PART III
CHAPTER 9
____________________________
Helen Doe, Alston Kennerley, Philip Payton
For nearly half of the eighteenth century Britain was at war, and Cornwall – as so often before – was in the front line. Yet, despite the ever-present threat of conflict, the century witnessed the further development of Britain’s global trade, particularly with the colonies, resulting in increases in imports and re-exports. Cornwall, with its rich deposits of copper and tin, was one of the first European regions to industrialise and there was a significant rise in the Cornish population: from 140,000 in 1750 to 192,000 by 1800.1 Politically, Cornwall enjoyed a certain prominence within the new British state. Sidney Godolphin, owner of the fabulously rich copper mine of that name (Godolphin Bal), near Helston, was at the height of his political skills and influence as Lord High Treasurer between 1702 and 1710, under Queen Anne, and was one of the prime architects of the union between England and Scotland.2 Indeed, Cornwall sent forty-four MPs to the enlarged Westminster parliament (maritime Looe had no fewer than four MPs, two each for East and West), only one fewer than the forty-five allocated to Scotland at the Act of Union. Yet, even in an age when political corruption was the order of the day, Cornwall’s infamous ‘rotten’ boroughs attracted a great deal of comment and notoriety, and were a malaise that would not be addressed fully until the Great Reform Act of 1832.3
For some in Cornwall – landowners, adventurers, entrepreneurs – the century sowed the seeds of new-found prosperity. But, for many Cornish people, industrialisation brought an uncertain future, with indifferent harvests – on land and at sea – consigning them to poverty and provoking the food riots that became the hallmark of eighteenth-century Cornwall. ‘Cornwall was one of the chief centres of food rioting in the country’, observed one historian of rural violence and disorder: ‘the tinners were regarded as almost beyond the pale of civilization’.4 Indeed they were. There were major riots in 1709, 1727–29, 1748, 1757, 1766, 1796–99 and on into the nineteenth century, with Cornwall earning its unenviable reputation as a wild ‘West Barbary’.5 According to one writer in 1775, the Cornish were ‘very strange kind of beings, half savages at best’. They were, he said, ‘as rough as bears, selfish as swine, obstinate as mules, and hard as the native iron’.6 Even as late as 1838 metropolitan opinion still imagined the locals as ‘Cornish barbarians’.7 Yet for those who took the trouble to travel from the metropolis, to penetrate the extremities of this ‘West Barbary’, an altogether more complex picture became apparent. The tinners were indeed as lawless as their reputation suggested, and the wild landscape of moor and cliff was as forbidding as many had imagined, with maritime Cornwall abounding in stories of wreckers and smugglers. But, as many visitors discovered to their surprise, Cornwall was also a land of remarkable contrasts. Cornish ports and harbours were as vibrant as any in the realm, for example, centres of a burgeoning and sophisticated international trade, their urbane cosmopolitanism contrasting strongly with the often violent isolationism of the neighbouring hinterlands. Increasingly, indeed, as Cornwall became the destination for intrepid travellers anxious to see for themselves the intriguing land that lay west of the Tamar, so visitors came to appreciate (and comment upon) such contrasts.8
‘West Barbary’?
At the end of the seventeenth century, in the autumn of 1698, Celia Fiennes had made her ‘Great Journey’ into Cornwall, as she called it. She entered Cornwall at Cremyll, after an alarming crossing of the wide Tamar estuary that took her an hour. She was soaked and caught a cold, and made the difficult journey to Looe on horseback, on occasions forsaking the muddy, rutted road for the smoother, easier foreshore. At Looe she was astounded by and not a little fearful of the steep descent in and ascent out of the town.9 Twenty or so years later Daniel Defoe also effected a hazardous entrance into Cornwall, this time further upstream at Saltash but with the river still a formidable obstacle. ‘The Tamar here is very wide’, he complained, ‘and the ferry-boats bad, so that I thought myself well escaped when I got safe on shore in Cornwall’.10 He was not impressed with Saltash itself – ‘a little, poor, shattered town . . . the ruins of a much larger place’ – although he noted that it exacted a toll from all vessels that passed on the river, had the sole oyster fishery on the Tamar and owned ships that ventured as far as Newfoundland. He added, grimly: ‘this town has a kind of jurisdiction upon the River Tamar down to the mouth of the port, so that . . . their coroner sits upon all dead bodies that are found drowned in the river and the like, but they make not much profit of it’.
More impressive was Fowey, observed Defore, ‘an ancient town, and formerly very large – nay, not large only, but powerful and potent; for Foyens, as they were then called, were able to fit out large fleets, not only for merchants’ ships, but even men-of-war’. It still retained something of this former grandeur, he said, for ‘Foy at this present time is a very fair town; it lies extended on the east side of the river for above a mile, the buildings fair. And there are a great many flourishing merchants in it, who have a great share in the fishing trade.’ Defoe also approved of Looe, ‘a very fair seaport town’, with numerous ships and a vigorous fishing industry, with East and West Looe together ‘good trading towns’. However, ‘as to sending four members to the British Parliament (which is as many as the City of London chooses), that, I confess, seems a little scandalous; but to whom, is none of my business to inquire’. Falmouth, a new port without parliamentary representation, won Defoe’s admiration and was singled out for praise as the ‘richest and best trading town’ in Cornwall (see below), benefiting as it did from its commercial links with Portugal. Likewise, Penzance was, he wrote, ‘a place of good business, well built and populous’. It boasted ‘a good trade, and a great many ships belonging to it, notwithstanding it is so remote’.11
9.1 East and West Looe Engraving by T. Allom, published in 1832
Among this band of worthy visitors were John Wesley and his brother Charles, who arrived to preach their brand of Anglicanism, the embryonic Methodist movement that was to have such a profound effect upon Cornwall in the years ahead. John Wesley first journeyed to Cornwall in August 1743 and returned no fewer than thirty-two times, the last being in August 1789 when, reviewing the cumulative effect of his life’s work, he concluded with satisfaction that ‘there is a fair prospect in Cornwall, from Launceston to Land’s End’.12 At St Ives, for example, as he wrote in his journal on 25 August of that year, he had preached as usual in the market-place. ‘Wellnigh all the town attended’, he noted, ‘and with all possible seriousness. Surely forty years’ labour has not been in vain here.’13 In fact, John Wesley had regularly used St Ives as his headquarters when preaching in West Cornwall, staying at the house of his friend John Nance. In the early days he was often given a rough reception by the local fishing community, as on 16 September 1743: ‘In the evening, as I was preaching at St Ives’, he recorded in his journal, ‘Satan began to fight for his kingdom. The mob of the town burst into the room and created much disturbance, roaring and striking those who stood in their way.’ Wesley strode ‘into the midst, and brought the head of the mob up with me . . . I received but one blow to the side of the head; after which we reasoned the case, till he grew milder and milder, and at length undertook to quiet his companions’.14 In the following year, 1744, during his second journey, he was greeted at St Ives ‘as usual, with a huzza and a few stones or pieces of dirt’. More dramatically, ‘I took a view of the ruins of the house which the mob had pulled down a little before, for joy that Admiral Matthews had beat the Spaniards.’ As he reflected: ‘Such is the Cornish method of thanksgiving.’15
Industrial Cornwall and the Problems of War
Admiral Thomas Matthews’ ‘victory’ (at the inconclusive Battle of Toulon) was a reminder, if any were needed, of the almost constant presence of war in the background. War caused problems for all trade, both foreign and coastal, as the risks increased and the trading environment became more difficult. In Cornwall, with its strategic but potentially vulnerable position at the entrance to the Western Approaches, this was doubly so, not least as mineral extraction and industrial expansion continued apace during the century.16 Cornwall remained the principal source of copper throughout the period except for the years between 1789 and 1791, when its dominance was challenged briefly by the Anglesey copper mines, and it was, therefore, of critical importance to British industrialisation as a whole.17 Both copper and tin were extracted in quantity and sent along the Cornish coast, running the gauntlet of enemy ships; however, as most coastal trade went unrecorded, the precise size of this maritime trade is difficult to estimate.
During periods of conflict some foreign ports became out of bounds for Cornish and other British shipping and the operations of enemy warships and privateers disrupted trading patterns. In particular, the presence of foreign fleets in the Channel caused considerable anxiety and sightings of great movements of the enemy fleets were duly relayed to London. For example, Dennis Rouse reported from Fowey in March 1703 on the progress of 120 French ships bound for Dunkirk.18 It was the privateers, however, that posed the greatest threat to shipping, as Symons shows in his contribution, picking off unwary merchant ships that had strayed into their paths. Moreover, the French had developed a vigorous guerre du course aimed at attacking merchant shipping with a view to cutting off vital supplies, and operated powerful commerce raiding squadrons that included frigates and some line-of-battle ships. They were at their most successful between 1693 and 1713. For the shipowner, joining a convoy was an essential method of safe transport if such squadrons were to be avoided. Ships gathered in various ports and the convoy moved along the coast, picking up vessels in each of the ports, before heading to their destination escorted by armed warships. It was a painstaking process and the convoy moved at the pace of the slowest vessel. Moreover, on arrival at the destination the presence of so many ships with full cargoes might flood the market and depress prices, also raising the difficulty of finding sufficient loads for the return passage. Convoys could be delayed for months by a lack of wind, bad weather, the presence of enemy vessels or a shortage of suitable escorts.19
The convoy system was seen as a necessary evil and the dangers had been brought home sharply by the fate of the Smyrna convoy in 1694. This fleet of allied merchant ships had been safely escorted past Brest and their escorts had then withdrawn, wrongly believing them to be out of immediate danger. The French, who had gained knowledge of the fleet, attacked off Cape St Vincent and ninety-two vessels were sunk or captured. The losses were enormous and in London were compared to the effect of the Great Fire in 1666.20 The outcry had the effect of requiring a permanent allocation of warships to protect trade. This strengthened protection but the Royal Navy was severely overstretched in trying to provide cover for the number of merchant vessels requiring it.21 The passage through the Channel was considered the most dangerous part of the voyage and so the Navy’s western squadron was deployed to escort ships out of danger. It was not a lack of communication that had led to the problems. As Symons shows, there was plenty of correspondence between the merchants and the Admiralty. The difficulty was a shortage of suitable escorts, exacerbated by ineffective organisation. Priority was given to the East Indiamen and to commerce with the Mediterranean, Spain and Portugal.22 In 1704 and 1705, the period during which the tin ship convoy was in operation, the losses were high, mainly owing to the effective French privateers based at St Malo and Dunkirk. In 1707 the French gained control of the Channel and had their most successful year. Pressure from the merchants led in 1707 to the Security of Merchant Ships Act of 1707 (or Convoys and Cruisers Act, as it was often known).23 The Act not only laid down the number of warships to be employed but attempted to ensure that the Navy focused on the situation. The instructions were explicit; this was to be:
An Act for the better securing the Trade of this Kingdom by Cruisers and Convoys. Forty-three Ships of War to be employed as Cruisers in proper Stations, as Lord High Admiral shall direct, &c. Ships to be careened three Times a Year. In case of Necessary, Lord Admiral may order any of the said Ships to be employed in the Line of Battle. Commissioners of the Navy to be appointed to take care of cruising Ships, and send Account, within eight Days after Meeting of Parliament, when such Ships sailed out of Port, &c. Lord Admiral to nominate the Number of cruising Ships by 26 March 1708 and afterwards yearly between 1 November and 1 December during the War. If taken or lost, to appoint others.24
The Naval Presence
The Royal Navy was not a major presence in Cornwall during this period, although numerous Cornish served in the Navy, as N.A.M. Rodger shows in his contribution. Falmouth was used mainly as a victualling station and as a place of refuge for naval vessels, while Plymouth was the big naval base in the West. Falmouth, along with Dartmouth and Milford Haven, had been considered and rejected as possible sites by Edmund Dummer, Surveyor of the Navy. One reason, paradoxically, for the decision against Falmouth was the port’s poor road communications.25 Work in Plymouth began in 1691 and by 1700 the dockyard at Plymouth Dock (later renamed Devonport) was complete.26 If Falmouth missed out, other parts of Cornwall still gained benefits from the dockyard at Plymouth. Naval dockyards were major industrial employers and Plymouth attracted many men from Cornwall, as it would continue to do so in subsequent periods. In 1747, for example, shipwrights were recruited from Fowey, Falmouth and St Ives. Similarly. timber, hired transport and victuals such as beer, meat and biscuit, along with much else, were sourced locally.27
There were those, such as Daniel Defoe, who considered that the full potential of Falmouth as a naval base had not been sufficiently recognised. He insisted that, with the possible exception of Milford Haven, it was ‘the fairest and best road for shipping that is in the whole isle of Britain’. This was ‘whether be considered the depth of water for above twenty miles within land; the safety of riding, sheltered from all kinds of winds or storms; the good anchorage; and the many creeks, all navigable, where ships may be run in and be safe; so that the like is nowhere to be found’. As he put it, at Falmouth ‘ships of the greatest burthen come up to the very quays, and the whole Royal Navy might ride safely in the road’.28 During the eighteenth century Falmouth did indeed demonstrate its worth. It was already, for example, home for the Packet service, instituted in 1688–9, the port of departure for the Post Office’s mail services to far-flung destinations overseas. Later, during the early French Revolutionary wars, it was an effective base for Edward Pellew’s semi-independent frigate squadron, with its large contingents of Cornish sailors.
However, in the unreformed, pre-1832 Parliament Falmouth had no representation at Westminster and there were those who imagined that this had allowed Falmouth to be passed over. The Revd Richard Warner, who visited Falmouth at the beginning of the next century, certainly thought so. He observed the ‘unequalled convenience of the harbour’ and felt that it ‘deserves a much larger portion of the attention and encouragement of government than it has been honoured with’. As he explained, ‘to use a proverbial expression’, Falmouth ‘has no friend at court; in other words, it does not return any members to the British senate; though its dirty little opposite neighbour, St Mawes, a mean village, with no house of God in it . . . enjoys the privilege of being represented in Parliament’. As he concluded, this accounted ‘for the petty intrigues which have always interposed to destroy any scheme for the aggrandizement of Falmouth’, even ‘though one of the greatest naval names of our present day, Lord St Vincent, has repeatedly declared, that with very few practicable improvements, it would furnish the best situation for dockyards, and other naval accommodations, in Europe’.29 Be that as it may, when the Reform Act was finally passed Falmouth celebrated heartily, the town ‘decorated with Flags & Laurel’, as Barclay Fox noted in his journal.30
But if Falmouth had languished as a naval port as a result of the rise of Plymouth, then, at the other end of Cornwall, Torpoint as a naval town had positively thrived. Situated on the Cornish bank of the Tamar, immediately opposite the dockyard, Torpoint was in 1700 little more than a name on a map. By the 1730s ferrying to and fro across the river at Torpoint had commenced, the precursor to what would develop later in the century as the major ferry connection between Plymouth and that part of south-east Cornwall below Saltash. An Act of Parliament for the provision of a turnpike road from Liskeard to Torpoint was passed in 1760, and this proved another major catalyst in the development of the town, opening it up to connection with the rest of Cornwall. In 1774 a plan was drawn up for the systematic development of Torpoint modelled on the grid-iron system already applied at Dock, the settlement adjoining the dockyard on the Plymouth side of the river. Torpoint developed strongly thereafter and came into its own in the decade after 1776 as war with the American colonies, France and Spain proved a boost to local commerce. Similarly, there was a second burst of expansion in the period 1793–1815, when renewed conflict with France again stimulated trade. By 1801 the population of Torpoint had risen to about 1,000, its inhabitants involved overwhelmingly in the multiplicity of trades that supported the burgeoning dockyard across the water.31
Pressgangs
Recruitment of men for the Royal Navy was assisted by the use of the pressgangs. This was a particular problem during the eighteenth century, when an increasingly desperate government sought solutions to its manpower shortage. Relationships between the local authorities and pressgangs were often strained, the former seeing the pressgang as a direct threat to their autonomy and authority. Men were often pressed from inward-bound ships as a supposedly easier option,32 but within the ports the activities of the gangs put great pressure on the supply of men for the merchant fleet and residents were likely to be helpful to any man evading the press. Joseph Fox of Falmouth had responsibility for the medical care of sick and hurt naval seamen brought into the port. He normally tended them on shore, but in 1770 he requested permission to care for the impressed men on tenders who ‘cannot be sent on shore without danger of losing them. If you approve I will attend them on board.’33 Falmouth was, of course, an important port for foreign-going vessels – a point made here by N.A.M. Rodger (Chapter 11) – and thus a good place for finding potential men. In the same year, 1770, Lieutenant James Baron of the cutter Fly explained how he had lost an anchor and cable during a gale. He was making for the Hamoaze, in the Tamar estuary, with fifty-three newly pressed men from Falmouth but had had to seek shelter within Penlee Point, near Cawsand Bay.34 The requirement for naval recruits was still running high at the end of the century, when the French Revolutionary war led to further demands for manpower at sea. In 1795 the total number of pressgangs operating in Britain was seventy-three. London had seven, while Dover, Deal and Folkestone had five pressgangs that operated across all three ports. Most other ports had one and ports such as Liverpool, Hull, Whitehaven and Exeter had two. In Cornwall there was one gang based in each of West Looe (ten men), Fowey (eight men) and Penzance (seven men), with two based in Falmouth (twenty-three men).35
A fascinating insight into the operation of the pressgangs in Cornish waters was provided in a contemporary account by an unnamed visitor from the Hamble, in Hampshire. He was sailing in the lobster smack Friendship, bound for Falmouth in August 1793 with a cargo of barrel hoops. Reaching Plymouth Sound on 28 August, he and his colleagues anchored in ‘a very good harbour called Cawsand Bay . . . in this bay were many merchantmen & some few ships of war’. They went ashore for a time, observing the military preparations around Mount Edgcumbe, and then returned on board, expecting to sail within two hours. However, their departure was delayed until 8 o’clock the following morning, partly through lack of wind but also because of a deeply unpleasant experience at about 5 am. Aroused by ‘a great noise alongside our vessel’, the ship’s crew, on ‘looking out of the cabin . . . found that the Press Gang had boarded us’. The crew secured themselves below, fastening the hatch from the inside so that it could not be opened, but one poor fellow was inadvertently left outside. He tried to hide in the cabin but was discovered by the pressgang and carried off, leaving the rest unmolested. ‘I felt for the poor fellow’, wrote the unnamed visitor, ‘& wished I could have assisted him, the only thing we had to do was to lie as still as possible.’ After the incident was over the visitor reflected on the experience: ‘I know nothing of the policy of manning our ships of war’, he wrote, ‘I can only say that if it be a necessity it is a very cruel one.’ Indeed, he had heard that only recently ‘an East Indiaman came into this harbour [Cawsand Bay] on her return from a long voyage, she had nearly 100 men onboard, many of them had families, & probably all of them friends whom they were in hopes of seeing again on their return.’ But they had hardly dropped anchor when the pressgang came aboard and carried off upwards of ninety of the crewmen. As he observed: ‘I am sure I shall always hate a press gang as long as I live.’36
‘The Large Continent of Cornwall’
N.A.M. Rodger wonders whether the Navy came to Cornwall, or Cornwall to the Navy. Perhaps the Cornish were not always suitable recruits for the Royal Navy. Relatively few had the deep-sea, ocean-going experience that lent itself easily to naval recruitment, despite the long history of voyages to America and other parts. But there may also have been cultural factors at work. An ‘independence of mind’ and ‘strong opinions’ constantly recurred as descriptions of the Cornish.37 It was an attitude in which the Cornish took pride, and a later commentator, retelling the tales of old Mevagissey, declared that it was a common saying that a Mevagissey man could not be held in the Navy. He provided uncorroborated stories of hiding places from pressgangs and daring escapes from warships.38
And yet, as N.A.M. Rodger also shows, there were Cornishmen who played a prominent role in the Royal Navy in this period. Foremost among these, as Rodger notes, was Admiral Edward Boscawen, Lord Falmouth, born at the family seat of Tregothnan in 1711 and known with affection to a generation of sailors as ‘Old Dreadnought’ or ‘Wry-necked Dick’. He was a successful commander – among his battle honours was the action off Lagos in 1759 when he destroyed the French fleet – but he was also one of the first to recognise the importance of cleanliness, fitness and high morale, introducing a modicum of hygiene in his ships and attempting a balanced diet for his seamen. Charles Penrose, another Cornish commander, was likewise concerned for the welfare of his crews, an anxiety that stemmed from his religious conviction, being (along with Edward Pellew) one of the evangelical ‘Blue Light’ officers active in the Royal Navy at this time.39 A patriotic Cornishman, Boscawen made extravagant claims for the land of his birth; so much so that his wife’s friend Elizabeth Montagu referred teasingly in correspondence to ‘the large continent of Cornwall’ that, she inferred, Boscawen imagined to exist. His wife, Fanny Boscawen, was herself not above joking, teasing her husband that, with his extensive recruitment of Cornishmen, he had constructed ‘a little Navy of your own making’. Boscawen retorted, with a hint of mock hurt: ‘You approve, I believe, of my taking and encouraging good men from that part of the world.’40
One of Boscawen’s Cornish protégés was Samuel Wallis, from Lanteglosby-Camelford, who was responsible for the European ‘discovery’ of Tahiti in 1767. At the time the find was hailed as a great coup, Tahiti being the ideal spot, it was said, on which to site observations for the transit of the planet Venus, which in turn would allow calculation of the distance between the earth and the sun. Wallis made an impressive entrance in his warship, the Dolphin, firing his guns to announce the arrival of British seapower. The locals, suitably awed, were thus persuaded to make the necessary arrangements for Wallis’ five-week recuperation and resupply on the island.41 Wallis was followed by James Cook in his ship the Endeavour in 1769, and in his footsteps came William Bligh, another Cornishman. Born in St Tudy in 1754, Bligh had sailed with Cook in the Resolution in 1776, visiting Tahiti and exploring the southern oceans. Later, in 1787, he returned on his famous journey in the Bounty, to collect breadfruit plants to take to the West Indies as a potential source of food for the slave population. After a stay of nearly five months, much enjoyed by the crew, Bligh set sail from Tahiti, only to be faced with mutiny. Put in a longboat with the remaining loyal crewmen, he navigated his way to Timor and from there joined a ship for Britain, while the mutineers found refuge on Pitcairn Island. Undaunted, Bligh made his second voyage to Tahiti in support of the breadfruit experiment in 1791, this time in the Providence. He also found time to chart part of the coast of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) and the Torres Strait, as well as Fiji, and in 1806 became Governor of New South Wales, the fledgling convict colony founded less than two decades earlier in 1788. Here, in an unsuccessful attempt to confront the ‘Rum Corps’ of officers that had virtually monopolised the colony’s economy, Bligh suffered the ignominy of a second mutiny. Exiled in Van Diemen’s Land, he returned shortly to Britain, where he was promoted Admiral.42
In the experiences of Boscawen, Wallis, Bligh and others like them we glimpse Cornish participation in the global expansion of British influence in the eighteenth century – the projection of British seapower; maritime exploration and survey; the establishment of trading routes; the subjection of indigenous peoples; the acquisition and settlement of colonies. As ever a window on the Atlantic, Cornwall had already played an important role in the settlement of North America, cultivating an ‘emigration culture’ and establishing lasting conduits of contact and movement that would underpin the ‘Great Emigration’ as it developed in the following century. Similarly, towards the close of this period, the Cornish had participated in the early settlement of Australia, again establishing links that would blossom in the nineteenth century.
The First Fleet, which arrived in New South Wales in 1788, carried nineteen convicts tried in Cornwall (eleven at Launceston, the remainder at Bodmin), together with a further two Cornish-born tried at Plymouth and Exeter respectively. Twelve Cornish convicts sailed in the Second Fleet in 1790, six of whom died en route in the disease-ridden Neptune, and a further sixteen sailed in the Third Fleet in 1791.43 Also embarked in the First Fleet was Philip Gidley King, born in Launceston in 1758. He was responsible for the establishment of the convict station on Norfolk Island and in 1800 became Governor of New South Wales itself. In this position he extended British convict settlement to Van Diemen’s Land, among other things establishing there the township of Launceston and naming the River Tamar. Among those transported in this early period were two Cornish convicts who are still remembered today as emblematic of the early colonisation experience. First was Mary Bryant, the famed ‘Girl from Botany Bay’. Born in Fowey, Mary was sentenced to seven years’ transportation for stealing a cloak. However, once in Australia she and her new-found husband, William Bryant, effected a daring escape, sailing to Timor in a small boat. Alas, there they were apprehended and shipped to Batavia, where William died of fever. Subsequently, Mary was returned to Britain, where she was committed to Newgate prison. But James Boswell took a shine to her, in May 1793 arranging her release and repatriation to Fowey, where she became something of a local celebrity.44 The second was James Ruse, hailed as ‘The Father of Australian Agriculture’. Born at Lawhitton, near Launceston, in 1760, James was tried and convicted of burglary at Bodmin in 1782. Sentenced to death, his punishment was commuted to seven years’ transportation, which he served initially in a prison hulk in the Tamar estuary before being shipped to New South Wales in the First Fleet. There, he proved a model colonist and was granted thirty acres of land to commence farming. In 1790 he married another convict, one Elizabeth, also known for her ‘industriousness’, and, despite the depredations of drought, flooding and other disabilities, they were among the first colonists to establish successful independent livings on the land.45
Wartime Intelligence
Part of the rationale for the colonisation of Australia was the thwarting of expansionist designs by the French. Closer to home, even if they were sometimes reluctant naval recruits, Cornish mariners and fishermen also played a distinctive part in the war effort. Gaining good intelligence about the enemy’s activity was an essential role for those on the coast and at sea, and good information collected in and around Cornish waters assisted both the naval and merchant fleets. During the War of Austrian Succession, 1740–48, there was much activity in the Channel and a key aim of the Royal Navy was to stop the Spanish and French fleets from uniting. Blockading tactics were used, which led frequently to the problems suffered by ships forced to stay at sea for long periods: notably, shortage of stores, manpower and victuals. Intelligence was often slow and inaccurate.46 Penzance and Falmouth and other Cornish ports were the closest parts of Britain to Brest, the French naval base, and were thus crucially important in the government spy network, being critical to the improvement of the flow and quality of information.
Intelligence arrived via Penzance in 1740 regarding the French militia and warships at Brest. In 1741 John Pye, the Mayor of Falmouth, was in correspondence with the office of the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State, about the best means of obtaining news from France. At Newcastle’s request Pye planned to send a man named Edgcumbe to Brest to act as an informer. In April of the following year he confirmed that he had found another potential spy, a French-speaking Cornishman, Henry George, and was hiring a sloop for him. Information could sometimes be gained from French vessels that arrived in Cornish ports, either forced in by bad weather or brought in as prizes. In October 1742 four French ships came into Falmouth, but Pye had difficulty getting any intelligence from them. In 1743 he was able to send more specific news of the French marines and about a fire at the naval yards at Brest. Additional intelligence was sought from British merchant ships visiting the port. Richard Skelton, the master of the Nelson of Whitehaven, reported that the Brest squadron was laid up and that many seamen and artificers had gone to Morlaix.47 All of these scraps of news were carefully forwarded on to London as part of the Cornish war effort.
Despite this support for the war, just a few years later the interchange of letters between London and Cornwall related to a different anxiety. In 1745 letters from the Mayor of Penzance, the local justice and the parson were protesting their support and loyalty to the government. They were also responding to allegations that a haul of ammunition was being stored at Penzance. Sensitivities were high owing to the Jacobite rising and there were clearly question marks over Cornwall’s allegiance and loyalty to the Crown. The tinners were a particularly unpredictable group and had threatened Penryn in 1737. The government at the time had sent more than 200 soldiers to support the townspeople. No wonder the government, based at such a distance and in fear of rebellion, was concerned about arms and ammunition getting into the wrong hands in Cornwall – when an English privateer went aground in Mount’s Bay, special dispensation was given to Walter Borlase to seize the arms and ammunition and convey it for safekeeping to Penzance.48
Privateering
A war effort of a different type was the opportunity available for privateering. As ever, war brought opportunities as well as threats to the merchant and mariner. For the adventurous, and those with deep pockets, there was the opportunity to build and equip their own privateers in the hope of capturing enemy vessels carrying rich cargoes. John Appleby (Chapter 6) has shown how this operated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the activity increased in a more regulated environment throughout the eighteenth century. The 1707 Act relating to convoys also encouraged privateers, or cruisers, as they were termed:
For Encouragement of the Sea Service, Officers and Seamen of Queen’s Ships, Privateers, &c. to have the sole Property in all Prize Ships. Proviso touching Appraisement of Prize Ships taken into Queen’s Service. Treasurer of the Navy to pay 5 l. for every Man on board Ship taken from the Enemy. Not to exempt Prize Ships or Goods from Payment of Customs. Such Goods to be brought on Shore, and put into the Queen’s Warehouses, &c. until appraised and sold. After Sale, Notice to be given for Payment to Captors, &c. Shares not demanded in three Years, to go to Greenwich Hospital. Farther Provision for Greenwich Hospital, 10 Ann, c. 17. sect. 9. To whom Bills for Prize Ships taken into the Queen’s Service, &c. and the 5 l. per Man, shall be made payable. Commander, &c. imbeziling Prize Goods to forfeit treble the Value. To continue during the War.49
The south-west peninsula, including Bristol, was well placed for privateering activity and provided 20 per cent of the commissioned privateer vessels in Britain. It was also highly successful in the capture of prizes.
Table 9.1 Commissioned Cornish Privateering Vessels 1777–85
|
Commissioned |
Prizes |
|
|
Fowey |
4 |
3 |
|
St Austell |
1 |
|
|
Falmouth |
26 |
16 |
|
Penryn |
3 |
1 |
|
Looe |
3 |
2 |
|
St Ives |
12 |
9 |
|
Padstow |
2 |
|
|
Truro |
2 |
|
|
Gweek |
4 |
3 |
|
Helford |
2 |
|
|
Penzance |
23 |
33 |
|
Scilly |
1 |
|
Source: David J. Starkey, British Privateering Enterprise in the Eighteenth Century (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1990), pp. 200, 221.
The American Revolutionary War in 1777 at first appears unlikely to have had an impact on Cornish privateering. But the war involved not only the American colonies but also operations against the Dutch, Spanish and French. The opportunity to attack Dutch trade increased the eagerness of shipowners to take out Letters of Marque and the small-scale predatory privateer became notable. Excitement was whipped up by newspaper suggestions that the Channel was full of Dutchmen. Twenty-four ports in the South West accounted for 50 per cent of the licences issued for 143 vessels. Fowey, Padstow and Penryn were among the small ports whose masters took out Letters of Marque against the Dutch.50 Moreover, Cornwall also had strong links with Channel Islands privateers, St Austell and other areas supplying shareowners for their vessels.51
Penzance sent out its first commissioned vessels during the Dutch war. The Penzance fleet included the 30-ton Dolphin, master Francis Ford, which was armed with ten guns and had a crew of twenty-five men. Despite its small size, the Dolphin was the most successful privateer, taking nineteen prizes including nine Dutch vessels seized in 1781. It also acted together with other privateers, and this led almost inevitably to disputes that had to be resolved in the High Court of Admiralty. For example, the Princess of Orange was claimed by eight private ships of war, five of which were Cornish. The Packets operating out of Falmouth frequently had to avoid not just enemy vessels but also eager English privateers. The Lisbon Packet was boarded or spoken to by no fewer than forty ‘cruisers’ between Ushant and Falmouth.52
These activities were not just of benefit to the successful owners. Cornish ports also profited from the building of ‘cruisers’ and the refitting of privateers operating in the Channel. Prizes seized by these ships were brought into the ports to be held until the High Court of Admiralty had ruled on each case. The vessel and its contents would then be sold locally, to the benefit of the inns and auction houses, as in the case of the ‘new French built le Kaiser taken on passage between L’Orient and Brest’.53 Some contents were offered to the government:
The owners of the Good Intent Privateer which has brought a French Snow, La Jane Marie, with naval stores into Falmouth and a Dutch ship with masts for Brest called the Tonker Alart, have offered the stores for the Service. The Agents for the owners have asked for a convoy for them from Falmouth to Plymouth54
Ports on the north coast also gained from their position on the Atlantic, as many prizes came in from the West Indies. At the George Inn, Padstow, on 27 January 1782, the 250-ton Mary was for sale by candle. It was ‘lately arrived from Jamaica, a prime sailor, square stern, French built and well found having had a considerable repair before her last trip. Well adapted for any service where a ship of her size is required.’55
The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were the last in which privateers were licensed by the British government for operations against the enemy. Shipowners in Cornish ports once again sought Letters of Marque. Thomas Shepherd of Mevagissey, for example, took out one for his 56-ton cutter, Zephyr, in 1794, and among the list of men on board was the implausibly named surgeon, Amos Gripe.56 Obtaining Letters of Marque was one way of legally arming cutters that were otherwise involved in smuggling, as an increasingly nervous government eventually realised. Moreover, in a world where international relations were ever more closely managed by nation-states, privateering was in any case becoming a diplomatic anomaly. In the Treaty of Paris in 1856, following the Crimean war, privateering was finally banned by the great powers.
Ports and Trade
Even without the disruption of war the heavy duties on French goods led to a fall in legal shipping employed in those trades, while the 1703 Methuen treaty with Portugal increased the trade from that country. Although the eighteenth century did not see a dramatic expansion of shipping on the scale that would come later, tonnage generally increased. In 1702, 17 per cent of all British tonnage was owned in the South West, although by 1788 the proportion had fallen to 14 per cent. The dramatic growth elsewhere that accounted for this fall was in the North East of England, whose proportion grew from 13 to 28 per cent, driven by the expansion of the coal trade.57 In this period the loss of the Newfoundland trade during the American wars was felt keenly in Cornwall, but, as Helen Doe illustrates, the Cornish were able to enjoy many of the benefits associated with the growth of imports, including the improvements to port infrastructure that this encouraged.
As we have seen, Falmouth, without ‘its friend at court’, had not been deemed suitable as a site for a naval dockyard in the late seventeenth century owing to poor road communications. Nonetheless, during the following century Falmouth became an increasingly important communications centre largely as a result of its strategic position close to the Western approaches and through the presence of the Packet service. Additionally, as the roads gradually improved, the route between Falmouth and London became ever more busy, conveying both passengers and mail, and hostelries all along the route began to advertise their existence. A poster of 1780, for example, showed the names and locations of inns along the ‘great post-road from Falmouth to Bath, with the several stages where gentlemen, &c. may be supplied with the genteelest accommodations’.58 These inns were situated conveniently every ten to twenty miles along the road. But one highly valuable import that was unlikely to stop at hostelries on the way to London was the bullion arriving from Lisbon. Between 25 March 1740 and 8 June 1741 this was worth £447,347, and in just one year – 1764 – it was valued at over £1 million.59
Daniel Defoe, with his high opinion of the harbour, in 1724 thought the ‘town of Falmouth . . . by much the richest and best trading town in this county’, although conceding that it was ‘not so ancient as its neighbour town of Truro’. But Truro as a port existed now ‘chiefly (if not only) for the shipping off [sic] block tin and copper ore’, its former general trade ‘now in a manner wholly gone to Falmouth’. Likewise, Tregony, in earlier times an important port, albeit some fifteen miles upstream from Falmouth, was now ‘a town of very little trade’, while Penryn ‘is a very pleasant, agreeable town, and for that reason has many merchants in it, who would perhaps otherwise live at Falmouth’. Defoe also noted the importance of the Lisbon trade to Falmouth. Intriguingly, he claimed that it grew up initially as a result of sleight of hand by the Packets, a ‘clandestine commerce’, as he termed it, where the Packets – being ‘the king’s ships’ and so not liable to searches or visits by customs officers – carried ‘great quantities of British manufactures’ that were sold illegally to Portuguese traders without the payment of customs. Thus, Defore concluded, ‘the Falmouth merchants, having by this means gotten a taste of the Portuguese trade, have maintained it ever since in ships of their own.’60
9.2 A View of Falmouth Engraving by T. Allom, published in 1832
As Defoe suggested, Falmouth had benefited considerably from the rapid expansion of Britain’s trade with Portugal. The increasing demand in Portugal and Brazil for British manufactures had led to a large trade balance in Britain’s favour, notwithstanding the healthy flow of wine imports from Portugal to Britain. The balance was settled with gold, mainly from Brazil, a Portuguese possession. This bullion trade involved many in the already extensive colony of British merchants settled in Lisbon, who sold bills of exchange and exported bullion to Britain and across Europe. Well-armed British ships were essential to guard this trade. Royal Navy warships were employed but the well-established packet trade between Lisbon and Falmouth, and onwards to Mediterranean ports, became an important conduit for gold and specie.61 As Defoe observed:
These packets bring over such vast quantities of gold in specie, either in moidores, which is the Portugal coin, or in bars of gold, that I am very credibly informed the carryer from Falmouth, brought by land from thence to London, at one time, in the month of January, 1722, or near it, eighty thousand moidores in gold, which came from Lisbon in the pacquet boats, for account of the merchants at London, and that it was attended with a guard of 12 horsemen well arm’d, for which the said carryer had half per cent for his hazard.62
More generally, Defore noted the reliance of Cornish ports in the early eighteenth century ‘on the pilchards and Newfoundland fishing, which is very profitable to them all’.63 Fishing, as Defore suggested, was both a coastal and a foreign trade, and the vagaries of the pilchard shoals appearing (or not) offshore each season often had a greater impact than war. Between 1747 and 1756 the annual average export of pilchards from Cornwall was 29,795 hogsheads, much of it being exported through Falmouth. Mount’s Bay and Mevagissey were major fishing centres and the art of seining – long established in mid and west Cornwall – was introduced to Looe and Polperro late in the eighteenth century. In the 1770s St Ives also rose to prominence as a major fishing port. The duty on salt was a constant problem for the pilchard industry in Cornwall and smuggling was encouraged by high tariffs. The war in 1779 cut off the Mediterranean and this, together with the presence of the Franco-Spanish fleet in the Channel, had a serious impact on the fishing trade. The 1779 Act to remove the salt tax was primarily to encourage home consumption of pilchards and it has been suggested that it was steered through Parliament by a Cornish MP with the assistance of powerful local business interests such as Lemon, Eliot, Rashleigh and Grenville.64
Politics and Patronage
As we have seen, Cornwall was noted for its large number of MPs and its vested interests. On occasion Parliamentary seats were hotly contested by men with significant amounts of money at their disposal to fight for the small number of votes cast in elections. In 1790, for example, Francis Gregor spent over £20,000 contesting one Cornish seat and went to great lengths to identify with both the mining and fishing interests. Borough corruption was then widespread, and among the twenty-one Cornish boroughs were the influential coastal boroughs of East Looe, West Looe, St Mawes, Saltash, Penryn, Truro, St Ives and Fowey. But not all supported this system – ‘some of the most prominent [Cornishmen] voted for Pitt’s 1783 and 1785 proposals for parliamentary reform’65 – and disenfranchised Falmouth, with its Quaker tradition, became a focus for radical agitation in the years before 1832.
MPs – even prospective ones – could bring material benefits to Cornwall, or to the parts of Cornwall they sought to represent, and the manner in which they influenced the development of the shipbuilding trade has been explored elsewhere.66 The government had within its gift local positions and sinecures and a sitting MP or a candidate with government support could influence the appointment to some senior positions. They would also have the direct gift of some of the junior ones. Charles Crokatt, a London merchant and prospective candidate for Fowey in 1764, was one who used this advantage whenever he could.67 But he over-played his hand, and in February 1765 a complaint was lodged against him with the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. Walter Polgrean had been acting as a Customs Landwaiter since 1763 and was waiting for an official warrant to confirm his position, which would enable him to collect his pay arrears. This was given to Crokatt to dispense but, before releasing the warrant, he wanted Polgrean to promise his vote.68 A different example was that of John Pye, the Mayor of Falmouth who had been helpful in gaining wartime intelligence. For his efforts he was rewarded with the post of Land Surveyor. Thus placed, he then lobbied for the post of British consul at Venice for his brother-in-law.69 Such open use of positions of influence was a part of the way of life in Britain as a whole – not least in maritime Cornwall, where operation on the edge of the law, and sometimes far beyond it, was commonplace.
Smuggling and Wrecking
Smuggling and wrecking continue to dominate popular imaginings of maritime Cornwall and today are often viewed through the prism of high Victorian gothic romance, of the type discussed by Simon Trezise in Part IV. In the eighteenth century, however, neither activity was in any way ‘romantic’. On the contrary, smuggling and wrecking were precarious and often dangerous and violent occupations. To upholders of law and order they were an affront to civilised behaviour and deprived both the Crown and private interests of what was rightfully theirs. But, as John Rule argues in his contribution, smuggling and wrecking may best be considered ‘social crimes’. To their perpetrators such activities were a legitimate way of making a living, a moral economy in which smuggling was merely an assertion of the right to freedom of trade and where wrecking – the plundering of ships that had foundered – was also the exercise of an ancient natural right, the Right of Wreck.
Popular understanding of these activities is also hampered by both paucity of evidence – smugglers tended to leave little trace – and widespread misconceptions about the nature of wrecking. Recent detailed research has tackled the common myth that Cornish wreckers deliberately lured ships to their doom by showing false lights.70 Rule demonstrates that, instead, with shipwrecks being then an almost commonplace occurrence along the Cornish coast, the practice of wrecking involved the systematic plunder by large crowds of vessels that had already come to grief. Belief in the Right of Wreck was widespread. It had been so in medieval times, when the Duchy of Cornwall admitted it as part of maritime law, and indeed it still is today, as performed in the full glare of the international media in January 2007 when the wreck of the MSC Napoli on a Devon beach attracted large crowds anxious to take advantage of ‘free goods’. In the eighteenth century the exercise of the Right of Wreck was no less contentious and could lead to dramatic confrontations as opposing interests and sources of authority sought to impose their wills and their interpretations of the law – a conflict explored in a telling case study in Cathy Pearce’s contribution.
The hazards of unreliable, often poor weather and a rocky, inhospitable coastline underscored Cornwall’s reputation as a dangerous place for shipping. Human error, including poor navigation, added to that danger. Indeed, Cornwall’s place in the history of navigation was assured by the tragic loss of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell and all the men in three ships of the line off the Isles of Scilly in 1707. This was a disaster of such national significance that the Longitude Act of 1714 offered major prizes for the person or persons who could fix longitude at sea with some accuracy.71 Adrian Webb’s piece on navigation examines this fundamental element of maritime history and shows how navigational advances in the eighteenth century made a contribution to maritime safety around the Cornish coasts. But, despite these advances, the general growth of trade in this period, coupled to the exigencies of almost constant warfare, put great strain on Cornwall’s navigational resources. Indeed, local pilots were much in demand to cope with the requirements of those troop and provision transports navigating Cornish waters en route to overseas garrisons or to war. In April 1749, for example, John Pye, Mayor of Falmouth, reported with dissatisfaction that ‘Major Grant of Lord John Murray’s regiment on the Noble Hope Transport put in here with another transport carrying soldiers bound to Kinsale.’ As Pye explained, it had proved ‘difficult to get Pilots as the Masters [of the transports] did not know the Scilly Isles or the Irish coast’. Eventually, he added, Richard Dunn had decided that he ‘was willing to take the Noble Hope and advised she would find Pilots at Kinsale’. But, to Pye’s chagrin, ‘Dunn would not leave without payment and he gave me Major Grant’s certificate which is made out in his name. I cannot get the money back from him and ask for another bill to be made out in my name. For which he sends an affidavit.’72
9.3 South elevation of the original eighteenth-century lighthouse built upon the Eddystone Rock by Mr Winstanley
Source: A narrative of the building and a description of the construction of the Edystone Lighthouse with stone . . . by John Smeaton (London, 1813) (MoD Admiralty Library, Portsmouth)
Meanwhile, wrecks around the Cornish coast continued with depressing regularity, to the great joy of the poor of maritime communities. Robert Hunt, writing in 1865, recalled tales of wrecking at its height ‘about a hundred years since’, evoking the almost carnival atmosphere of wrecking parties but showing how so very quickly the mood could change to one of violence and even murder. He told the story of a wreck on the Lizard attended swiftly by the Breage men, who soon stripped the unfortunate vessel and were heading home with their plunder. But at Cury Great Tree they encountered the Wendron men, intent on a similar raid, who were infuriated to find that they had been beaten to the prize. According to Hunt ‘a fight, as a matter of course, ensued, which was prolonged to the following day’. The contest was ‘a terrible one, each party being armed with staves’, and Hunt observed that such inter-parish battles were so frequent ‘in those days that any death occurring in the fray was quietly passed over as a thing of course, and soon forgotten’.73
Apocryphal or not, Hunt’s description was a sobering insight into the periodic eruptions of violence associated with wrecking. The authorities were hard-pressed to contain these outbreaks of lawlessness. In November 1739, for example, the German ship Vigilantia was wrecked near Perranuthnoe, on Mount’s Bay. Charles Vyvyan of Penzance Customs House hurried there as swiftly as he could, but on arrival found that the vessel had already been stripped bare. Likewise, when the Lady Lucy foundered at Gunwalloe, on the Lizard, in December 1739, Charles Vyvyan attended as soon as he was able, only to find that the cargo of wine, brandy, coffee, berries and indigo had been carried off. Intriguingly, subsequent enquiries located some of the spoils in the possession of the local vicar, the Revd Thomas Whitford of Cury, an indication that the business of wrecking was not only in the hands of ‘the mob’.74 Nine years later the luckless Vyvyan was still battling against the odds. When the Jonge Alcida ran aground near Porthleven in December 1748 he could do little to save its cargo because of ‘the violence and barbarity of the country people’.75 Similarly, in 1754 at Mawgan Porth, on the north coast, ‘a parcel of Cornish Barbarians’ (as the Sherborne Mercury termed them) assaulted the local magistrate as he tried to save a valuable cargo of raw silk.76
Occasionally, the customs officers had more luck, as at Downderry in March 1751, when they discharged their weapons – first with powder only, and then with ball – to prevent the plunder of the stranded Endeavour.77 But it would be well into the next century before the authorities could claim the upper hand or the behaviour of the ‘country people’ abated. The spread of Methodism did much to influence the latter. John Wesley made no secret of his hostility to ‘that scandal of Cornwall, the plundering of wrecked vessels’, as he described it at Cubert in August 1766, and was told sadly by his supporters that ‘only the Methodists will have nothing to do with it’. But most of the blame for wrecking, it was explained, lay with the wild ‘tinners’, with their disregard of ‘all the laws both of humanity and religion’. Yet Wesley felt that some of the fault was with the local gentry, who were content to draw a veil over such misdemeanours: ‘Let them only agree to discharge any tinner or labourer that is concerned in the plundering of a wreck, and advertise his name, that no Cornish gentleman may employ him any more; and neither tinner nor labourer will any more be concerned in that bad work.’78
As John Rule notes, Wesley was equally hostile to smuggling (even if his Cornish adherents sometimes had their doubts) and the authorities in eighteenth-century Cornwall had equal difficulty in combating it. The Cornish coast – with its silent creeks, hidden coves, lonely cliff-tops, caves and beaches – lent itself to smuggling and made prevention difficult. Moreover, the authorities were often under-resourced. In 1763, for example, Lieutenant St Albion Roy of the cutter Fly wrote from Falmouth to his superiors complaining that there was a great deal of smuggling by Dutch and other vessels along the coast.79 He and his fellow Revenue officials were overstretched, and they continued to be so – in 1789 Lieutenant Gabriel Bray of the revenue cutter Hind, based in Fowey, was tasked with patrol of the entire coastline from Portland (in Dorset) to St Ives.80 The eighteenth century was the highpoint of smuggling in Cornwall and, indeed, all along the south coast of England, with numerous small enterprises in operation all around the coast.81 It would not be until 1805, with the extension of the anti-smuggling laws to the main supply point of the Channel Islands and greater Government resources, that smuggling was significantly reduced.82
But that is not to say that the authorities did not have their successes. Jacob Whetter, for example, was apprehended at his farm at Benhurden, Gorran, for receiving smuggled kegs of spirits and was sentenced to six months in Bodmin Gaol.83 When John Skinner, a Bath clergyman, visited Cornwall in 1797, he stayed in Bodmin, where he ‘read prayers, and preached a Sermon on Idleness, to the prisoners’. Among their number, he noted, were several women, ‘whose offences were comparatively small, such as selling smuggled Gin, etc.’.84 Other smugglers sent to Bodmin – or other places of confinement – included William Daw in 1787, who was said to have assaulted Christopher Childs, an excise officer, and William Moyle in 1791, prosecuted for having killed a horse belonging to Daniel Bartlett, another excise man. Sometimes the clashes between smugglers and the authorities were especially violent, as in August 1791 when the crew of a Penzance smuggling vessel fired repeatedly into the customs house boat in New Grimsby harbour on the Isles of Scilly, killing two officers and badly wounding a third.85 When Jonathan Couch published his History of Polperro in 1871 the long struggle between smugglers and preventive men was still within living memory, with anecdotes repeated by locals as if they had happened only yesterday. He recounted the story of the smuggling smack Vigilant, for example, which in 1802 had been engaged by a revenue cutter, the shot aimed at the vessel’s rigging falling short and killing two of the smugglers.86
‘I Learnt Cornish Going to Sea with Old Men’
If smuggling and wrecking seemed somehow redolent of Cornish independence, of distance from the metropolitan centres of law and ‘civilisation’, then a still stronger mark of distinction was the Cornish language. When Edward Lhuyd visited Cornwall c. 1700 he found that the language was now restricted to the maritime parishes running from the Lizard, along Mount’s Bay, to Land’s End. This included the important fishing communities of Newlyn and Mousehole, which can duly be claimed as the last homes of Cornish as widely spoken vernacular. As C.V. Wedgwood once observed: ‘Cornish was dying on the lips of all but the fisher folk.’87 Yet, despite the best efforts of John Boson, William Gwavas, Oliver Pender, Edward Chirgwin and other local enthusiasts, who sought to foster the language, Cornish as a community language continued to decline in Mount’s Bay during the eighteenth century. It was a decline that might have gone unnoticed and unreported if it had not been for the interest shown by a minor English antiquary, Daines Barrington. His brother, Captain Samuel Barrington, a naval officer, had been in Cornwall in 1746 and had been astonished to find that a Cornish-speaking mariner recruited from Mount’s Bay was able to converse with Breton sailors in their own language. He mentioned this to Daines who, more than two decades later, in 1768, decided to find for himself the last remnants of the Cornish language. Eventually he discovered Dolly Pentreath, an aged fishwife (seller) at Mousehole. Dolly explained that she had spoken no English until the age of twenty, that she had sold fish in Penzance in the Cornish language until the age of twelve, and that she was now the last speaker of the ancient tongue.88 As a result of Barrington’s visit Dolly Pentreath became something of a minor celebrity, her portrait being painted by the Cornish artist John Opie RA. As Joanna Mattingly has observed: ‘So the woman who claimed to be the last fluent native Cornish speaker became the first Cornish fishwife to be immortalised in paint.’89
There has been much discussion of the fate of the Cornish language after Dolly Pentreath’s death in December 1777. Individuals with at least some native knowledge of the language are said to have survived well into the nineteenth century, with counting rituals among the Mount’s Bay fishermen perhaps lasting even into the twentieth. But we do know of one William Bodinar, a Mousehole fisherman, who produced a testimonial in July 1776 written in both Cornish and English. He explained that: ‘My age is 65. I am a poor fisherman. I learnt Cornish when I was a boy. I have been to sea with my father and 5 other men in the boat, and have not heard one word of English spoke in the boat for a week together.’ He added that he had never seen a book in the Cornish language and that ‘I learnt Cornish going to sea with old men.’ Alas, he said, there ‘is not more than 4 or 5 in our town can talk Cornish now, old people 80 years old. Cornish is all forgot with young people.’90 Bodinar, perhaps the last of those Mount’s Bay fishermen for whom the Cornish language had been an integral part of a maritime way of life, died in 1789.
Conclusion
The eighteenth century had been dominated by war. At the close of the century Cornwall was in the front line, just as it had been at its opening. In that sense, little had changed. Smuggling was at its height, the building of smuggling cutters was big business and wrecking continued to be justified as an ancient right, as it had been since time immemorial. There were still just as many MPs in Cornwall as there had been before, although these would be culled dramatically in the next century. Methodism, established mid-century, had gained significant ground, particularly among the miners, fishermen and mariners, and would become the ‘unofficial’ Cornish religion during the nineteenth century. Pilchards were still being caught and exported and the extraction and export of minerals had reached new heights.
Falmouth, despite being passed over as a potential naval dockyard, had proved its strategic worth and had further developed as a centre of international trade. Indeed, the strong expansion of mercantile trade in the nineteenth century, in Cornwall as elsewhere in Britain, was based on hard-won success in the eighteenth, aided by the Pax Britannica that emerged after 1805. The Royal Navy itself may not have featured prominently in the life of Cornwall but there were many Cornishmen attracted to its ranks – and many who were pressganged – as well as those Cornish officers who rose to high rank and played important roles in the global expansion of British influence. With its (not always justified) reputation as ‘West Barbary’, the dangers of its temperamental seas and rocky coastline, its notoriety for political corruption as well as for wrecking and smuggling, and even fear of its rebellion during the Jacobite scare, Cornwall continued to be seen as a land apart. But the demands of war and the expansion of trade had drawn Cornwall ever more intimately into the fabric of the new British state and the continued decline of the Cornish language was but one sign of the enduring impact of outside influences. Cornwall, indeed, had played its role prominently and well in the new ‘Britishness’ of the eighteenth century.
Notes and References
1 Edwin Jaggard, Cornwall Politics in the Age of Reform, 1790–1885 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), p. 12.
2 Philip Payton, Cornwall (Fowey: Alexander Associates, 1996), p. 178.
3 A.C. Todd, Beyond the Blaze: A Biography of Davies Gilbert (Truro: Bradford Barton, 1967), pp. 267–69.
4 John Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England, 1700–1832 (London: Longman, 1979), pp. 98 and 106.
5 Bernard Deacon, ‘“The Hollow Jarring of the Distant Steam Engines”: Images of Cornwall between West Barbary and Delectable Duchy’, in Ella Westland (ed.), Cornwall: The Cultural Construction of Place (Penzance: Patten Press, 1997), pp. 7–24.
6 A.K. Hamilton-Jenkin in Old Cornwall 1.1 (1925), pp. 9–18.
7 R.L. Brett (ed.), Barclay Fox’s Journal (London: Bell & Hyman, 1979), p. 133.
8 See Cynthia Lane, ‘“Too rarely visited and too little known”: Travellers’ Imaginings of Industrial Cornwall’, in Philip Payton (ed.), Cornish Studies: Thirteen (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005), pp. 170–93.
9 Christopher Morris, The Illustrated Journeys of Celia Fiennes 1685–1712 (London: Cresset Press, 1947), p. 204.
10 Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (London: G. Strahan, 1724).
11 Defoe, A Tour.
12 John Pearce (ed.), The Wesleys in Cornwall: Extracts from the Journals of John and Charles Wesley and John Nelson (Truro: Bradford Barton, 1964), p. 170.
13 Pearce, The Wesleys, p. 170.
14 Ibid., p. 74.
15 Ibid., pp. 75–76.
16 John Rowe, Cornwall in the Age of the Industrial Revolution (2nd edn, St Austell: Cornish Hillside Publications, 2006).
17 James Whetter, Cornwall from the Newspapers, 1781–93 (Gorran: Lyfrow Trelyspen, 2000), p. 7.
18 The National Archives [hereafter TNA]: SP 34/3/129 1703/4 March 18th.
19 Patrick Crowhurst, The Defence of British Trade, 1689–1815 (Folkestone: Dawson, 1977), pp. 15, 55–56.
20 Crowhurst, The Defence of British Trade; N.A.M. Rodger, The Command of the Oceans: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815 (London: Allen Lane, 2004), p. 153.
21 Rodger, The Command of the Oceans, p. 159; Crowhurst, The Defence of British Trade, p. 54.
22 Crowhurst, The Defence of British Trade.
23 6 Ann CAP XIII 65. Listed in the Table of Statutes as the Security to Merchant Ships Act, 1707. It came into effect in 1708.
24 Ibid.
25 M. Duffy, ‘The Creation of Plymouth Dockyard and its Impact on Naval Strategy’, in Guerres Maritimes 1688–1713: IV Journees Franco-Britannique D’histoire De La Marine (Vincennes: Service historique de la Marine, 1996), pp. 245–74, p. 249.
26 Rodger, The Command of the Oceans, p. 188.
27 A.J. Marsh ‘The Local Community and the Operation of the Plymouth Dockyard, 1689–1763’, in Michael Duffy, Stephen Fisher, Basil Greenhill, David Starkey, and Joyce Youings, The New Maritime History of Devon, Vol. I: From Early Times to the Late Eighteenth Century (London: Conway, 1992), pp. 201–8.
28 Defoe, A Tour.
29 Richard Warner, A Tour Through Cornwall in the Autumn of 1808, cited in Anon, A First Cornish Anthology (Truro: Tor Mark Press, 1969), pp. 14–15.
30 Brett, Barclay Fox’s Journal, p. 35.
31 Gladys Harris and F.L. Harris, The Making of a Cornish Town: Torpoint and Neighbourhood through Two Hundred Years (Redruth: Institute of Cornish Studies, 1976), p. 13.
32 Rodger, The Command of the Oceans, pp. 314–15.
33 TNA: ADM 106/1187/206.
34 TNA: ADM 106/1185/333.
35 British Parliamentary Papers 1795: An Account of the Number of Pressgangs employed and the number of men in each.
36 Todd Gray (ed.), Cornwall: The Travellers’ Tales, Vol. I (Exeter: The Mint Press, 2000), pp. 67–68; see also Berkshire Record Office [hereafter BRO], D/EWI/F2.
37 Jaggard, Cornwall Politics, p. 18.
38 M. Dunn, ‘Men of Mevagissey’, Old Cornwall 3 (1937–42), pp. 293–99 and 325–30.
39 Robert Blake, Evangelicals in the Royal Navy 1775–1815 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), pp. 130–31.
40 N.A.M. Rodger, ‘“A Little Navy of Your Own Making”: Admiral Boscawen and the Cornish Connection in the Royal Navy’, in Michael Duffy (ed.), Parameters of British Naval Power, 1650–1850 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1992), pp. 82, 85, 86.
41 Alan Moorehead, The Fatal Impact: The Invasion of the South Pacific, 1787–1840 (2nd edn, Sydney: Meade & Beckett, 1987), pp. 33–34.
42 William Bligh, The Mutiny on HMS Bounty, 1787 (Guildford: Pagemaster Press, 1981); Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787–1868 (London: Pan, 1988), pp. 290–92.
43 Philip Payton, ‘The Cornish’, in James Jupp (ed.), The Australian People: An Encyclopaedia of The Nation, Its People and their Origins (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1988), p. 42.
44 Hughes, The Fatal Shore, pp. 205–9.
45 Hughes, The Fatal Shore, pp. 106–7; Martyn Brown, Australia Bound! The Story of West Country Connections, 1688–1888 (Bradford-on-Avon: Ex Libris Press, 1988), pp. 55–57.
46 Richard Harding, The Evolution of the Sailing Navy (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), p. 121.
47 TNA: SP 36/51 Deposition of William Richards; SP 36/56 8 June 1741; SP 36/58; SP 36/59; SP 36/60.
48 TNA: SP 36/67 Sept 9–10 1745; SP 36/42 18 Set 1737; SP 36/71 Oct 9 1745.
49 6 Ann CAP XIII 65.
50 David J. Starkey, British Privateering Enterprise in the Eighteenth Century (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1990), pp. 202–3
51 A.G. Jamieson, ‘Return to Privateering’, in A.G. Jamieson (ed.) A People of the Sea (London: Methuen, 1986), p. 161,
52 David Starkey, ‘British Privateering against the Dutch in the American Revolutionary War, 1780–1783’, in Stephen Fisher (ed.), Studies in British Privateering, Trading Enterprise and Seamen’s Welfare, 1775–1900 (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1987), pp. 1–18. p. 14–16
53 Starkey, British Privateering Enterprise, pp. 225, 228; Whetter, Cornwall from the Newspapers, p. 15.
54 TNA: ADM/354/155/202 1757 April. Note: A snow was similar to a small brig.
55 Whetter, Cornwall from the Newspapers, p. 15.
56 TNA: HCA 26/83.
57 Ralph Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1962), pp. 29–37.
58 [Bath?], [1780?]. Based on information from English Short Title Catalogue. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Group. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ECCO [accessed 1 April 2013].
59 H.E.S. Fisher, ‘Anglo Portuguese Trade 1700–1770’, in W.E. Minchinton, The Growth of Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Methuen, 1966), pp. 144–64, pp. 151–60.
60 Defoe, A Tour.
61 Stephen Fisher, ‘Lisbon, its English Merchant Community and the Mediterranean in the Eighteenth Century’, in P.L. Cottrell and D.H. Aldcroft (eds), Shipping, Trade and Commerce (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1981), pp. 24–28, 37–38; Stephen Fisher, ‘Lisbon as a Port Town in the Eighteenth Century’ in Stephen Fisher (ed.), Lisbon as a Port Town, the British Seaman and other themes (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1988).
62 Defoe, A Tour.
63 Ibid.
64 Rowe, Cornwall in the Age of the Industrial Revolution, pp. 271–73.
65 Jaggard, Cornwall Politics, pp. 28 and 23.
66 Helen Doe, ‘Positions, Patronage and Preference: Political Influence in Fowey before 1832’, in Philip Payton (ed.), Cornish Studies: Twelve (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2004), pp. 249–67.
67 Cornwall Record Office [hereafter CRO]: R/5690.
68 TNA: T 1/451 1 February 1765.
69 TNA: SP36/59 Nov 1742.
70 Cathryn Pearce, ‘Neglectful or Worse’, Troze, 1:1, www.nmmc.co.uk, online journal of the National Maritime Museum Cornwall.
71 Rodger, The Command of the Oceans, p. 172.
72 TNA: ADM 106/1093/54.
73 Robert Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England (London: John Camden Hotten, 1865), p. 198.
74 John Vivian, Tales of the Cornish Wreckers (Truro: Tormark Press, 1969), pp. 6–7.
75 Vivian, Tales of the Cornish Wreckers, p. 7.
76 Ibid., p. 9.
77 Ibid., p. 8.
78 Pearce, The Wesleys, p. 158.
79 TNA: ADM 106/1128/115.
80 Whetter, Cornwall from the Newspapers, 1781–93, p. 19.
81 Alan G. Jamieson, ‘Devon and Smuggling, 1680–1850’, in Duffy et al (eds), The New Maritime History of Devon, Vol. I, pp. 244–50; Whetter, Cornwall from the Newspapers, p. 18.
82 Helen Doe, ‘The Smugglers’ Shipbuilder’, Mariner’s Mirror 94:4 (2006), p. 13.
83 Whetter, Cornwall from the Newspapers, p. 18.
84 Roger Jones (ed.), West Country Tour: Diary of an Excursion through Somerset, Devon and Cornwall in 1797 by John Skinner (Bradford-on-Avon: Ex Libris, 1985), p. 46; see also Somerset Record Office [hereafter SRO]: DD/SASC/1193/10.
85 Whetter Cornwall from the Newspapers, pp. 18–19.
86 Jonathan Couch, A History of Polperro, 1871 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Frank Graham, 1965), p.32.
87 C.V. Wedgwood, Seventeenth-Century English Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 4.
88 P.A.S. Pool, The Death of Cornish (Penzance: Pool, 1975), p. 25.
89 Joanna Mattingly, Cornwall and the Coast: Mousehole and Newlyn (Chichester: Phillimore/Victoria County History, 2009), p. 84.
90 Pool, The Death of Cornish, p. 27.