The advent of Coppinger upon the coast at Welcombe Mouth, near where Devon and Cornwall join, was dramatic. The story tells how a strange vessel went to pieces on the reefs and how only one person escaped with his life, in the midst of a howling tempest. This was the skipper, a Dane named Coppinger. On the beach, on foot and on horseback, was a crowd, waiting, in the usual Cornish way, for any wreck of the sea that might be thrown up. Into the midst of them, like some sea-monster, dashed this sole survivor, and bounded suddenly upon the crupper of a young damsel who had ridden to the shore to see the sight. He grasped her bridle, and, shouting in a foreign tongue, urged the doubly-laden animal to full speed, and the horse naturally took his usual way home. The damsel was Miss Dinah Hamlyn. The stranger descended at her father’s door and lifted her off her saddle. He then announced himself as a Dane, named Coppinger, and took his place at the family board and there remained until he had secured the affections and hand of Dinah. The father died, and Coppinger succeeded to the management and control of the house, which thenceforward became the refuge of every lawless character along the coast. All kinds of wild uproar and reckless revelry appalled the neighbourhood, night and day. It was discovered that an organised band of smugglers, wreckers, and poachers made this house their rendezvous, and that “Cruel Coppinger” was their captain. In those times no revenue officer durst exercise vigilance west of the Tamar, and, to put an end at once to all such surveillance, the head of a gauger was chopped off by one of Coppinger’s gang, on the gunwale of a boat. Strange vessels began to appear at regular intervals on the coast, and signals were flashed from the headlands, to lead them into the safest creek or cove. Amongst these, one, a full-rigged schooner, soon became ominously conspicuous. She was for long the terror of those shores, and her name was the _Black Prince_. Once, with Coppinger aboard, she led a revenue cutter into an intricate channel near the Bull Rock, where, from knowledge of the bearings, the _Black Prince_ escaped scathless, while the King’s vessel perished with all on board. In those times, if any landsman became obnoxious to Coppinger’s men, he was seized and carried aboard the _Black Prince_, and obliged to save his life by enrolling himself as one of the crew. Amid such practices, ill-gotten gold began to accrue to Coppinger. At one time he had enough money to purchase a freehold farm bordering on the sea. When the day of transfer came, he and one of his followers appeared before the lawyer and paid the money in dollars, ducats, doubloons, and pistoles. The lawyer objected, but Coppinger, with an oath, bade him take that or none.