To the visitor, before entering, a note of caution. This tour is entangled, do not proceed if you are looking for a path toward unsolved questions contained within the sand and rocks. This is an assemblage of facts and folklore; please move laterally through time and place. The best way of accessing this work is through a computer or laptop instead of a smartphone. All references are acknowledged in the bibliography.
Rapparee is constructed from a constellation of causal connections, where history and matter collide to create a point of focus. This place becomes a network of interrelations, connecting through time from the past into the future. But at each iteration, some information is lost or distorted. Rapparee is conscious of itself. It offers up its guts to the inquisitor, but like the Bristol Channel, the silt mesmerises and confuses all attempts at defining truths. Information stored in the cove is true-evident-real and memory-anecdotal-fiction, but all links to a wider world. This network of interrelations forms the basis of my investigation, where all narrative strands converge, moving from traces to an actuality.
The London foundered on the rocks of Rapparee on the 9th of October 1796. Casualties were upwards of 70, including over 40 black soldiers (prisoners) and 40 of the London’s crew. The North Devon Journal reported the following witness account on February 28th 1856.
The anecdotal accounts from Captain John Chiswell, a resident of Ilfracombe and rescuer on the pilot gig boat that night, told the local paper of what he encountered when making his way out to the sinking ship, saving as many of the people on board as he could. However, Rapparee cove contains the traces of an earlier wreck that adds to the interference of the site.
The Ballast, so enticing, a possible material connection! I want to believe that this is the yellow flint contained within the depths of the ship, holding it in place on the water to end up a remnant held forever in the cove. A possible truth is this evidence in exchange for gold?
We know that the London was coming from St. Lucia and was lost near Ilfracombe. Names leap out from the record along this coastline, the bunching of activity around 1796, HERCULES, CONCORDIA, CHARLOTTE, LA VENTURA, LONDON – all stranded and a total loss.
Making a mark, a way of drawing, connecting with the site, a locator.
An official letter. Politics intervenes to announce ‘the purpose of treating for the re-establishment of peace’ between the British and Napoleon during the French Revolutionary Wars. A convoy of 103 vessels, almost certainly the London was part of this transport fleet.
HMS Ganges of 74 Guns no doubt leading the fleet. A sobering moment, the first evidence of the cargo, 3000 prisoners of war, black men ‘with two black Generals’. Who were these lost souls, did any survive, were the black people prisoners of war or slaves?
HMS Ganges at ‘Spithead’, another clue making the essence of the London feel real.
The remains of a grave on Rapparee beach are all that is left from the storm of 1997. The circumstances of this grave are difficult to pin down and feel entwined with the name. Dates and folklore rebound to confuse and make errors.
An Irish weapon called a ‘rápaire’ meaning ‘short pike’, or an outlaw and the connection to the cove – Rapparee meaning Irish rebel, the trail runs through the woods to Combe Martin and the ‘Hunting of the Earl of Rone’. Pagan rituals and Irish folklore from further back in time to the Nine Years War and the ‘Flight of the Earls’ in 1607. Did an earlier ship become lost at Rapparee, the Earls fleeing Ireland to end as outlaws, hunted?
Ireland – England – France – Italy, history shows that Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone was buried in Rome on 20th July 1616, folklore takes over.
I return to the memorial. A commitment to the evidence gathered, debates on all sides, who were they, how many died, what are the findings from the remains.
I think back to the convoy of The Ganges, a powerful marker in history, ships constantly moving, the channel an artery, connecting.
The mouth of the cove, the Bristol Channel, a funnel of geological formations, sucking inwards.
Who were the survivors of the London, we know there were some from Captain Chiswell.
This record, evidence of a prisoner exchange at Stapleton Prison in 1797 and 1798. Further investigation is required in Bristol and Kew. The descriptions are shocking, Prisoners of War registered as Slaves, making real the time that these people from the West Indies and Africa found themselves in, washed up, confined, as part of the mechanisms of war.
Gold coins, a disembodied bounty, nothing remains under the shoreline. The survivors of the London are transferred to the Admiralty Prison, Stapleton near Bristol, an account reveals more insight into who the inmates were.
An actuality, a moment, a pause between the rocks, matter fragments and is held.
Another wreck, 105 years earlier, an unnamed vessel, in 1691 from Cork in Ireland destined for Brest in France, containing Irish Soldiers ‘rapparees’ from the Jacobite Army, in the ‘Flight of The Wild Geese’, not to be confused with the ‘Flight of the Earls’, reports suggest 160 soldiers drowned with only three survivors, the folklore spreads to Combe Martin and ‘The Hunting of the Earl of Rone’. Two different pieces of history, both from Ireland, both mixed and confused through folklore.
A vessel, visceral, real.
Everything about the remnants of the grave and surrounding area feels wrong, it is a collection of fragmented structures, a shelter, a fracture of stones to cover the dead, a space laid bare, a stage_
Phillip Henry Gosse explores the Devon coast in 1853, he notices the same yellow flint stones ‘as strangers’ to the coastline and makes a connection to the London. His interest as a naturalist captures the morphology of marine life, living creatures feeding off the Bristol Channel.
Markers in history lead to an understanding that this cove holds the material information of many dead souls from Ireland, the West Indies and the local inhabitants. The complexity and significance of Rapparee shine a light on the struggle of these peoples across the world. The plight of the Irish through the Nine Years War and the Jacobite War in Ireland. Of the Black Prisoners and their fight for freedom from slavery in St Lucia during the French Revolutionary Wars. An assemblage of connections to this site, a vital material marker for understanding the diaspora and my relationship to it from Rapparee.
