DEVON’S PIRATE ISLAND

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLVI, Issue 10684, 30 December 1925, Page 5

DEVON’S PIRATE ISLAND

HISTORY AND BEAUTIES OF LUNDY. Charles Kingsley’s “Westward Ho!” and the wreck of H.M.S. Montague in 1906 made the name of Lundy Island known to the world, but save sailormen who use the Bristol Channel and a. few excursionists from Ilfracombe, there are not many people who have set foot upon this, one of the most romantic of British Isles. For Lundy looming dim and mysterious 12 miles from, the nearest point of the North Devon coast, has a history resembling that of some island of the Spanish Main. At this day “Lundy is supposed to be duty free,” Mr Lewis R. W. Lloyd says in his recently published “Lundy: Its History and Natural History” “There is no licensing laws on the island, no dog or gun licenses. . And', it is to be assumed, no income tax.

Lundy is, and always has been, a place unto itself, cropping up every now and again for public notice. Its earliest recorded history dates from the 12th century, when the rebellious “Do Mansco” held the island. There are remains of Marisco Castle there now. In this castle in the mid-eighteenth century one Thomas Benson used to incarcerate numbers of convicts, who were, in fact, his slaves. For Benson had contracted with the British Government to transport criminals to the Maryland and Virginian plantations. Instead he shipped them from Bristol to Lundy, and employed the men on his own works in that island. Benson carried, on with a high hand while he owned Lundy, demanding a salute from ships that passed by, and on occasions firing in remonstrance at those who neglected the courtesy. He subsequently got into trouble for smuggling, piracy, and eventually attempting fraudulently to draw insurance money upon the cargo of his ship, a cargo which had been safely stowed away m Lundy before he caused the vessel to be scuttled. But he was only one of the many who used Lundy as a piratical base m the had old days. A hundred years before his time Turkish pirates toOk the island and threatened the Devon coast. In 1632 Lundy became the headquarters of a notorious buccaneer, Captain Robert Nutt, whose ghostly vessel is still said to haunt the island. __ Sss®^" -