Here is the epitaph to the smuggler, one—
ROBERT MARK;
late of Polperro, who Unfortunately
was shot at Sea the 24th day of Jany.
in the year of our Lord God
1802, in the 40th Year of His Age
In prime of Life most suddenly,
Sad tidings to relate;
Here view My utter destiny,
And pity, My sad state:
I by a shot, which Rapid flew,
Was instantly struck dead;
Lord pardon the Offender who
My precious blood did shed.
Grant Him to rest, and forgive Me,
All I have done amiss;
And that I may Rewarded be
With Everlasting Bliss.
Robert Mark was at the helm of a boat which had been obliged to run before a revenue cutter. It was at the point of escaping when the cutter’s crew opened fire upon the fugitive, killing the helmsman on the spot. Let us trust he has duly won to that everlasting bliss that not even smugglers are denied. The mild and forgiving terms of the epitaph are to be noted with astonishment; the usual run of sentiment to be observed on the very considerable number of these memorials to smugglers cut off suddenly in the plenitude of their youth and beauty, being particularly revengeful and bloodthirsty, or at the best, bitterly reproachful.
Among these many epitaphs on smugglers to be met with in the churchyards of seaboard parishes is the following, to be found in the waterside parish of Mylor, near Falmouth. Details of the incident in which this “Cus-toms house officer” (spelled here exactly as the old lettering on the tombstone has it) shot and mortally wounded Thomas James appear to have been altogether lost:
We have not a moment we can call our own.
In Memory of Thomas James, aged 35 years, who
on the evening of the 7th Dec. 1814, on his returning
to Flushing from St. Mawes in a boat was shot by a
Cus-toms house officer and expired a few days after.
Officious zeal in luckless hour laid wait
And wilful sent the murderous ball of fate:
James to his home, which late in health he left,
Wounded returned—of life is soon bereft.
This is quite a mild and academic example, and obviously the work of some passionless hireling, paid for his verses. He would have written not less affectingly for poor dog Tray.
Prussia Cove, the most famous smuggling centre in Cornwall, finds mention in another chapter. Little else remains to be said, authentically at any rate. Invention, however, could readily people every cove with desperate men and hair-raising encounters, and there could nowadays be none who should be able to deny the truth of them. But we will leave all that to the novelists, merely pointing out that facts continually prove themselves at least as strange as fiction. Thus at Wendron, five miles inland from Helston, two caves, or underground chambers, were discovered in 1905 during some alterations and rebuildings, close to the churchyard. Local opinion declared them to be smugglers’ hiding-holes.