Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [6]
After his departure, Deane wrote two illuminating reports. The first, entitled "An Account of Affairs in Russia, JuneJuly, 1725" was a detailed analysis of the political situation after the death of Peter I. The second, "The Present State of the Maritime Power of Russia," was an intelligence report on the standing Russian Baltic fleet.21 Deane was convinced that he had failed in his mission, however, for what his superiors wanted was an account of the activities of Jacobite emigrés and sympathizers in Russia. In despair, he wrote Townshend that enemies were gathering "to blacken my name ... and that you will think me a monster."22
Before he left St. Petersburg, Deane made contact with a Jacobite courier, a young Irish military officer named Edmund O'Conner. With an offer of monetary reward and promise of a king's pardon, Deane convinced O'Conner to betray the cause. The captain made contact with O'Conner again in Holland and delighted his superiors by penetrating the communications network of the nefarious Jacobite agent John Archdeacon. During
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the winter of 172526 Deane and O'Conner gained the confidence of Archdeacon, gathered new correspondence, forged documents, and manufactured seals. 23
The following spring Deane was assigned to the squadron dispatched to the Baltic to threaten the Russians in the Gulf of Finland. He was able to acquire current intelligence about the Russian fleet, and he set about recruiting a network of agents to supply future information. He issued a number of dispatches and seems to have influenced or written the report signed by Admiral Charles Wager entitled "The Present State of the Danes, Swedes, and Russians in Respect to One Another and to the English Fleet in the Baltic in the Year 1726."24
Back in London in the fall of 1726, Deane released a new edition of the Narrative, which was then reprinted the following year.25 In these new editions, the captain was less actor or subject than author, and the shift from first-person to third-person narration was intended to portray a man ultimately in control of his fate. Again, Deane's goal was to keep his name current, for he now sought continued employment in the Foreign Office as commercial consul for the Ports of Flanders at Ostend. He won the post in 1728, for Walpole, Townshend, and Wager were powerful patrons who admired his service and loyalty. Most of all, they wished to place someone in Flanders capable of assisting the enterprise of suppressing Austria's attempt to enter the East India trade. A perfect choice for the assignment, Deane played a significant role in eliminating the Ostend East India Company.26
Deane remained consul in Ostend until 1738, when he retired to his home in Wilford, Nottinghamshire. He continued to recognize the value of his celebrity, and in 1730 and 1738 he reissued the 1727 Revis'd Narrative to redefine himself within the context first of Ostend and then of Wilford.27 In 1735 he arranged for a memorial to the deliverance of the crew of the Nottingham Galley
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and commissioned the Reverend Samuel Wilson to publish "An Abstract Of Consul Deane's Narrative," which described the captain as "a pious Gentleman ... who wished the great Salvation ... should be commemorated ... [and] that the Mercy should not be forgotten, but from year to Year be acknowledged with suitable Gratitude and Praise." 28
Captain Deane died at his home in Wilford in 1761 at the age of eighty-three. In his will he made provision for a commemoration of the wreck of the Nottingham Galley in New England, a generous sum for that purpose to be granted to Doctor Miles Whitworth of