The church of St. Anthony-in-Meneage fell gradually into decay. It was "awl davered," as they say in these parts, i.e. mildewed, and was not restored until recent years, when its mouldy interior was cleaned and the rotting woodwork removed. The usual cheap and nasty fittings of pitch-pine have been installed in their place. It was impossible to spare the decayed woodwork, of which two fragments remain in the tower. The vicar, at the time when the present writer was here, brought them forth to show a boating-party who had landed on the beach, and the party gushed plentifully over them. "How beautiful! how interesting!" they exclaimed; insincerely, because any beauty or interest they may once have had has utterly vanished, and left merely two almost formless logs, not good enough for firewood. The really interesting object no one understood or appreciated. This was the beautiful granite font of the thirteenth century, an exceptionally interesting example, one of the somewhat rare inscribed fonts. It is adorned with shield-bearing angels and has the inscription, "Ecce Karissimi de Deo vero baptizabuntur spiritu sancto," with the initials, Q.P., B.M., B.V., P.R., repeated. No one appears ever to have explained the significance of those initials, but it may perhaps be considered that they are not only those of the donors, which seems obvious enough, but that they are also those of the storm-tossed voyagers who gave the church.
INSCRIBED FONT, ST. ANTHONY-IN-MENEAGE.
Inside the protecting shoulder of Nare Point lies Porthallow, a fishing cove, and beyond it, in the next bight, is Porthoustock, whose fishing is now mixed with the exportation of granite. Up out of Porthoustock, over the hill and on to the next point, and you have come to the most recently tragical outlook upon the Cornish seas, for there, offshore, lie the Manacles rocks. No one but a seaman would take particular note of them, for they do but rise unobtrusively from the water.
Their odd name, forbidding and ominous though it be, and apparently allusive to the fast hold they often keep upon vessels unlucky enough to go out of their course among them, is only accidental; their original title having been, in the Cornish language, "maen eglos," the "church stone." Why they were so called does not appear. A bell-buoy, floating out there, giving out a harsh knell, might seem to justify the name, but the rocks were so called long centuries before the Trinity House placed their buoy here. There is no sadder sound than that of a bell-buoy, tolling on the brightest day with the note of a funeral knell; a likeness well justified here, for many have been cast away on the Manacles, notably in the wreck of the Dispatch transport, January 25th, 1809, when sixty-four were lost; and in that of the John emigrant ship, May 1855, with the loss of nearly two hundred.
The terrible wreck of the American steamship Mohegan, on Friday, October 14th, 1898, is the latest tragedy associated with the fatal Manacles. The vessel was on its way to New York, and had left London the day before, carrying fifty-three saloon passengers, a crew of one hundred and seven, and a stowaway. Between half-past six and seven o'clock, when the saloon passengers were at dinner, every one on board was suddenly terrified by a violent crashing and grinding and a succession of shocks, indicating only too surely that the vessel had run upon a reef. All the ship's lights went out, and the horror of darkness was added to the peril of the occasion.
The sun sets at nine minutes past five in the evening on October 14th, and it is normally quite light for an hour later. It is therefore incapable of explanation how, in something like another half-hour, the Mohegan should have been as much as ten miles out of her course, especially as the south-westerly trend of the land towards the Lizard must have been very noticeable. Nor are these coasts ill-lighted. The Eddystone and Falmouth harbour lights, which the Mohegan had already passed, and the Lizard light ahead, form a remarkable triangular display for the guidance of the mariner. But it should be noted, perhaps, that the last half-hour of daylight may be especially dangerous. The lighthouses have already lit their warning beams, but they are only faintly to be seen in the still radiant western sky, and only gather strength when the afterglow has died away and darkness falls upon the restless sea and the sombre coast. Another explanation of the captain being so far out of his reckoning was sought in the Mohegan being a new ship, and her compasses possibly not true; but nothing can actually be known, for all the officers of the ship were drowned. A strong south-easterly wind was blowing at the time, and the bell-buoy on the southern ledge of the Manacles at such times rings loudly; but no one on board appears to have heard its warning. Only two boats could be launched, so swiftly did the Mohegan sink, and one of them was capsized. The Porthoustock lifeboat saved many, but one hundred and six were drowned.
Gibson & Sons, Penzance.] WRECK OF THE GLENBERVIE, ON LOWLANDS POINT.
A landsman, looking out on some calm day from the low headland that stretches insignificantly out to sea south of St. Keverne cannot easily comprehend the dangers of the scatter of rocks extending seaward for nearly a mile and a half. The spot is by no means dramatic. It is even commonplace, and has no hint of the scenes of terror and despair that have been enacted out yonder. And the photographs of the wreck that were afterwards plentifully taken are probably the tamest among such things, showing merely the funnel and the four masts standing upright from the waves and disclosing that the Mohegan sank on an even keel in comparatively shallow water. Those views, taken from the water, on a calm sea, only, in the present writer's imagination, add to the pity of the occasion, for in shallow water and so near land, it seems exceptionally hard that so many should have lost their lives. The remarkable attraction of the Manacles rocks for vessels was illustrated the following year, when the Paris strayed among them, happily with no disastrous results. The Glasgow barque Glenbervie struck in moderate weather one night, in January 1902, on the Ray, a rock two miles distant, off Lowlands Point, and although the crew were saved, the vessel became a total loss.