Smuggling and wrecking

Little is known about the 25 ton sloop Liberty prior to the first official Registration of British Shipping in August/September 1786. Built at Topsham in Devon […]

While Charles was languishing in prison, during the first week in February, 1794, a wreck occurred in Prussia’s Cove, that demanded the attention of the Penzance […]

On February 21st 1793, the Attorney General opened a trial in the Court of Exchequer against Charles Carter. In the preceding months Charles, together with John […]

Once again all then went quiet, and it was seven or eight months later before another incident brought Carter’s battery to the fore. The Lord Hood, […]

The sloop Liberty, which had escaped the previous encounter had been legitimately registered at Penzance as No.2 in 1786. Built at Topsham in 1780, she was […]

May 1789 All goes quiet on this front, for six or seven years, before further references to the Carters’ battery of cannon appear in the Penzance […]

Reference to Carters’ battery first appears in official correspondence in the early 1780s but surprisingly there is not a single mention of it at this time […]

The Carter Brothers, possibly the most notorious of Cornish smugglers, were raised in the vicinity of Prussia’s Cove, in the second half of the eighteenth century. […]

The Carter brothers were possible the best-known and notorious Cornish smugglers of the second half of the C18. There were seven of them. Thomas Carter Born […]

The Guns of Prussia’s Cove or the Carters’ Battery The late C18 was a turbulent time. Bays and anchorages on the coast of England, remote from central […]

It would be impossible to talk about the maritime history of Cornwall without some mention of smuggling and wrecking. Smuggling is a by-product of government policy […]