A Note on Coastguards

Penzance Promenade showing the Coastguard station on the left and a row of cottages on the right sometimes called Coastguards Row (Newlyn Archive).

By Ron Hogg

Anyone who knows the history of nineteenth century Newlyn will have gained the impression that the people were quite insular, rarely moving out of the streets where they were born and being reluctant even to cross the boundaries of the three districts that made up Newlyn at that time: Newlyn Town, Street‐an‐Nowan and Tolcarne.

There were exceptions to this: the fishermen travelled quite far from home although they tended to hug the coasts and stay on their fishing boats. Some men (very few from Newlyn) joined the gold rush; many of these came back although not all.

We make the case that mariners were different from the fishermen in that they were much more mobile both in their working life and in their domestic arrangements; and so were their wives and children.

This was also the case for coastguards.

Before the establishment of HM Coastguard in 1822, customs men were responsible for collecting taxes and apprehending smugglers; after that the new coastguards took on a proliferation of duties, including defence of the coasts, protection of the revenue, assisting vessels in distress, and performing duties to do with signals, telegraphs, buoys, lighthouses, wild birds and rare fish washed ashore.

The coastguard was a mariner who served on ships and on shore, and if he worked on shore, he was usually moved away from his home location for fear of collusion.

Most of the coastguards at Newlyn in the nineteenth century were born elsewhere. It is difficult to get exact information from the 1841 census because it simply discriminates between men born in or out of the county.

The 1851 census includes place of birth and also information regarding the superannuated naval personnel. Of the five coastguards in Newlyn in 1851, four were pensioners, all born in Paul while the fifth was a Boatman revenue Coastguard from Upminster, Essex. This seems to confirm our thesis that coastguards usually worked away from home; like Richard Cock, who built a fine house called Mount Vernon, they returned home as navy pensioners after they had retired.

In many places coastguards lived at coastguard stations, which were equipped with living quarters for married men but there was no such accommodation in Newlyn, so coastguards lived in the village. In 1851, there was a coastguard station at Mousehole and the families of six coastguards lived in cottages at Coastguards Row, presumably homes that went with the job. Of these six men, none came from Penwith although all were Cornish, being born at Devonport, Scilly, Landulph, Plymouth, Flushing and Polperro.

At Sennen, there was a ‘Cove’ coastguard station in 1841. By 1851, it was the home of seven coastguard families. They came from Herefordshire, Plymouth (2), Scilly, St Columbe, Gerrans and Polperro. One of the people living at the Sennen Coastguard station in 1851 was Blanche Courtney, the widowed sister‐in‐law of the CALH JOURNAL No 60 Autumn 35 widowed revenue coastguard John Courtney from St Columbe. With Blanche were her two children, William aged 10 and Robert aged 7 who were both born at Rye in Sussex.

One can only imagine the circumstances that had led to Blanche and her two young children seeking refuge with her dead husband’s brother.

Blanche Courtney, Fishwife (Newlyn Archive) Blanche Leah Tonkin from the Backside of Newlyn had married the carpenter, Robert Courtney in 1840. He and his brother John had lived ‘out the Green’ in Newlyn Town with their coastguard father William Courtney (b1781), who would have seen service during the Napoleonic wars.

The two Courtney sons became coastguards like their father and moved away from Newlyn. Robert and Blanche were sent to Rye in Sussex where their two sons William (b1841) and Robert (b1844) were born.

In 1847, Robert’s brother John Courtney returned to Newlyn to marry another Newlyn girl, also from a mariner family, Mary Bodinnar Hichens. We do not know what happened to them; perhaps Mary died in childbirth but by 1851 John was a widower.

The 1851 census lists John and his sister‐inlaw Blanche (both widowed) living at the coastguard station at Sennen. John remarried soon after this and was posted elsewhere so Blanche returned to her parents home on St Peter’s Hill at Newlyn and is recorded living there with her youngest son, Robert in 1861.

When Robert married Susan Harvey Nichols on September 7 1873, he listed his occupation as a mariner, showing the mariner tradition to have lasted at least three generations in that family.

Blanche did not remarry but became a wellknown fish hawker, living alone in Church Street. We do not know if she received a pension, but she made her living as a fishwife and she became a favourite model for the photographers and she appears in many of the photographs taken at the end of the nineteenth century.

If you are interested in Smuggling and the work of the coastguards read JC Tregarthen, The Smuggler’s Daughter (John Murray, 1932)

Here is a description of the new Riding Officer coming to Penzance.

‘Can you direct me to the Coastguard Station?’ ‘With pleasure, sir,’ replied Malachi James ‘keep upalong to the far end of the Market House, to where Penaluna's gingerbread‐nuts stall is, then turn downalong to the Globe Inn and past the smithy where ten to one, Jim Bodennar will be standing with his leather apern on. That will take 'ee down past Coulson's timber yard to the sea and the sandhills, and once theere, you'll see the Coastguard Station away towards New‐lyn with the flag of the Custom House flying over it.’