From the North Foreland to Penzance

by Clive Holland

The well-known antiquarian and naturalist, Jonathan Couch, who dwelt many years in the village, and, amongst other things, left behind him a history of the place descriptive of it and its many curious customs far above the average of such local works, both from the points of literary merit and interest, paints a picture of storm and stress at Polperro, which we make no excuse for quoting at some length, as it is not only vivid, but also typical of similar scenes to be witnessed “when the stormy winds do blow” in many another haven on the Cornish coast. On these occasions he says, “All who can render assistance are out of their beds helping the sailors and fishermen, lifting the boats out of reach of the sea, or taking the furniture out of the ground floors to a place of safety.... When the first streak of morning light comes, bringing no cessation of the storm, but only serving to show the devastation it has made, the effect is still more dismal. The wild fury of the waves is a sight of no mean grandeur as it dashes over the peak and falls on its jagged summit, from whence it streams down the sides in a thousand waterfalls and foams at its base. The infuriated sea sweeps over the piers and striking against the rocks and houses on the warren side rebounds towards the strand, and washes fragments of houses and boats into the streets, where the receding tide leaves them strewn in sad confusion.”

The truth of this description will easily be recognized by all who have witnessed a storm and its effects upon the rock-bound Cornish coast. Then there gather upon the points or bluffs above the harbour mouths, or on the sea-swept piers and quays groups of frightened women and children, and men with anxious faces gazing out over the wild expanse of foam-flecked seas to watch for the return of the boats, or, maybe, the manœuvres of some brave ship which has suddenly found herself on a lee shore. Those are times when the heart-strings of men are taut, and when the tears of women are in their eyes. Few sights are more sad, either to sailor or to landsman, than the break up of a fine vessel upon a rocky coast, when the heavy seas pound the strongest works of men into matchwood, and the fabric of the ship seems indeed to dissolve before one’s eyes.

Old Polperro folk—mostly women, it must be admitted—still talk with bated breath of the uncanny doings of a certain John Stevens, who dealt in occult arts in the middle part of the last century; and of another “witch,” who dwelt in an outlying hut near the quaint village of Crumplehorn, just a short distance up the valley. In the days, which some of the old people yet remember, none would go near her hut after dusk, and at least one old lady survived till comparatively recent times who had seen (so she told us) “the devil or the witch flying up out of the chimney on a broomstick.” But these were sights seen in days when the little harbour was seldom entered except by the fishing craft of the place itself, and strangers but once or so in a generation found their way down by the steep hill road to the place where the sea meets the land, and the murk of storm in winter days is so often, by reason of the death and devastation wrought, a firmer limned memory than the glorious clarity of Cornish sunshine and the azure tint of a summer sea.

Just as was the case at Looe the chief pursuits of Polperro men in the period from about 1750 to 1835 were only somewhat remotely connected with fishing, smuggling and privateering being much more to the taste of these hardy and reckless seafarers; and, as Mr Couch points out, the place was made for the enterprise. How universal the pursuit of smuggling was at Polperro may be gathered from the following extracts: “The smith left his forge, and the husbandman his plough; even the women and children turned out to assist in the unlawful traffic, and received their share of the proceeds.” The men, at all events, generally fell into two classes—“tub carriers,” who carried the “tubs” up the beach to the “cache,” or inland, as the case might be, slung back and front by the “tails”[F] provided for the purpose on the other side of the Channel; and the “batmen.” The former were paid five shillings and upwards a night according to the number of “tubs” they succeeded in carrying, and the latter, who gained their name from the “bat” or bludgeon which they carried and on occasion used for the protection of the carriers, were paid from fifteen shillings to a pound.

[F] Pieces of rope secured round each end of the “tub” for this purpose and also for use should it be necessary to sling the “tubs” overboard to avoid capture.—Smuggling Days and Smuggling Ways.

Of the speed and seaworthiness of the craft built at Polperro there have been left several testimonies. Here is one from the History of Polperro: “Fine craft too they turned out—clippers which, when manned by skilful and intrepid sailors, would scud away from the fastest of the Government cruisers and offer them a tow rope in derision.”

One famous craft, the Unity, is said to have made five hundred successful trips, and have served on privateering expeditions without having met with a single serious misadventure. Such boats were, doubtless, also the notorious smuggling craft, the Hope, Cruizer, Exchange, and Happy Brothers, all of Polperro, and constantly engaged in trips to Roscoff in the first decade of the last century. Several of them were heavily armed as well as strongly manned, and there is little wonder that the “preventives” in this part of the west country were sometimes lax in the exercise of their duty, and lived for the most part on pretty good terms with the fisherfolk who were engaged in the contraband trade.

It is improbable that the Polperro or indeed Cornish smugglers generally recognized smuggling as in any way dishonest, or if they did so, they certainly regarded it as a very trifling offence. And when one remembers that the better-class people and even the gentry frequently bought what spirits, tea and lace they required of the smugglers, and that the “preventive” officers and men not seldom connived at the running of cargoes, and were not above profiting from their laxness, it is not to be wondered at that these bold fishermen, in whose veins ran the blood of adventurers, and pirates of old, should engage in a calling to which their hereditary character would be most naturally adapted.

Sometimes, however, as was the case of Robert Marks, a noted Polperro smuggler, who was killed in an affray with the revenue men on January 24, 1802, and whose epitaph expresses such Christian forbearance towards his slayer, and hope of being rewarded “with everlasting bliss,” serious encounters took place, and in the course of years “much good blood and spirits were spilt along the coast.” But however outwardly friendly the two opposing interests were, the History of Polperro records the fact that “though active opposition on the part of the smugglers was not politic, the people determined, one and all, to offer as much passive resistance as was safe. No one would let a coastguardman a house to live in at any price, so the whole force was obliged to make a dwelling and guard house of the hull of a vessel which was moored to the old quay.”

So lucrative and attractive was “the trade” at Polperro, and so uncomfortable and risky the “preventive” service, that there is a record of at least three men who “verted” from the revenue service and entered the ranks of active smugglers, one James Rowat, boatman coastguard, having been dismissed the service in 1827 for purchasing a boat “intended to be employed in smuggling.”