Morthoe has a bad record for wrecking operations, which brought much discredit on this coast, and of which it was one of the principal centres. Prayers are said to have been offered that “a ship might come ashore before morning.” To facilitate this blessed consummation, a lantern was tied to some animal, and by this wandering light poor mariners were lured through the treacherous mist to their doom. Even women were to be found cruel enough to participate in this murderous trade, and the tale is told that one of Eve’s daughters held a drowning sailor under water with a pitchfork. Another, a farmer’s wife living at a certain barton, secured as a prize some chinaware, which was arranged on her dresser. One day a sailor’s widow happened to enter, and recognising the ware as belonging to her late husband’s craft, seized a stick and smashed it to atoms. The farmer’s wife thereupon became a prey to remorse, and not long afterwards gave herself up to justice. A painful story regards the wreck of an Italian ship, when the only person on board to reach the shore was a young and beautiful lady, who bore with her a casket of precious family jewels, saved at the risk of her life. Utterly unmoved by her tears and entreaties, the savage wreckers carried her off to one of their vile haunts, and nothing was heard of her again. Many years after the event, the jewels, it was said, were still in the neighbourhood.
The last recorded instance of this shameful practice on the north-west coast of Devon occurred in 1846, at Welcomb, near Hartland, where a vessel and her ill-fated crew were ruthlessly sacrificed to the cupidity of heartless local wreckers. By the way, Blackmore’s account of a wreck in the Maid of Sker is perhaps founded on the circumstance that at the commencement of the great war two transports from the French West India islands, laden with black prisoners, were driven ashore at Rapparee Cove, many lives being lost, whilst, afterwards, gold and pearls were washed about among the shingle.
Rapparee Cove is at Ilfracombe, which Blackmore describes as “a little place lying in a hole, and with great rocks all around it, fair enough to look at it, but more easy to fall down than to get up them” (Maid of Sker, chapter lxv.).
Historically, Ilfracombe has not much of interest save the escapades of the saint-like Cavalier, Sir Francis Doddington, who in
September 1644 set the place on fire, but was beaten out by the townsmen and sailors, with the loss of many of his followers. Ten days later he returned, and, falling on the town with his horse, succeeded in capturing it. “Twenty pieces of ordnance, as many barrels of powder, and near 200 arms,” were amongst his spoils. Ilfracombe was retaken for the Parliament in April 1646.
Sir Francis was no lukewarm partisan, for meeting one Master James, described as “an honest minister,” near Taunton, he demanded whom he was for? “For God and His Gospel,” was the other’s reply, whereupon the enraged knight immediately shot him.
It was to Ilfracombe that Colonel Wade, Captains Hewling and Carey, and others fled after the battle of Sedgemoor, and here they left Ferguson, their chaplain, and Thompson, captain of the Blue Regiment, whilst they themselves, having seized and victualled a vessel, put out to sea. Being pursued by two frigates, they had to land at Lynmouth, as already narrated ([see p. 154]).
The great charm of the neighbourhood is its bold scenery and romantic walks, one of which will conduct the wayfarer to Hele, with its old earthwork, and thence to Chambercombe, concerning which Mr Tugwell has preserved a most delightful legend, worthy to be reproduced at length:—