

MARITIME HISTORY 



the towns built the batteries and provided ammunition. Brighton was furnished with 12, Seaford 

 10, Littlehampton 7, Newhaven 5, Hastings n, and Rye 10 guns, and the inspecting officer 

 reported that they were all in good condition. 1 The Elizabethan blockhouse and gun-garden at 

 Brighton had been sapped and washed away by the sea during the first half of the eighteenth 

 century ; this new battery the East Cliff was placed near the former east gate, and this battery 

 was also destroyed by the sea on 17 November, 1786.* The Littlehampton battery is said to have 

 been established in 1739;* the guns at Seaford appear to have been divided between an open 

 battery on the beach and a blockhouse at Cliff End, shown in a map of 1757 ; 4 the Castle Hill, at 

 Newhaven was bought of Hester Gibbon in 1764, although the guns were there earlier ; 6 and the 

 date of 1740 is assigned for those at Rye. 6 In 1764 ^35 14*. was paid to the corporation of Rye 

 for the gun-garden on which an upper and lower battery and a magazine had lately been built ; six 

 poles were shortly afterwards taken from the churchyard to add to the area. 7 The 2 Geo. Ill, 

 cap. 27 (1761) vested in trustees, for the use of the crown, the land on which these batteries had 

 been erected ; in each case the area is given, and a battery on Blatchington Down, then only just 

 built, is also included. 



The war of 1776-83 with the American colonies and their supporters afforded no important 

 incident relating to Sussex, but a supplementary descent on the county was planned in 1779 to 

 coincide with the main invasion to be carried out by the combined French and Spanish fleets. 

 Troops, mostly militia, were cantoned along the coast and a camp formed at Playden ; at Rye there 

 was a battery of ten 24-pounders, and another of two 1 8-pounders, belonging to the government, 

 and one of five 6-pounders belonging to the town; at Hastings there was the government battery of 

 eleven 12-pounders. 8 When the Revolutionary War broke out the great need was for men. Years 

 of ever-widening commerce and of naval victory had their effect eventually in attracting thousands 

 of men to the sea, but at first the supply of sailors was altogether insufficient to man the royal and 

 merchant navies. Therefore, besides the impress system, always working, and a suspension of certain 

 sections of the Navigation Acts, Parliament sanctioned in 1795 and 1796 an experiment analogous 

 to the ship-money project of Charles I by requiring the counties each to obtain a certain number of 

 men for the navy, who were to be attracted by a bounty to be raised by an assessment charged in 

 every parish like other local rates. 9 In 1795 the county was called upon for 172, and in 1796 for 

 223 men, comparing with 440 and 570 for Kent, and 236 and 306 for Hampshire. The Cinque 

 Ports organization, it will be noticed, is completely ignored. The ports, also, were required to 

 procure men, an embargo being placed upon all British shipping until they were obtained ; Arundel 

 was rated for 33 men, Chichester 56, Newhaven 17, Rye 90, and Shoreham 28. In 1798 the 

 need of men was greater than ever, and there was the added possibility of invasion which the French 

 government had been considering since the beginning of the war. The French marine was quite 

 impotent, and the departments of Normandy and Brittany were themselves clamouring for protection, 

 but maritime superiority was not a factor in the calculations of the strategists of the Convention and 

 the Directory, especially when the comforting belief in the possibility of evasion could be used as 

 an answer to objectors who dwelt upon facts. 10 



From 1796 onwards the idea of an evasion descent, in flat-bottomed barges, fishing boats, and 

 the like, took shape again ; such plans came to the knowledge of the English authorities and awoke 

 renewed watchfulness. Therefore to afford local security, and to obtain the services of more men, 

 a new force, the Sea Fencibles, was created by an Order in Council of 14 May, 1798. It was 

 raised with the intention of meeting an invading flotilla by another of the same character, and for 

 the purpose of manning the coast defences ; it was to be composed of fishermen and boatmen as 

 well as the semi-seafaring dwellers of the shore who were not liable to impressment. The order 

 applied to the whole of Great Britain and Ireland, but had especial reference to the stretch of coast, 

 extending from Norfolk to Hampshire, which fronts the continental centre and has always been 

 particularly exposed to attack. The men were to be volunteers, and the principal inducement 

 offered was that, while enrolled, the seafaring members were free from the liability to be impressed ; 

 they were under the command of naval officers and were paid is. a day when on service. There 

 were two districts in Sussex, that from Dungeness to Beachy Head having one captain, four lieu- 

 tenants, and 288 men, and the other from Beachy Head to Emsworth with six officers and 440 



1 Ho. Off. Ord. v, 53. 



1 Erredge, Hist, of B rights Ims ton, 67, 68. An anonymous writer in the Brighton Gazette of 1 8 April, 

 1895, states that the East Cliff battery of the middle of the century was washed away in 1761, and that a 

 new one, built in the same year, was destroyed on the date given by Erredge. 



* Dallaway, Hist, of Western Sussex, \\, pt. i, 19. * (B.M.) K. 1 1 Tab., xlii, 2. 



s W.O. Ord. Bills, Ser. iv, 652. " Holloway, Hist, of Key, 349. ' W.O. Ord. Bills, Ser. iv, 652. 



8 Add. MSS. 15533. ' 35 Geo. Ill, cap. 5 ; 37 Geo. Ill, cap. 4. 



10 In the terminology of naval warfare ' evasion ' applies to any operation by which a belligerent proposes 

 to accomplish his object without being brought to action by his opponent's fleet. 



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