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Deal, Kent Deal is a town in Kent, England. It lies on the English Channel eight miles from Dover. It is a small fishing community situated between Dover and the Isle of Thanet. Closely associated with Deal are the villages of Kingsdown and Walmer. The town lies at the site where Julius Caesar first arrived in Britain (best guess by historians), and was named as one of the Cinque Ports in 1278. The town over the centuries grew to become for a while the busiest harbour in England; today it enjoys the reputation of being a quiet seaside resort, its quaint streets and houses the only reminder of its fascinating history. Its finest building is the Tudor Deal Castle, commissioned by King Henry VIII and designed with an attractive rose floor plan. During the 19th century, Charles Dickens was to comment on the character of the East Kent boatmen, and on one of his visits to Deal he wrote: These are among the bravest and most skilful mariners that exists. Let a gale rise and swell into a storm, and let a sea run that might appal the stoutest heart that ever beat; let the light ships on the sands throw up a rocket in the darkness of the night; or let them hear through the angry roar the signal guns of a ship in distress, and these men spring up with activity so dauntless, so valiant and heroic, that the world cannot surpass it". ..... "For this and the recollection of their comrades, whom we have known, whom the raging sea has engulfed before their childrens eyes in such brave efforts whom the secret sand has buried, let us hold the boatmen in our love and honour, and be tender of the fame they well deserve~
Maritime history By the time Dickens came to Deal it had been largely forgotten how the government of 1784, under Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (who was staying at nearby Walmer Castle, and was later to be appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports-(1792)), ensured that the Deal boats were all set ablaze, suspecting some of the Deal luggers of being engaged in smuggling. Pitt had awaited an opportunity that January, when the boats were all hoved up on the beach on account of bad weather, to send a Regiment of soldiers to smash and burnt them all. A Naval Cutter was positioned off shore to prevent any of the boatmen from escaping. Could anything but the fact of the event itself have made matters worse for the boatmen it would have been in that their ancestors had the right, under charter, for centuries, to freely import goods in return for their services as Cinque Port men in providing what had been long recognised as the sole naval defence of the realm. These men continued to risk their lives and their boats, in the saving of the lives of shipwreck victims. The irrepressible spirit of the Deal boatmen remained undaunted by these events throughout the Napoleonic wars with France and they continued to engage in asserting their hard-earned right to trade, referred to as smuggling at Walmer in 1784. From these activities ready news of the events unfolding across the channel in France would reach English the shore that much more quickly and regularly, with about 400 men making a living of off Deal beach at that time. The very fact of that war only made the boatmens efforts more profitable, so that with the peace, the Government immediately turned a part of its Naval blockade into a coastal blockade, which lasted from 1818 to 1831. Deal had a naval ship yard uniquely located beside the sheltered waters of the Goodwin Sands, the yard provided Deal much of its trade. On the site of the yard there is a building, orriginally used as a semaphore tower, it was latter used as a coastguard house, and then as a Time Ball Tower, which it remains today, although as a museum. The Royal Marines. The first home of the Royal Marines in Kent was established at Chatham in 1755. Because of its proximity to the continent and the fact that it possessed a thriving naval dockyard, Deal has been closely associated with the corps ever since its foundation. Records from the old Navy yard at Deal exist from 1658 and show that Marines from Chatham and Woolwich were on duty in Deal, quartered in the town, until the Deal depot was established in 1861. Deal barracks has became known over its long history as the Royal Marine School of Music, the barracks at Walmer consisting of the North, East and South (or Cavalry) barracks, and all were constructed shortly after the outbreak of the French revolution. A part of the South barracks was used from 1815 as the quarters for the 'blockade men', drafted against a threat of local smuggling rumoured to be ongoing. The South barracks became a coastguard station thereafter, and this duty continued until 1840. It was the East barracks which accommodated the School of Music, until the Royal Naval School of Music was formed at Plymouth in 1903, but which moved to Deal in 1930, replacing the original depot band formed in 1891. Thus the inistitution became known as the Royal Marine School of Music in 1950. During 1940, at St Margarets Bay, close to Deal, the Royal Marines Siege Regiment came into being and manned cross channel guns for most of the remainder of the war. In 1989, a bomb planted by the IRA killed ten bandsmen and injured a further 22. On the evening of 26th of March 1996, the Deal populous were made privy to a very special ceremony: being the sounding of the 'beating of the retreat' coming from the South barracks, as the Marines were commanded to vacate there ancient Kent depot, so moving to new quarters at Portsmouth. The Deal Lifeboats. During the First World War, Deal had two lifeboats, the Charles Dibden and the Frances Forbes Barton; William Stanton was coxswain of the latter, which was originally, in 1897, the legacy of a Miss Webster to the boatmen of Broadstairs. It is recorded as having remained at that station until 1912, when the Broadstairs RNLI station was closed, during which time it had been taken out on 77 launches and saved 115 lives, by far the most effective of the RNLI craft stationed there. Solomon Holbourn, Coxswain of the Mary White of Broadstairs had an aunt, Sophia who married at Folkestone in 1813 to William Stevenson. His eldest son William, became a mariner and a boatman, and married an Elizabeth Wellard in 1839 at St. Peters, Broadstairs. One of their children, born in 1848 was likewise named after his father William, but in his adult life was better known as Bill Floaty Stevenson, and as such as a member of the Frances Forbes Barton Lifeboat crew. The North Deal lifeboat. The Charles Dibden of 1907~31 saved 443 lives at sea. During the service of R. Roberts as Coxswain, the Deal lifeboatmen included F. Roberts, Bonny Will Adams, Henry and William Marsh, (the latter a Deal pilot), F Hanner (2nd Coxswain), and Henry Holbourn, nephew of Henry Marsh. Internet Links Deal Carnival Official town website Tourist guide to Deal
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