Cinque or swim

In truth it’s a football team, an amalgamation in 2005 of Brightlingsea United and Regent Park Rangers. Last Saturday, they played at Dunston UTS in the last 16 of the FA Vase, the Railroad to Wembley again heading perversely northwards.

It’s a town of 8,500 or so, between Clacton and Colchester, in Essex, widely regarded – or, more accurately, regarded by a chap at the Shildon match the night before – as one of the Cinque Ports. It wasn’t.

The Cinque Ports, as O-level historians will aver, were Hastings, Hythe. New Romney, Dover and Sandwich – appointed to provide Edward the Confessor with ships and men in return for tax exemption and the sort of blind eye of which Harold, among his royal predecessors, might have been proud.

Brightlingsea was one of seven “Limbs”, and the only one in Essex.

The Cinque estate also had two “antient towns”, Rye and Winchelsea – the latter, like Brightlingsea, once famed for its oysters.

Monarchs no longer have private ports, in a storm or otherwise, though the ceremonial trappings remain.

There’s still a Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, still an annual Choosing day at which the Brightlingsea Deputy is elected.

It’s doubtless all very jolly, though not a lot to do with football. There is, however, a further and yet more singular matter for us to consider before returning, rejoicing, to the FA Vase.

THE Mignonette was a 54ft yacht built at Brightlingsea in 1864 and sold to a buyer in Australia 20 years later.

The only means of getting there, of course, was by sea – perhaps hardly surprising that, 1,500 miles off the Cape of Good Hope, she should founder and swiftly sink. The tiny lifeboat was launched, the four-man crew able only to salvage two tins of turnips.

Though augmented by a passing turtle – a real turtle, once – the turnips weren’t going to last for ever.

The crew also considered it unlucky (and doubtless unhealthy) to drink sea water.

There was only one thing for it: someone would have to be killed and eaten. Some accounts say that lots were drawn, others that the cabin boy copped for it – why always the poor cabin boy? – because he was already closest to death.

So it was that 17-year-old Richard Parker was killed, cannibalised for food and, yet more gruesomely, for drink.

Rescued by the German barque Montezuma after 19 days and nights adrift, the three survivors were returned to Falmouth and insisted upon taking Parker’s remains for burial. To their apparent surprise, they were charged with murder – and bailed.

Their defence was that such things were “a custom of the sea”, which may not entirely have explained why all the nice girls love a sailor.

The nation was said to be agog, the guilty verdict finally returned at Exeter Assizes establishing the common law principle that necessity is no defence to murder. Though the recommendation was for mercy, the judge had no option but to impose the death penalty.

The appeal went to the Lord Chief Justice, who was indeed able to demonstrate the quality of mercy.

The cannibals got six months.

BRIGHTLINGSEA are fourth, games in hand, in the Eastern Counties League – that of Goodmanchester Rovers, Kirkley and Pakefield and the polysyllabic Walsham-le-Willows.

They are known as the Rs, enabling the more mischievous to sport the slogan “Up the Rs” but most stridently to suggest that the Rs are going to win the Vase.

These are also the guys who, ahead of the last round at home to Bodmin, bought a stand on eBay and shifted it on the back of a lorry cross country to Brightlingsea.

In the Dunston clubhouse, Essex boys and Geordie lads mix happily, though not much accent on being able to tell who’s who. They’re joined by a group of 15 over from Holland for the Magpies match – is this what’s called a Dutch treat? – the following afternoon.

Dunston chairman Malcolm James observes that every time they go to the bar, there’s an order for 15 pints of lager. They go to the bar quite often.

The Essex double deckers have also disgorged several standard bearers and a couple of drummers. Though the atmosphere is wonderfully convivial, it’s possible to suppose that if most spectators had wanted a bunch of Essex musicians, they’d have preferred the Dagenham Girl Pipers.

Early exchanges favour Brightlingsea, their usual red and black forsaken for shirts described as puce.

Dunston are without 43-year-old centre half Chris Swales, hundreds of Football League games behind him, after he’d encountered breathing difficulties in the midweek match at Shildon.

“Irregular heartbeat, injections every day at the hospital,” says Chris. He’ll soon be back, he adds.

Word also arrives from Eastbourne United, the previous Saturday’s thwarted destination, that Morpeth Town have had a player sent off and gone a goal down inside the first two minutes.

It’s surmised – incorrectly, as it turns out – that it must have been a professional foul, prompting a debate about whether the triple jeopardy law is fair.

“The law’s still the law, just as it’s still the law for taxi drivers to carry a bale of hay in the boot for the horse. It’s never been repealed,” says a member of Her Majesty’s Corps of Groundhoppers (Hartlepool division).

The belief is widely held to be mistaken.

Andy Bulford, ace marksman, puts Dunston ahead after 25 minutes.

The Brightlingsea band is undeterred, insisting that they’re all going to Wembley.

The little drummer boy – in truth a 6ft drummer boy, and wearing a Big Daddy topper – simply ups the beat.

After an hour, Bulford completes his hat-trick. At the end of a match in which not a soul has been booked, nor barely said boo to a puce goose, it’s 5-0.

Brightlingsea fans form up and conga back to the clubhouse. “We’re all going to Clacton,” they chant.

Fortified, they face a five-hour homeward journey. Dunston are at Whitehaven in the Northern League Cup three days later – a trip that may be almost as far – and on March 8 face a repeat of the 2012 Vase final, a quarter-final at West Auckland.

The Dutch contingent remains until 7.30pm, at which point they depart for a karaoke night at the Tudor Rose with new-found friends from the Dunston committee. “A wonderful day,” says the chairman, and what football really should be all about.