The most noted and daring
Cornish smuggler was a Dane called Coppinger, who
lived on the north coast near Hartland Bay. Coppinger
swan ashore in Hartland Bay in the prime of life and
in the middle of a frightful storm from a
foreign-rigged vessel which disappeared.
Tradition says that
he wrapped himself in a cloak torn off the shoulders
of a woman and was taken by a farmer's daughter, who
had come to see the wreck, to her father's house
where Coppinger was fed and clothed.
Coppinger was a
fine, handsome looking man and made out he was
well-connected at home. He won the young girl's
affections and they were married after her father
died a short time later. Their marriage turned out
not to be happy and they had but one child who
inherited his father's cruel disposition and who
delighted in torturing all living things. It is said
the boy cunningly killed one of his playmates.
Coppinger organized
a band of smugglers and made himself their captain.
He quickly became known as 'Cruel Coppinger.'
One legend says
that he and his men led a Revenue cutter into a
dangerous cove, of which he alone knew the soundings,
and that he and his crew came out safely but all on
board the other vessel perished.
Coppinger's ship
was called 'The Black Prince' and that any man who
crossed Coppinger's path on land was carried on board
and compelled to enroll in her crew.
A testament from a
ninety-seven year old man corroborates this tale,
saying he was so abducted as youth and was finally
ransomed for a large sum by his friends after two
years service, all because the young man saw a man
kill another and thought the youth might talk to the
authorities.
Coppinger is said
to have had a wonderfully fleet horse that only he
could master and he escaped by a hair's breadth on
this horse more than one time.
There is a
marvellous account of Coppinger's end in which he
disappears as he came, in a vessel which he boards
during a storm of thunder, lightning, and hail. As
soon as he was in her, the ship was out of sight like
a spectre or a ghost:
Will you hear of the cruel
Coppinger?
He came from a foreign kind;
He was brought to us from the salt water,
He was carried away by the wind.
One thing certain
about the man is that he amassed wealth enough by
smuggling to buy a small freehold estate near the
sea, the title-deeds signed by him still exist, but
he is said to have been reduced to poverty in his old
age and subsisted on charity.
Baring-Gould says
that Coppinger was one of the most terrible men on
the north Cornish coast and had a house at Welcombe
there where he lived with his wife, an heiress. The
bed is still shown with its posts to which he tied
his wife and thrashed her until she made over her
little fortune to his exclusive use.
Coppinger had a
small estate at Roscoff, in Brittany, which was his
smuggling headquarters during the European war. The
British government paid him to carry dispatches to a
from the French coast, but he took advantage of his
credentials as a government agent to do much
contraband himself.
Baring-Gould, A
Book of Cornwall, pages 272-273.)
