When Charles Dickens visited Cornwall in the mid-19th century he spent some time walking around the Lizard “knapsack on shoulder and stout boots on feet”. He felt that it was the only way to truly experience this isolated corner of Cornwall. Just outside Gunwalloe he made the acquaintance of a man he called “Old Cuttance” who regaled him with tales of shipwrecks and daring deeds.

That man was Henry Cuttance and by the time that Dickens met him he had already led a life so full of adventure and incident that he really could have been a character straight out of one of the great writer’s novels.

“If wild legends and still wilder tales of storm and wreck satisfy you, you will not be disappointed in the Lizard country.”

Charles Dickens, All The year Round, Nov 1876 (published after his death)

Early Life

Henry Cuttance was born in St Keverne and baptised in the church there in November 1790. His parents were Henry Cuttance and Jane Ralph, who had married in the same church in 1782 and had five other children. What his father did for work isn’t clear but he seems to have died in about 1793 when Henry was 3 years old.

In his 20s and 30s Henry Cuttance took part in Cornish wrestling competitions, winning several medals and trophies. One of his last matches was in October 1826, a few days before his marriage to Elizabeth Caddy. He won three sovereigns.

In about 1807 when he was around 17 years old Henry was pressed ganged into the navy while on a visit to Falmouth. But as the Man-of -war he was on sailed out of the harbour, passing close to his home on the Lizard, he decided to try and escape. He apparently distracted the crew by throwing his own hat over one side of the ship and shouting “man overboard”, and while everyone ran to look he leapt from the other side and swam for shore.

Cuttance told this story many times during his lifetime and you can find a vivid account of it in Rev Johns’ book “A Week on the Lizard” printed in the 1870s. In this version, according to Henry, even after he had jumped overboard the navy still tried to apprehend him.

“One sturdy veteran [smuggler] . . . can tell a tale of his being chased by a king’s boat, of him having thrown himself overboard, of having swum for his life, of his having eluded by diving blows dealt by an oar or a cutlass and of having escaped safe to land.”

Rev C. A. Johns, A Week on the Lizard, 1873

Some accounts claim that the ship that Cuttance escaped from was in fact the HMS Anson, the notorious Loe Bar shipwreck, meaning that he also escaped certain death that day.

Although I haven’t found firm evidence of this, it does seem possible as it’s well known that the Anson had a large number of pressed sailors onboard.

And this was only the first of many adventures and many tales that Cuttance would tell to entertain visitors to Gunwalloe over the years as the landlord of the Ship Inn.

The Landlord of the Ship Inn

Henry Cuttance and Elizabeth Caddy married at Cury on 17th October 1826 and initially lived in Gunwalloe parish where their first child, Henry, was born in 1827. Then the family moved to St Anthony in Meneage for a short time where Cuttance worked as a labourer and the couple welcomed two more sons, Lisle and Lionel, before they returned to Gunwalloe in about 1830.

It was then that Henry became the landlord of a tavern at Chyanvounder and four more sons were born – William, Eli, Warren and Joseph.

In Cuttance’s time the pub was called the Ship Inn and he ran it, as well as farming a small area of ground nearby, until his death in 1875. Now known as the Halzephron Inn, it was probably here that his career as a smuggler began as this pub supposedly already had a long connection to ‘free trading’ when he took it over.

There are various stories about the Ship Inn, including rumours that there were tunnels leading from the pub to either Gunwalloe Fishing Cove, to nearby caves or to a monastery.

“Gunwalloe: Here a tunnel led from the belfry tower of the church to a cave on the beach, now partially blocked and cut off at high tide. Two other caves used by smugglers are more accessible. A secret passage is said to have led from the Halzephron Inn to Fishing Cove.”

SMuggling in the West Country 1700 – 1850, Antony D. Hippisley Coxe, 1984

Evidence for a least one such tunnel can be seen inside the Halzephron Inn, which was built in 1468, to this day. The huge wall which stands between the lounge and what is known as the Fisherman’s Bar is 8’6” thick and apparently contains a shaft leading to a tunnel said at one time to have connected the inn to a nearby monastery.

As far as I can establish Henry Cuttance was never actually arrested or convicted of smuggling, and you could argue that it is his connection to the pub and the area that means that his name appears in books written about smuggling in Cornwall.

However, an interesting description of Cuttance appeared in the Western Morning News in January 1950. The information in the article was said to have been originally recorded by a member of the coastguard between 1840 – 1850 as part of a collection of descriptions of notorious local characters.

Cuttance’s inclusion on the list does suggest that he was a person of interest to the authorities at that time.

The note read:

“Henry Cuttance, absent on a smuggling trip – is 5ft 7in in height with a florid complexion and black whiskers. He has only one eye and was formerly a tailor by trade.”

Another clue linking Cuttance to ‘free trading’ is a ledger, sold at auction in Penzance in 2017, said to record the smuggled goods, including brandy, cotton and cheese, that passed through Cuttance’s hands.

But ultimately, whatever his shady past, what drew me to Henry was not his smuggling career, it was his acts of selfless bravery.

Wreck after Wreck

Anyone who is interested in the history of shipwrecks around the Cornish coast will know that the area around Gunwalloe, Halzephron (sometimes spelt Halsferran) and Loe Bar was a notorious graveyard for ships.

Henry Cuttance undoubtedly witnessed dozens of wrecks during his lifetime. But when he was still a young man, as well as the terrible wreck of the Anson in 1807, we know that he also witnessed the ill-fated, government transport, James and Rebecca, hit the Halzephron cliffs in the same year. He described the wreck to Dickens and explained how he had seen the 80 or so drowned men, women and children “thrown into a pit near where they were washed up.”

Perhaps it was these horrific experiences that led to him being honoured more than once for his acts of bravery rescuing stricken sailors.

And his daring adventures certainly gave him stories to tell his patrons over the bar, as Charles Dickens found out.

“Old Cuttance, an octogenarian, shows with pride a silver cup bearing the inscription ‘Oscar, King of Norway, to Henry Cuttance of Gunwalloe for brave and noble actions on 20th November 1846’ . . . for saving the crew of the schooner Elizabeth of Bergen.”

Charles Dickens, All the Year Round, 11th November 1876

Dickens went on to give more details of the circumstances, presumably told to him by Cuttance, but, perhaps making notes later from memory, muddled up two different rescues that happened a year apart.

The first was the wreck of a Norwegian ketch called Elizabeth, travelling to Bergen with a cargo of salt when she came ashore at Gunwalloe. It was a particularly stormy winter’s night in 1846 and the newspapers reported numerous shipwrecks up and down the south coast. It was said that the Elizabeth was “hurled onto the sands” and “went to pieces in minutes”.

A group of local men, Henry Cuttance, John Kitto, John Freeman, Solomon Rowe and John Sheppard, along with two men from the Prussia Cove and Mullion coastguards, went to the scene and managed to save the captain, Niels Ellertsen, and three of the crew “with much difficulty” using ropes thrown from the shore.

Although at first the coastguard were given credit and congratulated in the papers for the rescue it soon became clear that they had in fact been wholly unprepared and it was Cuttance and the other civilian men who had actually risked their lives and saved the sailors.

An inquest was held for the three crewmen who had been lost, Neil Petter Thorsen, Christian Samuelson and John Christian Borseth, but the story of the Cornishmen’s bravery spread and the following year Cuttance and the other men were each presented with an award.

The presentation took place in Helston in front of a crowd of onlookers and they were each given gifts from the King of Norway in recognition of their bravery in saving his countrymen.

” On Wednesday a silver cup was presented by R. Pearce Esq of Penzance to Mr Solomon Rowe of Porthleven and another to Mr Henry Cuttance of Gunwalloe and the sum of 2 guineas to each of 7 men who assisted in rescuing the survivors of a Norwegian vessel . . . A copy of the following letter was also presented at the same time to each:

Royal Swedish & Norwegian Vice Consulate, Penzance, 22nd September

Sir – I have great pleasure in informing you that his Majesty the King of Norway has been graciously pleased to direct me to convey to you his perfect satisfaction with the important services rendered by yourself and others in the preservation of Captain Niels Wuff Ellertsen, his mate and seamen, the only survivors of the crew of the Norwegian schooner Elisabeth of Bergen unfortunately wrecked on the 20th day of November last near Gunwalloe and to present to you the accompanying testimonial as a further acknowledgement of your bravery and good conduct.”

Royal Cornwall Gazette, 24th Sept 1847

Cuttance and the other men were also rewarded by their local community. Henry Trengrouse, the inventor from Porthleven, obtained five sovereigns for each of them from the National Shipwreck Institute.

Amazingly just one year after the wreck of the Elizabeth Henry Cuttance was involved in another dramatic rescue, this time the ship was a Russian craft called Iris bound for Falmouth for orders. She came ashore between Poldhu Cove and Mullion on 10th October 1847 and on this occasion three of the crew managed to make it ashore and reached a nearby farmhouse to raise the alarm.

At dawn the ship’s captain and two sailors were spotted huddled on a rocky cleft at the base of a cliff with the sea breaking over them. It was Henry Cuttance who organised their rescue. First he instructed that hot coffee and bread should be lowered down to the men, who had been marooned on the rocks all night and were no doubt suffering from exposure.

Then a chair attached to a rope was rigged up and the contraption was used to haul the exhausted men to safety. Unfortunately six other members of the crew were lost but two days later the Penzance Gazette reported that during the rescue:

“None were more distinguished for their gallantry and risk on Monday than Henry Cuttance . . .”

Penzance Gazette, 13 October 1847

In 1859 the Chincas, the largest sailing ship ever to be wrecked on Loe Bar, came ashore and according to the Falmouth Packet it was Henry Cuttance that spotted the vessel in distress and notified the coastguard. Three years later in January 1862 the Constitution from Austria was came ashore at Gunwalloe, once more it was Cuttance who led the group of local men who managed to save some of the crew, again by throwing them a rope. Apparently the sailors would tie the rope around themselves wait for the waves to recede, drop down onto the sand and those on the beach who drag them to safety. Three survived, thirteen others died.

And when the French schooner, Coquette, was wrecked below Halzephron cliffs in December 1873 it was Henry Cuttance, then 82 years old, who gave the survivors welcome at the Ship Inn, where they were “made as comfortable as possible” after their ordeal.

Final Thoughts

Henry Cuttance died in February 1875 at the age of 85, some years after meeting Charles Dickens. For the final years of his life he had lived at the inn with his son William, his wife Elizabeth and their growing family.

William Cuttance continued to run the pub for the next 20 years until it was put up for auction in May 1894 and was purchased by Redruth Brewery Company for £253.

In 2017 a local auction house, WH Lane & Son, sold a collection of Henry Cuttance’s possessions including his cup from the King of Norway, his ledger, some glass decanters and some wrestling prizes. That silver tankard that he prized so highly and had shown to Dickens sold for £8100 to an anonymous buyer, I wonder where it is now . . .

Further Reading

A Mysterious Shipwreck at Mullion

Memorial for Lost Mariners – Porthleven

Buried Pirate Treasure at Kennack Sands

Captain John Piers – Cornish pirate

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