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January 1748 – Ten Days of Mayhem on the Chesil

On the 17th of April 1747 the ship Hope set sail from Amsterdam for Curacao, then belonging to the Dutch. She would sail on to the Spanish Main to sell her cargo to the Spaniards, who, because of the war with England, were in some distress in the American provinces. In command of the ship was Captain Boon Corneliz, who had at his disposal a crew of 73 men and 30 guns, although on the outward voyage only 21 guns were mounted ready for action against pirates or the English Navy, should they seek to engage. The ship was owned by the Dutch merchant firm Hendrick Hogenberg and Co, who had loaded the ship with cloth and bale goods.

Business done and nearing the end of her voyage home the Hope of Amsterdam was off Portland on the 16th of January 1748, having sailed through storms and tempestuous seas the previous fourteen days. All 30 of the ships guns were mounted, perhaps because the cargo of gold, jewels and other valuable commodities it was bringing home was, by the most conservative estimate, worth at least £50,000. Its guns would have been sufficient to fight off any attacks from pirates but against the elements they were no help and off Portland that night Captain Corneliz and his crew needed all the help they could get.
 
No light was visible from the Portland lighthouse, perhaps because of the mist or possibly due to the neglect of duty by those responsible. It was about one or two o’clock in the morning and very dark when the Hope ran ashore on the Chesil beach. When she struck land the mast fell with the force of impact, the ship shattered into three parts. The upper deck was thrown upon a ridge of pebbles and the cabin was buried in the sands; the hull was never found and was thought to have rolled back into the sea. Amazingly, all of the men aboard got safely to the shore.

Word of what had happened quickly spread. A mob soon flocked on to the Chesil from the adjacent villages and from all parts of Dorset and the neighbouring counties. The men of Portland, Wyke and Weymouth were first on the scene and seem to have had a well rehearsed drill for dealing with these events. They formed themselves into a body with colours to secure the goods that floated along the coast. They split into groups of 20, which united as necessary under a leader. A report written latter suggests there were between three and four thousand local men employed in this endeavour and as others arrived from farther afield the numbers on the beach swelled to several thousand.

For ten days the mob held the beach. One report described “a scene of unheard of riot, violence and barbarity.” Another report described the scene thus: “a crowd swarmed about the water’s edge grubbing for gold, tearing up the shingle with their bare nails, fighting over gleaming coins like starved wolves.”

On January 18th the crew set-off for Holland, except for the Captain, his First-mate and another officer. The Captain was forced to leave the beach; the officers of Customs and the Justice of the Peace officers were overawed by the mob that carried on digging and turning-up the beach. On January 20th several bags of money were found six feet under the pebbles.

After ten days three neighbouring Justices of the Peace with a body of armed men dispersed the mob. An inquiry was held and the authorities set about tracing the possessors of the plundered goods, who were compelled to hand over to the agent of the ship’s owners gold, jewellery and other goods with a value of between 25 and 30,000 pounds. They were allowed something for salvage rights.

Some men were committed to prison and two men appeared before Judge Baron Heneage Legge at the assizes in Dorchester on July 15th 1749, to answer for their actions but they were acquitted. The jury accepted their rather far fetched claim that the Dutch were pirates who had argued amongst themselves over the division of their bounty and then deliberately ran the ship on shore and deserted her for fear of being taken and punished. The two argued that the Dutch had taken the goods from the Spaniards, who had bought and paid for them; thus they maintained it was lawful to plunder pirates. The jury also took into account that only two men were before them when all manner of disorders were committed by many of the reported several thousand men who were on the beach for those ten lawless days and nights.

At the time there were stories of men with “bulging pockets” being robbed and strangled on the beach but there is nothing to confirm this. Men did die on the beach but from the affects of the extreme cold aggravated by high winds.

There are modern day examples of similar occurrences. In 2007 the Napoli, on a voyage from Belgium to Portugal, ran aground off the Devon coast. Several containers loaded with consumer goods floated ashore. Hundreds of people flocked to the scene to see what they could get, some leaving with BMW motorcycles worth thousands. The authorities had to point out that people removing goods and not properly declaring them risked fines of up to £2,500 but this did not deter many people intent on seeing what they could get their hands on.

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