Smugglers

Pirates & Smugglers

The Killigrews of Falmouth were involved in piratical activities for many generations, with varying degrees of success. The family first appeared in St Erme in the 13th century, by the 14th century they had arrived in Falmouth when Simon Killigrew married Jane de Arwenack of Arwenack near the port Falmouth. At that time Penryn with its Glasney Ecclesiastic College was the more significant and Falmouth port was just a quay, The little village of Smithwick lay just inland and this was eventually incorporated to make Falmouth the town.

Along the south coast in Cornwall and Devon the local gentry, the landowners who owned ships, such as Richard Hawkins and Hannibal Vyvian profited from the trade. As did Killigrew in Falmouth, Treffery in Fowey, Gilbert and Gylle in Dartmouth, and a century before them the most famous of Dartmouths mayors John Hawley. Whether the Pomeroy family got involved we do not know  but there was a commission headed by a Killigrew which included Henry Pomeroy of Tregony, to investigate piracy...in other word pirates investigating themselves.

Sir John Killigrew erected the first lighthouse at The Lizard in 1619 to  the chagrin of local people who had benefited considerably from the wrecking of vessels. His actions not only caused fury but also  astonishment, for the Killigrew were some of the fiercest and most notorious pirates ever to plague the coasts of Cornwall.

Much of the wealth the Killigrews  inherited came from piracy . There was even an  infamous female pirate in the Killigrew family.

After all why should the men have all the fun after all ?!

She had been Lady Mary Wolveston, before she married Killigrew, but she took to piracy with great enthusiasm. and went on many p  excursions along the English coast.   In 1583 a Spanish merchant ship was driven into Falmouth by storms. It was Lady Killigrew who led a boarding party onto the vessel and she who took up her sword and helped pillage as the crew were killed and the cargo stolen.

The lady pirate's crew rowed away with loot that included jewels, heavy silver and   pieces of eight. When the queen, Elizabeth I, heard about the attack she was very angry. Lady Killigrew was tried, found guilty of piracy and sentenced to be hanged along with her lieutenants.

At the last minute the Queen,because she liked Lady Killigrew,  relented and the lady was reprieved and given a long jail sentence.

Her husband Sir John was in the powerful position of being on the Commission investigating Piracy and the Tregony Pomeroys who also served on these commissions, may also have been similarly involved in piracy. His appointment as a piracy commissioner is anomalous even by Elizabethan standards.

Killigrew’s trafficking with the pirates had been known to the authorities since 1552, and in 1565 commissioners were appointed to undertake a formal investigation. However the man was powerful enough locally to evade the allegations against him. During 1575 and 1576 the Council wrote to him repeatedly about such matters as his imprisoning a French merchant and seizing four ships from Flushing. Even the good Earl of Bedford complained that ‘the castle in Mr Killigrew’s charge is much decayed and almost unserviceable’.

In January 1569 a commendation of Killigrew's behaviour appears in the records, after he and Sir Arthur Champernown had seized some Spanish silver and conveyed it to the Tower.

During the 16th century with profits from privateering made the family virtually untouchable. Far away from the seat of legal power in London, they controlled most of the port of Falmouth, and had "the finest and most costly house , Arwenack, in the county. Possessing of one of the largest estates in the county extending from Arwenack, to Helford passage, the Killigrews had the incomes from sixteen parish tithes'

This allowed them to enlarged and make beautiful the mansion house at Arwenack, the family's home  which remained the centre of their lawless little empire until well into the 18th century by which time the magnificent house at Arwenack was partially ruined for lack of money to maintain it.

Throughout the Tudor period the mainly flourished with one or two unhappy episodes, for them at least, and ultimately their enterprise failed.

By the 18th century the Killigrews and their  pirate ships were no more.

When James I came to the throne in 1603 the flourishing enterprise of piracy, legalised by letters of marque from the monarch and called privateering,  had grown into rampant force and by 1608 there were more than 500 English ships, with owners, with captains & crews involved.

Then a new kind of piracy began to operate along the coast of the south west. By 1625 Barbary Pirates , Corsairs of from the Islamic nations of north Africa, began to capture people from along the coastal towns and villages,  adding to their already flourishing activities in captured cargoes.

During the early 17th century more that 1200 people were picked off the south coast and carried away for ransom or slavery by Islamic pirates, also called Salee Pirates after their home port. The captives were confronted not just with loss of home & freedom  but with  the threat of torture and execution intended to force them to renounce Christianity and become Muslim. Those who did were still slaves, the men on galleys as oarsmen or in quarries hauling stone whilst women were put into harems as sex slaves or made households slaves.  Those who managed to escape returned to their own faith as soon as they were free.

Privateering was one way to make a huge amount of money the other was smuggling.

For centuries Cornwall's rugged coastline was a haven for wreckers and smugglers, activities which reached a peak in the 18th century. Ordinary folk and even the clergy, seizing the opportunity to ease their miserable lives a little, and plundered wrecked ships and engaged in smuggling with enthusiasm.

The little fishing village of Polperro became a wealthy centre for these activities  in the 18th century. It even had its own bank founded and operated by master smuggler Zephaniah Job.

Even the local clergymen was involved. Rev Richard Dodge of Talland, just along the coast from Polperro, would spread stories of ghosts and demons around the village to keep prying eyes away from his illicit activities. One Sunday service was interrupted by a man announcing a wreck on nearby rocks it is said to have the Rev. Dodge begged the congregation to remain seated until he'd taken off his cassock " so that we can all  start fair ".

At Perranporth on the north coast of Cornish  had a syndicate of smugglers, including men of the cloth, and The Dolphin  in Penzance was a meeting place for smugglers. The Ship Inn in Porthleven  was once a smuggling inn.

The Rev. Thomas Whitford, rector of Cury in 1739 was actually caught in possession of 4 casks of wine looted from the wreck of The Lady Lucy on the rocks at Gunwalloe.

Smuggled contraband would be hidden in Church crypts, bell towers, in pulpits and even tombs!

Such activity was spread all along the south coast wherever there was a harbour, inlet, or a quiet beach. Driven either by landowners greed or the extreme poverty of the ordinary people smuggling flourished. However for the ordinary man it had always been a dangerous business. By the 18th c the penalties for being caught were harsh. Heavy fines or even death for those caught either smuggling or harbouring smugglers, yet the Squire usually was not suspected by the authorities, nor was the Vicar, although many were actively leading it.

Other smugglers were also not always quite what they seemed. One of Cornwall's most famous, Harry Carter - the so called "King of Prussia Cove". By day he was a devout  Methodist and lay preacher, all the while running contraband from Roscoff usually at night and when in exile in Roscoff he held services on the quayside for his fellow  smugglers.

It has been estimated that between 1780 and 1783 as much as 2 million pounds of tea and 13 million gallons of brandy were  smuggled into England.

The strong winds, treacherous rocks ,reefs and currents around southern coastline provided all the opportunities needed for smuggling. Indeed, when the vessel Postilion was driven ashore on the  North Coast in November 1732 the ship was certainly plundered,  and not until every crew member aboard had been helped safely ashore.

In quiet unassuming Teignmouth in 1779 the French ship L'Emulation together with her cargo of sugar, coffee and cotton, was offered for sale at "Rendle's Great Sale Room" in the town.

At that same time two privateers were being fitted out for a group of Teignmouth merchants They were advertised in the local newspaper ' The Dragon with 16 guns and 70 men; and the Bellona, described as carrying "16 guns, 4 cohorns and 8 swivels". The Bellona set sail on her first cruise in September 1779, and was "oversett in a violent Gust of Wind" off Dawlish with the loss of 25 crew members

The introduction of Custom Officers, or "Preventive Men" caused the smugglers all kinds of problems that are well known and much written about. On many occasions, when they had successfully retrieved cargo either from wrecks or from the hands of  wreckers themselves their storehouses were later broken into by local people reclaiming what they considered to be rightfully theirs.

The pickings from wrecks were sometimes so substantial that some "Preventive" men could not resist the temptation to help themselves as well. One such was Sir John Knill, Collector of Customs at  St. Ives between 1762 and 1782, and Mayor in 1767.Though he published a scholarly pamphlet on the prevention of wrecking he is said to have dealt  in looted cargo as enthusiastically as the next man.

Smuggling and wrecking were popular pastimes in Cornwall, especially in  the 18th century when they reached their peak. Many people sought to enhance their lives by collecting goodies from wrecks, or indulging in a spot of smuggling..

The Helford River as well as Falmouth and Penryn have caves, all of which hid smuggled goods.   Wells beach on the south side of the creek is supposed to have caves with  tunnels, that are now blocked. Mevagissey and St. Austell were famous for smuggling, and Jamaica Inn near Bodmin was notorious for its unlawful dealings Almost all of the coastal  towns and villages lying on the Cornish coast has some kind of connection with smuggling.