Soldiers and Saints: Travel in the Bristol Channel under Sail

Talk on 12 December 2023 by Philip Ashford.
Report by Stephen Griffiths

If you can keep your head when all the other headless chickens have lost theirs ... (I’m sure it goes something like that). At the Society’s Christmas meeting Santa’s gremlins delayed the start, and, while everyone panicked or fainted, our technical guru Andy calmly plugged his phone into the projector and played us a soothing YouTube video about Thornbury. When the gremlins had been dispersed Philip Ashford took a couple of deep breaths and launched his talk on the voyages from Bristol of soldiers and saints.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, if you asked a gentleman wearing a tricorn hat and gold epaulettes the direction to King Road, he would send you out to the mouth of the river Avon. King Road was the area of the Bristol Channel where large ships would anchor that were too big to sail up the Avon into Bristol. At times King Road would be full of sails, especially times of war, when many of the ships would be full of soldiers. At other times the ships might be full of religious fugitives or missionaries, all hoping or praying for the northerly or easterly wind that would take them out of the Bristol Channel.

Queen Elizabeth I’s settlement of Ireland had lit flames of rebellion that still smoulder today, so the soldiers did not have a long journey to work. But it was rarely an easy commute. In 1579, Sir Henry Wallop had to wait 2 weeks in King Road while constant westerlies battered his 600 soldiers from Somerset and Gloucestershire. Upon finally reaching Lundy they were driven back up the channel by high autumn tides. But in 1581, Sir William Morgan said his 7 ships would surely have sunk if not for being driven back up to Bristol by the tides.

If you managed to survive in Ireland then the voyage home was not so bad. With favourable wind and tide it could be done remarkably quickly. In 1601, the final Spanish Armada landed at Kinsale in Ireland to help the Irish rebels. Richard Boyle (father of scientist Robert Boyle) needed to get news to the Queen in London, and managed to do the journey in just 2 days, sailing to King Road and then galloping a string of horses to London. You’d be hard pressed to do it quicker today without flying.

You would think that saints might be given an easier passage out of King Road than soldiers, but they suffered just as badly. In 1635, some of the first generation of emigrants to New England had to wait 11 days in King Road for a provident wind to blow. It then took several more weeks to cross the Atlantic. After the Pilgrim Fathers came the Quakers, whose leader William Penn sailed from King Road in 1669 to found Pennsylvania. In the 18th century it was the turn of the Methodists, whose modest beginnings were in Bristol, to make the voyage, followed by the Baptists in the 19th century.

Philip’s information comes from personal diaries and letters. Tales full of suffering and sea-sickness straight from the pilgrim’s mouth, so to speak. But did that deter us from tucking into mince pies and mulled wine? We historians are made from tougher stuff. Thanks to Philip for his comforting stories of the horrific voyages of yore, and to Andy for his riot-avoiding video.