ALICE HAD JUST dragged the unconscious girl to a patch of sand, farther away from the fluctuating water’s edge, when a cry went up from the cliff top and was carried back down the line of weighed down pillagers toiling up the narrow cliff path with their booty. Coast guard officers had been seen hurrying towards the scene of the wrecked vessel.
There was an immediate flurry of activity on the beach. Those who had already gathered goods from the wrecked ship were eager to carry it to the cliff top and escape before the coast guards arrived upon the scene.
There had been a time when such officials were sympathetic towards Cornish coastal dwellers, most of whose lives were spent in abject poverty, but this had changed in the last decade, since the Admiralty in London had won the right to appoint Royal Naval officers and some ratings to the coast guard service.
In most cases the officers were men from outside Cornwall and, in the wake of rumours, not always exaggerated, of shipwrecked seafarers being murdered for their possessions, they showed little sympathy for those who felt they had a time-honoured right to anything that came ashore as a result of shipwreck.
A number of bitter battles had been fought along the Cornish coastline in recent years, resulting in casualties and fatalities on both sides. As a result the coast guards were hated by those who had once profited by smuggling and the pilfering of wrecks – but they had earned a healthy respect for themselves and their Service.
There was a mad scramble to evade the coast guards now, but a number of less agile scavengers had not made it to the top of the cliff by the time the uniformed men appeared at the top of the path.
Those still toiling to the cliff-top hastily jettisoned their booty, causing consternation and occasional injury to those still on the sand of the cove.
Most of this activity was lost upon Alice who, with Percy, was struggling to lift the rescued girl clear of the rocks and away from the incoming tide. They reached a spot that Alice considered safe, at the base of the cliffs and close to where the path met the beach, just as the first of the coast guards arrived there.
Those few hopeful looters who remained on the beach were mostly older men and women, standing close to the water’s edge, hoping to create the impression that they were concerned only with what was happening to the stricken ship, and had no interest whatsoever in the items being washed ashore around them.
Because Alice and Percy appeared to be the only two on the now near-deserted beach who were doing anything, they attracted the immediate attention of the uniformed arrivals.
One of two officers who hurried to them addressed Alice’s companion, saying, ‘Hello, Percy, I would have taken a wager that I would find you here, but I never expected there to be a young woman helping you, and by the look of that body you’ve carried here you’re not likely to get much of value from it.’
Alice realised that, soaking wet as she was, with lank hair hanging out of a waterproof hat belonging to her brother hiding much of her face, she must have looked no different to the dozens of other women the man had passed hurrying away from the scene … but she was not prepared to waste time explaining herself to him.
‘If you’ve come here to be helpful you and your friends can get the girl up the cliff and take her to the rectory at Trethevy as quickly as you can. She’s still alive but appears to be seriously hurt. While you’re doing that some of your companions might want to check those laid out further along the beach. It is quite possible some of those are still alive too.’
The coast guard who had addressed Percy was startled. He had previously merely glanced at Alice. Plastered with sand and wet and bedraggled, he had dismissed her as a local village girl, but her manner of speech was not that of a village girl and now he looked closer he could see her clothes were not home-made.
Addressing his companion, he said, ‘Stay here with them, I’ll go and have a word with Lieutenant Kendall.’
‘I have no intention of waiting here while you go off for a discussion with your friends. This girl needs urgent medical attention if she’s to survive and I mean to ensure she receives it.’
Her raised voice pursued the coast guard as he hurried away heading for a group of uniformed men standing on the beach, looking out to where the vessel on the offshore rocks was being unmercifully pounded to pieces by the relentless sea.
There were no visible signs of life on board the wrecked vessel and as the coast guard approached the group of fellow officers, two of them waded into the sea to retrieve the body of a man floating face down in the water, arms outstretched to his sides, being washed in with the tide.
The coast guard who had been with Alice and Percy spoke to a young man wearing the uniform of a lieutenant of the Royal Navy, pointing back the way he had come. Heads turned to look in the direction of Alice and the lieutenant, accompanied by two coast guards, began hurrying towards her.
When he arrived, the lieutenant looked at the wet and dishevelled girl kneeling beside the prostrate survivor and was no more impressed with her than the other man had been.
Addressing her, he said, ‘Coast Guard Pascoe says the young girl is a survivor from the wrecked vessel and he found you and your companion searching her….’
‘Then Coast Guard Pascoe has a vivid imagination,’ Alice retorted. ‘The state of the girl’s clothing makes a search unnecessary. The sea and rocks have not left her with enough to even satisfy decency. Percy and I found her among rocks at the far end of the beach, she is still alive – but only just. If she is not seen by a doctor very soon she’ll no longer be a survivor and will join the line of bodies farther along the beach.’
As had the coastguard who had been first to reach her, the Royal Navy lieutenant realised that Alice was not just another local young woman intent upon plunder and he reacted immediately. Turning to the coastguard with him, he said, ‘Pascoe, collect a few men and something to support the girl then carry her to the top of the cliff.’
Turning back to Alice, he said, ‘I am Lieutenant Jory Kendall, the officer in charge of the North Cornwall coast guard. Where do you want the girl taken? I’ll have a doctor sent for but he can’t treat her out here in this weather.’
‘Have her carried to the rectory at Trethevy. I’ll go with her and settle her in a spare room.’
‘The rectory? I was not aware of a church at Trethevy.’
‘It has been unused for many years, at least, as a place of worship, but my brother has been appointed rector there and it will soon be serving its original purpose once more.’
Her reply satisfied a number of the naval lieutenant’s unasked questions, but he had more. ‘Why are you here and not your brother? This is hardly the place for a woman – a woman like you – in such circumstances.’
‘My brother needed to go to Tavistock yesterday and will not be back until tomorrow. Had he realised what would be happening he would never have gone, not that it would have made any difference. I would still have been on the beach with him. But we are wasting time, this girl needs help – and quickly.’
Stung by his implication that she, as a woman, had no place at the scene of a shipwreck, she added, ‘Had I not been here I doubt whether the young girl would have had any chance of survival – but what exactly do you and your men hope to achieve now you are here?’
‘We came in the hope of rescuing crewmen from the stranded ship if at all possible – but there doesn’t appear to be anything we can do. There is very little of the ship left, it has taken such a pounding from the storm. It is also part of my duty to ensure that anything coming ashore is saved for the vessel’s rightful owners and is not stolen.’
‘You have arrived too late to save everything,’ Alice commented, ‘but what about the bodies over there. There are five or six of them. Will you recover them before the tide is fully in?’
Lieutenant Kendall shook his head, ‘By the look of them any means of identification has either been stolen or lost. As they are unknown and their bodies unlikely to be claimed by anyone, they might as well be buried here on the beach as anywhere else.’
‘That is appalling!’ Alice was distressed by the lieutenant’s casual attitude towards the bodies laid out on the beach. ‘The men who have drowned will have wives, children or mothers – there might even be women among the bodies too. They deserve more than a shallow grave in the sand. They are entitled to a Christian burial with someone to say a prayer for their souls.’
‘I wouldn’t argue with that,’ he agreed. ‘It’s what every man who goes to sea would hope for should he be unfortunate enough to be victim of a shipwreck, but a Christian burial requires payment for a parson and gravediggers, as well as an undertaker, coffins and bearers. Who would pay the costs? They would not come from a parish where the dead men are total strangers.’
Alice realised she had given no thought to the practicalities of giving a proper burial to all the shipwreck victims laid out on the tiny beach, but she was determined not to admit it to this naval lieutenant who she felt was being particularly smug at pointing out the lack of thought she had given to arranging a decent burial for the bodies recovered from the wrecked ship.
But now the coast guards had arrived to carry the unconscious survivor to the rectory and she said defiantly, ‘I don’t think cost should be the first consideration when a disaster such as this occurs. If you and your men have nothing else to do once the girl is taken to the rectory, they can carry the bodies up to Trethevy church. My brother will ensure they are given a proper burial.’