Coverack - meaning 'A hidden place'

Coverack is a fishing village built on both sides of a spur of rock that juts out into the sea. There's a large, crescent-shaped beach in the sheltered bay, ideal for swimming and windsurfing. The small church of St Peter, built in 1885 for £500, has a serpentine pulpit, a gift from the old serpenting factory along the coast at Poltesco. Both fishing boats and pleasure craft are moored in the small harbour which is built out of local serpentine, and the old lifeboat house and slipway, are reminders of a past rich in maritime adventure. This lovely village on the east coast of the Lizard, with its tiny harbour wall of 1724 made from local hornblende and serpentine, seems a peaceful and sheltered place on a sunny summer's afternoon - but the photographs in the bar of the Paris Hotel show just how devastating a storm here can be.

Smuggling was a regular, and often necessary, way of life in these parts, and if you walk to one of the nearby coves, you'll be treading the paths of the coastguards and preventive men.

The hotel is named after an American passenger liner which ran aground off Lowland Point in the mist on the 21st May 1899. There was no loss of life on that occasion. The Paris re-entered service as the Philadelphia and was again stuck in the fog on the east coast of Cornwall in 1914!

Only a year before the Paris ran aground, the steamship Mohegan was wrecked on the dreaded Manacle Rocks beyond Lowland Point and 106 people were drowned. Soon after that a lifeboat was stationed at Coverack (and the stout lifeboat house built just by the harbour) because, as was said at the time, 'the fishermen of this village are familiar with the Manacles and the boat could be launched in all waters'.

The Coverack lifeboat rescued many from the Manacles, which claimed ships such as the Mohegan in 1898 with the loss of 106 lives, and HMS Brig Primrose, lost in 1809 with 120 officers and men, the only, survivor being a drummer boy. Too see pictures of the Coverack Lifeboat click here.

The Manacles are truly notorious, and have virtually no redeeming features. They are the sight of many wrecks. It's sinister and evil reputation is matched only by it's bleak and forbidding appearance, as it stretches out nearly one and a half miles into the sea, where it lies mostly submerged waiting to entrap the careless or just plain unlucky. One of the worst was that of the 7,000 ton luxury liner Mohegan. She hit them on 14th October 1898 at full speed, and in good weather. She sank in ten minutes. Forty-four people were rescued by the Porthoustock lifeboat (out of 157).

The Manacles' name name derives from the old Cornish words Maen Eglos, meaning church rocks, and a possible reference to the spire of St. Keverne's church, which has served as a landmark for centuries. More likely it refers to the gravestones that fill the local church yards, because over the centuries more than a hundred ships have been wrecked, drowning well over a thousand people on this unforgiving shore. During one terrible night in 1809, one hundred and ten bodies were washed ashore and many more accounted for, when the transport ship Dispatch, and the Brig, H.M.S. Primrose were dashed to pieces on the Manacles. The emigrant barque John sank in 1855 with the loss of over one hundred and twenty people, and everybody knows about the loss of the liner Mohegan that sailed full speed onto Carn Du rock, drowning one hundred and six poor souls.

Paris aground with Mohegan's masts in foreground

The Paris aground on the Manacles

Southeast from Manacle Point is a large red buoy securely held in place with a huge anchor and a heavy chain reaching down nearly two hundred feet to the seabed. Even that and the masts of the sunken liner Mohegan, did not deter the French Liner Paris from running aground in 1899. Luckily she was finally refloated with only the loss of her owners pride, the Andola, four years earlier was not to be so lucky. She was caught in a snowstorm, which reduced visibility to just a few feet. A look out heard the Manacle buoy's bell tolling in the gloom and the Captain ordered the topsails furled so that he could stand off. It was all too late. The Andola was swept onto the Sharks Fin rock only yards from the Manacles beach.

The wreck of the Andola

The list goes on and on. Liners, sailing ships, men of war, coasters and fishing boats, you name it and it has been wrecked on the Manacles. All around, the churchyards have been filled with gravestones, and the lifeboat men from the local villages surrounding this fatal shore have heroically sacrificed their lives to rescue the poor victims.

The Manacles are truly a fatal shore.