William Whittle was a seaman with a lucrative sideline. He was a smuggler of foreign spirits. The Dorset coastal village of Langton Herrimg was his place of birth and he was born there in 1810 on New Year’s Eve. His secondary trade of smuggling seems to have been a family affair as relative Thomas Whittle, a Langton Herring shoemaker, had been sent to prison for smuggling three years earlier.
In 1835, William Whittle was charged with assaulting Lieutenant Rowe, a Customs Officer at Abbotsbury and of being the leader of a large smuggling gang. It was reported that a gang of around 600 men were helping with the landing of the liquor. Many were carrying bludgeons. One of the Customs Officers suffered three broken ribs and was unfit for work for seven weeks. Smuggling of wines, spirits and luxury goods from France was a local industry and the men of Abbotsbury and Langton Herring were much involved in the activity.
At Dorchester Assizes in March 1835, William Whittle was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged in Dorchester Gaol. This prompted a petition for clemency signed by former Weymouth mayor and brewer, William Devenish, Thomas Margrie - Secretary to the Bridport Shipping Company and 355 petitioners from the Isle of Portland, 173 from Weymouth and 110 from Dorchester. Grounds for clemency were based on his alleged excellent character, his youth and an employment record of six years as a merchant seaman. It was proposed by the petitioners that he should serve a period in the Royal Navy to restore his good name.
Coastguard Comptroller General Robert Roe strongly disagreed with the petition and claimed that if the sentence was altered ‘we should be in more danger from Whittle’s gang.’ The sentence was changed to transportation to Australia for a period of 10 years. William Whittle was to leave behind in Langton Herring his wife Sarah and their children.
William Whittle was moved to the convict hulk York at Gosport berthed off Rat Island next to the naval abattoir. There, he awaited a transportation vessel to take him to Australia. He left Portsmouth on the Royal Sovereign (2) on 25th July 1835 arriving down under in Sydney on 12th December 1835. There was only one convict death en route often there were more. William Whittle received his ticket of leave in September 1841 allowing him certain freedoms. Then he settled in Wellington, New South Wales around 200 miles inland from Sydney. There, reputedly he became a farmer.
In 1846, he married Australian born Elizabeth Hunt and they had a large family. She was the daughter of Samuel Hunt who also was an ex-convict who was convicted of high treason in Derby for his involvement in a working class uprising. (Pentrich Rebellion 1817) With little prospect of returning to Dorset it was not uncommon for married ex-convicts to marry again in Australia. Wishing to see a growing population, the authorities tended to turn a blind eye to this practice. With his maritime background, William Whittle took on a lease in 1865 of a ferry which crossed the Macquarie River in Wellington. He was provided with a ferry boat and required to convey passengers, horses, carts, etc at any time and to maintain it at his own expense.
He died at the age of 63 years and is buried in Wellington General Cemetery, New South Wales, Australia.
(Sources include Dorset Smugglers (1986) by Roger Guttridge, British Newspaper Archives, Wellington Museum NSW and the National Archives, Kew.)
(Illustration: credit Wellington Museum NSW, Australia.)
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