Introduction to the Lizard Peninsula

The Lizard and the Sea

The Lizard is the southernmost point of England and gets its weather from the sea. On a summer's day brilliant sunlight beats down on hot sandy beaches, but with little warning the sky can darken as a squall rushes in from the Atalantic, sweeping over the Lizard as if the peninsula was adrift in the open sea.

But the squalls disappear as quickly as they come. The sunlight returns, and the air is fresh and clear after the storm, the colours of the landscape vibrant and alive - a painter's paradise where windswept moors littered with stone-age tumuli exist side-by-side with tourist beaches and pebbled coves. Not so long ago smugglers used these coves to land their kegs of French brandywine.

Timeless maritime images never seem far away on the Lizard. From the cliff tops sailing yachts can be seen leisurely cruising the offing, and further out, if you train binoculars on the haze of the horizon, deep-sea cargo ships snap into view, their decks stacked high with containers, white water surging from their prows as they make for the open sea off Lizard Point. Old-fashioned romantic destinations come to mind. South America and Rio. Hong Kong via Panama. Suzie Wong and Shanghai Lil...

Plus ça change. People have always watched boats from these cliffs. During the war the blacked-out silhouettes of convoys slid by, hugging the coast until they passed Lizard Point and headed out into the Atlantic to take their chances with the U-boat wolf packs. In an earlier age, during the Napoleonic Wars, the enemy were the French privateers that swarmed out of Le Havre at word of an English convoy. In 1797 anyone strolling along the coastal path would have seen a convoy of sailing boats hove to off Lizard Point while a straggler caught up. The poet Coleridge, who was taking passage to Malta, reported that the commander of the convoy was furious, loosing off a cannon shot to concentrate the straggler's mind.

Probably few spectators witnessed that event, but in 1815 a crowd thronged the headlands to stare out at the sea. A British man-of-war fresh out of Falmouth Roads was passing by under full sail. It heeled over as it passed Lizard Point, changing tack to leave the safety of the coastal waters and begin a long reach out towards the South Atlantic. Its name, HMS Northumberland. Destination, the island of St Helena. Cargo, the Emperor Napoleon on his way to a grim and fatal incarceration.

Even on the calmest day there are telltale signs that hint at the darker aspects of the sea around the Lizard. The trace of white spume where the rock known as the Jay lurks just beneath the surface like a fang ready to gut an unwary sailing boat. A slight change in the wave pattern betrays the presence of the Caeverracks, a boulder field adjacent to Kennack Sands, invisible at high tide. But these are dangers only to smaller craft - at the extremities of the Lizard lie hazards that can bring down prey of any size. The Bees and Black Head. The minefield of rocks around Lizard Point. The Dales. Clidgas. Pen Ervan and Men Hyr.

Shipwrecks are everywhere along the Lizard coastline. Old schooners and barquentines, now mere hulks, silted up, buried deep where the waves cannot reach. Steamships from a more recent age, their holds now the home of conger and wrasse. Fishing vessels that have snagged their gear and capsized before the lines could be cut away. Even rusting submarines, their battered hulks encrusted with coral and bladderwrack, empty torpedo tubes now patrolled by crabs.

In the summer tourists snap up the books about ancient Cornish wrecks. No doubt they read them in the evenings in their campsite chalets or rented cottages. The heating turned up and drawn curtains providing a warm cocoon blocking out the noises of the night. Nice and safe as they scan the pages and examine the photographs of broken ships and drowned men and clifftop graves.