SKETCHES OF OUR COASTS.—CORNWALL (_continued_).
Wilkie Collins’s Experiences as a Pedestrian—Taken for “Mapper,”
“Trodger,” and Hawker—An Exciting Wreck at Penzance—The Life‐line
sent out—An Obstinate Captain—A Brave Coastguardsman—Five
Courageous Young Ladies—Falmouth and Sir Walter Raleigh—Its Rapid
Growth—One of its Institutions—A Dollar Mine—Religious
Fishermen—The Lizard and its Associations for Voyagers—Origin of
the Name—Mount St. Michael, the Picturesque—Her Majesty’s Visit—An
Heroic Rescue at Plymouth—Another Gallant Rescue.
Mr. Collins’s experiences as a pedestrian are amusing. Says he:—“We enter
a small public‐house by the road‐side to get a draught of beer. In the
kitchen we behold the landlord and a tall man, who is a customer. Both
stare as a matter of course; the tall man especially, after taking one
look at our knapsacks, fixes his eyes firmly on us, and sits bolt upright
on the bench without saying a word—he is evidently prepared for the worst
we can do. We get into conversation with the landlord, a jovial, talkative
fellow, who desires greatly to know what we are, if we have no objection.
We ask him what he thinks we are? ‘Well,’ says the landlord, pointing to
my friend’s knapsack, which has a square ruler strapped to it for
architectural drawing, ‘Well, I think you are both of you _Mappers_;
mappers, who come here to make new roads; you may be coming to make a
railroad, I dare say. We’ve had mappers in the county before this. I know
a mapper myself. Here’s both your good healths.’ We drink the landlord’s
good health in return, and disclaim the honour of being ‘mappers;’ we walk
through the country, we tell him, for pleasure alone, and take any roads
we can get, without wanting to make new ones. The landlord would like to
know, if that is the case, why we carry these loads at our backs? Because
we want to carry our luggage about with us. Couldn’t we pay to ride? Yes,
we could. And yet we like walking better? Yes, we do. This last answer
utterly confounds the tall customer, who has been hitherto listening
intently to the dialogue. It is evidently too much for his credulity; he
pays his reckoning, and walks out in a hurry without uttering a word. The
landlord appears to be convinced, but it is only in appearance; he looks
at us suspiciously in spite of himself. We leave him standing at his door,
keeping his eye on us as long as we are in sight, still evidently
persuaded that we are ‘mappers,’ but ‘mappers’ of a bad order, whose
perseverance is fraught with some unknown peril to the security of the
Queen’s highway.
“We get on into another district. Here public opinion is not flattering.
Some of the groups gathered together in the road to observe us begin to
speculate on our characters before we are quite out of hearing. Then this
sort of dialogue, spoken in serious, subdued tones, just reaches us.
Question—‘What can they be?’ Answer—‘_Trodgers!_’
“This is particularly humiliating, because it happens to be true. We
certainly do trudge, and are therefore properly, though rather
unceremoniously, called trudgers, or ‘trodgers.’ But we sink to a lower
depth yet a little further on. We are viewed as objects of pity. It is a
fine evening. We stop and lean against a bank by the road‐side to look at
the sunset. An old woman comes tottering by on high pattens, very
comfortably and nicely clad. She sees our knapsacks, and instantly stops
in front of us, and begins to moan lamentably. Not understanding at first
what this means, we ask respectfully if she feels at all ill? ‘Ah! poor
fellows, poor fellows!’ she sighs in answer, ‘obliged to carry all your
baggage on your own backs! very hard! poor lads! very hard indeed!’ and
the good old soul goes away groaning over our evil plight, and mumbling
something which sounds very like an assurance that she has no money to
give us.
“In another part of the county we rise again gloriously in worldly
consideration. We pass a cottage; a woman looks out after us over the low
garden wall, and rather hesitatingly calls us back. I approach her first,
and am thus saluted: ‘If you please, sir, what have you got to sell?’
Again, an old man meets us on the road, stops, cheerfully taps our
knapsacks with his stick, and says, ‘Aha! you’re tradesmen, eh! things to
sell? I say, have you got any tea?’ (pronounced _tay_). Further on we
approach some miners breaking ore. As we pass by we hear one asking
amazedly, ‘What have they got to sell in those things on their backs?’ and
another answering, in the prompt tones of a guesser who is convinced that
he guesses right, ‘Guinea‐pigs!’
“It is, unfortunately, impossible to convey to the reader any adequate
idea by mere description of the extraordinary gravity of manner, the looks
of surprise, and the tones of conviction which accompanied these various
popular conjectures as to our calling and station in life, and which added
immeasurably at the time to their comic effect. Curiously enough, whenever
they took the form of questions, any jesting in returning an answer never
seemed either to be appreciated or understood by the country people.
Serious replies fared much the same fate as jokes. Everybody asked whether
we could pay for riding, and nobody believed we preferred walking, if we
could. So we soon gave up any idea of affording any information at all,
and walked through the country comfortably as mappers, trodgers,
tradesmen, guinea‐pig mongers, and poor back‐burdened vagabond lads,
altogether, or one at a time, just as the peasantry pleased.”
Penzance is itself the most westerly port of England. It has a noble pier,
700 feet long, and a lighthouse, the red light of which can be seen nine
miles off. It has a lifeboat, the crew of which has done many a gallant
deed. Out of a population of twelve or thirteen thousand in and about the
town, at least twenty‐five per cent. are hardy men of the sea—fishermen or
sailors. It was the scene, only a couple of years ago, of a most exciting
event.
[Illustration: ROCKET LINE THROWN TO A WRECK NEAR PENZANCE.]
A French brig, the _Ponthieu_, went ashore near the town, during the
prevalence of a strong south‐west gale. The Marazion rocket apparatus was
worked successfully, and the line was thrown over the wreck, but the crew,
being ignorant of the mode of working it, fastened it loosely on board,
instead of hauling it in taut. One of the crew managed, however, to get
safely ashore by it. The Penzance lifeboat was then got out, but on her
arrival at the ill‐fated vessel, the French crew, though in infinite
peril, great seas washing over them, took no notice, the captain
apparently forbidding them to leave, or even throw a line to the boat. The
wind and sea rapidly increased in fury; the vessel was evidently doomed,
and must soon break up. In vain the life‐boatmen entreated. They were
actually warned off, and had, after earnest warning, to leave. But seeing
the inevitable loss of life that must ensue, the brave coxswain of the
boat determined to return. Result: five lives saved. The captain still
remained obstinate, and at length a coastguardsman, all honour to him!
volunteered for the perilous duty of going out to the wreck by the rocket
line, taking with him a letter from the French Consul, urging the captain
to leave. In the presence of hundreds of intensely‐excited spectators, the
coastguard made his way, often under the waves for several seconds, and in
peril of being washed off. The captain was watching him from the brig, but
stood motionless, even when his deliverer had arrived under the bows. Just
then a furious sea broke over the hero of the rocket line, and washed him
away, and it was feared by all on shore that he must perish. Happily,
however, he regained the rope, and more dead than alive, was washed
ashore. Meanwhile the brig was fast breaking up. The masts fell over the
side. The stern, on which the captain was standing, was first battered in,
and then clean carried away. It was supposed that the captain had
perished, but presently he was seen among the wreckage, mounting to the
foreyard, the sail of which somewhat sheltered him. The coastguardsmen
fired two more rockets, and one line falling close to the captain, he
seized it, but even then seemed irresolute whether to save himself or
perish with his brig. After a quarter of an hour the love of life
constrained him to fasten the rope round his body, and the foolhardy man
was dragged ashore. Within an hour nothing was to be seen of the vessel
but a few floating spars. The cheers which greeted the captain’s rescue
were but feeble compared with those that had welcomed the return of the
coastguardsman whose life had been risked in attempting to save him. Brave
Gould!
The coastguardsmen, however, do not enjoy a monopoly of bravery in
Cornwall. There are courageous women there, some of them very young.
[Illustration: LIFE‐BOAT GOING TO A WRECK ON DOOM BAR, PADSTOW.]
Towards the end of October, 1879, a well‐earned presentation was made at
Padstow, to five young ladies of an equal number of silver medals and
testimonials inscribed on vellum, the vote of the National Life‐boat
Institution. The four Misses Prideaux Brune and Miss Nora O’Shaughnessy
had taken a boat through a heavy sea, at the risk of their own lives, to
save an exhausted sailor from a capsized boat, two of the companions of
whom had perished before their arrival. Samuel Bate, late the assistant
coxswain of the Padstow life‐boat, was towing the ladies’ boat astern of
his fishing smack, when seeing the accident, they requested to be cast
off, and that being done, though against his convictions, he states that
they rowed “like tigers” to the rescue through a furious sea, and he has
no doubt that the man would have perished like his companions but for
their prompt arrival. Such noble‐hearted girls make us still more proud of
Cornwall, which has given England—aye, the world—so many noble men.
The Cornish coast, in spite of its picturesque character and points of
interest, is not so well known by tourists and artists as it should be.
Falmouth has an interesting history. When Sir Walter Raleigh visited it on
his return from the Guinea coast, where guinea‐pigs came from, he found
but one solitary house outside of the family mansion of an ancient county
family. His quick eye noted the admirable harbour and entrance, the former
capable of holding 500 vessels, and he represented to the Council the
advantage of making it a port. From that time its fortunes grew; soon it
became a packet station for the arrival and departure of the foreign
mails. Now on the lofty headland, St. Anthony’s Point, a lighthouse,
flashing brilliantly every twenty seconds, serves to guide the entering
ships and steamships, which have sometimes numbered 2,000 in one year. It
has a patent slip, dry and other docks, and all conveniences for shipping
interests. Connected with the town is an extensive oyster and trawling
fishery, and it has a little fleet of pilot cutters. It has a sailors’
Bethel, with library and reading‐room; and the Royal Cornwall Sailors’
Home is a prominent institution. Another of the “institutions” of Falmouth
might be copied to advantage elsewhere. Every boatman who rescues a
drowning person is entitled to receive a reward of one guinea.
The Rev. C. A. Johns tells us that near Gunwalloe, Cornwall, the land
rises, and the coast becomes bold for a short distance. The cliffs, though
not lofty, are precipitous, and offer no chance of escape to any
unfortunate vessel which may chance to be driven in within reach of the
rocks. About the year 1785, a vessel laden with wool, and having also on
board two and a half tons of money, was driven ashore a few hundred yards
west of the church, and soon went to pieces. Ever since, at intervals,
after a storm, dollars have been picked up on the beach, but never in
sufficient numbers to compensate for the time wasted in the search. No
measures, however, on a large scale for recovering the precious cargo were
adopted until the year 1845, when people were startled to hear that a
party of adventurers were going to sink a dollar‐mine in the sea.
This is not the only unsuccessful search for treasure which has been made
at Gunwalloe. In the sand‐banks near the church, or, as others say, at
Kennack Cove, the notorious buccaneer Captain Avery is reported to have
buried several chests of treasure previous to his leaving England on the
voyage from which he never returned. So strongly did this opinion prevail
that Mr. John Knill, collector of the Customs at St. Ives, procured, about
the year 1770, a grant of treasure trove, and expended some money in a
fruitless search.
The vessel had gone to pieces between two rocks at a short distance from
the base of the cliff, and here it was proposed to construct a kind of
coffer‐dam, from which the water was to be pumped out, and the dollars to
be picked up at leisure. Mad though the scheme was, operations were
actually commenced; a path was cut in the face of the cliff, iron rods
were fixed into the rocks, and several beams of timber laid down, when a
breeze set in from the south‐west, and in the course of a few hours the
work of as many weeks was destroyed. The wood‐work was ripped up as
effectually as though it had been a mere wicker cage, and the coast was
soon lined with the fragments. It is not likely the attempt will be
renewed. The speculators were in this instance strangers, which accounts
for the enterprise having been taken in hand at all, for any one
acquainted with the coast must have been well aware that though the sea is
tolerably calm sometimes for many consecutive days, it is never so for a
period long enough to allow the completion of a work which requires time,
and which, in the most favourable weather, is beset with difficulties;
indeed, an ordinary breeze setting on this shore excites the sea to such a
state of fury that certainly no unfinished mechanical structure could
withstand the force of the breakers.
The lower classes of Cornwall are generally Methodists, and decidedly
religious. In Scotland also, strict Sabbatarianism is the rule among the
poor. _The Northern Ensign_, in reply to a journalist who had been
advocating the prosecution of the herring fishery on the Sabbath day, had
an article showing that there is no class in Scotland, taken as a whole,
who love, revere, and enjoy the Sabbath more than the men and women who
live by the sea. At Wick, the largest herring fishery station in the
world, where the fishers congregate from all parts of the coast, at ten
o’clock one Sabbath morning not a single fisherman was to be seen in the
street; in half an hour after knots of men and women were wending their
way to the various places of worship, and when the church bell announced
the hour of meeting the streets were almost impassable—men, women, and
children, all cleanly dressed, and not in working clothes, streamed this
way and that to church.
No visitor to Cornwall ever misses the Lizard, the most southerly headland
promontory in Britain, a piece of rocky land which has caused more vivid
and varied emotions than any other on our coasts. The emigrant leaving, as
he often thinks, and often wrongly thinks, his native land for ever; the
soldier bound for distant battle‐fields, and the sailor for far distant
foreign ports; the lover just parted from his beloved one; the husband
from his wife; have each and all strained their eyes for a last parting
glimpse of an isle they loved so much and yet might never see again! And
when the lighthouses’ flash could no longer be discerned, how sadly did
one and all “turn into” their berths to think, aye, “perchance to dream,”
of the happy past and the doubtful future. How different the emotions of
the homeward bound, the emigrant with his gathered gold, the bronzed
veteran who has come out of the fiercest conflict unscathed, and the
sailor who has safely passed the ordeal of fearful climes; the lover ready
now for the girl he adores; and the husband jubilant with such good news
for his faithful spouse. The first glimpse of that strangely‐named rocky
point is the signal for heartiest huzzas and congratulation.
The Lizard Rock owes its name, according to various authorities, firstly
to its form; secondly to the serpent‐like colour of its cliffs; and
thirdly is said to be derived from the Cornish word Liazherd, signifying a
projecting headland. Its two splendid lights can be seen out at sea at a
distance of twenty miles.
[Illustration: WRECK OF A STEAM‐SHIP NEAR LIZARD POINT.]
Mount’s Bay, a few miles further west, has a fine anchorage, but is more
interesting to the visitor as containing an isolated pyramidal collection
of grand rocks, which, with their castle, are the delight of the landscape
artist. The old castle on the rocky islet rises to a height of 230 feet.
The island is connected with Marazion, a village on the mainland, 400
yards distant, by a causeway of stones. In 1846 her Majesty Queen Victoria
and Prince Albert paid a visit to the spot, and the event is commemorated
on a tablet let into the wall of the pier, and by a brass foot‐plate
placed on the spot first touched by the Royal feet when they conveyed Her
Majesty ashore. There is a snug little harbour, and the pier just named
will allow several hundred vessels to unload at the same time. The
population of Mount St. Michael is composed almost entirely of pilots and
fishermen.
Plymouth, Devon, with its grand breakwater and many associations, has
often been mentioned in these pages. Comparatively recently it was the
scene of a most gallant rescue. Five boys were playing on the beach in
front of the Hoe, when they entered a cave in the rocks, and remained
there until the tide, which flowed in with unusual rapidity on account of
a gale outside, completely hemmed them in. Their screams were heard from
the road and promenade above, and hundreds of people quickly congregated.
The waves were dashing furiously on the beach, and surging into the cave
where the terrified lads were crouching, shivering with wet and cold, and
trembling at their apparently inevitable fate. No boat could live in the
surf, or dare approach the rocks. But seamen’s proverbial ingenuity came
to the rescue; ropes were procured, and two seafaring men, George Andrews
and Thomas Penny by name, were lowered over the precipitous crags through
the blinding spray and dashing foam to the mouth of the rocky recess.
Here, still attached to the ropes, they allowed themselves to be washed by
the sea into the cave far enough to seize a boy, when, the signal being
given, they were hauled out and up. This was repeated, until amid
enthusiastic cheering, the fifth and last boy was saved.
Has the reader ever visited Dartmouth, one of the loveliest spots in
Britain? The men, and, if history tells us aright, the women too, of that
ancient town rendered a good account of themselves when the French, in
1404, after burning and sacking Plymouth, thought they would have an easy
prey. The inhabitants of Dartmouth pluckily resisted the invaders, and
with such success, that the commander of the fleet, three barons, and
twenty knights, were taken prisoners. But then out of a comparatively
small population, then as now, a large proportion were men of the sea.
[Illustration: SOUTHAMPTON.]