Torquay is no exception. A first glance says sleepy hollow town spread lazily over seven. Devon hills. But the Riviera railway station is a great open portal at one.
Dropping Keys Travel Writing from the English Riviera
"The small man Builds cages for everyone He knows. While the sage, Who has to duck his head When the moon is low, Keeps dropping keys all night long For the beautiful rowdy prisoners." Hafez, 14th century poet.
EVEN the most glamorous seaside towns reveal their mysteries in the winter months. Torquay is no exception. A first glance says sleepy hollow town spread lazily over seven Devon hills. But the Riviera railway station is a great open portal at one end of the town and the marina is a gateway to the continent at the other. A town hidden in plain sight. Thanks to the Great Western Railway you can slip away from the office in London at five o'clock and be stepping through that portal, just in time for supper at Torquay's Grand Hotel. When the moon is low over Hope's Nose, and as silvery white as the palladium in Devon's limestone rocks, that is the time to start an adventure on the English Riviera.
Palladium was discovered at the end of 1802, and at the same time Napoleon Bonaparte was beginning his great imperial decade in Europe. In Bercy, outside the tax walls of Paris, but still close to the river Seine for easy shipping, Emmanuel Courvoisier had just set up shop to sell Courvoisier, Le Cognac de Napoléon. In 1811 Napoleon visited the brandy warehouses in Bercy and, whilst enjoying a tasting, placed a secret and very special order. 300 barrels of cognac to be delivered to, and at this point, his aide de camp unrolled Donn's 1765 survey map of
Britain's south coast showing the Cshaped bay of Tor. Bottles, glasses and corks were arranged to hold open the map whilst the emperor selected a spot. And it was a spot, a stain, une tache de cognac on the map.
'Quel bon pays !' he exclaimed, and went on to give very precise instructions on the construction of the barrels for the sea voyage to his aide, the very young, Tasque Gers. This barrel size, the half-anker, holds a little over four gallons of brandy thus making it reasonably portable. The half-anker was the preferred barrel of Devon smugglers. Devon cabinet makers could add a hidden, lockable compartment at either end of the barrel for contraband. And at number 16, The Strand, on Torquay's harbour front, a very skilled, and successful Upholsterers and CabinetMakers had moved into glamorous, brick-faced premises in 1805. The building still stands out today, a lesson in Regency exuberance, occupied by Pizza Express on the ground floor.
Two hundred year old French white oak (quercus petraea) provides a fine grained wood that remains watertight, secure and, incidentally, contributes 'aromatic components like vanillin and its derivatives, methyl-octalactone and tannins, as well as phenols and volatile aldehydes' as Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia tells us. When we sip a
cognac we are tasting the oak forests of Enlightenment Europe.
Tasque Gers, 'Call me Tasker', as he would say to help native English speakers, arrived on the western or seaward-side of Thatcher Rock with Napoleon's ransom. His task was to unlock the compartments from just 100 of the barrels and fill the void with a new alloy of silver and palladium. At today's prices the total value of this new precious metal hidden in the casks would fetch £600 million. Tasker then went to ground for 4 long years on the Strand. He was ready for the eventuality, should it ever happen, of Napoleon's capture. That moment came, and the mighty emperor is described here in a scene taken straight from Octavian Blewitt's A Panorama of Torquay from 1832:
"During his sojourn, presents of fruit were sent on board from the Tor Abbey Gardens; and these generous attentions of an English gentleman, whose estates were often menaced by his invading fleet were fully appreciated by the fallen Emperor. The Bellerophon, Capt. Maitland, having Napoleon on board, anchored in Torbay on Monday the 24th July 1815, and early in the morning of the following Wednesday, sailed for Plymouth."
A sleight of hand was now necessary for the emperor to have his ransom paid and effect his escape. Two hundred barrels were loaded onto the ship to sweeten the voyage and to keep him in Courvoisier on St Helena. Then, as a gift to Tor Quay one hundred of the barrels were sent ashore in gratitude for the gifts of fresh fruit the people of Devon had sent to the defeated leader. The Hole in the Wall, at 6, Park Lane, very kindly offered to host many of the half-ankers. A condition was attached. The casks must be
emptied before the return of the Bellerophon from Plymouth and refilled with water from the good river Dart, which, as Alice Oswald reminds us, is an old Devonian word for oak. Thence to be re-loaded as drinking water for the voyage. Tasker was told he had a fortnight, a strange English word he did not fully understand. Blewitt takes up the story from that point, describing how on Sunday 6th August the vessel returned from Plymouth to stand in the bay off Torquay. However, at noon on the Monday Bonaparte's party was hurriedly transferred from the Bellerophon. They were taken further out into Tor Bay and south towards Brixham Quay, onto the vessel that was to transport him into exile, the Northumberland. Blewitt paints a pretty picture of the English Riviera, no doubt a Riviera fuelled by fourteen days of volatile aldehydes and methyl-octalactone: "Napoleon was frequently seen through the garter-ports and gangway of the Bellerophon, as he promenaded the deck, dressed in the uniform of the imperial guard; and the ship was daily surrounded by vessels, yachts and boats of every description, full of persons from all parts of the coast, anxious to behold the Hero of modern Europe."
Alas, the crowds foiled Tasker. Over the last two weeks, as the town revelled, Tasker rowed the waterfilled barrels to that tiny stain of an island in the bay, then re-loaded with the more precious substitute, hidden from the town's view. Now he waited anxiously for the 'yachts and boats of every description' to make for the quay, to leave him invisible again. The rapid transfer of Napoleon further out onto the Northumberland proved too much, and, as the sails of the more distant warship filled for St Helena, Tasker began the back-breaking job of unloading the palladium and hiding it on the seaward-side of the island. Chroniclers, like Blewitt, were none
the wiser. Tasker's treasure lay as an unrecorded mystery on La Tache, which locals began to call Thatcher. Even today Torquay remains unaware of its riches. It seems like the end of the story but it is not.
The first to benefit from the Emperor's ransom were American and French prisoners of war released from Dartmoor prison in April 1815 but unable to fund their voyage home… Charlie Mansfield, Devon, May 2014 Mansfield, C (2014) Dropping Keys: Travel Writing from the English Riviera, Plymouth. TKT. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.4348.2727
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Donn's 1765 Map is online at https://goo.gl/XY5Y4j
