![]() Similar details are recorded for all the other parishes around the Estuary and along the south coast of Devon. In the parish of Malborough in 1619, which then included Salcombe, lived 104 mariners, 5 shipwrights and 2 “coopers barrel makers for sea”. His Lord High Admiral, the Duke of Buckingham, demanded of his county subordinates comprehensive parish lists of all those men with maritime skills. The ambitions of the young King Charles I required the rebuilding of a navy much run down after its Elizabethan successes. Most history until recently has been that of great men and their deeds but the maritime surveys of Devon of the early 1600s tell us a very different story. Unusually, we know something of the common people of the town a few years later. The war with Spain dragged on until 1603 but appears not to have affected Salcombe again. She came ashore on Bolt Tail near Hope Cove on 6 November with 158 survivors, all of whose names are known. The only Spanish ship to be wrecked in England, as distinct from Scotland and Ireland, was the hulk San Pedro Mayor, which served as a hospital ship. It has been stated, but not confirmed, that when the Armada finally appeared in local waters on 31 July 1588 the villages round the Salcombe Estuary had fitted out 16 small ships to support the English fleet. Two years later another survey shows that 5 ships under 60 tons belong to Salcombe with an aggregate tonnage of 150. In July 1570 a census of “mariners mustered in Devon” was taken – 56 are listed for Salcombe and 12 for Portlemouth. John Leland described the harbour and settlement in the 1530s in his Travels in Tudor England as “…sumwat barrid and having a Rok at the entering into it … and aboute half a Mile within the Mouth of the Haven … is Saultcombe, a Fisshar Towne”.Īs relations between England and Spain deteriorated in the 1550s, culminating in the ‘Spanish Armada’ campaign of 1588, new records of town and harbour become available. ![]() The town had been awarded a grant in 1377 “in aid of fortification” but apparently nothing had been done. In 1403 Salcombe was raided by a force from France which had previously sacked and burnt Plymouth. Twelve “barges” and a “ballinger” were hired to transport troops to Brittany at the start of the Hundred Years War. ![]() However, ships of some size were already based in the harbour, referred to by 1342 as ‘Portlemouth’. Maybe it was little more than a fishing hamlet with a few ‘cellars’, simple buildings where farmers living a mile or two inland kept their nets and gear. References to Salcombe are limited for several centuries after 1244, perhaps because of a lack of literate inhabitants (the illiterate leave no records). Archaeologists have identified stone age settlements on the cliff tops on both sides of the mouth of the estuary and a recently discovered shipwreck has demonstrated the existence of cross channel trade some 3,500 years ago. While Salcombe itself may be a latecomer, man has lived around the area from time immemorial. We know about these because their names and assets figure in the Domesday book, William’s comprehensive survey of his new kingdom published in 1083. The manor was the smallest of the administrative units into which England was divided by William I after he conquered the country in 1066. It fell within the boundaries of the parish of Malborough on the edges of two ‘manors’, Batson and West Portlemouth. The name Salcombe first appears in writing in 1244, centuries after most of the other neighbouring settlements were identified. Some were eventually ransomed but others never returned home. Hundreds of Devon people were kidnapped in the 1600s and taken to the slave markets of Algiers and Sallee on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Others include pirates seeking temporary shelter and supplies and, in the case of those from the Barbary States of North Africa, slaves. Some of these dangers are mentioned in the following paragraphs. Long after the invasions which some of us learned about at school – Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking and Norman – it still remained a source of danger. The reason was that danger came from the sea. The oldest local settlements were not built at the water’s edge but at some distance inland. Fishing, seafaring, boat and later shipbuilding with smuggling and probably some piracy were the principal occupations. Until about 100 years ago Salcombe earned its living from the estuary and the sea. Photos Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.
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