The Shipwreck Cannibals: Captain John Deane and the Boon Island Flesh Eating Scandal by Adam Nightingale

Author:Adam Nightingale [Nightingale, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Great Britain, 18th Century, Maritime
ISBN: 978-0750951821
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-09-19T16:00:00+00:00

As a political double act, Walpole and Townsend complemented one another. Walpole was shrewd but could be abrasive and ruthless. He was hated by his enemies and was not always liked by his allies. Although he could be imperious, Townsend was the softer of the two men, better liked, more affable and an important tempering influence to Walpole’s sharper edges. Many filial bonds held Walpole and Townsend together in this, the golden age of their professional partnership. But both men were equally united in fear of a great mutual enemy: Jacobitism.

In 1668 the English king, James II, had converted to Catholicism. His change of faith was initially tolerated. But for what remained of his reign the king set about what was perceived to be an incremental catholicising of the country as laws were challenged and Catholics were appointed to key government positions. The king, from his perspective, was simply trying to create a level playing field where Catholic and Protestant had equal status under the law. But the king’s incrementalism soon gave way to a force-feeding of pro-Catholic reform that turned his own people against him. The king unwittingly created an open door for the Dutch Protestant monarch William of Orange to sail up the Thames and take the English throne without a shot being fired in protest by James II’s own army and navy.

The transition was not without deferred bloodshed. There were followers of James on British soil who were willing to take up arms. They were called Jacobites after ‘Jacobus’, the Latin translation of the name James. There would be a Jacobite rebellion in 1715 that was not fully suppressed until the following year.

James II was still alive and resided in France. He had the sympathy of Catholic Europe and a core of loyal exiles who dreamed of invasion and a second restoration of the Stuart monarchy. And when James II died that core of loyalty transferred to his son, who was called the ‘Pretender’ by his enemies and James III by the faithful.

Walpole and Townsend were ever alert to the prospect of Stuart plots and conspiracies, the worst manifestation of which would be a foreign-backed Jacobite invasion of Great Britain. Walpole and Townsend had their spies dotted throughout Europe, but Russia was something of a blind spot. And Russia was becoming a concern since the death of Peter the Great. There were disquieting rumours that the Jacobites were gathering strength and influence in the court of the new Russian monarch. Experienced eyes and ears were needed in St Petersburg.

Despite the relatively benign presence of Admiral Norris’ squadron in the Baltic during the Great Northern War, as the conflict between Russia and Sweden had come to be known, George I and Peter the Great despised one another. When the war began, relations between the British and the Russians had been cordial. William and Mary reigned in England. William had even made a present of a yacht to the young tsar. But Peter the Great had little love for the House of Hanover as it replaced the House of Orange on the throne of Great Britain.

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