Thomas Benson

Benson's Cave, on Lundy: reputed to be where Benson stored contraband goods. Thomas Benson (1708 – c. 1771), of Knapp House (alias Nap), Appledore, on the north Devon coast of England, was a ship-owner and merchant who was Sheriff of Devon in 1746–47 and MP for Barnstaple between 1747 and 1754. In 1753 he fled to Portugal from British justice, having been accused of customs duty evasion and maritime insurance fraud.

Biography He was the second son of John Benson (died 1739) of Knapp by his wife Grace Melhuish. The Bensons were long established merchants at Bideford, with an established trade to France, Portugal and Placentia in Newfoundland. They also owned lime-kilns in Bideford, near Appledore. In 1737 Benson married his cousin Frances Melhuish (died 1752), a daughter of Roger Melhuish by his second wife Eleanor Barber. By Frances he had two sons and two daughters. He was elected to Parliament as the member for Barnstaple in 1747, and the following year he acquired a lease of the island of Lundy, off the North Devon coast, for a rent of £60 per annum from John Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl Gower. Some time before 1753, Benson also purchased the estate of Halsbury in the parish of Parkham, near Bideford, from Roger Giffard (died 1763).

In 1747 he obtained a contract from the Government to transport English convicts, and gave the usual bond to the Sheriff to ship them to Virginia or to Maryland. However he shipped them instead to Lundy where he employed them as slave labourers in building walls, etc. The episode is the subject of crime novel Hell and High Water by Tanya Landman.

Benson fled to Portugal in 1753, and his English assets and lands were seized by the Crown. Halsbury was later sold to the Davie family of nearby Orleigh. In Portugal he was joined by two of his remaining ships, and with his nephew Thomas Stafford he established one of the largest English trading companies in that country. He is said to have died in Porto in 1771 at the age of 64, but no direct evidence of this has been found.