Undoubtedly the Cornish coasts have their mysteries, but none of them is quite so mysterious as the wreck of the Dutch barque, Jonkheer Meester Van de Wall van Puttershoek, which happened on the night of March 25th, 1867. This vessel, of 650 tons, Captain Klaas van Lammerts, homeward-bound from the East Indies with a cargo of sugar, coffee, spices, and tin, was worth about £45,000, and had twenty-five persons on board. She had been observed, the afternoon before, beating up Channel in a gale, and it was then noted that she was being very clumsily handled and would perhaps not succeed in rounding the Lizard. The wreck took place at night, and all on board were drowned, except one man, a Greek sailor, who was discovered the next morning, climbing along the rocks between Polurrian and Poldhu.
"My name," he said, "is Georgio Buffani. I was seaman on board the wrecked ship, which belonged to Dordrecht. I joined at Batavia, but I do not know either the name of the ship or that of the captain."
He repeated this extraordinary statement at the inquest on the drowned, and being shown a list of Dutch East Indiamen, picked out the Kosmopoliet, as a likely one. The inquest therefore was concluded on the assumption that this was the lost vessel. The Greek then left and was not again heard of. Soon afterwards, however, the Dutch consul at Falmouth came with the captains of two Dutch Indiamen then lying in port. One of them declared that the Kosmopoliet would not be due for nearly another fortnight, and was convinced that the lost ship was the Jonkheer. The vicar of Mullion then appeared with a fragment of flannel he had found, marked "6 K. L." "Yes," said the captain, "it must be the Jonkheer, for those are the initials of her captain, Klaas Lammerts."
"On the Friday following," continues the vicar, "when the consul and this Dutch captain again visited Mullion, the first thing handed to them was a parchment which had been picked up meanwhile, and this was none other than the masonic diploma of Klaas van Lammerts."
There were some curious incidents in connection with this wreck, and the Greek sailor himself was something of a mystery: a kind of Jonah to ships. It was the third time, he said, he had been wrecked, and on every occasion was the sole survivor. It was noticed as singular that he was wearing a lady's gold watch and chain; and piecing one suspicious circumstance and another together, very grave thoughts were entertained that there had been a terrible mutiny on board. But the secret of it was shared alone by the Greek sailor and the sea. The coast was thickly strewn with coffee-berries and sugar-baskets from the cargo of the wrecked ship. Penzance speculators who carted many tons of coffee away, lost heavily when it was discovered that the berries had all been spoiled by sea-water.
The smuggling and the wrecking that once distinguished Porthmellin and Mullion village may be traced in old records: the wrecking, I hasten to say, not of that criminal, murderous type which produced wrecks, but the fierce hunger for wreck of the sea which animated all coastwise dwellers, and is still only dormant.
The chief smuggling incident is that of the Happy-go-Lucky, an armed lugger of fourteen guns, commanded by one Welland, of Dover. She was located off the Cove on April 4th, 1786, by the revenue-cutters Hawk and Lark, and captured after a running fight in which Welland was killed.
As to the "wrecking," an account, written in 1817, tells us vividly about it.
"The neighbourhood is sadly infested with wreckers. When the news of a wreck flies round the coast, thousands of people are instantly collected near the fatal spot; pick-axes, hatchets, crow-bars, and ropes are their usual implements for breaking up and carrying off whatever they can. The moment the vessel touches the shore she is considered fair plunder, and men, women, and children are working on her to break her up, night and day. The precipices they descend, the rocks they climb, and the billows they buffet to seize the floating fragments are the most frightful and alarming I ever beheld; the hardships they endure, especially the women, in winter, to save all they can, are almost incredible. Should a vessel, laden with wine or spirits, approach the shore, she brings certain death and ruin to many with her. The rage and fighting, to stave in the casks and bear away the spoils, in kettles and all manner of vessels, is brutal and shocking. To drunkenness and fighting succeed fatigue, sleep, cold, wet, suffocation, death. Last winter we had some dreadful scenes of this description. A few in this neighbourhood, it seems, having a little more light than others, had scruples against visiting a wreck that came ashore on a Lord's day, lest it should be breaking the Sabbath; but they gathered all their implements into a public-house and waited until the clock struck twelve at midnight. Then they rushed forth; all checks of conscience removed."