Mullion Cove
The small fleet sailed on following the Lizard Coast, and a welcome change in the direction of the wind allowed them to escape the gathering English ships led by Sir Francis Drake.
In one of these lives an old man who has been blind for many years who ... is glad indeed when the month of March is come, for he finds his solitary walk up and down the road in front of his cottage more cheerful when he feels the blessed sunshine falling on his sightless eyes.
However, the largest treasure ship to fall foul of local torment was in January 1527 when the 300 ton Carrack "San Antonio" or St Anthony belonging to the King of Portugal, en route from Lisbon to Antwerp and laden with, among other things a valuable cargo of bullion, plate, silver, precious stones, jewellery and armour was wrecked at Gunwalloe/Loe Bar north of Mullion Cove in a storm.
In May 1781 a French Privateer, an armed Lugger Defiance under the command of Lieutenant Louis Le Ture with 45 men onboard was chased from Mullion Island by a Naval Vessel, under the charge of a Captain Curlyon placed there for the purpose by the Admiralty.
[30] Witnesses onshore at Marazion could supply no help and could only watch as two Privateers took two unnamed large sailing ships, a schooner from St Ives and a brig from Swansea in one day in February 1746.
"[33] In December 1862 the Truro schooner Arwenack, 92 tons register, with a cargo of Copper Ore from Devoran, bound for South Wales lost her masts in a storm in the Mounts Bay.
"[37] In 1850 a Falmouth owned schooner called the Windrush from Malaga, 51 tons register and built in 1833 at Cowes was driven ashore in a severe SW gale at Church Cove between Mullion and Gunwalloe.
[citation needed] The second part of the overall plan was to create a sheltered area for larger sailing ships and smaller coasting and fishing boats in the Cove by building a breakwater, 630 feet (190 m) in length, between Mullion Island and the Vro, a large rock on the mainland 500 yards (460 m) to the south west.
However, there was also an intention to form a Mullyon Trading Company based at Mullion, a commercial organisation to help local farmers, retailers and other occupants of the southern part of the Lizard Peninsula who had otherwise to travel on very poor roads to the Ports at Gweek and Porthleven.
[59] The main rocks on both the northern and southern sides of the harbour are based on hornblende schist, originally thought to be a basalt or a gabbro which has been changed by the heat and pressure, produced by the intrusions of peridotite.
It was used by the earliest English soft paste porcelain factories to produce thousands of highly decorated pieces (tea and coffee pots, dinner services, tableware, vases etc.)
For the first time the country's potters could manufacture a product which could withstand boiling water, thus avoiding the previous problems of cracking and breaking, and allowing competition with porcelain imported from China.
Given the name of "Soapeyrock", (also referred to locally as Steatite), and identified as such in the 1720s by naturalist Dr John Woodward (1665–1728), and subsequently by Cornish historian William Borlase (1695–1772), it had first been located from coastal cliff sites in the serpentinite of Kynance Cove, 4.3 miles (6.9 km) SSE, as a mineral with potential economic value.
In 1751 the newly formed "Worcester Tonquin Factory" set up by Dr John Wall, William Davis, Richard Holdship and 12 other Directors adopted the soft paste porcelain formula and early in 1752 purchased the Lund pottery and acquired the Lease for Gew Graze.
A problem was the large amount of underground water which limited the achievable depth and required adits to take it away – which needed finance and labour, but no Mine Leases have currently been located.
In April 1786 one prolific smuggler, Thomas Welland, in his armed lugger "Happy go Lucky", was killed in a gun battle near Mullion Island by men of the Revenue cutters Hawk and Lark.
[91] It seems that every trip to France was planned with military precision, and there were always two alternative landing points for the smuggled goods to take into account changes in wind direction – and of course loose talk in the vicinity of the Revenue men.
From the Mounts Bay fishing ports of Newlyn and Penzance the pilchards in their wooden casks would be sold in Genoa, Leghorn, Civitavecchia, Naples, Ancona, Venice, and Trieste, and to a lesser extent in Malta.
These areas or "Stems" as they were called were marked out on land by large posts in the ground on the cliffside and there was a responsibility to complete the enclosure between the two designated markers before retiring and allowing the next boat to come in and cast their net.
A capstan winch which has a similar but smaller framework and used for the same purpose, constructed by local miners from Geevor, is still in place today at the little cornish fishing cove of Penberth in the Parish of St. Buryan and can be visited there on foot from Porthcurno.
They ate and were then joined by a Falmouth Pilot Cutter "Grand Turk" crewed by Captain George Cox and Jacob Harris after which Walter Andrews went ashore for fresh water.
In the early hours increasing gale-force winds drove 14 boats of the fishing fleet from a mooring at Newlyn causing some to drift uncontrollably towards the eastern side of the Bay and some towards the English Channel.
Miraculously as information came in to Newlyn it was found that the Alpha had been spotted swirling around the end of the Lizard Peninsula in the gale- with the sole occupant, the 71-year-old Mr Treneer at the Tiller, but after this report nothing was known.
It took a concerted effort from a number of famous Edwardian actors (Seymour Hicks), actresses (Ellaline Terriss), show business heroes and visiting authors staying at the three main Mullion hotels to promote the Regatta, produce a programme of events and help raise enough money to allow the fishermen to continue.
There were many times when French fishermen, held up in the Mount's Bay used what is now the Grade II Listed Net Loft in Mullion Harbour as a shelter from storms and adverse weather.
In the November storm torrential rain was accompanied by gales for several days causing huge seas to build, and massive waves rising high up the sides of St. Michaels Mount were reported.
It looked at the viability of the structure, given the very grim prospect that climate change, a rapidly rising sea level and increasing costs might lead to the Cove losing the Piers at an unspecified date in the future.
[145] In January 2014 the Daily Mirror ran a front-page story featuring photographs of a man holding a young child up to peek over the harbour wall during a storm and then being engulfed by waves.
[150] By the late 1850s, after an increasing number of shipwrecks and severe storms in which lives were lost, villagers and Lloyd's of London realised that a lifeboat was needed on the west coast of the Lizard Peninsula.
On 21 October 1867, the occasion of her first launch, the lifeboat crew saved three lives from the wreck of the London barque Achilles, which became embayed in the Mounts Bay before grounding at Polurrian.
