The Duke of Lorraine was visiting a number of ports in the Netherlands. The nature of the visit, at the duke’s insistence, was incognito. There were to be no ‘public honours’ but nobody took the Duke of Lorraine’s order seriously. Each port was keen to impress the duke and hopefully win his support and patronage. Each port sought to outdo the other in ‘magnificent entertainments’.
While Ostend prepared for the advent of the Duke of Lorraine, John Deane was obliged to justify his actions in trying to delay the packet boat. Deane’s decision had not been met with the universal approval of his superiors. Deane invoked his three decades’ experience of giving and taking orders. In doing so he was asserting his right to make the kind of independent judgment he had just made if it was in the national interest. The fact that the packet boat’s mate had defied him caused Deane to write a particularly strident assertion of his own moral superiority and right to be obeyed absolutely: ‘[…] and as to the mates, I have in my time commanded hundreds, not to say thousands such as they are, and shall for this day never put myself on a par with them’. Deane wrote on, invoking his faithful and often poorly rewarded service to two successive monarchs. He invoked his relationship with Townsend and the freedom the former secretary of state had afforded Deane in allowing him to give orders with the expectation of having them obeyed. Deane accused the packet boat trade of fraud on account of sending out more packet boats than was necessary. Deane quoted an official who had granted him permission to stop packet boats if necessity demanded it. He even cited a precedent where a packet boat had been stopped before. Deane waited for Harrington’s ruling as to whether he had acted within or beyond his authority.
The Duke of Lorraine arrived in Ostend in August 1731. The British staged a mock naval battle in the harbour to amuse the duke. The duke was suitably entertained. The British took their turn wining and dining the duke. John Deane was present at the dinner and for a single evening was relieved of his pariah status.
The Duke of Lorraine knew who John Deane was. He sought Deane out and spoke with him for an hour. The duke knew about Deane’s service in Peter the Great’s navy. He knew about Boon Island. He asked Deane numerous questions and when he had finished his gentle interrogation the duke asked Deane if he might have a one of his Boon Island pamphlets. John Deane had had his Narrative of the Nottingham Galley reprinted in 1730 and presented the duke with a copy the following morning.
The duke was clearly taken with John Deane. He dovetailed in and out of Deane’s company for the remainder of his stay in Ostend. Deane for his part was like a pig in mud. When writing up his account of his encounter with the Duke of Lorraine he tried to maintain a veneer of professionalism. Deane spoke of his being ‘determined to be in the way and make what observations that I could’, but could not help luxuriating in the status bestowed upon him by the duke and the annoyance it caused his enemies. He wrote, ‘You’ll be pleased to observe that all in the India scheme are extremely jealous of me…’. Deane’s foreign enemies demonstrated their envy by neglecting to invite Deane ‘either onboard the ships or to the townhouse’. It hardly mattered. Deane was able to spend more time with the Duke of Lorraine when the duke was entertained at Governor De Campo’s residence.
As the duke of Lorraine prepared to leave the port, presents were exchanged. The duke received silk from the Company at Ostend. The duke distributed gifts, singling out those who had fought in the mock battle for particularly generous treatment. John Deane was pleased. He believed that his encounter with the duke meant that ‘some use would be made (or at least attempt to be made) of his Highness in favour of this company’.
The entire encounter was replete with irony. In those few days Deane had proved more of a diplomat than any other Englishman present. What had facilitated his briefly exalted status was his legacy of cannibalism, survival and fighting for profit for a foreign king.
20
Irish Confederates and English Smugglers
1738 was John Deane’s final year of employment. Once again he had reprinted the Boon Island narrative. It would be the last time in his life that he would republish his most favoured account of his best-known adventure. But there were no more aristocrats who would take an interest in a despised consul’s antiquated feats of survival. By the year’s end, John Deane would be finished. He would set fire to his last bridge, arresting any chance of further advancement. He would condemn himself to a long retirement in England. Deane had survived everything Boon Island and the Russian winter could throw at him. He had survived the mercurial whims of a treacherous tsar. The Swedes could not kill him at sea and the Russians and their Jacobite allies in the East had singularly failed to crush him on land. In the end, what finally did for Captain John Deane was a running dispute with the postmaster in Ostend.
Deane had, ‘for eight years and odd months […] lived in a friendly manner’ with the postmaster. For two of those years John Deane lived directly opposite the postmaster’s house. During that time, the postmaster had observed that many people came and went from Deane’s residence on what appeared to be secret and possibly remunerative business. The postmaster offered his services to Deane. Deane promised nothing but encouraged the postmaster that he ‘may on some future occasion’ be of service to him. The day never came. In time, John Deane befriended and occasionally confided in the postmaster’s brother. The postmaster felt slighted and from that point on began to regard John Deane as more of an enemy than a friend.
The first disquieting clue as to the postmaster’s newborn hostility was a change in the hours that he did business. The postmaster altered the times he made up the mail for England. He ensured that English mail was sorted at the same time as the Irish mail, a practice John Deane felt deeply uncomfortable with.
In a very short space of time, Deane’s relationship with the postmaster would take on the hue of a virtual blood feud. Deane referred to the postmaster in a letter as, ‘malicious’ and ‘babbling’. Deane was convinced that there was a serious risk of the postmaster interfering with his mail. Deane also believed that there was a conspiracy among the postal service to keep him in the dark as to when the packet boat was about to sail. As a consequence, John Deane sent his letters to Lord Harrington via Calais. When the packet boat arrived, rather than wait for his post to be delivered to him via the postmaster, John Deane would collect his mail directly from the boat. When writing about his strategy for dealing with the postal service, John Deane circumvented the English minister to Brussels, Robert Daniels, in his dispatches, leaving him out of the loop and communicating exclusively with Harrington on the subject.
Deane continued to act as a spy. January 1737 saw ‘more than an ordinary’ amount of ‘English ecclesiastics at this town’. Leading them was John Gould, ‘an Irish papist.’ Deane acquired a handwriting sample from Gould and the names of contacts in London Deane thought Gould was secretly corresponding with.
John Deane believed that the postmaster had delayed his mail on purpose. In early February Deane had sent a letter to a London agent containing a bill for £8 14s. He was disturbed to discover that the letter and the bill ‘came not to hand till 24 February’. Deane believed that the postmaster had delayed the mail on purpose. It was the latest snipe in the war of attrition the postmaster appeared to have declared on John Deane.