too late for that,” said Jack Treviss, the old seaman with the wooden leg, still panting to catch his breath.

  “Then what?” said Jago.

  Sovereign, who had been sitting by the fire, came over to see what all the excitement was about, sniffing at the men’s feet. Jago put his boot under the dog and flipped him out of the way. It wasn’t exactly a kick, but it took all of my strength not to run downstairs and kick HIM. But that would give away my presence, so I bit my lip and stayed where I was on the stairs.

  “What to do, Jago,” said Jack Treviss. “We came to ask the captain what to do.”

  “It’s just that if these Frenchmen ain’t no friends of ours...” said another man.

  “And they’re weighed down with cargo…” added yet another.

  “We’re all men of the sea,” said Jago. “I say we rescue them, but quietly, like, so as not to attract attention… and if we was to rescue their cargo too and were to look after it as if it were our own, then all the better!” He grinned a handsome grin and no one misunderstood his meaning. “I say we get down there at once. All this talk and the ship could already be stranded and its cargo waiting to be claimed!”