Draw a line from East Coker to Bristol Docks, turn west to Nether Stowey and Watchet then return to East Coker and you have enclosed in your triangle a fascinating part of England – the Somerset Levels, the Mendip Hills and the Quantocks, but there is also a captivating golden thread of Literary connection the triangle brings together.
James Crowden’s riveting volume “LITERARY SOMERSET” [1], an essential read for anyone interested in Somerset writers of the past and today, shows us the pattern of this Literary connection bringing together amongst others William Dampier, the mariners of Bristol and the Romantic Poets of the Quantocks.
Dampier (1651–1715) born in East Coker nine years before the Restoration bringing King Charles II to the throne, went to sea on a Weymouth trader in 1669, and was during an eventful life at sea a buccaneer, a hydrographer, a cartographer and writer chronicling his voyages. He made three great circumnavigations; late in the 1680s one voyage brought the first Englishmen to make landfall in Australia. To this day Dampier’s name is found in many places on world maps and charts [2].
Ships owned by Bristol businessmen and their Captains sailed with Dampier; after a disagreement on board one accompanying vessel the sailing master Alexander Selkirk was put ashore at his own request on the uninhabited Pacific island Juan Fernandez. Almost five years later in February 1708 HMS Duke navigated by Dampier on his third circumnavigation rescued Selkirk. It is worth noting that Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719) the novel based on Selkirk’s experience, was a supporter of Monmouth and present as a young man at the Battle of Sedgemoor (1685) – wisely removing himself to London and buying a pardon to escape the Bloody Assize.
To complete the connection Simon Hatley who sailed with Dampier on two voyages later sailed on another Bristol vessel which suffered adverse conditions west of Cape Horn and believing the bird to be an evil omen Hatley shot an accompanying Black Albatross, an incident recorded in an account of that voyage published in 1726 and current for years in folklore around Bristol Docks. And so to Nether Stowey [3] and to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) who on long, often night time, walks on the Quantocks in company with and encouraged by the Wordsworths, sister and brother, picked up the tale of the albatross and penned his great poem THE RIME ANCIENT MARINER (1797) in which the Mariner’s cursed voyage sets out from Watchet where today a statue of the Mariner and the dead albatross stands on the quayside.
“The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared;
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.
The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.”
[1] LITERARY SOMERSET © James Crowden, Flagon Press, Winsham, Chard,published in 2010, ISBN 978-0-9562778-0-0.
[2] DAMPIER ARCHIPELAGO off Western Australia and the DAMPIER STRAITS off Papua New Guinea
[3] Coleridge Cottage, Nether Stowey, National Trust, Open March to October excl. Tuesdays and Wednesdays
Chip Tolson: Architecture, the army, international container and shipowning trades kept Chip busy before an MA in Creative Writing led him to the joy of short stories, winning the Yeovil Short Story Competition in 2013. He has also written short plays and has two novels in want of a publisher.
