From the North Foreland to Penzance

by Clive Holland

And there is, indeed, a charm in the narrow devious streets and the little Cornish courts, in which the fisherfolk sit mending or knitting nets, or the jerseys which will do as much as wool can do to keep out the bitter cold of dawn or winter nights.

It is ages since the two Looes (East and West) became one by charter of Queen Elizabeth; but now, though we have left Devon and are in Cornwall, we have by no means left behind the memories of the strenuous life of fighting and piracy of old. And what has been said concerning many a Devon port and haven is equally true of Looe. It was probably (although, alas! records of the daring deeds and piratical descents of St Looe men upon the opposite Breton coast are much wanting) one of the most actively aggressive Cornish fisher towns. But we are sure of one thing, that Looe men were not less quick with the sword, flint lock, and culverin in the past, than with the trimming of sails and the handling of tiller; and that the harvests of blood, of fire, and of sword reaped along the French coast, which lay a hundred miles or so due south, were not less rich or risky of reprisals than those of the bold men of Dartmouth and Plymouth hard by.

That daring deeds were done more or less “outside the law of nations” there can be no question; but, save for an almost casual mention of the doings of the Looe lugger George in the famous though somewhat traditional fight with “those hereditary enemies, the French,” little has come down to us concerning these adventurers, and only a memory has survived from the early years of the nineteenth century of the Looe privateer of small size but large courage which, whilst cruising off the mouth of the Channel about thirty miles south-west of the Lizard, fell in, not with the French merchantman of which she was in search, but with a famous St-Malo privateer “of much superior force both in guns and men, which she promptly engaged and forced to surrender after a running fight lasting well nigh seven hours.” Had the St-Malo lugger known that more than sixty per cent of the Looe boat’s crew were either killed or placed hors de combat the result of the engagement might possibly have been different; but Cornish fisherfolk do not wear their hearts upon their sleeves, and one can well imagine that the survivors put on a “brazen front with no timidity shown,” just as one seems to catch an echo of the rousing cheers with which the striking of the tricolour was undoubtedly greeted.

Both the Looes did their best to uphold the honour of England during the long struggle with our French neighbours at the end of the eighteenth and commencement of the nineteenth century. Possibly it was the same spirit which made the Looe men amongst the boldest and most successful of smugglers on the Cornish coast in the first quarter of the last century, and this although they were remarkably well looked after by the “preventives.” It is only right to add, however, that an inspection and study of many records of smuggling along the South Coast proves conclusively that Cornish “free traders” conducted their operations in a much less brutal and forceful manner than that which characterized the doings of the famous smugglers of the Sussex coast, and which so often led to outrages and scenes of an atrocious character.

A well-known writer upon smuggling says in reference to this point: “As regards the skill and enterprise displayed by those who conducted the trade, it is difficult to award the palm to any one county, though, on the whole, perhaps, and after a careful consideration of all the circumstances of the case, the writer is inclined to give it to the Cornishmen. Not that the east countrymen were one whit behind them in point of courage or activity, but the very fact of having to travel a far greater distance for their goods exposed them to increased risks, and to many dangers from which the trade elsewhere was tolerably exempt, thus giving scope to the highest faculties, and developing seamanlike qualities of no mean order.”

As an example of the risks which the Cornish smugglers, and doubtless those of Looe, were willing to run for the sake of the enormous profits realized when a successful “run” of a cargo was accomplished, it may be mentioned that frequently these bold and hardy seamen would cross to the hundred-mile distant French coast in open boats even in the depth of inclement winters.

Not only would the daring character of the Cornishman seem to have qualified him especially for engaging in a species of enterprise in which were incurred such risks and dangers to life and limb, but the situation of Cornwall, lying as it does at the western extreme limit of England, and in the early days of the last century almost isolated from other parts of the kingdom, in itself was well adapted to the secrecy so necessary for the successful carrying out of smuggling enterprises on a large scale. No coast line on the south or west of England is more rugged or better supplied with creeks and harbours than that of Cornwall, and, indeed, had Nature been concerned with the provision of an ideal seaboard for the prosecution of contraband trade she could not have formed one better adapted for the purpose. And “to these natural advantages the Cornish smuggler brought in his own person an amount of skill, cunning, and enterprise which was scarcely equalled, and certainly was unsurpassed, elsewhere.” It was to the various circumstances to which we have referred that is mainly attributable the fact of Cornish smuggling having survived for a considerable period after “free trading” had been successfully put down along other portions of the south and west coasts.

Roscoff, which, until the edict of the King of France of September 3, 1769, was but a tiny fishing hamlet, became (when made by that edict a free port) one of the places on the French coast most frequented by the Cornish smuggling fraternity, and rose to a position of great commercial importance. The action of the French Government was brought about by that of the English, who two years previously had passed an Order with relation to the Channel Islands—till then a smugglers’ paradise with an enormous trade in contraband spirits, lace, tea and tobacco—with the object of suppressing smuggling. And even during the French War with Napoleon the contraband trade with the coast of Brittany continued almost unabated. It should, however, be stated for the credit of the smugglers that they frequently afforded important information to the English naval authorities and the Government regarding the movements of the French fleets and operations of privateers, and for this reason, probably, the circumstances which led to such information being obtained were generally not very closely inquired into.

How extensive the smuggling trade was about this period and even a little later may be gathered from the fact that more than a hundred large vessels (luggers and cutters chiefly) were engaged in it upon the south and south-west coasts alone. They varied in tonnage from about 80 to 150 tons, and were not infrequently supplied with means for armed resistance. They were built chiefly at Cornish ports, Polperro, Falmouth, Mevagissey amongst the number, the boats of the last-named port being especially noted for their speed. So much so that they were frequently bought by the Sussex and east coast smugglers, notwithstanding the fact that both Hastings and Shoreham enjoyed some considerable reputation for the building of smuggling craft. Not a few, too, of the larger luggers were during the French Wars fitted out as privateers either by their smuggling owners, or merchants who had purchased them for the purpose.

The carrying capacity of the vessels engaged in the trade may be somewhat gauged from the fact that on June 10, 1823, a cutter of twenty-five tons of East Looe took in a cargo of “within a few tubs of 700” of spirits at St Brelade’s Bay, Jersey, for transhipment to the Cornish coast.