Had you been alive and afloat in June of 1802 and been cruising about near Falmouth Bay, or taken up your position on the top of one of those glorious high cliffs anywhere between St. Anthony and the Dodman, and remembered first to take with you your spyglass, you would have witnessed a very interesting sight; that is to say, if you had been able to penetrate through the atmosphere, which was not consistently clear throughout the day.  For part of it, at any rate, was hazy and foggy just as it often is in this neighbourhood at that time of year, but that was the very kind of conditions which the smuggler loved.  Between those two headlands are two fine bays, named respectively Gerrans and Veryan, while away to the south-west the land runs out to sea till it ends in the Lizard.  A whole history could be written of the smuggling which took place in these two bays, but we must content ourselves with the one instance before us.

On this day it happened that his Majesty’s frigate Fisgard was proceeding up Channel under the command of Captain Michael Seymour, R.N.  The time was three in the afternoon.  In spite of the haziness it was intermittent, and an hour earlier he had been able to fix his position by St. Anthony, which then bore N. by W. distant six or seven miles.  He was then sailing by the wind close-hauled lying S.S.E.1/2E., in other words, standing away from the land out into mid-channel, the breeze being steady.  By three o’clock the Fisgard had only travelled about another six or seven miles, so that she was now about 12-1/2 miles from St. Anthony or just to seaward of the Lizard.  It was at this time that the frigate sighted a smaller craft, fore-and-aft rigged and heading N.N.W., also on a wind, the breeze being abaft her port, or, as they called it in those days, the larboard-beam.  This subsequently turned out to be the cutter Flora, and the course the cutter was taking would have brought her towards the Dodman.  The haze had now lifted for a time, since although the Flora was quite eight miles away she could be descried.  Knowing that this cutter had no right to be within a line drawn between the Lizard and Prawl Point, the Fisgard starboarded her helm and went in pursuit.  But the Flora’s crew were also on the look-out, though not a little displeased that the fog had lifted and revealed her position.  When she saw that the Fisgard was coming after her she began to make off, bore up, and headed due North.  But presently she altered her tactics and hauled round on the starboard tack, which would of course bring her away from the land, make her travel faster because her head-sails would fill, and she hoped also no doubt to get clear of the Prawl-to-Lizard line.  Before this she had been under easy sail, but now she put up all the canvas she could carry.