CAPTAIN CRUEL.
Captain Coppinger occupied an old farmhouse, roomy, low-built, granite
quoined and mullioned, called Pentyre Glaze, in a slight dip of the
hills near the cliffs above the thundering Atlantic. One ash shivered
at the end of the house--that was the only tree to be seen near
Pentyre Glaze. And--who was Coppinger? That is more than can be told.
He had come--no one knew whence. His arrival on the north coast of
Cornwall was mysterious. There had been haze over the sea for three
days. When it lifted, a strange vessel of foreign rig was seen lying
off the coast. Had she got there in the fog, not knowing her course;
or had she come there knowingly, and was making for the mouth of the
Camel? A boat was seen to leave the ship, and in it a man came ashore;
the boat returned to the vessel, that thereupon spread sail and
disappeared in the fog that re-descended over the water. The man gave
his name as Coppinger--his Christian name, he said, was Curll, and he
was a Dane; but though his intonation was not that of the Cornish, it
was not foreign. He took up his residence in S. Enodoc at a farm, and
suddenly, to the surprise of every one, became by purchase the
possessor of Pentyre Glaze, then vacant and for sale. Had he known
that the estate was obtainable when he had come suddenly out of the
clouds into the place to secure it? Nobody knew, and Coppinger was
silent.
Thenceforth Pentyre Glaze became the harbor and den of every lawless
character along the coast. All kinds of wild uproar and reckless
revelry appalled the neighborhood day and night. It was discovered
that an organized band of smugglers, wreckers, and poachers made this
house the centre of their operations, and that "Cruel Coppinger" was
their captain. There were at that time--just a century ago--no
resident magistrates or gentry in the immediate neighborhood. The
yeomen were bribed, by kegs of spirits left at their doors, to
acquiesce in a traffic in illicit goods, and in the matter of exchange
they took their shares. It was said that on one occasion a preventive
man named Ewan Wyvill, who had pursued Coppinger in his boat, was
taken by him, and his head chopped off by the captain, with his boat
axe, on the gunwale. Such was the story. It was never proved. Wyvill
had disappeared, and the body was recovered headless on the Doom Bar.
That violence had been used was undoubted, but who had committed the
crime was not known, though suspicion pointed to Coppinger.
Thenceforth none ever called him Curll; by one consent he was named
Cruel. In the West of England every one is given his Christian name.
An old man is Uncle, and an old woman Aunt, and any one in command is
a Captain. So Coppinger was known as Captain Cruel, or as Cruel
Coppinger.
Strange vessels were often seen appearing at regular intervals on the
coast, and signals were flashed from the one window of Pentyre Glaze
that looked out to sea.
Among these vessels, one, a full-rigged schooner, soon became
ominously conspicuous. She was for long the terror of the Cornish
coast. Her name was The Black Prince. Once, with Coppinger on board,
she led a revenue cutter into an intricate channel among the rocks,
where, from knowledge of the bearings, The Black Prince escaped
scathless, while the king's vessel perished with all on board.
Immunity increased Coppinger's daring. There were certain bridle-roads
along the fields over which he exercised exclusive control. He issued
orders that no man should pass over them by night, and accordingly
from that hour none ever did.[A]
[A] Many stories of Cruel Coppinger may be found in Hawker's
Footprints of Former Men in Cornwall. I have also told them
in my Vicar of Morwenstow. I have ventured to translate the
scene of Coppinger's activity further west, from Wellcombe to
S. Enodoc. But, indeed, he is told of in many places on this
coast.
Moreover, if report spoke true--and reports do not arise without
cause--Coppinger was not averse from taking advantage, and that
unlawful advantage, of a wreck. By "lawful" and "unlawful" two
categories of acts are distinguished, not by the laws of the land but
by common consent of the Cornish conscience. That same Cornish
conscience distinguished wrecking into two classes, as it
distinguished then, and distinguishes still, witchcraft into two
classes. The one, white witchcraft, is legitimate and profitable, and
to be upheld; the other, black witchcraft, is reprehensible, unlawful,
and to be put down. So with wrecking. The Bristol Channel teemed with
shipping, flights of white sails passed in the offing, and these
vessels were, when inward bound, laden with sugars and spices from the
Indies, or with spirits and wines from France. If outward bound they
were deep in the water with a cargo of the riches of England.
Now, should a gale spring up suddenly and catch any of these vessels,
and should the gale be--as it usually is, and to the Cornish folk,
favorably is--from the northwest, then there was no harbor of refuge
along that rock-bound coast, and a ship that could not make for the
open was bound inevitably to be pounded to pieces against the
precipitous walls of the peninsula. If such were the case, it was
perfectly legitimate for every householder in the district to come
down on the wreck and strip it of everything it contained.
But, on the other hand, there was wrecking that was disapproved of,
though practised by a few, so rumor said, and that consisted in luring
a vessel that was in doubt as to her course, by false signals, upon a
reef or bar, and then, having made a wreck of her, to pillage her.
When on a morning after a night in which there had been no gale, a
ship was found on the rocks, and picked as clean as the carcase of a
camel in the desert, it was open to suspicion that this ship had not
been driven there by wind or current; and when the survivors, if they
reached the shore, told that they had been led to steer in the
direction where they had been cast away by certain lights that had
wholly deceived them, then it was also open to suspicion that these
lights had been purposely exhibited for the sake of bringing that
vessel to destruction; and when, further, it was proved that a certain
set or gang of men had garnered all the profits, or almost all the
profits, that accrued from a wreck, before the countryside was aware
that a wreck had occurred, then it was certainly no very random
conjecture that the wreck had been contrived in some fashion by those
who profited by it. There were atrocious tales of murder of
shipwrecked men circulating, but these were probably wholly, or at
all events in part, untrue. If when a vessel ran upon the rocks she
was deserted by her crew, if they took to the boats and made for
shore, then there remained no impediment to the wreckers taking
possession; it was only in the event of their finding a skipper on
board to maintain right over the grounded vessel, or the mariners
still on her engaged in getting her off, that any temptation to
violence could arise. But it was improbable that a crew would cling to
a ship on such a coast when once she was on the breakers. It was a
moral certainty that they would desert her, and leave the wreck to be
pillaged by the rats from shore, without offer of resistance. The
character of the coast-wreckers was known to seamen, or rather a
legend full of horror circulated relative to their remorseless
savagery. The fear of wreckers added to the fear of the sea would
combine to drive a crew, to the last man, into the boats.
Consequently, though it is possible that in some cases murder of
castaway men may have occurred, such cases must have been most
exceptional. The wreckers were only too glad to build a golden bridge
by which the wrecked might escape. Morally, without a question, those
who lured a hapless merchantman upon the rocks were guilty of the
deaths of those sailors who were upset in their boats in escaping from
the vessel, or were dashed against the cliffs in their attempts to
land, but there was no direct blood-guiltiness felt in such cases; and
those who had reaped a harvest from the sea counted their gains
individually, and made no estimate of the misery accruing thereby to
others.