In Cornwall you are never far away from the sea. Surrounded on three sides by the ocean and, on the fourth, almost cut off by the river Tamar, Cornwall is virtually an island. This maritime environment has played a major role in moulding the character of Cornwall and its people, and is a key element in the county’s history.
Much of Cornwall’s folklore is connected with the sea. The story of the Lost Land of Lyonnesse tells of a place that once lay beyond Cornwall, a country of towns and churches and farms, which one day was covered by a huge tidal wave that swept all before it. Richard Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, in 1602, said that fishermen off the coast of Cornwall sometimes dredged up ancient window frames and other relics of the ‘lost land,’ and other legends insist that Lyonnesse was once the home, and perhaps the final resting place, of King Arthur.
Legend has it that a man named Trevelyan was the only person to escape the drowning of Lyonnesse, having galloped madly to safety just ahead of the rushing sea. This story is remembered to this day in the white horse incorporated in the coat of arms of the Vyvyan family, into which Trevelyan is said to have married. After storms, tree trunks and roots have been exposed on the beach at Mount’s Bay, evidence of a submerged forest that once might have stretched to St Michael’s Mount and beyond – perhaps to the mythical Lyonnesse.
Other legends have more than a glimmer of truth, a vague collective memory of something that happened a long time ago. The story of Lyonnesse, perhaps, tells us that the Isles of Scilly were once joined to the Cornish mainland.
The sea, as well as being what the Cornish call a ‘harvest field’, also has a dark side. When sailors and fishermen were lost in great storms at sea, this was seen as the work of the sea god who demanded perpetual sacrifice. This belief might explain the eerie folk tale, recorded by Robert Hunt in the mid 19th Century, of an incident late one night on Porthtowan beach, on Cornwall’s rugged north coast.
A strange voice was heard calling three times from the sea, saying: “The hour is come, but not the man.” Suddenly, a figure, all in black, appeared on the hill-top, pausing briefly before rushing headlong into the waves and disappearing for ever.
Similar fears might be responsible for the many Cornish mermaid stories, while a more recent legend – celebrated every year on December 23 at Mousehole (pronounced Mowzel) as Tom Bowcock’s Eve. The story here tells of how Tom Bowcock’s boat braved a storm to bring home a bumper catch of fish to save his village from starvation.
The sea has also featured strongly in books. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island is thought to have been partly set in Cornwall, with characters such as Squire Trelawney, and mention of ‘old Redruth.’ Many of Daphne du Maurier’s Cornish novels also have a strong maritime aspect. Frenchman’s Creek is a story of piracy and romance set on one of silent wooded creeks of the Helford River; Jamaica Inn involves the smuggling activities connected with this famous inn on Bodmin Moor; Virginia Woolf’s book To The Lighthouse was inspired by Godrevy, although in the book she transferred the location to Scotland.
For artists, too, the sea has been significant, both for inspiration and as a subject. At the end of the 19th Century, Stanhope Forbes and the Newlyn School of painters captured in their work the lives of ordinary fishing folk at Mousehole, Newlyn and Penzance. At St Ives, on the other side of the Penwith peninsula, a more abstract school of painters emerged, but one that still owed its inspiration to the sea. Alfred Wallis was an artist of special note, his ‘primitive’ paintings of boats and harbours appealing to children and adults alike.
The sea has also been important for Cornwall’s economic prosperity. Although wrecking and smuggling are often portrayed as romantic activities, they were in fact a hard and dangerous way for people to make a living. Although there is no record of the Cornish people deliberately luring unsuspecting ships on to the rocks, there is plenty of evidence to show that local people habitually plundered unfortunate vessels that had been wrecked on Cornwall’s dangerous coastline. The north coast was particularly treacherous, giving rise to the grim rhyme:
From Padstow Point to Lundy Light
Is a watery grave, by day or night
When the ship Good Samaritan was wrecked at Bedruthan Steps near Newquay in October 1846, at the height of the Hungry Forties when many people in Cornwall were on the verge of starvation, the locals thought the wreck was a blessing and they stripped the vessel bare, with the saying:
The Good Samaritan came on shore
To feed the hungry and clothe the poor
Barrels of beef and bales of linen
No poor man shall want for a shillin’
In the 18th and 19th Centuries, great risks were taken by Cornish smugglers as they slipped across the English Channel to the Channel Islands or Brittany to collect their illegal cargoes. Cawsand Bay in south east Cornwall, and Mounts Bay in the west, were especially notorious for smuggling, and at Prussia Cove Captain John Carter was known as the King of Prussia, such was his reputation as a bold and successful smuggler.
However, the Cornish people also acquired a reputation for heroism, risking their lives to pluck drowning men and women from the sea. Henry Trengrouse from Helston invented the rocket-line which for many years was the standard device used by coastguards to get a life-saving line aboard a stricken vessel. All around the coast of Cornwall, lifeboats have been stationed at strategic points, and even today Cornish lifeboats are among the busiest in the UK.
At Newquay, an old ‘huer’s hut’ survives, from where the huer, or watchman, once scanned the sea to spot the pilchard shoals coming in close to shore. He would cry ‘hevva, hevva’ to alert the fishermen to put to sea immediately. In those days, the pilchards were fishermen’s ‘best friends’ and the streets and alleyways of fishing villages were awash with pilchard waste as the fish were prepared for export to their principal market, the Catholic countries of southern Europe. As an old Cornish rhyme put it:
Long life to the Pope
Death to our best friends
And may the streets run in blood
In the early 19th Century, as Cornwall’s industries developed and as mining and steam engineering came to dominate the Cornish economy, so the sea became important in the service of the new industries. Coal was imported from South Wales and copper ore was exported for smelting at Swansea. Timber for mining props was brought in from Norway, and from ports such as Hayle huge Cornish beam engines and other mining machinery were sent overseas to destinations as distant as Mexico and South Australia.
Canals were built at Bude and Looe, and the River Tamar became an important industrial waterway as sailing barges plied and down from the copper mines around Callington, Calstock, Gunnislake and Morwellham. New ports and quays were established at places such as Portreath, Devoran, Par, Pentewan, Charlestown, Trevaunance and Bude, to deal with the new industrial trade, while others were re-fitted to meet the demands of the changing economy. The expansion of the china clay industry in the 19th and 20th Centuries mean increased activity for ports such as Par, Fowey, Charlestown, and even Looe.
Cornwall had also been important for centuries as a home of the Royal Navy and of the Packet service. The Falmouth Packets, which ran from 1688 until 1850, carried the Post Office’s mail to destinations in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and North and South America. The Navy also helped in the growth of Falmouth as a maritime centre. In the 18th Century, Admiral Edward Boscawen ran what was almost a private Cornish navy.
Today, the Royal Navy maintains a strong presence in Cornwall, with its training establishments at HMS Raleigh at Torpoint, and the largest helicopter base in Europe, HMS Seahawk, the Royal Navy Air Station at Culdrose near Helston, from where Sea King search-and-rescue helicopters operate.
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