When we last left Logan--back with my long post over a year ago on the
Jacobite Rising of 1715--the Battle of Preston had been lost, and soon thereafter the whole rebellion was crushed. Logan would have been among nearly 1,500 prisoners of war in
Preston. It was late November. Common soldiers like Logan were held in the town church for a whole month, cold and uncomfortable, barely existing on bread and water, unsure of what doom may await. If he was not imprisoned or executed, he was likely to be indentured and sent to America. By some ruse (that I have yet to invent), perhaps alone at night, Logan managed to get out of the church. Marked as a rebel, his only option was to flee as quickly and as far as possible. For Logan, this meant getting to sea and leaving England completely, perhaps never to return.
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| Warton Marsh on the Ribble Estuary, from the blog ribbletoamazon.com |
The port of
Liverpool was only about thirty miles away. The most obvious route would have been directly south, but this led through
Wigan and thus in the direction from which
General Wills had brought his troops. Luckily for Logan (and, for me, the writer), the geography of the area gave him a way to travel that few if any people would notice. West of Preston, the
River Ribble broadens into a massive
estuary. Even today, thanks to preservation as a
National Nature Reserve, over a quarter of a million waders and waterfowl winter in the area. The region was sparsely populated, limited to small, scattered fishing and farming villages such as
Banks and
Churchtown in the ancient parish of
North Meols that had been settled by the Norse before the Norman conquest. By keeping to the marshes, Logan would have been seen by no more than thousands of birds such as
wigeons,
geese, and
plovers. The going was slow, muddy, and treacherous. Eventually, south of what is today the seaside resort of
Southport, the wetlands would have given way to miles of beach and sand dunes. The flat, broad
West Lancashire coastal plain saw Logan all the way to the outskirts of Liverpool.
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| A 1917 map of the Ribble Estuary |
