Here, as at Rye, if the favoured one refused to serve, the crowd were instructed to repair to his house and pull it down about his ears. In later periods the commonalty had mighty little to do with the selection of the Mayor, which as at Rye became almost hereditary in a family or connexion.
In a map of Hastings circ.1748, there are no buildings at all west of this spot. A haven too with vessels on it is here depicted, partly behind the castle hill and on or about the site of the present Wellington Square. It is connected with the sea by a narrow channel, over which a bridge carries the road leading westward along a then virgin shore-front.
It was a dozen years after the date of this comparatively recent, map that the Hastings mariners turned, pirates again for a time, and for many years a gang known as the Ruxley crew reverted to the practices of the Middle Ages.
In August,1758 two armed Hastings cutters held up a Danish ship carrying no less a personage than the Ambassador Extraordinary from the Court of Spain to that of Denmark. They assaulted the captain and plundered part of the cargo. Six of the offenders were subsequently arrested and two of them hung in London. This example, however, in no way intimidated these audacious Hastings corsairs, who during the next seven years boarded and robbed many vessels coming up the Channel.
Their outrages culminated in the looting of a homeward bound Dutch ship off Beachy Head, whose skipper thev clove down the back with an axe. This raised a great outcry, and two hundred Inniskilling dragoons were sent to Hastings to seize the culprits.
The purchasers of these ill-gotten gains were seized with panic, and one
of them, worth £10,000, fled the town. A dozen men were arrested on
this occasion and three of them were hung. As wreckers, too, the natives
of the premier Port proved incorrigible.
In 1747, a big Spanish ship of nearly 1,000 tons carrying a most valuable
cargo, insured for £120,000, the prize of a British privateer, was
wrecked near Beachy Head. Desperate encounters took place between the Custom
House officers and the wreckers, sixty of whom are reported to have perished
from various causes: many, no doubt, from excessive sampling of the ardent
liquors found on board.
A most curious contemporary print of the scene, shows the shattered hulk of the big ship lying on the sand and crowds of people on the shore, making off with the cargo. Underneath the picture is inscribed, with other descriptive details, " Ye most extraordinary wreck that ever happened on any part of ye coast of this Kingdom."
Two months after this a Dutch East Indiaman of 700 tons, and carrying in cash and cargo £200,000, drove ashore at Bulverhythe, just beyond the western extremity of St. Leonards. A private letter, of which anon, describes the ship as standing intact upon the sands with no possibility of getting her off. " I believe," says the writer. " they did save everything that is worth saving to the 'Great Disappointment' of the wreckers who came from all parts of the country for plunder.
There was yesterday more than a thousand of these wretches with long poles and hooks at the end. But all the soldiers on the coast are here and Behave well at present. They keep the country people off and their officers keep the soldiers to rights."
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