The Old Ship is one of the oldest hotels in Brighton and has quite a history itself, as can be seen from the web site of the Royal Escape Race from where these words come:
Following the first English Civil war, in January 1649 Charles I was executed for high treason. The King had refused to properly recognise the power of Parliament and the House of Commons, faced with a King who seemed bent on raising another Royalist army, decided on regicide and signed his death warrant.
Just before Charles I climbed the Whitehall scaffold to face the executioners axe, Parliament rushed through an emergency bill to make it an offence to proclaim a new King and to declare the House of Commons as the source of all just power. England effectively became a republic, lead by Oliver Cromwell.
Which just left the royal problem of the Kings son, Charles II, who had made his way north to Scotland, which was then still a separate Kingdom. In 1649 the Scottish Parliament proclaimed Charles II King of Scots and he set about raising his Royalist Scots army to move against Parliament, which culminated in the Battle of Worcester. On the afternoon of September 3rd 1651, Cromwell’s Roundheads routed the Royalist army in a brutal clash, with the Royalists being chased and cut down through the narrow streets of Worcester, so bringing the Civil War to a final and bloody conclusion.
Charles’ supporters fled into hiding and he had no choice but to follow, for capture would have inevitably meant following his father noble footsteps for appointment with the executioners axe. Hunted by a vengeful Cromwell, Charles fled south, eventually evading a detachment of troops in Sussex blocking the bridge at Bramber.
Now in the company of Lord Wilmost and a Colonel Gounter, they hid themselves in the fishing village of Brighthelmstone (now Brighton). The party took rooms at the George Inn in West Street where Colonel Gounter started looking for a way out. Through his acquaintance, a French merchant, he found himself in conversation with Nicholas Tattersell, captain of a filthy little 31ft coaster named the Surprise, which was lying in the mud of Southwick. Her normal trade was lugging coal from Newcastle round to Poole, but Captain Tattersell sniffed out the value of these secretive passengers and agreed to give them passage to France.
On the morning of 16th October, they set sail for the Isle of Wight, then changed course and sailed on through the night towards the French coast where Charles and Wilmot were landed in to exile on Fécamp beach in the cock-boat to begin nine years of exile.
In 1658, with the death of Cromwell, England faced a political crisis and Parliament sought to reunite the country by inviting Charles to return and assume the throne. After the bloody chapters of civil war and the oppression of Cromwell’s puritans, Charles II was a popular King, popularly known as the ’Merrie Monarch’ and admitting to at least 12 illegitimate children.... but back to our story.
Following his return from exile, Charles had no sooner settled into his Thameside Palace at Whitehall than the Surprise appeared, scrubbed clean of coal dust and moored on the opposite side of the river. Captain Tattersell had dressed his little ship with flags so all would know it was in his modest little vessel that Charles had made his escape ten years previously, and that it was to Captain Tattersell that the King was indebted.
Tattersell’s reward was a commission from the Navy, and the Surprise was commissioned as a fifth rate and renamed the ’Royal Escape’. The King then had the ’Royal Escape’ kept moored in the Thames opposite the Palace of Whitehall ’as a reminder to himself and his subjects’.
The gallant Captain was also awarded an annuity and with his new-found wealth returned home to Brighthelmstone where he purchased the Ship Tavern... which is today the Old Ship Hotel on Kings Road in modern day Brighton.
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