Uncle Billy's Far-fetched Tales Chapter 8

Bridge House

The room, like all the rooms in this somewhat strange house, looked just like the cabin of a great man-of-war. As soon as you entered, a large, solid timber-framed desk confronted you. The desk, constructed from oak, topped with mahogany inlaid with red leather, its sides veneered with flame bur-walnut, was about six foot by four foot. It occupied a space in front of a large window, which itself resembled the window of a captain’s cabin of a ship of the line. The window overlooked the harbour and bay of Castletown and the masts of the ships anchored in the bay further enhanced the illusion that this room was in fact a cabin on a ship.
The walls too added to this illusion, for instead of lat and plaster, interlocking boards of ships’ timbers covered them! The boards on the back wall however, were painted a pale shade of green. At various points around these walls, there hung large paintings of ships at sea and portraits of naval officers in uniform. There must have been a dozen or more of these paintings set in oblong moulded frames. They were the only form of decoration on the walls except for one circular convex mirror. This was set on one of the side walls. The entire room could be seen from the desk by looking into this mirror.
Below the mirror stood a table on which there were two strange objects not usually associated with an office.
The first object was a pyramid of small cannonballs. The bottom layer contained nine balls laid in a square. There were four balls resting on top of these forming the second layer and a single ball on top forming the tip of the pyramid. Surrounding the bottom layer of balls, preventing them from rolling apart, was a square formed from four brass rails nailed to a board of timber.
The second object stood alongside of this pyramid. It was a three-foot high replica of a semaphore signalling tower. Such towers were used to pass messages over long distances. They were placed at strategic points around the island’s hilltops, harbours and forts and were usually manned by sailors or marines whose job it was to watch neighbouring towers for messages and then relay them to the next tower in turn. In this way, a message could be sent from the garrison stationed at the southernmost tip of the island at the Calf Sound and be read by the intended recipient at Ramsey harbour only ten to fifteen minutes later, depending on the efficiency of the operators. As the two points mentioned are some thirty miles or so apart, this was obviously a great improvement on sending dispatch riders on horseback who might take all day to deliver a message.


The replica tower, like the real thing, had movable arms, levers, pulleys, cords and counterbalances. These allowed the arms to assume the positions necessary to spell out the letters of a message. The reason this tower was in this particular office could have had something to do with the fact that it was a modification based on a French design attributed to the owner of this very house.
(There was another reason for the tower and the pyramid of cannonballs, but that we will leave for later!)
Behind the desk stood a large, comfortable looking oak captain’s chair. This chair had been in a ship’s captain’s cabin for real for many years until the captain in question had retired from sea and set up in business here in Castletown as a ship’s chandlers and mercantile marine. This man was called George Quayle and was the owner and designer of Bridge House, the building in which this office was located.

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George was a man in his mid forties. He dressed in the attire of a well-to-do person of obvious wealth, yet his face and his hands were weather-beaten and his whole demeanour was that of a hard-working manual worker rather than the indolent flabby look of most of the wealthy merchants hereabouts. Most of these merchants were not born locally, but were what is termed ‘Comeovers.’ That is to say they had come over to the Isle of Man from the neighbouring countries of the British Isles and settled here buying up shops and warehouses etc. then lived here as if they were natives.
George on the other hand had been born in the island. He had been educated locally in a small single-roomed schoolhouse alongside the harbour at Castletown. Here he had proved to have an aptitude for figures and for writing and speaking both Manx and English and thanks to the efforts of his well-travelled schoolmaster, he also learnt French and Spanish. On leaving school at twelve years of age, he joined His Majesty’s Navy as a midshipman and served with some distinction earning promotion until he retired from the navy as a full blown captain at the early age of forty after nearly thirty years at sea.
During his time at sea, George had acquired a substantial amount of money which he had invested wisely. He used some of his money to buy a small ship’s chandlers business on the north quay at Castletown. With the passing of time, his business thrived and he was soon able to purchase the adjoining warehouses and expand his trade to include general merchandise. The quayside location of his warehouses enabled him to get his goods straight off the sailing ships that docked at the harbour on the north side. However, if he had goods on a ship that docked on the south side of the harbour, he had to send wagons around to the south quay. His employees would offload goods from the ship and transport them to the warehouses on the north quay.




This was not as simple a task as it at first sounds. The harbour stood at the estuary of the Silverburn River. The river may not have been very wide, but it was too wide and muddy in the tidal stretch of the estuary and to get from one quay to the other involved a journey up one bank of the river to a ford about half a mile from the harbour. If the river was in flood, this ford became too deep for wagons and horses to cross safely. The nearest crossing then was a couple of miles further up the river at Ballasalla. There was a ford there as well, but this one did not become too deep even during very wet periods, so could be crossed at any time. However, as the saying goes, ‘time is money’ and George did not like to waste either.
Among his many talents, George was something of an inventor and an engineer. As has been mentioned earlier, he took the French semaphore idea and created a more sophisticated system which the Admiralty had adopted for use around the coasts of Britain to enable messages to be passed over long distances in but a short time. He also invented a device which would enable small craft to negotiate shallow stretches of water and yet be able to sail safely in deeper waters as well. This was a sliding keel, but more of that later.
“What is required,” he thought, “is a bridge across the harbour entrance.”
This of course was an obvious conclusion, but had never been attempted before because the narrow harbour entrance would only allow ships into the harbour if there were room for their tall masts. A bridge across the harbour entrance would not allow this. Both a bascule bridge and a drawbridge had been considered but the engineering problems of such designs had not been mastered.
“In that case,” George thought, “why not build a bridge across the inner part of the harbour basin where the water is too shallow for the larger ships to berth even at high tide?”
Therefore, George and the other merchants, whose businesses required quick access to both quaysides, met and agreed to finance such a bridge. Soon wagons could get from one quay to the other across this newly commissioned bridge, thus saving a lot of time. Smaller craft without masts, or with masts that could be lowered, could still gain access to the inner part of the harbour under this bridge, while the larger ships could moor in the part of the harbour between the narrow entrance and the new bridge.
George however, soon became dissatisfied with this arrangement.
He designed a smaller bridge to cross the narrowest part of the harbour entrance. This bridge was not as big or as robust as the one just erected at the other end of the harbour. It was built in two halves and was cantilevered. The two halves met in the middle of the gap they spanned. The weight of these spans was counterbalanced by heavy blocks of iron at the quayside ends. The clever part of the cantilevered bridge was the fact that each end of the bridge was fixed to a large cast iron disc. This allowed both halves of the bridge to swivel at right angles when a ship approached the harbour entrance, thus opening for the ship to pass through.
“Why build another bridge now that the new bridge is so successful?” the other merchants asked.
George replied: “Time is money and as a lot of the merchandise I receive can be transported by handcart, it is more convenient to have a shorter route than that across the road bridge. I grant you that that is very useful for goods that need to be transported by wagon, but too much time and money is wasted when all that is required is a strong back or a handcart to carry my goods. I am even willing to finance this footbridge out of my own pocket!”
Others thought it folly but as George was going to pay for it himself, there were no objections and the swing bridge was built. Soon it became a very popular crossing point, especially with pedestrians even when George levied a toll for people to cross it. Ever with an eye for profit, George had foreseen the popularity of this shorter crossing and knew that he could recoup some, if not all of his capital outlay in this way.

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“Two forty-five and all’s well!”
The voice of the night watchman echoed from the nearby castle walls.
It was dark and damp as the shifty figure scuttled across the footbridge that spanned the narrow entrance to the harbour. He was sweating profusely with nervous tension having had to wait nearly five minutes for the moon to disappear behind some clouds and allow the darkness to hide his passage.
This had been the most dangerous part of the night’s venture so far. He had had to hide in the entrance to the harbourmaster’s house so as not to be seen by the night watchman as he walked on his rounds calling out at five minute intervals his time signal. Had he been seen, the watchman’s cry would not have been “All’s well!” but rather, “Call out the guard!”
The harbourmaster’s house was but forty yards or so from the entrance to the castle from which the town got its name. If the night watchman did not see him, the man also had to avoid being seen by the sentries who marched around the walls of the castle. Hence the reason he could not cross the bridge in full moonlight.
The guard, who was supposed to be on duty watching the bridge, was in the habit of snoozing inside his cabin on the north end of the structure, so the man was extra careful when he reached that end of the bridge. He tiptoed silently past the cabin door. He listened. His patience was greeted by the comforting sound of snoring coming from inside the cabin. He crept around the corner and approached the front door of a four-storey building. He quietly took from a pocket in his large topcoat, a set of skeleton keys. He inserted one of these into the lock of the door and manipulated it carefully with no success. He tried another with similar result. A third likewise failed to unlock the door. On the fourth attempt however, the key turned silently and the door was unlocked successfully.
“Not like thee, Davey!” he muttered quietly to himself. “Thee be slipping not finding it in three!”
He turned the handle of the door and gently eased it open. He need not have worried about it making any noise, for it was obviously a well-oiled door and moved silently and easily to his touch. He entered the hallway of the house and after making sure nobody had heard his entry, just as gently, he eased the door shut, releasing the doorknob silently into its closed position.
He waited for a few moments while his eyes adjusted to the darkness within the house. As soon as he could make out any obstacles to his progress, he made for the stairs and ascended to the next floor. Pausing to ensure that he was still alone and undetected, he moved to the end of the corridor and pressed his ear to the door he found there. On reassuring himself that the room was not occupied, he opened the door just as carefully as he had done the front door on entering the house.
Again, the well-lubricated door made no noise as he entered. The room was not as dark as the rest of the house, for the back wall contained a large uncurtained window that overlooked the harbour. He could see the vantage point at which he had been hiding not five minutes earlier in front of the harbourmaster’s house, for the moon had once more appeared from behind the clouds.
He moved to the far right corner of the room, taking care not to knock the table set against the wall as he passed it by. He began pressing the green-panelled boards on the back wall, but after covering every inch of them, he tutted to himself, “Not this wall then!”
He turned his attention to the wall on his left, repeating the procedure. This time though, after only a few seconds, he succeeded in finding what he was looking for. Had the wall not been in partial shadow, he might have seen it sooner. There was a knot in the wood on one of the panels and the centre of this knot moved inwards as he pressed on it. As it did so, the board at the back corner of the left wall swung open like a door. Then all the panels of the back wall between this corner and the window slid silently across disappearing into the space thus opened, revealing the top of a spiral staircase.
“So far, so good,” muttered Davey.
Ever the careful man, Davey listened to check if the opening of this secret stairway had attracted the attention of anyone in the house. When he was satisfied that he was still undetected, he took from one of his voluminous pockets, a tinderbox. From the same pocket he also withdrew a candle. This he ignited as quietly as he could and returning the tinderbox to his pocket, he began to descend the stairway on his tiptoes.
As he spiralled down, he noted that he was in a shaft surrounded on three sides by boards and on the fourth, stone blocks of the walls of the house. After descending a little further, he noted that the shaft was now boarded on all four sides. In his estimation, he had now descended to a level below the ground floor of the house and must therefore be underground. This was confirmed when the boarding disappeared altogether revealing bare chiselled rock on all four sides.
He reached the bottom of the stairway and found himself standing on a rock floor in an empty room roughly eight feet square. Three sides of this room were bare rock but in the middle of the fourth side stood a large, heavy-looking door. Davey studied the door, holding the candle close to it.
Beyond this door lay his goal. Reputedly, this was a strongroom containing much of the wealth of the house owner, George Quayle. In addition, according to his source, the Governor’s gamekeeper, it should contain proof that Quayle was a smuggler and illicit goods thus brought to the island were to be found in this strongroom. It was this proof that Davey had been paid to acquire. All he had to do now was to open the door and collect any items small enough to carry. These he was to take back to the person who had employed him.
“All I have to do?” Davey pondered. “How do I open this door?”
Davey had come prepared to enter any locked door with the skeleton keys he had used to break in to the house. So why was this door a problem? There was no sign of a keyhole anywhere in the door! There was a doorknob, but that did not turn, appearing to be merely a device which could be used to pull the door shut or push it open, yet the door did not budge either way when Davey tried both pulling and pushing. He tried pushing at what should have been the hinge side of the door in case it opened that way but still there was no movement. He put his shoulder to the door in case it was merely stuck and heaved with all his might. Still it would not budge.
“There must be a hidden lever or button like the knot in the board of the room above,” he thought.
Painstakingly, he began to press every inch of the door, trying to find a secret button, but after ten minutes, he decided there was not one in the door itself. He turned his attention to the wall either side of the door but again, after more painstaking searching, he drew a blank. Each of the remaining walls seemed to be equally unforthcoming.
The only place he had not searched was the stairway down which he had just come. He began to inspect it with care, for he was a patient man and despite his lack of success so far, he was determined not to fail in his quest.
The banister rail of the spiral stairway was smoothly planed all the way down. It was attached to the walls by metal staples. A vertical beam surmounted by a sphere supported the bottom. Davey took the sphere in both hands and tried to unscrew it. It would not budge, but by a stroke of luck, he attempted to turn it clockwise, the direction which would normally have tightened a screw. The sphere began to turn!
He continued to turn it in this direction and was rewarded for his efforts when the sphere came loose revealing a hidden button. Davey pressed this button. With wonder, he saw a portion of the rock wall to the right of the door open like the door of a cabinet. Where only a moment ago there had been an apparently smooth rock face, there was now an opening about four feet square. Hidden in this was a replica of the model of the semaphore tower he had noted in the room on the second floor.
“Now what?” he wondered.

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The Governor sat on the porch in front of the French windows overlooking the manicured lawns of his magnificent home. The view from this point should have been delightful.
Lorne House stood on the top of a small hillock overlooking the harbour and castle. The beautiful lawns were screened from the east and west winds by avenues of sycamore trees. The south side of the property however, had no trees to block the view. He should have been able to see the whole of the harbour and the castle beyond framed by the aforementioned trees on either side. However, all he could see was the austere façade of a four-storey building.
Two years ago, when he first took up the post of Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man, the offending building had been only one storey high and was mostly hidden by the wall surrounding the southern end of the mansion. Even this obstruction to his view of the harbour had annoyed the newly appointed Governor and he had ordered the owner of the building to demolish it. The owner of the offending building was George Quayle.
George had taken an instant dislike to this pompous popinjay of an Englishman from the moment he had first set eyes on him disembarking from the deck of the ship on which he had arrived at Castletown.
“Certainly I’ll demolish the warehouse,” he said on receiving the Governor’s orders. Had the messenger looked more carefully at George as he spoke these words, he would have noted a wicked gleam in his eyes. In addition, had he been more observant, he might have noted the sarcastic air in which the words were spoken.
The Governor was pleased to see demolition work begin, thinking, “That’s the way to treat these Manx upstarts. My view of the harbour will be uninterrupted when I return from London.” He had to report in person to the English capital later that month and expected to return to the island some three months later after a visit to his family home in Hampshire.
Imagine his disbelief and frustration when on returning to the island he was greeted by the sight of a brand new edifice at the entrance to the harbour. Where the warehouse to be demolished had stood, there was now a four-storey building, the size of three houses blocking his view of the harbour and castle!
Naturally this enraged the Governor. However, even though he had his lawyers check everything over three of four times, he could not discover anything to prevent the owner of the land from building there. Nor could his lawyers discover any reason for the building to be restricted in its height. Public planning had not even been thought of and so the Governor had to suffer the ignominy of defeat. Of course this made his opinion of George Quayle even more derogatory and he was determined to find some way of getting his revenge for the slight George had dealt him.

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George had had more reasons to build this house other than to annoy the new Governor. He required more warehouse space; office space and a grand house in which he and his family could live. The new building met all these requirements.
On the road side of the building, facing Lorne House, there were three doors with windows on either side of each. At first glance, there appeared to be three separate houses between the small cottage-like building that housed the original chandler’s shop and the north quay of the harbour. However, each door led to a different part of the same house. On the ground floor of each of the first two parts of this house, there were offices. On the other three floors, there was warehouse space stretching the whole length of the two parts of the house. The remaining third of the house was the family home.
On the ground floor of the home, there were reception rooms and kitchens. George’s office and the family withdrawing rooms occupied the first floor. Family bedrooms, an internal bathroom and a room with a flushing toilet courtesy of a Mr Alexander Cummings. The servants’ quarters occupied the top floor.

(Cummings’ design was later improved on by a Mr Thomas Crapper, but that did not happen for another fifty years of so!)

On the harbour side of the building, outside of the family part of the house, there was a small garden. The west end of this garden was separated from the adjacent bridge by a high stone wall sheltering it from the noise and bustle of the north quay and the ravages of the west wind in winter. The east end of the garden backed onto the wall of the original warehouse that had not been demolished, but was still utilised by the family business. The harbour side of the garden was bordered by a low stone wall, surmounted by black iron railings for the protection of the younger members of the family, as on the other side of this wall there was a drop straight onto seaweed-covered rocks at the harbour entrance. These rocks were covered by the sea at high tide, but completely uncovered at low tide. The garden was a pure suntrap and was the favourite place for the family to sit and even dine on fine summer days. The name of the house was ‘Bridge House’ as it was right next to the swivel bridge George had built.



However, the main reason George was so amused by the construction of Bridge House was that it contained many hidden cupboards rooms and corridors and hid his greatest secret from the prying eyes of the Governor. George enhanced his legitimate income by involving himself in smuggling.
On the harbour side of the chandler’s cottage, there was a small inlet where the rocks opened into a shallow pool. Whilst this pool drained out at low tide, it was about five feet deep at mean tide, deep enough to float a shallow-draught boat. The pool was handy for ships’ boats to moor in when doing business at the chandler’s and a wall was built around it to protect it from inclement weather. A sturdy oak gate that was open during business hours to allow passage, protected an opening of about eight feet on the harbour side.
George, in partnership with four other local men, had recently purchased a twenty-five foot schooner. They had purchased it supposedly for pleasure but in fact they were using it secretly for smuggling.
The schooner was only seven feet three inches in beam which was narrow for a boat of twenty-five feet, but what made it unique was its keel. George had read in a journal that the Admiralty were experimenting with a revolutionary type of keel for smaller sailing craft. He immediately recognised the possible advantages of this new type of keel. Called a sliding keel, or drop keel, it as a device which allowed the keel of the boat to be raised or lowered depending on what depth of water the boat was sailing in and what amount of sail she was carrying.
The Peggy, the name of the schooner, was originally fitted with a normal keel. This was ideal for negotiation passage around the island and across the Irish Sea under sail. However, it restricted movement in and out of harbours at low tide. George and his partners had her modified. They removed the keel, then cut an oblong hole through the main beam to which the keel had been attached. The hole was long enough and wide enough to accommodate the new sliding keel. Inside the boat they built around this hole a box to a height level with her gunwales#. The box was caulked with pitch to ensure it would remain waterproof. Thus, the new keel could slide into the water to prevent the boat from slewing across the surface or capsizing when under sail. It could also be lifted out of the water when in shallows and manoeuvring under oar power.
George and his partners were well pleased with these modifications, especially when they realised that the Peggy could now moor in the pool outside of the chandlers’, out of view of Government House and its occupants. This meant that she could deliver contraband to the warehouses without the Governor or any of his staff seeing what was happening. It did not matter that the harbour-side entrance was visible from the Harbourmaster’s house, for a Mr John Clegg who was one of George’s partners, held this office. In addition, Mr Clegg’s house blocked the view of this part of the harbour from the castle ramparts, so there was no likelihood of any of the sentries seeing anything untoward happening at the chandlers.

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The Governor felt uncomfortable. He was dressed in the ill-fitting clothes belonging to one of his gamekeepers. The owner of these clothes accompanied him on his incognito jaunt into the town centre. They entered one of the town’s inns by the back door and stepped up to the bar in the smoky interior. The gamekeeper ordered two flagons of ale which they took to a table near the dark rear of the room.
“Are you sure this man is up to the job” the Governor asked his companion in a conspiratorial voice.
“Aye, sir, he is the most successful housebreaker in the island. Came here from Ulster a few years ago and never been apprehended yet despite having been suspected of many burglaries. Never found with any incriminating evidence and always has an alibi placing him miles away at the time. Doesn’t have a regular job yet never short of the price of a pint!” replied the gamekeeper softly. “He’s reputed to be responsible for over half the break-ins around the island in the last five years, so I would say he is good at what he does.”
“And no one has caught him?” the Governor questioned disbelievingly.
“Bless you, no, sir!” his companion laughed softly. “He’s so clever at his chosen livelihood that people often don’t even realise they have been burgled until days, even weeks later, for he only takes items that are small and unlikely to be missed until they are needed. By the time they are missed, he has sold them on to some fence or other rogue who will take them across the sea to be sold again. He works alone at night and claims there is no lock he cannot open! Ah, here he is now, sir!”
The man who approached their table was not quite what the Governor had imagined. His appearance was that of a reasonably clean, well-to-do man of about forty years of age. His clothes were obviously not those of an aristocrat, yet they were not those of a poor working man either. His outer coat came down to his ankles and was surmounted by a cloak, giving him the appearance of a highwayman except that he did not wear the long riding boots of a horseman. Rather, he wore heavy walking shoes. Despite his advancing years, he moved with the agility of a much younger man and showed no sign of the usual middle-age spread of a man of his years.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said politely enough, “May I join you?”
Without waiting for an acknowledgement, he sat down opposite the Governor, his back to the glowing fire in the grate.
“That’s better,” he said with a sigh as he removed his overcoat and draped it over an empty stool beside him. “’Tis a chilly night out tonight is it not? A night for honest men to be sat in front of a fire,” he chuckled. “Now which of you two fine gentlemen be Thomas Sayle?”
“That would be me,” the gamekeeper replied. “Are you David O’Connor?”
“That I am, but me friends calls me Davey! And who might this be?” Davey continued, indicating the Governor.
“That’s information you don’t need to know yet!” Thomas responded.
“So be it,” Davey said, “but you won’t mind if I call you Guv’ner, will you, sir?” he added with a sly grin. He paused while he took a swig from his flagon, smiling with amusement at the look of consternation that passed between his two companions as they took in the fact that this man had obviously seen through their disguise.
“Now Guv, what is it you want me to do for you?”
Taking a drink to steady his nerves and to check that no one could overhear them, the Governor spoke just above a whisper, so that Davey and the gamekeeper had to lean towards him to hear.
“You know the monstrosity of a building called Bridge House?” Davey nodded. “George Quayle, the scoundrel who owns it is a smuggler, or I am a Frenchman’s uncle! I have it on good authority that he has a secret cellar beneath the house. In this cellar, he hides contraband as well as his own family fortune, which I understand is not inconsiderable! My spy assures me that there is an entrance to this cellar via a secret stairway accessible from his own personal office on the second floor of his house. He and his family live in the end of the building nearest to the bridge. The rest of the building is offices and warehouse space. I want you to break into this cellar and bring me proof that there are smuggled goods there so that I can have my own men arrest the blackguard! Anything else you find belonging to him is of no concern to me. I will make sure that if he has the cheek to try to complain of being robbed, I will personally have great pleasure in informing him that there is nothing that can be done about that as it was probably ill gotten gains from his criminal career anyway.”
“Apart from what I can gain in this manner, what will you pay me to take the risk of getting your evidence?”
“I will pay you five gold guineas,” the Governor replied generously. “Two now and the other three when you succeed with your mission.
“That’s generous of you Guv, but what happens in the unlikely event that I am caught in the act?”
“I will see to it that you are not prosecuted by arranging your ‘escape’ from prison. You will of course probably think it would be better to leave the island then rather than face any revenge on the part of his friends.”
“All right,” Davey agreed with a sigh. “Two guineas up front and a promissory note for the rest to be exchanged for the cash when I complete the job,” he stated.
“Fine!” the Governor said, taking two coins out of a purse attached to his belt, hidden beneath his coat. Placing them on the table, he withdrew from an inner pocket a pencil and a pocket book. On a blank page of this book he wrote:

I Robert Joyce, promise to pay David O’Connor the sum of three gold guineas on his supplying proof that George Quayle is involved directly with smuggling activities centred in his home at Bridge House in Castletown. Such proof to be acquired by any means deemed necessary.

Dated this 10th day of October 1787.
R Joyce
Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man.

He tore this note from his pocket book and handed it to Davey who folded it in two and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket..
“One more thing,” Davey continued. “As you said, I am bound to be suspected by Quayle’s friends afterward. My life will not be worth a quarter of a farthing. It will be better for me if I can leave the island immediately after I find your proof. It is time I moved on now anyway. Don’t want to push my luck, do I?”
“Yes, that is sensible,” the Governor answered. “My men will see to your safety until you can embark and I will send Sayle here with you to make sure no one on board ship interferes with you.”
Their business concluded, the three men sat and smoked pipes for a few minutes before departing and going their separate ways.

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Davey studied the model tower which he had discovered hidden in the rock wall.
On the wall behind the tower in its hiding place was a label pinned to a board by tacks. There were symbols and letters on it.
“That’s interesting!” thought Davey. “Semaphore signs for some of the letters of the alphabet! Why not all the letters I wonder?”



He studied the tower with more care. When he shone the light from the candle flame on the base of the tower itself, his vigilance was rewarded by the sight of a message engraved there.

To open the safe door is a simple task,
All you do is simply ask!
But remember, to achieve this simple quest,
Please be polite , it’s always best!

Some letters were engraved more deeply than others, making them stand out more.
Davey studied the message some more and realised that the letters of the words thus more deeply engraved were the same letters as written on the label.
He returned his gaze to the tower itself. Like a real semaphore tower, it had arms that could be positioned by turning handles at the bottom of the tower. He noted the position of the arms as they stood at present.

According to the label, this was the letter ‘e’.



“Of course!” he muttered gleefully. “It’s so obvious.
Davey was convinced he had broken the code. Open the safe were the three emboldened words at the beginning of the message . The last letter of this statement was the letter ‘e’, so he decided this must be a code for opening the door.
He manipulated the control handles of the tower altering the position of the arms until they formed the sign for the letter ‘o’.



As soon he began to move the position of the arms of the semaphore machine, he thought he could hear a distant tinkling of a bell and waited a few moments to listen. He could hear nothing, so after a few more moments he completed the letter ‘o’ and began forming the letter ‘p’.


Again, he thought he could hear the tinkling of a distant bell, but continued with his task having gained more confidence. Nobody had disturbed him and he was becoming more familiar with the controls for the tower so he continued forming the letters ‘e’ and ‘n’.



How to indicate a space between words was the next problem? Normally you would pause between words, but he reasoned that here he should just run one word into another. Therefore he continued the message which when completed had read:



‘openthesafe.’

He waited expectantly for the door of the safe to open by some unknown means but he soon realised that nothing was going to happen. He studied the message and label again. This time he noted that there were in fact three letters he had not used in this first attempt. He had omitted to use the ‘d’, the ‘l’ and the ‘r’.
The word ‘door’ required the letters ‘d’ and ‘r’ but not ‘l’. In addition, ‘door’ did not end in ‘e’ which was the whole premise on which he had based his theory. However as soon as he realised that in the original message, the work ‘please’ was also emboldened and that it ended in the letter ‘e’, surely the message must end in the work ‘please’. this would make sense of the whole message, for it said to ask politely and it was polite to say ‘please’.
Thus Davey continued forming letters until he had spelled out the whole of the message:



‘openthesafedoorplease’


Lo and behold, another piece of the rock wall beside the door opened up like a cupboard. Within stood a glass with a spiral stem, an unopened bottle of claret and a folded letter addressed in the following manner:

To the clever finder of this bottle read the message inside.

Davey unfolded the letter and read its contents.

To get this far you have done well.
Before you continue, sit a spell.
Enjoy a glass of this fine wine,
The door will open in its own good time.

Davey examined the bottle suspiciously but could see no sign that it had been tampered with, so he thought, “I may as well do as it says. It’s a pity whoever left this here did not think to leave a corkscrew as well though!” A corkscrew was one item Davey did not carry about his person, so he struck the neck of the bottle smartly against the bottom ledge of the newly opened cupboard. This broke the neck just below the cork, spilling a little of the wine, but retaining most of it. He poured some of the wine into the glass being careful not to include any broken shards. He raised the glass slightly above his head.
“Your good health!” he said to the unknown donor of the wine. With these words he drank the contents of the glass in one swallow. He refilled his glass, again with care and downed it in one swallow a second time. Yet again he poured out a glassful of the fine tasting vintage, but this time he only sipped the wine. He sat on the foot of the stairs and waited for something to happen. He hardly noticed the glass slip out of his hand as he fell into a deep, drugged sleep!

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George awoke to the sound of a bell. it was not a loud bell. it was more like the bell used in large houses to attract the attention of servants. This bell however, was ringing in his office immediately below the bedroom.
“Aha!” thought George, “Intruders!”
He rose from his bed, taking care not to disturb has sleeping wife. He put on a pair of slippers that were on the floor beside the bed, stood up and donned a large, warm, elaborately decorated dressing gown. This had been draped over the back of a comfortable bedside armchair. He then tiptoed to the dressing table where he opened a drawer and withdrew from it a pair of pistols. He put one of them into a pocket of the dressing gown and quietly opened the door. He tiptoed downstairs to the floor below. He approached his office door and gently opened it a few inches.
On glancing round the room, with the help of the mirror, he was able to see that the room was empty, but the door to the secret stairway was open and the arms of the semaphore tower were moving causing the bell to ring. He moved stealthily into the room and watched the tower, reading each letter as it was formed. What George knew and the intruder did not know was that the tower below was linked to the tower in the office by cords so that when either tower was operated, the other mirrored its message. George watched as the tower formed the letters:




‘hesafe’

There was a pause. “He must be wondering what to do now,” George reasoned.
He waited a few minutes and was just about to steal down the stairway to apprehend the intruder when the tower began to move again. He waited patiently and watched the letter form the rest of their message.


‘doorplease’

“Now,” thought George, “we wait to see if he takes the bait!”

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The bay at Castletown is horseshoe in shape. On the east side, there is a peninsula of land jutting out into the Irish Sea. This is called Langness as it supposedly resembles a ‘long nose’. The east side of this peninsula is protected from coastal erosion by solid, jagged granite and limestone rocks but the west side comprises mainly soft sandstone and shale. Consequently, this side erodes, causing the land to be eaten away making it more curved on this side.
On the west side of the bay lies Scarlett Point. This does not erode, as it is comprised mainly of volcanic rocks, marble and limestone.
The south side of the bay is open to the sea, while the north is links land between Castletown and a small village called Derbyhaven. There is a sheltered bay there as well, but its water is not as deep as Castletown bay so could not take the larger craft of the time.
At about the same time that Davey had been hiding outside the Harbourmaster’s house awaiting his chance to cross the footbridge undetected, the schooner, The Peggy, was rounding Langness Point. She had been out of Castletown for two days, supposedly visiting Whitehaven in Cumberland for pleasure. She and her crew of three had in fact been meeting with fellow smugglers in the Cumberland coastline and were now returning under cover of the dark to deliver their goods to the secret boathouse at Bridge House.
On entering the bay, the crew lowered the sails and lifted the sliding keel. The two younger members placed rowlocks into their mounts on each side of the boat, then settled long oars into these and began to row skilfully avoiding moored vessels, their oars hardly making a sound as they entered the water. They soon approached the entrance to the pool outside the chandler’s cottage. The outer door through the protecting walls had been left open for them. They slipped into the pool, having shipped their oars at the last moment.
The elderly man stepped nimbly onto the wharf and opened the secret doors to the boathouse beneath the cottage. They guided Peggy inside and closed the doors behind them. On the left side of the boathouse, the men alighted onto a narrow landing. There was a wide door in the wall backing onto the landing. They opened this, revealing what appeared to be a storeroom no more than ten feet square. The eldest man pulled on an innocent looking beam of wood apparently lying against the rear wall. This was in fact a lever which operated yet another secret door. The lever operated a device that slid a portion of the wall at this end of the room behind the adjacent wall in a similar fashion to the entrance to the stairs in George’s office, which coincidently was at this very moment being opened by Davey.
A large room stretched before them. Much of the space revealed in this room was occupied by barrels, crates, rolls of cloth, carpets etc.
“Come on then lads,” the eldest man ordered, “Let’s get the boat emptied and then we can get to bed and enjoy a well deserved sleep.”

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George, listening from the top of the stairs, heard the tinkling of a glass as it hit the stone floor below.
“Time to see who our intruder is,” he mused as he started to descend. At the bottom of the stairs, he found the unconscious figure of a man whom he recognised.
“So Davey O’Connor,” he said aloud, for he could see the man was too well asleep to hear him, “’tis you the Governor has got to do his dirty work! Well I must credit him with finding the best man for the job. You weren’t to know that I am better!”
George turned and climbed the stairs re-entering his office. Here he went straight to the mirror on the left-hand wall. He pressed a hidden catch behind the mirror and the mirror swung on a hinge to reveal a circular hole in the board behind it. He then lifted the top cannonball from the pyramid on the table and pushed it into the hole. On letting go of it, it disappeared from view followed by a rumbling like distant thunder which signified the passage of the ball behind the boards.
George returned to the stairs and descended once more. Despite having put the ball into the hole before he himself descended, it had not reached its final destination, for he could still hear the sound of its passage behind the boards. The noise sounded more muffled now, as if it were coming from behind the rock wall near to the safe door. He walked to the door and when the sound of the rolling cannonball stopped, he put his hand on the right side of the door and pushed gently.
The door swung open effortlessly and almost silently on its well-lubricated hinges.
“Now Davey me lad, wouldn’t you love to be awake to see this?”
George entered the room behind the door. One whole side of the room was occupied by something akin to the workings of a windmill. There were large cogged wheels driving smaller cogged wheels in a mechanism that lifted a solid beam of wood. This beam was hinged at the bottom. Halfway up its length, it was attached to a length of strong rope. This in turn was wrapped round a capstan turned by the complicated mechanism. The rope raised the beam, the top end of which had been pressing against the door preventing it from being opened from the other side. At a higher level, the cannonball, at the end of its journey down a wooden channel, had fallen into a basket. This was attached to a balance. On altering the equilibrium of the balance, the weight of the cannonball had started the machinery, thus releasing the lever behind the door. Unbeknownst to O’Connor, the signalling tower and its message was just a red herring to trap any intruder. Normally if George or any of his staff or partners wished to enter this room, they simply placed a cannonball into the hole behind the mirror and set it on its way.
The rest of the room was filled with various boxes, crates and barrels, all of which were contraband. In the middle of the room was a large, padlocked chest which contained George’s personal treasure gathered over his years at sea and moneys accrued from his nefarious dealings as a smuggler. In the wall on the left was yet another door. This door was more conventional as it had a latch on this side and a keyhole.
George approached this door and using a key taken from a hook on the wall beside it, unlocked the door, returning the key to its hook. He opened the door and entered the room beyond. This room was vast. It stretched almost the full length and breadth of Bridge House and like the safe room he had just left, it was hewn from the volcanic rock beneath the house. This room contained many more items of contraband, ranging from casks of brandy and other spirits to luxurious carpets from north Africa and Asia.
As well as the contraband, there were three men in the room, busy moving freshly acquired goods from the opposite end of this room to various places in the warehouse.
“Hello George. Wasn’t expecting to see you tonight!” These words were spoken by the eldest of the three. He was a man of about the same age as George and like him, was well built with a ruddy, weather-beaten complexion.
“Didn’t expect to be here, John,” replied the merchant. “I was woken by the bell on the tower in my office. We have a visitor, courtesy of His Excellency the Governor.”
John was John Clegg, the harbourmaster. The other two younger men were his son James and George’s son Martyn. While these two young men were still only nineteen years of age, they both had the fresh features of men well used to hard work at sea.
“Come and meet our visitor!” George instructed his three companions. They walked back through the safe room to the bottom of the stairway. Here lay the still drugged body of Davey O’Connor.
“Fell for the trap then, hook line and sinker,” laughed Martyn. “Do you know him, father?”
“Aye lad. He’s an Irishman named Davey O’Connor. He’s a housebreaker with quite a reputation. Came here from his homeland some five or six years ago and lives as if he were a squire, even though he has no visible means of income. Looks like he is pretty good at his work though, for it takes a clever man to get as far as he has tonight.”
“What do we do with him?” James asked.
“Well,” the harbourmaster spoke up, “I think it must be time for Mr O’Connor to earn an honest living!” He looked at George and smiled.
“What do you have in mind,” queried the latter.
“First of all, George, tell me how long will the sleeping draught keep him under?”
“Judging by the amount he imbibed he should be unconscious till mid-day at the very least!”
“That will be fine!” John said. He paused for a moment and scratched his head, a sure sign to his son that he was calculating something. After a few minutes, he continued. “Yes, that should work out just perfectly. The sixty gunner, The Royal Sovereign is due to anchor in the bay sometime in the next three hours. Her captain has sent word ahead to the castle that he requires as many pressed men as he can find. One more would no doubt be very welcome!”
The four men chuckled. They bound Davey’s unconscious body hand and foot, relieving him of his purse and the contents of his pockets. These included certain items of jewellery; a fine pocket watch; some unusual looking keys; two pistols and an interesting note written in the hand of the Governor.
“You won’t need these where you are going!” John said, pocketing all but the note which he gave to George.

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“Mr George Quayle wishes to see you milord! He is waiting in the reception room.”
The Governor was displeased at having his morning disturbed in this way. He had been waiting expectantly for a visit from O’Connor and had a squad of soldiers from the castle ready outside to accompany him to Bridge House where he was confident he would have the pleasure of arresting the man Quayle. Yet there was no sign of O’Connor and here was Quayle calling on him! Why?” He accompanied the footman who had informed him of Quayle’s arrival. They entered the reception room where he greeted his visitor in a courteous but cold manner.
“What brings you here Mr Quayle?”
“A strange and worrying event occurred last night at my house. I was disturbed in the middle of the night by the sound of somebody in my office that should not have been there, especially at that hour”
“Really?” the Governor responded with feigned concern. “I trust neither you nor your family were injured by this man?”
“Indeed no!” George replied, noting with satisfaction the reference to ‘….this man…’ He had only said that he was woken by somebody. He neither indicated the number of intruders, nor if they were male or female!
“I was able to subdue him with a good rap on the back of his head with the butt of one of my pistols.”
“Did you recognize him?” the Governor asked in a worried manner. “What did you do with him?” he continued before George had time to reply to the first question.
“Well, I don’t know who he is,” George lied, “but on inspecting his pockets I came upon a note that I thought might be of interest to you , Sir.” With these words he handed a piece of paper to the Governor who snatched it from his hand and began to read it.
“This is not…… What nonsense is this?” he blustered. “This purports to be from me to someone called O’Connor. I know no one of that name and this is not my handwriting!”
“Indeed, the handwriting is mine,” confessed Quayle. “You see, I thought such a provocative missal should be kept safe, so I copied it and put the original in my safe at Bridge House. I know it is not going to fall into the wrong hands, for the safe is my own design and has proved to be impregnable even to the best of housebreakers. It can only be opened by me or my son!” He spoke these words with some relish and tongue in cheek, for he knew how uncomfortable his adversary must by now be feeling.
“What became of O’Connor?”
“At first, I thought I should call for the assistance of the night watchman, but that would have meant leaving the house and I am sure O’Connor being a resourceful man might have found a way of escaping. So I left him bound and imprisoned in the ante-room to the safe! I see that you seem to have a convenient squad of men outside. Perhaps you would order them to accompany me to my house and arrest him?”
“Not only that, but I will accompany them, for I must see for myself this impregnable safe of yours!”
“By all means,” agreed George with a wicked glint in his eye.
The party approached Bridge House with speed, crossing the lawns of the mansion to a gate in the south wall directly across the road from George’s front door. George ushered the Governor, the sergeant-at-arms and two of his armed men into his office.
“Interesting objects on your table,” remarked the Governor. “I recognize the semaphore tower of course and know of your association with it. Why the cannonball though?”
“They remind me of my days at sea,” replied George evasively. “The real thing would have stood alongside the cannon and would have held many more balls. They were stacked in the pyramid for convenience. It is a very stable way of stacking them provided the rails surrounding the base are bigger than half the diameter of the balls and fixed firmly to the deck. Being stacked thus beside the guns, the men could fire the guns rapidly in a battle, an important skill you will agree. The boys whose job it was to look after them and supply powder to the gunners were known as ‘powder monkeys’. The brass rails holding the balls in place and preventing them from rolling about the deck in rough weather became known as ‘the monkey’ or ‘brass monkeys’. Unfortunately in freezing weather, the brass has a habit of shrinking appreciably and then if it were rough, the balls would move about and often fall onto the deck, thus giving rise to the saying: ‘cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!”
“Thank you, sir, for the lesson in the origins of quaint and somewhat questionable sayings,” said the Governor sarcastically, “but I see no safe door and there is but one door into this office. Where is the ante-room you referred to and where is the safe?”
George, who was standing beside the table during this conversation, turned to the wall and pressed the knot in the wood. As it had done in the early hours of the morning when O’Connor discovered it, the secret entrance revealed itself. The men with George looked on in amazement as the panel disappeared behind the rest of the boards and the stairwell became visible.
George indicated the stairs and asked the sergeant to take the lead with his two men. The sergeant stepped forward, pistol in one hand, sword in the other. The Governor followed eagerly, not noticing George pause for a moment behind him.
His son Martyn entered the office with a grin on his face.
“Did everything go off as planned?” his father asked.
“Yes, father. Not a hitch!” replied the young man.
“Stay here and release the ball when the word ‘please’ is spelled out on the tower,” said George with a grin.
He set off down the stairs. On reaching the bottom, he was confronted by the mocking voice of the Governor.
“The bird seems to have flown, Mr Quayle. Your skill with knots must be leaving you!”
On the floor of the room, in front of the safe door, lay some lengths of cord, but there was no sign of the housebreaker.
“Damn me!” exclaimed George in feigned anger. “How did he escape from here? The only way out is up the stairs and through my office. I closed the secret entrance before coming to fetch you. There is no way of opening the entrance from this side! It is a mystery!”
“Perhaps he is hiding in your so-called impregnable safe!”
“I’ll wager a thousand guineas he’s not there!” stated George confidently. “I told you I designed it myself. It is impregnable!”
“I’ll take that wager,” said the Governor, who reasoned that if there were no way of opening the entrance at the top of the stairs, O’Connor could only be hiding behind the door in front of them. The two men shook hands sealing the bet.
“Open the door then,” the Governor ordered expectantly. He could see no way of opening the door, so was curious to see how it would be done.
George began to unscrew the sphere at the end of the banister rail. He pressed the button thus revealed, opening the ‘cabinet’ containing the tower. He manipulated the controls of the tower spelling out the message:



‘open please’.

Of course this was not the same message Davey had worked out earlier that day, but George’s son Martyn knew what to do. They heard the tinkling of a bell somewhere above them followed by a sound like the rumbling of thunder.
When this last sound ceased, George asked the sergeant to push the door open. Ordering his men to be ready with their firearms, the sergeant did so. The door opened inwards, revealing a room full of chests, but devoid of any human presence! The sergeant and his men entered carefully alert for any movement. They checked behind every crate, barrel and chest, but found nobody.
“That’s a thousand guineas you owe me!” stated George to the crestfallen Governor. “I have no idea how he has escaped, but gone he has!”
The Governor stormed out of the room and up the stairs. Not only had he been thwarted in his attempt to discredit Quayle, he now appeared to have lost a thousand guineas into the bargain.
“He must have found a way out through here!” he suggested hopefully.
He could not renege on his wager, for it had been witnessed by the sergeant and both of his men. This was money he had set aside to have a monument built in his honour. At a date in the future, before he left his office as Lieutenant Governor, he intended to ask for public subscriptions to fund this monument, but had held this thousand guineas in reserve should the necessary amount not be forthcoming. Without this money, he knew it would be very unlikely that his monument would be completed. So he was grasping at any straw that might save him having to settle the wager.
“I assure you, there is no way out when the entrance is closed from the other side. If you don’t believe me, I will go into the office and leave the three of you on this side and see if you can get through without breaking down the boards, which he obviously did not do as you can see.”
“We will do as you say, but the sergeant must accompany you to make sure there are no tricks!”
So George and the sergeant entered the office where George pressed the knot again and the boards returned into their original position, settling with a solid click as soon as the boards were in place again. They could hear the three men behind the panels knocking on the walls and boards, but as expected after about fifteen minutes the Governor shouted for him to open the entrance. George once again pressed the knot and the entrance opened allowing a disgruntled Governor and his two companions to enter the office.
“Satisfied?”
The Governor in one final desperate bid to find O’Connor, ordered the sergeant and his men to give the safe room one more careful examination to try to discover any hiding place they might have overlooked the first time. George offered to help by opening any crates, barrels or chests to convince the men there was nobody hiding in them and eventually after a further half hour, the Governor had to concede that this was the case.
With his men, the he left Bridge House a chastened, unhappy man.
George chuckled. He called to Martyn, “You can come and help me re-arrange the crates now, son.”
They went into the safe room and began to move crates from the wall on the left side of the room and place them in a similar position against the right wall. A more observant person than the sergeant or his men, might have noticed the lack of dust on this side of the room earlier, for these crates had stood here on the right for a long time, only being moved temporarily by George, Martyn and the Cleggs to hide the doorway into the warehouse from prying eyes.
“Did you have any trouble with our Mr O’Connor, lad?”
“None at all,” Martyn replied. “As you predicted last night, he must have drunk quite a bit of the wine. He was still asleep when we delivered him to the Royal Sovereign.”

“Well, let that be a lesson to him and to the Governor too!” laughed George.

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Davey awoke with a fuzzy head. Something was not right! He was in the dark, so assumed that his candle had burnt out. However, it was not pitch dark. There was a smell around him that he did not immediately recognize.
“Why does the room smell of a mixture of powder, seaweed and vomit?” he thought. His eyes gradually became accustomed to the dark. He could feel that he was lying on boards and his eyes discerned a pyramid of cannonballs beside him. They reminded him of something he had noticed in the office in Bridge House. These cannonballs were much bigger than the ones in the office though and there were many more of them.
He sat up and shook his head. He bent his knees, but was surprised to find that his left leg was fettered and attached by a loose chain. This was attached to a shackle bolted to the deck. Deck it was he slowly realised in horror. It began to dawn on him that he had been pressed into service on board of a warship.
His worst fears were confirmed when a rough looking man dressed in the uniform of a sailor in the king’s navy appeared.
“Welcome to your new home y’ swab!”

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