Good day to you my friends.

My interest in the events that became the saga of the Dangerous Chimes of Goldcaster was first aroused some years ago when I was browsing in the Stacks of the London Library and inadvertently nudged a copy of Wainwright’s guide to the Western Fells off a shelf to tumble to the floor at my feet. A rather pedantic, disapproving, elderly, gentlemen grunted loudly and scowled at me. “Sorry!” I whispered and got a dismissive shake of the head in response. I bent down to retrieve the volume and as I gripped it a somewhat tattered yellowing newspaper cutting fell out. I quickly snatched it up, and was pleased to see that my fellow scholar had not noticed what had happened. I stashed my find within my folder of working notes, continued my browsing, and very naughtily left the library without mentioning my discovery. (You will be reassured to learn that when I had copied the cutting at home I later returned it.)

The cutting was rather ragged and had evidently been carelessly torn from the newspaper. It consisted only of a headline and a few lines wide beneath:

The Fartledale Post and Intelligencer 28th September 1783

Pirates Attack Cumberland Town!

Terrible Scenes at Goldcaster Harbour

Children Kidnapped and Town Stormed

Populace flee to the forest Church Plundered

Doctor Johnson and Mr Boswell feared missing

Rumours of Witchcraft Returning to the North

Fears of hurricanes and floods…

From then on I became almost obsessed with the study of the events and those involved in this intriguing chapter of eighteenth century history.

But now let us to slip away to the west coast of what then was simply Cumberland, just over two hundred years ago…

A few miles south of Goldcaster, on an island two miles from the mainland, a rather odd couple sat in the early evening sunshine on a bench outside a hut.

‘You are surprised to see me in a good humour sir?’

‘Indeed I am. You appear uncommonly sanguine sir. We have been most cruelly kidnapped, and how a ransom is to be obtained for us and our safe deliverance engineered I know not.

‘But we are fortunate, are we not, in that the Captain determined on that course of action and so saved our lives. That ill favoured Quartermaster Speke would have slit our throats.’

‘But we are now here marooned, a situation as desperate as any in either of our lives.’

‘Forgive me sir, but you forget that I have starved in a garret for want of promised patronage. I have been stranded in salons of shallow women, beset by fools and unable with honour to escape without giving offence, and I, when alone and without support, have endured poor Goldsmith in full flood of verbiage for hour upon hour on days when his brain has been apparently untenanted. Sir, I am familiar with desperate situations.’

‘But here we might die.’

‘But my dear friend, we must die somewhere must we not? And here will do as well as any other place. The prospect is most pleasant, rich farmland and grand mountains on the mainland to the east, the lowering sun on the silver sea to the west. We have each other’s company and if I am to expire I shall be content for you to see me off. I would have liked to bid farewell to all of my acquaintance, but at least they will be spared the duty of bidding farewell to me. And we may not die just yet. We have adequate victuals, we have fresh well water, we have dry lodgings.’

‘But sir, our captors will return from wherever they are bound and take us off.’

‘That was their expressed intention sir, but we know not where they are bound nor what their immediate aims are. And Sir Jasper was surprised and concerned to learn from us about the naval initiative and so may simply abandon us. But there are other considerations to raise our spirits.’

‘What considerations pray?’

‘Those contributing towards the possibility of escape. Look to the south east. What see you?’

‘Why… far, far off I see a sail. But do not raise your hopes upon that vessel, I beseech you. We have no means of attracting their attention and they are undoubtedly bound from one harbour to another, with no occasion to visit this or any other island.’

‘I assure you sir that I would have shared your reasoning, had I not been studying that sail for the past quarter of an hour with the consequence that my contentment has increased in direct proportion to the growth of your melancholy bewilderment at my condition. When first I spied that sail it was but the tiniest of triangulations. It has grown larger and yet larger. The deduction is undeniable – that boat is heading this way. And what do you see when you look about you within our intended abode? Why, you see a wood burning stove with recent ash; you see iron cooking pans, pewter flagons, and wooden plates; you see creels and lobster pots and line and netting, not decayed, not detritus, but much of it in fair, much in very good condition. This, sir, is a fisherman’s hut, and if I mistake not fishermen approach. Hence my good humour. Hope is one thing sir, the strongest of probabilities is another.’

Thank you for sharing with me these moments with Doctor Johnson and James Boswell. Next week we shall consider what I found during my research about their adventure.

Author of Dangerous Chimes, read more about Michael Macauley over here.

With Michael Macauley and friends

Well hello, and a very warm welcome to you as you join me in my ponderings and peregrinations and the willing suspension of disbelief. Yes, occasionally you will accompany me through a hole in the fabric of history to enter a past world of wonder, drama, piracy, laughter, mystery, the occult, witchcraft, betrayal, revenge, incongruity, time travel, and sudden death, (well, not always all that sudden, what with the crows…)

Who am I? Michael Macauley I’m called, a well worn (but still standing) humble wordsmith and imagineer. My purpose with these weekly missives is to entertain you, provide you with a momentary escape from this world too full of weeping, regale you with some of the delights and dangers of the late eighteenth century, and introduce you gently to the   colourful cast of ‘Dangerous Chimes’, our tale of the events in the town of Goldcaster and the valley of Summerdale when the pirates came calling in September 1783.

I shall enjoy sharing with you brief extracts from the book and from other work already in progress, and offer up some anecdotes that may be of interest to such a well presented and intelligent audience. More will be revealed each week, subject to global warming catastrophes, government collapse, or perhaps official assassination, given the expression of some of my views in certain quarters…)

I post to you today from Tadger’s End Farm, a favourite Macauley family destination which is set in a delightful hamlet at Henchman’s Creek on the River Swyve estuary in the valley of Hunters Combe in Devon. This picturesque spot was named after the pirate captain Black Jack Tadger, who was extracted from his ill-gotten retirement here to hang for three tides at Execution Dock in Wapping, clad in chains covered in sewage infested seaweed and crawling with hungry crabs. Not the best way to go…’

This Jacobean farmhouse is the home of my cantankerous friend, Aldric Pendragon, and his inaptly named but devoted Irish servant, Francis Phineas Flattery. Here also are to be found the two cats, Mrs.Tanquery (a cat with an interestingly raunchy past) and the Suffragen Bishop of Birmingham (so called because he is riddled with righteousness to an episcopalian degree. Keeping order in the environs are Aldric’s protective geese, Dagda, Morrigan, and High Anxiety.

At our three storey principal abode, christened by my offspring, ‘Macauley Towers’, I have the undaunted support of the ‘Management’, my long suffering wife, and occasionally am also assisted by my sometime Adjutant and Aide de Camp, Captain Mac, who only looks rather sinister on particularly angst filled days… But we humans are but staff existing to serve the feline head of our residence, Mr Tibbs, the Guv’nor, a master of the purring demand, friendly enough, but rather over determined when it comes to ensuring that everyone knows who is really in charge. Mr Tibbs regards any current working file as the spot on which to best place himself so as to supervise and participate in any paperwork.

Today allow me also to introduce you to Dangerous Chimes, an only recently recorded episode in the life and adventures of Jasper de Quincey Scabbard, Knight Baronet, Pirate, and Captain of the heavily armed brigantine, the Black Leopard.

With the American War of Independence concluded life as a pirate is becoming increasingly difficult for Jasper as British and French fleets are more effectively protecting their shipping and territories. Now an English squadron is scouring the seas for those of Jasper’s profession and his name is high on their hit list.

With buccaneering opportunities few, and determined to avoid capture and execution and save his crew, Sir Jasper has selected what he believes to be a rich and easy target to provide sufficient plunder to round off his career.  A normally shrewd strategist and tactician, and an extremely intelligent and rational representative of the Age of Enlightenment, he ignores talk of superstitions and witchcraft in his research. And so, sadly for you Sir J., this project is not going to be quite the walkover you had hoped for…

Summerdale is a remote valley of complacent contentment lying between the sea and the mountains in the north west of England. It mainly consists of lush farmland bounded by woods with the unremittingly quaint small harbour town of Goldcaster nestling under the hills. But the only outside contact is by difficult journey to the south through dense forest. Before help can arrive Jasper thinks he has time to sack the town, plunder the  settlements in the valley, and capture the five gold covered bells from the church of St. Jocelyn Without.

His plan is to melt off the gold in the town forge, cast it into ingots, and so secure the future for himself and his men.  Besides his eccentric crew, which includes the Quartermaster Luther Speke (who has his own agenda), Scabbard has an aged parrot, Tantamount, who has an inexhaustible fund of apt and often disconcerting quotations.

But as the ship is bearing its ominous crew ever nearer to their target some of those aboard have doubts about the venture and are worried about rumoured possible paranormal problems in the area, and the First Mate Rathbone would sooner be heading for the Caribbean flesh pots.

Meanwhile, in Goldcaster Town seventeen year old Elisabeth Jane Trundle is yearning for a more interesting life. She is about to get one…

Thank you for joining me today. Next week we shall be examining an interesting eighteenth century newspaper cutting and find Samuel Johnson and James Boswell in apparently dire straits. I look forward to your company.

Author of Dangerous Chimes, read more about Michael Macauley over here.