The narrow and miraculous escapes from among this tangle of reefs have been many. The Cornish Magazine, now extinct, once published an article, in which the writer spoke of a Porthoustock fisherman telling him, from memory, the names of thirty vessels of all kinds, from steamships down to ketches, that had been totally lost here. He told a thrilling tale of a ship drifting inshore in a fog, and of the captain anchoring until the fog cleared away, when he sailed off in safety, to the astonishment of the many who had collected on the cliffs. There was also the story of the steamship which came so close to the cliffs that the noise of her engines could be distinctly heard on shore, but she, too, got away. Many have been the ships among the Manacles, and no word ever said about it; their captains even going the length of covering over the name of their vessels with a sail, lest their mistake in navigation should be published to the world.
The village of St. Keverne lies rather over a mile inland.
"St. Keverne" is another form of "St. Piran." It has also been spelled "Keveran" and "Kieran." Its church is very large and roomy, and is one of those few in Cornwall that have a spire. The fine inscribed font has demi-angels at the angles, holding crossed swords.
ST. KEVERNE.
In the churchyard, among other memorials of shipwreck, is the granite cross, bearing the simple inscription, "MOHEGAN, R.I.P." marking where lie many of the dead who were lost in that wreck. Near by is the touching epitaph upon "Charles Cyril Brownjohn, London, aged 23. S.S. Mohegan, Oct. 14, 1898. The devoted and only son of a widowed mother. He never said an unkind word to her in his life."
I do not think there were ever any distinguished persons born at St. Keverne. One notoriety, Sir James Tillie, was born here, and one other was vicar, as would appear from the records of 1467, in which, among a number of piratical Cornishmen, who had helped themselves to a quantity of merchandise from a Breton ship, we find the vicar, whose share of the booty was three tuns of wine. An order was given to arrest these enterprising persons, but they could not be found; and so St. Keverne apparently had a new, and let us hope, a better, vicar.