CHAPTER V
The Inhabitants of Morwenstow in 1834—Cruel Coppinger—Whips the Parson of Kilkhampton—Gives Tom Tape a Ride—Tristam Pentire—Parminter and his Dog Satan—The Gauger’s Pocket—Wrecking—The Wrecker and the Ravens—The Loss of theMargaret Quail—The Wreck of theBen Coolan—“A Croon on Hennacliff”—Letters concerning Wrecks—The Donkeys and the Copper Ore—The ShipMorwenna—Flotsam and Jetsam—Wrecks on 14th Nov., 1875—Bodies in Poundstock Church—The Loss of theCaledonia—The Wreck of thePhœnixand of theAlonzo.
Whenthe Rev. R. S. Hawker came to Morwenstow in 1834, he found that he had much to contend with, not only in the external condition of church and vicarage, but also in that which is of greater importance.
A writer in theJohn Bullsays: “He found a manse in ruins, and partly used as a barn; a parish peopled with wreckers, smugglers and Dissenting Bryanites; and a venerable church, deserted and ill-cared for, amidst a heap of weeds and nettles. Desolate as was the situation of the grey old sanctuary and tower, standing out upon the rugged incline that shelves down a descent of 300 feet to the beach, it was not more barren of external comfort than was the internal state of those who had been confided to his pastoral care.
“The farmers of the parish were simple-hearted and respectable; but the denizens of the hamlet, after receiving the wages of the harvest time, eked out a precarious existence in the winter, and watched eagerly and expectantly for the shipwrecks that were certain to happen, and upon the plunder of which they surely calculated for the scant provision of their families. The wrecked goods supplied them with the necessaries of life, and the rended planks of the dismembered vessel contributed to the warmth of the hovel hearthstone.
“When Mr. Hawker came to Morwenstow, ‘the cruel and covetous natives of the strand, the wreckers of the seas and rocks for flotsam and jetsam,’ held as an axiom and an injunction to be strictly obeyed:—
Save a stranger from the sea,And he’ll turn your enemy!
Save a stranger from the sea,And he’ll turn your enemy!
Save a stranger from the sea,And he’ll turn your enemy!
Save a stranger from the sea,
And he’ll turn your enemy!
“The Morwenstow wreckers allowed a fainting brother to perish in the sea before their eyes without extending a hand of safety—nay, more, for the egotistical canons of a shipwreck, superstitiously obeyed, permitted and absolved the crime of murder by ’shoving the drowning man into the sea,’ to be swallowed by the waves. Cain! Cain! where is thy brother? And the wrecker of Morwenstow answered and pleaded in excuse, as in the case of undiluted brandy after meals, ‘It is Cornish custom’. The illicit spirit of Cornish custom was supplied by the smuggler, and the gold of the wreck paid him for the cursed abomination of drink.”
One of Mr. Hawker’s parishioners, Peter Barrow,[*] had been, for full forty years, a wrecker, but of a much more harmless description: he had been a watcher of the coast for such objects as the waves might turn up to reward his patience. Another was Tristam Pentire,[*] a hero of contraband adventure, and agent for sale of smuggled cargoes in bygone times. With a merry twinkle of the eye, and in a sharp and ringing tone, he loved to tell such tales of wild adventure, and of “derring-do,” as would make the foot of the exciseman falter, and his cheek turn pale.
During the latter years of last century there lived in Wellcombe, one of Mr. Hawker’s parishes, a man whose name is still remembered with terror—Cruel Coppinger. There are people still alive who remember his wife.
Local recollections of the man have moulded themselves into the rhyme:—
Will you hear of Cruel Coppinger?He came from a foreign land:He was brought to us by the salt water,He was carried away by the wind!
Will you hear of Cruel Coppinger?He came from a foreign land:He was brought to us by the salt water,He was carried away by the wind!
Will you hear of Cruel Coppinger?He came from a foreign land:He was brought to us by the salt water,He was carried away by the wind!
Will you hear of Cruel Coppinger?
He came from a foreign land:
He was brought to us by the salt water,
He was carried away by the wind!
His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was signalised by a terrific hurricane. The storm came up Channel from the south-west. A strange vessel of foreign rig went on the reefs of Harty Race, and was broken to pieces by the waves. The only man who came ashore was the skipper. A crowd was gathered on the sand, on horseback and on foot, women as well as men, drawn together by the tidings of a probable wreck. Into their midst rushed the dripping stranger, and bounded suddenly upon the crupper of a young damsel who had ridden to the beach to see the sight. He grasped her bridle, and, shouting in some foreign tongue, urged the double-laden animal into full speed, and the horse naturally took his homeward way. The damsel was Miss Dinah Hamlyn. The stranger descended at her father’s door, and lifted her off her saddle. He then announced himself as a Dane, named Coppinger. He took his place at the family board, and there remained till he had secured the affections and hand of Dinah. The father died, and Coppinger at once succeeded to the management and control of the house, which thenceforth became a den and refuge of every lawless character along the coast. All kinds of wild uproar and reckless revelry appalled the neighbourhood day and night. It was discovered that an organised band of smugglers, wreckers and poachers made this house their rendezvous, and that “Cruel Coppinger” was their captain. In those days, and in that far-away region, the peaceable inhabitants were unprotected. There was not a single resident gentleman of property and weight in the entire district. No revenue officer durst exercise vigilance west of the Tamar; and, to put an end to all such surveillance at once, the head of a gauger was chopped off by one of Coppinger’s gang, on the gunwale of a boat.
Strange vessels began to appear at regular intervals on the coast, and signals were flashed from the headlands to lead them into the safest creek or cove. Amongst these vessels, one, a full-rigged schooner, soon became ominously conspicuous. She was for long the chief terror of the Cornish Channel. Her name wasThe Black Prince. Once, with Coppinger on board, she led a revenue-cutter into an intricate channel near the Bull Rock, where, from knowledge of the bearings,The Black Princeescaped scathless, while the king’s vessel perished with all on board. In those times, if any landsman became obnoxious to Coppinger’s men, he was seized, and carried on boardThe Black Princeand obliged to save his life by enrolling himself in the crew. In 1835 an old man, of the age of ninety-seven, related to Mr. Hawker that he had been so abducted, and after two years’ service had been ransomed by his friends with a large sum. “And all,” said the old man very simply, “because I happened to see one man kill another, and they thought I would mention it.”
Amid such practices, ill-gotten gold began to flow and ebb in the hands of Coppinger. At one time he had enough money to purchase a freehold farm bordering on the sea. When the day of transfer came he and one of his followers appeared before the lawyer, and paid the money in dollars, ducats, doubloons and pistols. The man of law demurred, but Coppinger with an oath bade him take this or none. The document bearing Coppinger’s name is still extant. His signature is traced in stern, bold characters, and under his autograph is the word “Thuro” (thorough) also in his own handwriting.
Long impunity increased Coppinger’s daring. There were certain bridle-roads along the fields over which he exercised exclusive control. He issued orders that no man was to pass over them by night, and accordingly from that hour none ever did. They were called “Coppinger’s Tracks.” They all converged at a headland which had the name of Steeple Brink. Here the cliff sheered off, and stood 300 feet of perpendicular height, a precipice of smooth rock towards the beach, with an overhanging face 100 feet down from the brow. Under this was a cave, only reached by a cable ladder lowered from above, and made fast below on a projecting crag. It received the name of “Coppinger’s Cave.” Here sheep were tethered to the rock, and fed on stolen hay and corn till slaughtered; kegs of brandy and hollands were piled around; chests of tea; and iron-bound sea-chests contained the chattels and revenues of the Coppinger royalty of the sea.
The terror linked with Coppinger’s name throughout the coast was so extreme that the people themselves, wild and lawless as they were, submitted to his sway as though he had been lord of the soil and they his vassals. Such a household as Coppinger’s was, of course, far from happy or calm. Although when his father-in-law died he had insensibly acquired possession of the stock and farm, there remained in the hands of the widow a considerable amount of money as her dower. This he obtained from the helpless woman by instalments, and by this cruel means. He fastened his wife to the pillar of her oak bedstead, and called her mother into the room. He then assured her he would flog Dinah with a cat-o’-nine-tails till her mother had transferred to him the amount of her reserved property that he demanded. This act of brutal cruelty he repeated till he had utterly exhausted the widow’s store.
The Kilkhampton parson hated rook-pie. Coppinger knew it.
He invited him to dine with him one day. A large rook-pie was served at one end of the table, and roast rooks at the other; and the parson, who was very hungry, was forced to eat of them. When he departed he invited Coppinger to dine with him on the following Thursday. The smuggler arrived, and was regaled on pie, whether rabbit or hare he could not decide. When he came home he found a cat’s skin and head stuffed into his coat-pocket, and thereby discovered what he had been eating.
Coppinger was furious. He had a favourite mare, so indomitable that none but he could venture on her back, and so fleet and strong that he owed his escape from more than one menacing peril to her speed and endurance.
Shortly after the dinner of cat-pie, the rector of Kilkhampton was walking homeward along a lane when he heard behind him the clattering of horse-hoofs; and Cruel Coppinger bore down on him, seated on his mare, whirling his double-thonged whip round his head. He lashed the back of the unfortunate parson, pursued him, struck and struck again till he had striped him like a zebra, and then galloped off with the parting scoff: “There, parson, I have paid my tithe in full; never mind the receipt.”
On the selfsame animal Coppinger is related to have performed another freak. He had passed a festive evening at a farmhouse, and was about to take his departure, when he spied in the corner of the hearth a little old tailor who went from house to house in exercise of his calling. His name was uncle Tom Tape.
“Ha! Uncle Tom,” cried Coppinger, “we both travel the same road, and I don’t mind giving you a hoist behind me on the mare.”
The old man cowered in the settle. He would not encumber the gentleman; was unaccustomed to ride such a spirited horse. But Coppinger was not to be put off. The trembling old man was mounted on the crupper of the capering mare. Off she bounded; and Uncle Tom, with his arms cast with the grip of terror round his bulky companion, held on like grim death. Unbuckling his belt, Coppinger passed it round Uncle Tom’s thin body, and buckled it on his own front. When he had firmly secured his victim, he loosened his reins, and urged the mare into a furious gallop. Onwards they rushed, till they fled past the tailor’s own door, where his startled wife, who was on the watch, afterwards declared “she caught sight of her husband clinging to a rainbow”.
At last the mare relaxed her pace; and then Coppinger, looking over his shoulder said: “I have been under long promise to the Devil that I would bring him a tailor to make and mend for him; and I mean to keep my word to-night.”
The agony of terror produced by this announcement caused such struggles that the belt gave way, and the tailor fell among the gorse at the roadside. There he was found next morning in a semi-delirious state, muttering: “No, no; I never will. Let him mend his breeches with his own drag-chain. I will never thread a needle for Coppinger or his friend.”
One boy was the only fruit of poor Dinah’s marriage with the Stranger. He was deaf and dumb, and mischievous and ungovernable from his youth. His cruelty to animals, birds and to other children was intense. Any living thing that he could torture yielded him delight. With savage gestures and jabbering moans he haunted the rocks along the shore, and seemed like some uncouth creature cast up by the sea. When he was only six years old, he was found one day on the brink of a cliff, bounding with joy, and pointing downwards to the beach with convulsions of delight. There, mangled by the fall, and dead, they found the body of a neighbour’s child of his own age; and it was believed that little Coppinger had wilfully cast him over. It was a saying in the district that, as a judgment on his father’s cruelty, his child had been born without a human soul.
But the end arrived. Money became scarce, and more than one armed king’s cutter was seen day and night hovering off the land. So he “who came with the water went with the wind.” His disappearance, like his arrival, was commemorated by a storm.
A wrecker who had gone to watch the shore saw, as the sun went down, a full-rigged vessel standing off and on. Coppinger came to the beach, put off in a boat to the vessel and jumped on board. She spread canvas, stood off shore, and, with Coppinger in her, was seen no more. That night was one of storm. Whether the vessel rode it out or was lost none knew.[23]
Tristam Pentire[*] has already been mentioned. He was the last of the smugglers, and became Mr. Hawker’s servant-of-all-work. The vicar had many good stories to relate of his man.
“There have been divers parsons in this parish since I have been here,” said Tristam, “some strict, and some not; and there was one that had very mean notions about running goods, and said it was wrong to do so. But even he never took no part with the gauger—never. And besides,” said old Trim, “wasn’t the exciseman always ready to putusto death if he could?”
One day he asked Mr. Hawker: “Can you tell me the reason, sir, that no grass will ever grow on the grave of a man that’s hanged unjustly?”
“No, indeed, Tristam: I never heard of the fact before.”
“That grave on the right hand of the path as you go down to the porch has not one blade of grass on it, and never will. That’s Will Pooly’s grave, that was hanged unjustly.”
“Indeed! How came that about?”
“Why, you see, they got poor Will down to Bodmin, all among strangers; and there was bribery and false swearing; and so they agreed together, and hanged poor Will. But his friends begged the body, and brought the corpse home here to his own parish; and they turfed the grave, and they sowed the grass twenty times over; but ’twas all of no use, nothing would grow—he was hanged unjustly.”
“Well, but, Tristam, what was he accused of? What had Will Pooly done?”
“Done, your honour? Done? Oh! nothing at all, except killed an exciseman.”
Among the “king’s men” whose achievements haunted the old man’s memory with a sense of mingled terror and dislike, a certain Parminter and his dog occupied a principal place.
“Sir,” said old Tristam one day to the vicar, “that villain Parminter and his dog murdered with their shetting-irons no less than seven of our people at divers times, and they peacefully at work at their calling all the while.”
Parminter was a bold officer, whom no threats could deter, and no money bribe. He always went armed to the teeth, and was followed by a large fierce dog, which he called Satan. This animal he had trained to carry in his mouth a carbine or a loaded club, which, at a signal from his master, Satan brought to the rescue.
“Ay, they was audacious rascals—that Parminter and his dog; but he went rather too far one day, as I reckon,” said old Tristam, as he leaned on his spade talking to the vicar.
“Did he, Trim? in what way?”
“Why, your honour, the case was this. Our people had a landing down at Melhuach, in Johnnie Mathey’s hole; and Parminter and his dog found it out. So they got into the cave at ebb tide, and laid in wait; and when the first boat-load came ashore, just as the keel took the ground, down storms Parminter, shouting for Satan to follow. But the dog knew better, and held back, they said, for the first time in all his life: so in leaps Parminter smack into the boat, alone, with his cutlass drawn, but”—with a kind of inward ecstasy—“he didn’t do much harm to the boat’s crew.”
“Why not?”
“Because, your honour, they chopped off his head on the gunwale.”
Near Tonacombe Cross is a stone called the Witan-stone. To that Tristam one day guided his master, the vicar.
“And now, your honour,” he said, “let me show you the wonderfullest thing in all the place, and that is the Gauger’s Pocket.” He then showed him, at the back of the Witan-rock, a dry secret hole, about an arm’s-length deep, closed by a moss-grown stone. “There, your honour,” said he, with a joyous twinkle in his eye, “there have I dropped a little bag of gold, many and many a time, when our people wanted to have the shore quiet, and to keep the exciseman out of the way of trouble; and then he would go, if he were a reasonable officer; and the byword used to be, when ’twas all right, one of us would meet him, and say: ’sir, your pocket is unbuttoned’; and he would smile, and answer: ‘Ay, ay! but never mind, my man, my money’s safe enough.’ And thereby we knew that he was a just man, and satisfied, and that the boats would take the roller in peace; and that was the very way it came to pass that this crack in the stone was called evermore the Gauger’s Pocket.”
In former times, when a ship was being driven on the rocks on Sunday, whilst divine service was going on, news was sent to the parson, who announced the fact from the pulpit, or reading-desk, whereupon ensued a rapid clearance of the church. The story is told of a parson at Poughill, near Morwenstow, who, on hearing the news, proceeded down the nave in his surplice as far as the font; and the people, supposing there was to be a christening, did not stir. But when he was near the door he shouted: “My Christian brethren, there’s a ship wrecked in the cove: let us all start fair!” and, flinging off his surplice, led the way to the scene of spoliation.
“I do not see why it is,” said a Cornish clerk one day, “why there be prayers in the Buke o’ Common Prayer for rain and for fine weather, and thanksgivings for them and for peace, and there’s no prayer for wrecks, nor thanksgiving for a really gude one when it is come.”
Mr. Hawker relates a good story in hisFootprints, which was told him by an old man in his parish named Tony Cleverdon.
“There was once a noted old wrecker, named Kinsman: he lived in my father’s time; and when no wreck was onward he would get his wages by raising stone in a quarry by the seashore. Well, he was to work one day over yonder, half-way down the Tower-cliff, when all at once he saw two old ravens flying round and round very near his head. They dropped down into the quarry two pieces of wreck-candle just at the old man’s feet.” (Very often wreckers pick up Neapolitan wax candles from vessels in the Mediterranean trade that have been lost in the Channel.) “So when Kinsman saw the candles, he thought in his mind, ‘There is surely wreck coming in upon the beach’; so he packed his tools together, and left them just where he stood, and went his way wrecking. He could find no jetsam, however, though he searched far and wide. Next day he went back to quarry to his work. And he used to say it was as true as a proverb—there the tools were all buried deep out of sight, for the crag had given way; and if he had tarried an hour longer he must have been crushed to death. So you see, sir, what knowledge those ravens must have had; how well they knew the old man, and how dearly fond he was of wreck; how crafty they were to hit upon the only plan that would ever have slocked him away.”
Wrecks are terribly frequent on this coast. Not a winter passes without several. There are men living who can remember eighty.
If wrecking is no longer practised, the wrecking spirit can hardly be said to be extinct, as the following facts will testify:—
In 1845 a ship came ashore in Melhuach Bay, between Boscastle and Bude. The surge burst against the cliffs, and it was impossible to launch a lifeboat; but a rocket was fired over the vessel, and so successfully that the hawser was secured to the ship. Every life would, in all probability, have been saved, had not some wretches cut through the rope, more greedy for prey than careful to save life. Of all the crew the only person saved was the captain. He confirmed the opinion of the coast-guard, that, but for the cutting through of the hawser, every one on board would have been rescued.
In 1864 a large ship was seen in distress off the coast. The Rev. A. Thynne, rector of Kilkhampton, at once drove to Morwenstow. The vessel was riding at anchor a mile off shore, west of Hartland Race. He found Mr. Hawker in the greatest excitement, pacing his room, and shouting for some things he wanted to put in his greatcoat-pockets, and irritably impatient because his carriage was not round. With him was the Rev. W. Valentine, rector of Whixley in Yorkshire, then resident at Chapel, in the parish of Morwenstow.
“What are you going to do?” asked the rector of Kilkhampton: “I intend to drive at once to Bude for the lifeboat.”
“No good!” thundered the vicar, “no good comes out of the West. You must go East. I shall go to Clovelly, and then, if that fails, to Appledore. I shall not stop till I have got a lifeboat to take those poor fellows off the wreck.”
“Then,” said the rector of Kilkhampton, “I shall go to Bude, and see to the lifeboat there being brought out.”
“Do as you like; but mark my words, no good comes of turning to the West. Why,” said he, “in the primitive Church they turned to the West to renounce the Devil.”
His carriage came to the door, and he drove off with Mr. Valentine, as fast as his horses could spin him along the hilly, wretched roads.
Before he reached Clovelly, a boat had put off with the mate from the ship, which was theMargaret Quail, laden with salt. The captain would not leave the vessel; for, till deserted by him, no salvage could be claimed. The mate was picked up on the way, and the three reached Clovelly.
Down the street proceeded the following procession—the street of Clovelly being a flight of steps:—
First, the vicar of Morwenstow in a claret-coloured coat, with long tails flying in the gale, blue knitted jersey, and pilot-boots, his long silver locks fluttering about his head. He was appealing to the fishermen and sailors of Clovelly to put out in their lifeboat, to rescue the crew of theMargaret Quail. The men stood sulky, lounging about with folded arms, or hands in their pockets, and sou’-westers slouched over their brows. The women were screaming at the tops of their voices, that they would not have their husbands and sons and sweethearts enticed away to risk their lives to save wrecked men. Above the clamour of their shrill tongues, and the sough of the wind, rose the roar of the vicar’s voice: he was convulsed with indignation, and poured forth the most sacred appeals to their compassion for drowning sailors.
Secondin the procession moved the Rev. W. Valentine, with purse full of gold in his hand, offering any amount of money to the Clovelly men, if they would only go forth in the lifeboat to the wreck.
Thirdcame the mate of theMargaret Quail, restrained by no consideration of cloth, swearing and damning right and left, in a towering rage at the cowardice of the Clovelly men.
Fourthcame John, the servant of Mr. Hawker, with bottles of whisky under his arm, another inducement to the men to relent, and be merciful to their imperilled brethren.
The first appeal was to their love of heaven, and to their humanity; the second was to their pockets, their love of gold; the third to their terrors, their fear of Satan, to whom they were consigned; and the fourth to their stomachs, their love of grog.
But all appeals were in vain. Then Mr. Hawker returned to his carriage and drove away, farther east, to Appledore, where he secured the lifeboat. It was mounted on a waggon. Ten horses were harnessed to it; and, as fast as possible, it was conveyed to the scene of distress.
But, in the meanwhile, the captain of theMargaret Quail, despairing of help, and thinking that his vessel would break up under him, came off in his boat, with the rest of the crew, trusting rather to a rotten boat, patched with canvas which they had tarred over, than to the tender mercies of the covetous Clovellites, in whose veins ran the too recent blood of wreckers. The only living being left on board was a poor dog.
No sooner was the captain seen to leave the ship, than the Clovelly men lost their repugnance to go to sea. They manned boats at once, gained theMargaret Quail, and claimed £3000 for salvage.
There was an action in court, as the owners refused to pay such a sum; and it was lost by the Clovelly men, who, however, got an award of £1200. The case turned somewhat on the presence of the dog on the wreck; and it was argued that the vessel was not deserted, because a dog had been left on board, to keep guard for its masters. The owner of the cargo failed; and the amount actually paid to the salvors was £600 to two steam-tugs (£300 each), and £300 to the Clovelly skiff and sixteen men. The ship and cargo, minus masts, rigging, cables and anchors, were valued at £5000.
Mr. Hawker went round the country indignantly denouncing the boatmen of Clovelly, and with justice. It roused all the righteous wrath in his breast. And, as may well be believed, no love was borne him by the inhabitants of that little fishing village. They would probably have made a wreck of him, had he ventured among them.
Another incident, at Bude, called forth a second burst of indignation, but this time not so justly.
A fine vessel, theBen Coolan, laden with Government stores for India, ran ashore on the sand, outside Bude Haven. The lifeboat was got out; but the sea was terrible, and there was no practised crew to man her. Crowds were on the pier, hooting the boatmen, and calling them cowards, because they would not put to sea, and save those on the vessel; but an old Oxford eight man, who was present, assures me that the crew were not up to facing such a sea: they were gardeners, land-labourers, canal-men, not one among them who, when he rowed, did not look over his shoulder to see where he was going. The crew shirked putting out in the tremendous sea that was bowling in; and the vessel broke up under the eyes of those who stood on the pier and cliffs. The first rocket that was fired fell short. The second went beyond the bows. The third went over the ship. The mate was seen to run forward to catch the rope, when a wave burst against the side, and spun him up in the foam, and he was seen no more. The ship turned broadside to the waves, which tore her to pieces with great rapidity. Only a few of the crew were saved. The captain was drowned.
Mr. Hawker wrote shortly afterwards:—
A CROON ON HENNACLIFF.Thus said the rushing ravenUnto his hungry mate:“Ho, gossip! for Bude Haven!There be corpses six or eight.Cawk, cawk! the crew and skipperAre wallowing in the sea,So there’s a savoury supperFor my old dame and me!”“Cawk! gaffer! thou art dreaming:The shore hath wreckers bold,Would rend the yelling seamenFrom the clutching billows’ hold!Cawk, cawk! they’d bound for bootyInto the dragon’s den,And shout, ‘For death or duty!’If the prey were drowning men.”Loud laughed the listening surgesAt the guess our grandam gave:You might call them BoanergesFrom the thunder of their wave!And mockery followed afterThe sea-bird’s jeering brood,That filled the skies with laughterFrom Lundy Light to Bude.“Cawk, cawk!” then said the raven:“I am fourscore years and ten,Yet never in Bude HavenDid I croak for rescued men!They will save the captain’s girdle,And shirt,[24]if shirt there be,But leave their blood to curdleFor my old dame and me.”So said the rushing ravenUnto his hungry mate:“Ho, gossip! for Bude Haven!There be corpses six or eight.Cawk, cawk! the crew and skipperAre wallowing in the sea:Oh, what a dainty supperFor my old dame and me!”
A CROON ON HENNACLIFF.Thus said the rushing ravenUnto his hungry mate:“Ho, gossip! for Bude Haven!There be corpses six or eight.Cawk, cawk! the crew and skipperAre wallowing in the sea,So there’s a savoury supperFor my old dame and me!”“Cawk! gaffer! thou art dreaming:The shore hath wreckers bold,Would rend the yelling seamenFrom the clutching billows’ hold!Cawk, cawk! they’d bound for bootyInto the dragon’s den,And shout, ‘For death or duty!’If the prey were drowning men.”Loud laughed the listening surgesAt the guess our grandam gave:You might call them BoanergesFrom the thunder of their wave!And mockery followed afterThe sea-bird’s jeering brood,That filled the skies with laughterFrom Lundy Light to Bude.“Cawk, cawk!” then said the raven:“I am fourscore years and ten,Yet never in Bude HavenDid I croak for rescued men!They will save the captain’s girdle,And shirt,[24]if shirt there be,But leave their blood to curdleFor my old dame and me.”So said the rushing ravenUnto his hungry mate:“Ho, gossip! for Bude Haven!There be corpses six or eight.Cawk, cawk! the crew and skipperAre wallowing in the sea:Oh, what a dainty supperFor my old dame and me!”
A CROON ON HENNACLIFF.
A CROON ON HENNACLIFF.
Thus said the rushing ravenUnto his hungry mate:“Ho, gossip! for Bude Haven!There be corpses six or eight.Cawk, cawk! the crew and skipperAre wallowing in the sea,So there’s a savoury supperFor my old dame and me!”
Thus said the rushing raven
Unto his hungry mate:
“Ho, gossip! for Bude Haven!
There be corpses six or eight.
Cawk, cawk! the crew and skipper
Are wallowing in the sea,
So there’s a savoury supper
For my old dame and me!”
“Cawk! gaffer! thou art dreaming:The shore hath wreckers bold,Would rend the yelling seamenFrom the clutching billows’ hold!Cawk, cawk! they’d bound for bootyInto the dragon’s den,And shout, ‘For death or duty!’If the prey were drowning men.”
“Cawk! gaffer! thou art dreaming:
The shore hath wreckers bold,
Would rend the yelling seamen
From the clutching billows’ hold!
Cawk, cawk! they’d bound for booty
Into the dragon’s den,
And shout, ‘For death or duty!’
If the prey were drowning men.”
Loud laughed the listening surgesAt the guess our grandam gave:You might call them BoanergesFrom the thunder of their wave!And mockery followed afterThe sea-bird’s jeering brood,That filled the skies with laughterFrom Lundy Light to Bude.
Loud laughed the listening surges
At the guess our grandam gave:
You might call them Boanerges
From the thunder of their wave!
And mockery followed after
The sea-bird’s jeering brood,
That filled the skies with laughter
From Lundy Light to Bude.
“Cawk, cawk!” then said the raven:“I am fourscore years and ten,Yet never in Bude HavenDid I croak for rescued men!They will save the captain’s girdle,And shirt,[24]if shirt there be,But leave their blood to curdleFor my old dame and me.”
“Cawk, cawk!” then said the raven:
“I am fourscore years and ten,
Yet never in Bude Haven
Did I croak for rescued men!
They will save the captain’s girdle,
And shirt,[24]if shirt there be,
But leave their blood to curdle
For my old dame and me.”
So said the rushing ravenUnto his hungry mate:“Ho, gossip! for Bude Haven!There be corpses six or eight.Cawk, cawk! the crew and skipperAre wallowing in the sea:Oh, what a dainty supperFor my old dame and me!”
So said the rushing raven
Unto his hungry mate:
“Ho, gossip! for Bude Haven!
There be corpses six or eight.
Cawk, cawk! the crew and skipper
Are wallowing in the sea:
Oh, what a dainty supper
For my old dame and me!”
A gentleman who was a witness of this wreck tells me: “We saw the carpenter swimming ashore. He was a magnificent man, largely built, with sinews and muscles of great strength. He swam boldly and desperately, but badly, as he kept his breast above the water, so that he must have been much beaten and bruised by the waves. We saw how his strength gradually gave way, and then he seemed to rally, and make another despairing effort. We succeeded in getting hold of him at last, and brought him ashore. Unfortunately there was no doctor by, or any one who was experienced in dealing with cases of drowning. We did as best we knew, following the old usage of throwing him across a barrel.NowI know that it was the worst treatment possible. Had a medical man been at hand, it is my conviction that the poor fellow would have been saved. His blood was not curdled when we got him ashore, and I saw it settle into his breast afterwards. It is an unpleasant thought, that a life was sacrificed for want of knowledge.”
Those of the crew who were saved proved to be a sad set of fellows. They got so drunk, that they could not attend the burial of their comrades.
Morwenstow, Sept. 18, 1869.My dear Mr. Martyn,—I will not say, forgive me for my silence. You must do that; but how can I state my miseries? First of all, for a fortnight I have been a cripple from sciatica, only able to creep bent double from room to room.[25]On Sunday night a hurricane smote my house at midnight, burst in the whole of our bedroom-window at a blow, and drove us out of bed to dress and go down. Two lights of the drawing-room window were also blown in, one broken to smash. No man or boy in the house. Well, we had a bed made up in the servants’ room till the morning. At dawn tidings came that a large vessel was ashore in Vicarage Bay, just under the hut. I was put into the gig, and carried out. Found the crew in death-horrors. Rocket apparatus arrived, and fifteen men were dragged ashore alive. The other seven (blacks) were drowned among my rocks. Guess my state. The whole glebe alive with people. Seven corpses came ashore for burial one by one. Graves already dug, and shrouds prepared; but more yet. The cargo, coals, sixteen hundred tons, vessel nineteen hundred tons, largest ever seen here. Broken up to-night. My path down is now made for donkeys. What can be saved is to be brought up and sold, as well as the broken ship. Cannot you get help for one Sunday, and come over? It would be the act of an angel to come to my rescue. You have your house, and you could do much that I ought to do and cannot. Come, I entreat you. God bless you, and help me; for I am indeed in much anguish, and my poor Pauline worn out. Love to all.
Yours faithfully,
R. S. H.
Morwenstow, Oct. 9, 1869.My dear Mr. Martyn,—I have devoted to you my first interval of freedom from pains and crushing worry. Let no man hereafter ever accuse me of shrinking from duty. I was assisted up to the churchyard by Cann to bury the last sailor, in such an anguish from sciatic pains, that I had faintness on me all the time; and on returning from the grave my leg gave way under me, and I fell. However, I have done it so far single-handed, and I am thankful....
Yours faithfully,
R. S. Hawker.
Not long after a Spanish vessel came ashore a little lower down the coast. There were on her a number of Lascars. When the coast-guard officer went on board, the Lascars, supposing him to be a wrecker, drew their knives on him. He had the presence of mind to show them his buttons with the crown stamped on them, and so to satisfy them that he was a government officer. The crew were much bruised and injured. They were taken into Stowe and other farmhouses in the neighbourhood, and kindly nursed till well. The captain was a gallant little Spanish don.
The rector of Kilkhampton, who diligently visited the sailors, urged on the captain, when all were well, the advisability of the crew coming to church to return thanks for their rescue. He hesitated, saying he was a Roman Catholic: but the rector urged that all worshipped the same God, and had the same Saviour; and, after having revolved the matter in his own mind, he agreed.
Accordingly the whole crew with the captain came to Kilkhampton Church, a beautiful restored building, filled with old carved seats, rich modern stained glass, and where the service is choral, and rendered with great beauty and reverence.
The Spaniards and Lascars behaved with the utmost devotion and recollection. After service they adjourned to Penstowe, where they were hospitably entertained with a dinner. The captain and the mate dined with the family, the sailors in the hall. The captain took in the lady of the house. On the other side of him at table, sat one of the farmers who had received the shipwrecked mariners into his house. The Spaniard helped the lady to wine, half-filling her glass; but was nudged by the farmer, who bade him give her a brimmer. The little captain turned round, and looked him in the face with an astonished stare, which said plainly enough: “Do you, a Cornish clown, think to teach manners to a Spanish don?” The burly Cornish farmer withered at the glance.
In 1853 a vessel laden with copper ore was wrecked in the bay below Morwenstow Church. The ore was recovered, and carried up the cliff on the backs of donkeys; but it was a tedious process, and occupied two or three months. Mr. Hawker was touched with the sufferings of the poor brutes, zigzagging up a precipice, heavily laden with ore; and, during all the time, had water drawn for them, and a feed of corn apiece, to recruit their exhausted strength as they reached the top of the cliff. His compassion for the donkeys made a profound impression on the people, and is one of their favourite stories about him when they want to tell of the goodness of his kind heart.
During these two or three months, the agent for the firm which owned the vessel lived in the vicarage and was entertained royally. When everything had been recovered, and he was about to depart, he thanked the vicar for his great kindness, and begged to know, on the part of the firm, if there was anything he could do, or give him, which would be acceptable as some recognition for his kindness.
“No,” answered the vicar; “nothing. If paid by you, God will not repay me.”
The agent again, and in more forcible terms, assured him that the firm would not be happy unless they could make him some acknowledgment for his services and hospitality, out of the common way.
“Then I will ask one thing,” he said; “give the captain another ship.”
The agent hesitated, and then said that what he asked was an impossibility. The firm had no other ships which were not then provided with captains. They could not, in justice, displace one of them, to instal in his room the captain of the wrecked ship.
“Never mind,” said Mr. Hawker; “this is the only thing I have asked of you, and this is refused me.”
A few days after, the agent came to him to inform him that the firm purposed laying the keel of a new vessel, and that the captain for whom he pleaded should be appointed to her.
The ship was built, and was baptisedMorwenna. She now sails to and fro along this coast, and, whenever she passes Morwenstow, runs up a flag, as a mark of deference to the spot whence she derives her name.
The flotsam and jetsam of a wreck are the property of the Crown. The coast-guard are on thequi-viveafter a storm, and there is no chance now for village wreckers. They may carry off small articles, which they can put in their pockets; but so many have been had up of late years before the magistrates, and fined, that the officers of government have it nearly all to themselves. When, however, a keg of brandy is washed ashore, the villagers go down to the beach with bottles, break in the head of the cask, and fill their bottles. Should a coast-guard officer appear, the keg is kicked over, and they make off with their liquor. The bottles are sometimes kept in a cave, or hidden in the sand, and removed at night. The coast-guardsmen may suspect that the head of the cask was stove in purposely, but cannot prove it. When the shore is strewn with articles, an auction is held on the spot. The farmers are the principal buyers, and they get the goods very cheap. They have their donkeys at hand, to remove up the cliffs what they have purchased. The expense of transport prevents others at a distance from entering into competition with them.
After all has been sold, portions of the beach are let by auction for a week or fortnight; and those who take the beach are entitled to claim, as their own, whatever is thrown up by the sea during their tenure. A wreck does not come ashore at once, but by instalments; nor always at one place, but all along the coast.
Should there not be sufficient articles found by the coast-guard to make it worth their while to call in an auctioneer, they hold an auction of their own; but, not being licensed, they cannot run the price of the articlesup, they therefore run themdown. For instance, a piece of wood comes ashore, worth, may be, half a crown. The coast-guard offers it for ten shillings; and, if no one will give that for it, it is offered for nine, then eight, and so on, after the manner of a cheap-jack.
I had got as far as this in my memoir on Saturday night, 13th Nov., 1875. On the following morning I went to Morwenstow, to take duty in the church. The wind was blowing a hurricane from the south-west. I had to hold on to the grave-stones, to drag myself through the churchyard in the teeth of the storm, to the church porch.
There were few present that morning. No woman could have faced the wind. The roar of the ocean, the howling of the blast, the clatter of the glass in the windows, united, formed such a volume of sound that I had to shout my loudest to be heard when reading the service.
When morning prayer was over, I went into the porch. A few men were there, holding their hats on their heads, and preparing for a battle with the wind.
“Not many at church this morning,” I said. “No, your honour,” was the answer; “the wind would blow the women away; and the men are most of ’em on the cliffs, looking out if there be wrecks.”
Two vessels were caught sight of between the scuds of rain, now on the top of a billow, then lost in the trough of the waves.
They had been driven within the fatal line between Hartland Head and Padstowe Point.
“Is there no chance for them?”
“None at all.”
That evening we sang in church the hymn for those at sea, in “Ancient and Modern.” Whilst it was being sung, one vessel foundered; but the crew, six Frenchmen, came ashore in a boat. An hour or two earlier the other went down, with all hands on board.
On Monday and Tuesday bits of the wreck came up in the coves, withWilhelminaon them, but no bodies.
After a storm the corpses are fearfully mangled on the sharp rocks, and are cut to pieces by the slate as by knives, and bits of flesh come ashore. These are locally called “gobbets”; and Mr. Hawker, after a wreck, used to send a man with a basket along the beaches of the coves in his parish, collecting these “gobbets,” which he interred in his churchyard, on top of the cliffs.
In 1845, after a wreck, nine corpses were taken into Poundstock Church. The incumbent was wont to have daily service. The nine corpses lay along in the aisle that morning. It was the twenty-second day of the month, and he read the Psalm cvii.:—
They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters; these men see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. For at His word the stormy wind ariseth, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They are carried up to the heaven, and down again to the deep; their soul melteth away because of the trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits’ end. So when they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, He delivereth them out of their distress. For He maketh the storm to cease, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad, because they are at rest; and so He bringeth them unto the haven where they would be.
This psalm coming in its proper order seemed strangely appropriate, read with those dead mariners for a congregation.
The narrative of the wreck of theCaledoniain 1843 must not be told by any other than Mr. Hawker himself. The following is extracted from his “Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar,”[26]slightly shortened.
At daybreak of an autumn day I was aroused by a knock at my bedroom door: it was followed by the agitated voice of a boy, a member of my household: “Oh, sir, there are dead men on Vicarage Rocks!”
In a moment I was up, and in my cassock and slippers rushed out. There stood my lad, weeping bitterly, and holding out to me in his trembling hands a tortoise alive. I found afterwards that he had grasped it on the beach, and brought it in his hand as a strange and marvellous arrival from the waves, but in utter ignorance of what it might be. I ran across my glebe, a quarter of a mile, to the cliffs, and down a frightful descent of three hundred feet to the beach. It was indeed a scene to be looked on only once in a human life. On a ridge of rock, just left bare by the falling tide, stood a man, my own servant: he had come out to see my flock of ewes, and had found the awful wreck. There he stood, with two dead sailors at his feet, whom he had just drawn out of the water, stiff and stark. The bay was tossing and seething with a tangled mass of rigging and broken fragments of a ship; the billows rolled up yellow with corn, for the cargo of the vessel had been foreign wheat; and ever and anon there came up out of the water, as though stretched out with life, a human hand and arm. It was the corpse of another sailor drifting out to sea. “Is there no one alive?” was my first question to my man. “I think there is, sir,” he said, “for just now I thought I heard a cry.” I made haste in the direction he pointed out; and on turning a rock, just where a brook of fresh water fell to the sea, there lay the body of a man in a seaman’s garb. He had reached the water faint with thirst, but was too much exhausted to swallow or drink. He opened his eyes at our voices; and, as he saw me leaning over him in my cassock, he sobbed with a piteous cry: “Oh, mon père, mon père!” Gradually he revived; and when he had fully come to himself with the help of cordials and food, we gathered from him the mournful tale of his vessel and her wreck. He was a Jersey man by birth, and had been shipped at Malta, on the homeward voyage of the vessel from the port of Odessa with corn.
Mr. Hawker wrote this account for a periodical, without giving the name of the place, or signing the article. This explains a few trifling deviations from fact. He goes on to relate how he took Le Daine into his house. This was not strictly true. Le Daine was found by another gentleman, and taken by him into his father’s house in Morwenstow parish, where he was carefully and kindly nursed till his recovery. Mr. Hawker continues his narrative thus:—
I returned to the scene of death and danger, where my man awaited me. He had found, in addition to the two corpses, another dead body, jammed under a rock. By this time a crowd of people had arrived from the land, and at my request they began to search anxiously for the dead. It was indeed a terrible scene. The vessel, a brig of five hundred tons, had struck, as we afterwards found, at three o’clock that morning; and, by the time the wreck was discovered, she had been shattered into broken pieces by the fury of the sea. The rocks and water bristled with fragments of mast and spar and rent timbers; the cordage lay about in tangled masses. The rollers tumbled in volumes of corn, the wheaten cargo; and amidst it all the bodies of the helpless dead—that a few brief hours before had walked the deck, the stalwart masters of their ship—turned their disfigured faces towards the sky, pleading for sepulture. We made a temporary bier of the broken planks, and laid thereon the corpses, decently arranged. As the vicar, I led the way, and my people followed with ready zeal as bearers; and in sad procession we carried our dead up the steep cliff, by a difficult path, to await, in a room at my vicarage which I allotted them, the inquest. The ship and her cargo were, as to any tangible value, utterly lost.
The people of the shore, after having done their best to search for survivors and to discover the lost bodies, gathered up fragments of the wreck for fuel and shouldered them away; not perhaps a lawful spoil, but a venal transgression when compared with the remembered cruelties of Cornish wreckers. Then ensued my interview with the rescued man. His name was Le Daine. I found him refreshed, collected and grateful. He told me his tale of the sea. The captain and all the crew but himself were from Arbroath in Scotland. To that harbour also the vessel belonged. She had been away on a two-years’ voyage, employed in the Mediterranean trade. She had loaded last at Odessa. She touched at Malta; and there Le Daine, who had been sick in the hospital, but recovered, had joined her. There also the captain had engaged a Portuguese cook; and to this man, as one link in a chain of causes, the loss of the vessel might be ascribed. He had been wounded in a street quarrel the night before the vessel sailed from Malta and lay disabled and useless in his cabin throughout the homeward voyage. At Falmouth, whither they were bound for orders, the cook died. The captain and all the crew, except the cabin-boy, went ashore to attend the funeral. During their absence the boy, handling in his curiosity the barometer, had broken the tube and the whole of the quicksilver had run out. Had this instrument, the pulse of the storm, been preserved, the crew would have received warning of the sudden and unexpected hurricane and might have stood out to sea; whereas they were caught in the chops of the Channel, and thus, by this small incident, the vessel and the mariners found their fate on the rocks of a remote headland in my lonely parish. I caused Le Daine to relate in detail the closing events.
“We received orders,” he said, “at Falmouth to make for Gloucester to discharge. The captain and mate and another of the crew were to be married on their return to their native town. They wrote, therefore, to Arbroath from Falmouth, to announce their safe arrival from their two-years’ voyage, and their hope in about a week to arrive at Arbroath for welcome there.”
But in a day or two after this joyful letter there arrived in Arbroath a leaf torn out of my pocket-book and addressed “To the Owners of the Vessel theCaledoniaof Arbroath,” with the brief and thrilling tidings, written by myself in pencil, among the fragments of their wrecked vessel, that the whole crew, except one man, were lost “upon my rocks.” My note spread a general dismay in Arbroath, for the crew, from the clannish relationship among the Scotch, were connected with a large number of the inhabitants. But to return to the touching details of Le Daine.
“We rounded the Land’s End,” he said, “that night all well, and came up Channel with a fair wind. The captain turned in. It was my watch. All at once, about nine at night, it began to blow in one moment as if the storm burst out by signal; the wind went mad; our canvas burst in bits. We reeved fresh sails: they went also. At last we were under bare poles. The captain had turned out when the storm began. He sent me forward to look out for Lundy Light. I saw your cliff.” [This was a bluff and broken headland just by the southern boundary of my own glebe.] “I sang out, ‘Land!’ I had hardly done so when she struck with a blow and stuck fast. Then the captain sang out, ‘All hands to the maintop!’ and we all went up. The captain folded his arms and stood by silent.”
Here I asked him, anxious to know how they expressed themselves at such a time, “But what was said afterwards, Le Daine?”
“Not one word, sir; only once, when the long boat went over, I said to the skipper: ’sir, the boat is gone.’ But he made no answer.”
How accurate was Byron’s painting!—