THE CORNISH WRECKERS

From ‘The Vicar of Morwenstow’

When the Rev. R.S.  Hawker came to Morwenstow in 1834, he found that he had much to contend with, not only in the external condition of church and vicarage, but also in that which is of greater importance....

“The farmers of the parish were simple-hearted and respectable; but the denizens of the hamlet, after receiving the wages of the harvest time, eked out a precarious existence in the winter, and watched eagerly and expectantly for the shipwrecks that were certain to happen, and upon the plunder of which they surely calculated for the scant provision of their families.  The wrecked goods supplied them with the necessaries of life, and the rended planks of the dismembered vessel contributed to the warmth of the hovel hearthstone.

“When Mr. Hawker came to Morwenstow, ’the cruel and covetous natives of the strand, the wreckers of the seas and rocks for flotsam and jetsam,’ held as an axiom and an injunction to be strictly obeyed:—­

     “’Save a stranger from the sea,
     And he’ll turn your enemy!’

“The Morwenstow wreckers allowed a fainting brother to perish in the sea before their eyes without extending a hand of safety,—­nay, more, for the egotistical canons of a shipwreck, superstitiously obeyed, permitted and absolved the crime of murder by ’shoving the drowning man into the sea,’ to be swallowed by the waves.  Cain!  Cain! where is thy brother?  And the wrecker of Morwenstow answered and pleaded in excuse, as in the case of undiluted brandy after meals, ‘It is Cornish custom.’  The illicit spirit of Cornish custom was supplied by the smuggler, and the gold of the wreck paid him for the cursed abomination of drink.”

One of Mr. Hawker’s parishioners, Peter Barrow, had been for full forty years a wrecker, but of a much more harmless description:  he had been a watcher of the coast for such objects as the waves might turn up to reward his patience.  Another was Tristam Pentire, a hero of contraband adventure, and agent for sale of smuggled cargoes in bygone times.  With a merry twinkle of the eye, and in a sharp and ringing tone, he loved to tell such tales of wild adventure and of “derring do,” as would make the foot of the exciseman falter and his cheek turn pale.

During the latter years of last century there lived in Wellcombe, one of Mr. Hawker’s parishes, a man whose name is still remembered with terror—­Cruel Coppinger.  There are people still alive who remember his wife.

Local recollections of the man have molded themselves into the rhyme—­

     Will you hear of Cruel Coppinger? 
       He came from a foreign land: 
     He was brought to us by the salt water,
       He was carried away by the wind!”