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Piracy, Smuggling and Antiheroes

John Mead Falkner, the author of Moonfleet, owes a lot to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, published 15 years earlier, in 1883. Stevenson’s story is about pirates in search of gold on the high seas, while Falkner’s is a tale of smugglers striving to make their fortune from contraband on the English south coast. The two books share a similar theme of antiheroes doing their best to earn a living as outlaws, at a time when the stakes were high and capture resulted in capital punishment. Additionally, both novels are essentially children’s adventure stories.

Daphne du Maurier wrote a similarly themed novel in 1936, titled Jamaica Inn, based in Cornwall. In her story, the protagonists are wreckers. They make a living stealing the cargoes of ships that run aground on the English coast, after luring passing ships onto the rocks using lamps to imitate lighthouses and then killing any surviving seamen to avoid being identified. The first novel of Samual Rutherford Crocket, entitled The Raiders (1894), has a similar trope and is based in Galloway, Scotland. There is also The Smuggler (1845), by English novelist George Payne Rainsford James. Prosper Mérimée’s novel of the same year, Carmen, is also about smuggling; this time set in Spain. It was famously turned into an opera by the French composer Georges Bizet and librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy.

As well as such literary influences, Falkner would have been inspired by true stories of smuggling along the English south coast. The motive behind smuggling was to avoid the revenue collected by the government, which was very high on certain goods. A profit could be made by purchasing goods in France and selling them on in England. The goods in question included tobacco, tea and various spirits, such as rum, gin and brandy. The revenue mark-up could be as much as six times the source cost, which is why smuggling was such a lucrative venture and punishment was severe.

Smuggling, wrecking and piracy were big business in places where the coast was difficult to patrol, enabling the perpetrators to go about their activities relatively risk free. The south coast was suitably rugged in places and faced France, making it useful for these clandestine careers. Smuggling became a problem as soon as governments began charging import duties. In England, this happened during the reign of King Edward I, in 1275. A customs-collection system was established and immediately people saw the fiscal benefit of smuggling those goods that were taxed the most.

Smuggling became part of English culture, not least because the authorities were never able to get the upper hand. The smugglers themselves were perceived as rather daring and brave ‘Robin Hood’ characters, because they were able to provide goods to the poor at reduced prices. Although they were roguish types, they were often protected by the general public, making it almost impossible for the government to deal with them. Some smugglers entered into English folklore, such was their infamy.

After 500 years, things reached a head when a battle was fought between a gang of smugglers and members of customs and excise at the town of Christchurch, on the Dorset coast. The Battle of Mudeford (1784), as it became known, was a conflict that saw the death of one of the customs officers. A smuggler named George Coombes was subsequently tried and hanged for murder. His body was chained up outside the local ale house, the Haven Inn, as a warning about the consequences of smuggling.

The Battle of Mudeford captured the public imagination, causing smuggling to be seen as both romantic and legendary. By the time Falkner was writing his novel, smuggling was in decline, which only served to mythologize it further. The smuggler had become an antihero in industrial Victorian England, not least because smuggling harked back to a pre-industrial era in which people were imagined to have lived with less social oppression. That Victorian longing for psychological freedom generated a ready market for stories about characters living their lives to the full. That is to say, their choices may have been high risk and illegal, but that also made for excitement and spontaneity.

About the Author

Falkner was something of a polymath and Renaissance man, and it would be fair to say that he dabbled in writing, rather than seeing it as a his calling or career. He was a rather successful businessman in later life and had formerly been a school master and private tutor. By 1915, during World War I, he had become chairman of Armstrong Whitworth, a leading armaments manufacturer. Moonfleet was the second of his three novels spanning an eight-year period, after which business work dominated his life. He did apparently write the greater part of a fourth novel, but he accidently left the draft on a train and never bothered with a rewrite. Falkner made several visits to the city of Bath, in southwest England, during his old age for the purpose of treating his ailments. He was so enamoured of the place that he wrote a book about Bath in 1918.

Falkner was a very tall man. At six foot nine inches, he had an imposing presence, which undoubtedly served him well in business. He was also the eldest son in his family and had a keen intellect, so he possessed an air of confidence that made him expect success at whatever he chose to pursue. He earned enough money in his early adulthood to put his four siblings through higher education. His sister, Anne Louise Falkner, became a talented and successful post-impressionist painter.

Falkner enjoyed a lasting marriage, but he and his wife, Evelyn, had no children. His own parents had died young, leaving the five children to fend for themselves, and it may have been the fear of doing the same to any potential offspring that made him reluctant to reproduce. Falkner was very Victorian and interested in academic pastimes. He was also a devout Christian and daily worshipper at Durham Cathedral. His house contained a vast library of ecclesiastical books, which were the product of his fascination with the church and church architecture.

Moonfleet

Moonfleet begins with the son of the village inn having recently lost his life during a skirmish between a smuggling boat and the authorities. This establishes the basic framework for the story and creates a vacancy for a new smuggler to enter the scene – the main character, John Trenchard. There is added tension thrown in by the attraction between John and the magistrate’s daughter Grace, as the magistrate is the sworn enemy of the smugglers and the one who killed the landlord’s son.

As the story unfolds, John finds himself in deeper and deeper trouble with his smuggling activities until he is eventually caught and sentenced to transportation to the Dutch colony of Batavia. However, he escapes due to a shipwreck and returns to Moonfleet. Upon meeting Grace once more, he repents for his wrongdoings by donating a windfall of money to the village. He marries Grace and they live on happily in Moonfleet.

Falkner is rather clever in the way that he weaves the plot. He allows John to live the life of adventure and danger associated with smuggling, but he then punishes him and has him go through a transformation so that he is able to marry Grace and win the hearts of the villagers. Thus, John is very much the reformed criminal, whom the villagers admire for having dared to take on the authorities and then paid his penance. In other words, Falkner conveys the message that smuggling is rather glamorous and daredevillish when all is said and done, while still managing to tell a captivating tale.