A BRIEF HISTORY OF DARTMOUTH.

Before the arrival of the Normans in 1066 Dartmouth as a town did not exist: there was only a village called Townstal (Dunestal) at the top of the hill according to the Domesday Book made twenty years later. Soon afterwards two small settlements grew up by the river on either side of a tidal creek, now vanished under the modern market place. On the north lay Hardness, where boats were built from the 12th to the 19th centuries, while on the south was Clifton with its shops and houses. This explains the official name of the town: Clifton-Dartmouth-Hardness.

The Normans soon saw the importance of this safe harbour for sailing to and from Normandy and the Channel Islands from which they came and developed it as a port which built, repaired and supplied ships. By 1147 Dartmouth was well enough known to be the assembly point for a European fleet setting off for the Second Crusade and for the Third Crusade in 1190.

In the 13th century the port grew rich on the wine trade with Bordeaux, and was recognised as a borough which in 1298 sent two members to Parliament. In time of war it provided two ships for the royal navy. In 1341 Edward III rewarded the burgesses by granting the borough its Royal Charter with power to choose their own mayor and hold their own courts. In return they had to provide the king with two ships equipped with supplies for 40 days a year. The borough seal shows a fourteenth century cog carrying the King with two lions either side.

The merchants built the fine church of St. Saviour’s down by the water to save the folk the long walk up to St. Clements, at Townstal, but it was not consecrated until 1372 because of the opposition of the Cannons of Torre Abbey who owned the rights to St. Clements.

The seamen of Dartmouth in the fourteenth century became notorious for piracy and Geoffrey Chaucer, who visited the town in 1373, made one of his characters in the Canterbury Tales a “shipman” of Dartmouth. John Hauley, fourteen times mayor of Dartmouth, was one of the leaders of the town who must have met Chaucer. He is often said to be the model for the “Shipman” who was undoubtedly a pirate, but Hauley was a civic and naval leader during the Hundred Years War with France who could be described as a national hero. He was licensed as a privateer by successive kings to fight against the enemy. He built, on the King’s orders, the first Fortalice at the mouth of the Dart, the ruins of which can still be seen. A chain could be stretched across the mouth the river to Godmerock on the Kingswear side to stop enemy ships entering. Hauley was deputy admiral of a fleet appointed by the king to defend the Channel against expected French attacks. He organised the army which defeated a Breton army at the Battle of Blackpool Sands in 1404.

In 1408 Hauley died and was buried under the chancel of St. Saviour’s church. His memorial brass, showing him as a knight with his two wives on either side, is on the floor above with an inscription which reads “that venerable man, builder of this Chancel.” After his death his family home between Higher and Lower Street became the Corporation’s Guildhall for nearly 400 years until it was demolished in 1864.

Between 1480 and 1504 new castles were built to guard the entrance to the Dart as the development of artillery had made Hauley’s Fortalice obsolete. A new tower to hold guns was built low down on the Dartmouth side, to fire directly at enemy ships, while another was built on the Kingswear side. The chain, as before, could be stretched across to Godmerock.

At the mouth of the river a small monastic cell which once may have provided a light for shipping grew into the church of St. Petrox, used by the soldiers guarding the Castle, and the people of Warfleet.

In the late 16th and early 17th centuries sailors from the Dart were exploring to the limits of the known world, and helped to found the first colonies overseas. Sir Humphrey Gilbert from Greenway searched for the North-West passage, and claimed Newfoundland for England in 1583 - opening up a lucrative fishing trade which was to make Dartmouth rich for the next two centuries. His half-brother Wir Walter Raleigh financed expeditions to found colonies in Virginia, Trinidad and Guiana. John Davis, born at Sandridge and perhaps the best navigator of them all, sailed further north than any previous European in his search for the North-West passage, hoping to reach the riches of the East Indies. When that failed he tried to reach them by the Straits of Magellan, again without success. He finally reached the fabled Spice Islands (now Indonesia) in 1598 as navigator with a Dutch expedition, and was sailing with ships of the newly formed English East India Company in 1605 when he was killed off Sumatra.

When the Spanish Armada threatened to invade England in 1588, Dartmouth fitted out two ships of war to join the English fleet, and ten more ships left from the Dart financed by local gentry or merchants. The Armada flagship “Nuestra Senora del Rosario” was captured by Drake off Torbay, and eventually towed into the Dart with 200 of its crew on board. They were used as slave labour in the garden of Sir John Gilbert at Greenway until ransomed by the Spanish.

The Pilgrim Fathers sailed into Dartmouth in the “Mayflower” and “Speedwell” in 1620 on their way from Holland to America because the “Speedwell” was leaking badly. They stayed for 11 days while local shipwrights repaired her - the pilgrims not allowed ashore by their leaders in case they ran away! When they set off for America, after 300 miles the Pilgrims had to put back to Plymouth where the “Speedwell” was abandoned and the “Mayflower” set off alone. William Bradford, their leader, claimed that the crew of the “Speedwell” deliberately holed her to avoid going to America where they feared dying of starvation.

In the 1620’s Francis Champernowne of Kittery, Kingswear, and his kinsman Nicholas Shapleigh settled in Maine and New Hampshire, taking with them the local names of Kittery and Godmerock.

During the 17th and 18th centuries Dartmouth was growing rich with the Newfoundland fish trade and the merchants built the New Quay, the Butterwalk and part of Southtown with the profits they made from it. Gradually this expanded into a triangular trade, with Devon goods exported to Newfoundland, dried cod carried to Spain, Portugal and the Mediterranean, and Port wine, oranges and dried fruit brought back to sell in England.

The English Civil War, 1642-9, disrupted this prosperity for a time. Dartmouth supported Parliament, was captured and held for three years by the Royalists and finally recaptured by Fairfax for Parliament in 1646. Up on Gallants Bower, above the twin stone castles at the mouth the river, stands the best preserved fort built by the Royalists in the Civil War.

About 1709 a diligent Dartmouth ironmonger, Thomas Newcomen, invented the first practical steam engine, one of the major developments of the Industrial Revolution. Designed first to pump water out of the Cornish tin mines, it proved even more useful in the coalfields of

the midlands and north, and led eventually to steam being used to power cotton mills, ships and locomotives. An actual Newcomen Engine can be seen in the Tourist Information Centre by the main car park.

During the eighteenth century Dartmouth was ruled by the Holdsworth family, supported by the Newmans and others all involved in the Newfoundland/Portugal trade. John Seale of Mount Boone tried without success to break into this closed circle.

After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 the Newfoundland trade declined and Dartmouth suffered a slump. In 1832 by the Reform Act Dartmouth lost one of its two M.P.s and, with the vote given to £10 householders, John Seale was elected M.P. for the town.

In 1863 the Royal Navy decided to train naval cadets in the Dart on two old sailing ships, the “Britannia” and “Hindustan.” This boosted the town’s flagging economy, and the Navy has been here ever since. The ships were replaced in 1905 by a new college on land, designed by Aston Webb, the present Britannia Royal Naval College. It prides itself on having trained a succession of royal princes as well as all past and future naval officers.

At about the same time, 1864, the railway reached Kingswear. The number of visitors to Dartmouth increased and Kingswear expanded greatly. With many of the ships visiting the Dart steam-powered the port provided coal from hulks in mid river, loaded by local “coal lumpers “ into the ships’ bunkers.

Ferries crossing the Dart were improved in the 19th century. There had always been a passenger ferry since at least the middle ages between Kingswear and Dartmouth, and in the 18th century one started between Hoo Down and the New Ground. These could carry a small horse, but not a wheeled vehicle. In 1831 John Seale promoted and had built the Floating Bridge between Sandquay and Noss - the first time carriages could cross the river. At first powered by steam, it was converted to being driven by two horses turning a treadmill. A more powerful steam engine replaced the horses in 1867. Meanwhile the Lower Ferry also began to carry vehicles on a float, at first rowed, and by 1870 propelled by a steam-powered tug. Though replaced by more modern vessels these ferries remain the only way of crossing the lower Dart.

From the middle ages up to the 20th century Dartmouth has been reclaiming land from the sea - two thirds of the modern town was once under water. In 1243 the Foss is first mentioned - now Foss Street - which was built across the creek which divided Hardness from Clifton to power a tidal mill. The east side of Lower Street was reclaimed from the river in the 14th century, and the New Quay and Butterwalk in the early 17th century. The New Ground (new in 1670), now the Royal Avenue Gardens, provided more quays for ships of the Newfoundland trade. In the early 19th century the old mill pool west of Foss Street was filled in to provide the present Market place and Victoria Road. Between 1875-8 the area where the earliest ships were built was reclaimed to make Mayors Avenue and Flavel Square, on which the new Flavel Church was built in 1895. The South Embankment was built out into the river on former mud between 1880-85. In the 1920’s Combe Mud was filled in to complete the Embankment up to the Higher Ferry and Coronation Park was laid out in 1937. Most recently, in 1986, the South Embankment was widened by up to six meters as the river had silted up still further.

In the 20th century Dartmouth has played its part in two world wars, but especially in the Second. With France overrun by the Germans from 1940-45 the town could be bombed. It suffered a severe attack on its shipyards at Noss in September 1942, when a bomb also hit the Naval College. The ancient buildings of the town centre were his in February 1943. There was much loss of life on both occasions. Then in December 1943 American troops took over Britannia Royal Naval College as their HQ for planning the rehearsals for the coming invasion of France. The river filled up with landing ships and craft, leaving for practice attacks on Slapton Beach which resembled the intended landing place in Normandy. In one such practice, Exercise Tiger, landing ships sailed up channel to Lyme Bay 50 miles away before turning back towards Slapton when they were attacked by German E-boats which sank two US LSTs with the loss of 700 lives while a third was damaged but managed to limp back to Dartmouth. So soon before the actual day of attack, D-Day, this was a severe loss. Two days before D-Day, on June 4th, 486 landing ships carrying nearly 500,000 men left from the Dart for Utah Beach, Normandy which was attacked by the US Fourth Infantry. .

While these preparations for invasion were going on, the Dart was also involved in a secret war when motor gun boats slipped out on moonless nights to pinpoints on the Breton coast to drop or pick up agents and their equipment, or to rescue airmen shot down over France and hidden by the resistance.

Since the Second World War shipbuilding, once the town’s main industry, ended in the mid 1970’s, and the old shipyards at Sandquay have been converted into a hotel and Marina. Noss Works only did repairs, and new industrial units were built on the site. At Sandquay the shipyards were turned into a hotel and marina. At Noss, only ship repairs are now carried out, and new industrial units have been built.

Coal lumpers too found their jobs disappearing as merchant ships turned over to oil. Timber ships for many years brought wood from the Baltic up river to Totnes, but by the end of the 1980’s these too had ceased. By 1900 commercial shipping came to an end after 700 years. Instead there has been an enormous increase in pleasure craft, from yachts to pleasure boats and cruise ships. There are three Marinas, with about two thousand small yachts. Crab fishing still flourishes, though other sorts of fishing have declined.

In 1974, in a major local government reorganisation Dartmouth’s long history as an independent borough came to an end. The town still elects a mayor and council, but its powers are restricted to those of a parish council, with the main authority of the area passing to the South Hams District Council.

Buildings destroyed in the war were rebuilt and the Butterwalk saved from threatened destruction. Housing improved with the expansion of the Townstal estate, begun before the war, and the provision of an industrial area alongside to widen opportunities for work. A new Community College was built at Townstal, and new primary schools nearby. The old Higher Street primary school was converted into flats for old people. The hospital, founded in 1887, was expanded and a clinic built in the town. Living conditions for all have improved. The population has increased with many people coming to start up businesses connected with the tourist industry, or to retire. Thousands come here to enjoy the sailing and other facilities of the river.