Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Jersey by Glynis Cooper

Author:Glynis Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783035496
Publisher: Wharncliffe
Published: 2013-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

George III’s dilemma however was that the privateers were out of control and Letters of Marque were a recipe open to widely differing interpretations. The king had his own problems as well in that he had developed a serious medical condition which appeared to rob him of his sanity and for much of the latter part of his reign his eldest son, who was to become George IV, acted as Regent. Modern doctors believe that George III suffered from an aversion to sunlight. The doctors of the time, however, not realising this, recommended that the king take as much fresh air and sunshine as possible which simply made his condition worse.

Meanwhile, this left the privateers to do pretty much as they pleased. In 1778, twenty Jersey privateers took shipping and goods worth £343,500 sterling (worth around £17,175,000 sterling at today’s values). The following year six privateers took £270,000 sterling (worth £13,500,000 sterling at today’s values); and three years after that in 1782 just five privateers scooped pickings of £156,000 sterling (worth around £10,550,000 sterling at today’s values). The French suffered particularly badly and the Governor of Cherbourg remarked rather desperately that ‘... these islands [Channel Islands] are the despair of France ... through their remarkably active privateers ...’

The amount of money brought into the Bailiwick through privateering activities was phenomenal. Many fine houses were built on the island during the privateering era, characterised by the architectural style of five windows across the top storey and two windows on either side of the front door, making a total of nine windows. It was big business and the finance industry eighteenth century style. In retrospect the Bailiwick was lucky that the legitimately aggrieved nations (i.e. the non enemies of the English Crown) such as the Dutch, the Danish and the Ottoman Empire, did not declare war on Jersey as the Dutch had threatened to do in the Isles of Silly during the Civil War. If that had happened the Channel Islands might have forfeited the medieval privileges granted by King John which they enjoy to this day.

There was, however, a price to pay. The French fought back, bravely and bitterly, and the cost to Jersey was the loss of two thirds of her shipping. For Jersey the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 effectively signalled the end of the island’s privateering era. Privateering was eventually officially abolished in 1856 by international agreement, but many innocent foreign merchants and businessmen from countries friendly to England, and even from England herself, had been ruined by the avaricious greed, and sometimes by the lack of conscience, on the part of those privateers who would sell the ship’s crew or pressgang them into service on ships belonging to the mother country of the privateers; neither of which they were legally permitted to do. Much of the time privateering was little better than a semi-legalised form of pirating which had long been an unofficial profession in the Channel Islands.

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