Picture this. It's December of 1807. Right. You
are standing on a beach in Cornwall, and it's
just this absolute freezing, driving rain. Miserable
conditions. Oh, completely. The wind is howling
so loudly, like you can't even hear the person
screaming right next to you. Yeah. And just a
few dozen yards offshore, trapped on a treacherous
sandbank, is this massive Royal Navy frigate
called the Anson. The Anson. Right, a huge ship.
Yeah, a wooden Leviathan. And the waves are just
picking it up and smashing it down. The hull
is splintering. Terrifying. And you can clearly
see the faces of over 100 sailors clinging to
the rigging. They're freezing. They're exhausting
their last ounces of strength before they basically
just slip into the boiling surf and drown. It's
an absolute nightmare scenario. It is. And they
are so close you could practically throw a baseball
to them. But the ocean is so violent that no
boat can launch. You are completely... agonizingly
helpless. And you know, the really wild thing
is, it's not an isolated incident. Yeah, not
at all. That terrifying proximity to uncontrollable
natural violence is, well, it's the exact starting
point for our journey today. Because to understand
the people we're going to talk about, you have
to understand the crucible that forged them.
Exactly. You trace your finger down to the very
bottom left -hand corner of the map of England,
to this peninsula that just stabs into the wild
Atlantic Ocean. You're looking at Cornwall. Right.
And you are about to go on a deep dive into one
of the most rugged, isolated, and fusely independent
corners of the entire world. Yeah, usually, I
mean, history focuses on The centers of power,
right? The capital cities, the kings, the prime
ministers. The intersecting highways of commerce.
We always assume that's where the important story
is happening. But today we are completely bypassing
all of that. We are heading out to the absolute
ragged fringe. Which is exactly the mission of
this deep dive. We're going to explore the lives
of the lesser known personalities from this really
fascinating historical collection of biographical
sketches. From the book Cornish characters and
strange events. Right. We aren't looking at the
world famous Cornishmen. No Sir Humphry Davy
today. Exactly. No celebrity chemists. We're
plunging into the lives of the forgotten eccentric,
the rogue inventors, the outlaws, and just the
absolute individualists. We want to discover
what these highly original people can teach you
about human resilience, the tragedy of lost cultures,
and, you know, the bizarre outcomes of extreme
isolation. Because history isn't just treaties
and wars. Right. The real juice of history, the
stuff that tells you who a people truly are,
is found in the everyday weirdos. I love that
phrase, the everyday weirdos. It's true, though.
The people who absolutely refuse to fit into
the mold. But before we get to the people, we
really have to talk about the environment. We
do. Geography is, in almost every way, destiny.
The geography here is wild. The source describes
Cornwall as a place set apart from the rest of
England. People mainly by Celts. Yeah, and cut
off by these towering, dangerous coasts. When
you put human beings on a storm -swept peninsula
like that, you force them to adapt. And the Cornish
had to rely on two incredibly dangerous environments
to survive. We mentioned the chaotic, deadly
sea, obviously. But we also have to recognize
the dark, claustrophobic, and really perilous
life of the tin mines. I am so glad you wrote
up the mines, because we honestly cannot understand
the Cornish psychology without going underground.
It's fundamental. What was it actually like down
there? Well, imagine descending hundreds, sometimes
thousands of feet down a rickety wooden ladder.
Oh my god. No thanks. In pitch blackness, right.
Yeah. Lit only by a single candle stuck to your
helmet with a lump of clay. That sounds terrifying.
It is. The air is thick, it's hot, it's choked
with rock dust. But you know the most terrifying
part is? Right. Some of these tin and copper
mines, like the famous Bodalac mine, they literally
extended out underneath the ocean floor. Wait,
you mean the miners were working beneath the
sea? Precisely. The source talks about how miners
would report hearing the massive boulders rolling
along the seabed directly above their... Above
their heads, while they're trapped in a tiny
tunnel. Yes, during storms. One wrong strike
with a pickaxe, one structural failure, and the
entire Atlantic Ocean would just come pouring
in. That is... I can't even fathom that kind
of stress. Right. When your entire population
spends its days either battling the violent waves
on the surface, or carving through solid granite
in the suffocating dark beneath the waves, you
don't produce a soft, compliant people. No. You
forge a highly original, hearty, and honestly
sometimes profoundly fanatic race. It's the ultimate
dual crucible, the pressure of the ocean and
the pressure of the earth. But before we even
get to physical survival, we have to start with
the most fundamental barrier that separated the
Cornish from the rest of the country. The linguistic
barrier. Yeah. To really understand the Cornish
character, we have to look at how they communicated.
We're starting with the echo of a lost world.
The linguistic isolation, because the Cornish
language was a distinct Celtic tongue closely
related to Welsh and Breton. And we're going
to explore the literal death of this ancient
culture through a single remarkable individual.
A woman named Dolly Pentreth. Dolly Pentreth.
Her story is just, it's soaked in a kind of profound,
lonely poetry. It really is. She was born at
Jeffrey, married to Pentreth, and she lived in
the village of Mouse Hole. Which, by the way,
might be the greatest name for a coastal village
ever. Mouse Hole. I love it. But the most striking
detail about her early life is that she claimed
she didn't speak a single word of English until
she was past 20 years old. Which tells us an
immense amount about the socioeconomic landscape
of Cornwall in the early 18th century. Right,
because by this time, English was aggressively
encroaching. It was the language of the gentry,
of the law, the broader economy. But down in
those tight -knit, isolated fishing communities,
Cornish was still the absolute bedrock of daily
life. It was like a protective bubble. Exactly.
As a 12 -year -old girl, she would be sent to
the market in Penzance to sell fish. And the
text notes, she did it entirely in the Cornish
tongue. She'd just stand there with her fish,
shouting out prices, haggling, bantering. And
everyone around her, even the local upper classes,
understood her perfectly. It was a vibrant, living
language of commerce. But then we see the insidious
mechanics of what linguists call language death.
Because it rarely happens overnight, does it?
No, it's a slow suffocation. English became the
necessary tool for upward mobility. If you wanted
a job outside the village, or if you needed to
deal with the government, you had to speak English.
So parents naturally stopped teaching Cornish
to their children. Yes, they viewed it as a handicap.
And suddenly, within a single generation, the
linguistic ecosystem collapsed. Which leaves
Dolly entirely stranded. As she grows older,
the language literally evaporates around her.
Until she becomes famous in her old age simply
for being the last native speaker of Cornish.
There is this amazing, slightly combative anecdote
about a man named Daines Barrington who visits
her in 1768. Right, Daines Barrington. He was
a prominent antiquarian from London. And he heard
rumors, right? He had. The intellectual circles
in the capital had heard rumors that the Cornish
language wasn't completely extinct yet. So he's
essentially on a fact -finding mission. Traveling
to the very edges of the map to capture a dying
specimen. And his guide... basically preps him
for disappointment. He's like, look, there's
really no one left except this one old woman
in Mousehole. So Barrington goes down there,
and he decides to play a little psychological
trick. He doesn't just ask her to speak the language.
He introduces himself by saying he has laid a
wager, a bet, that no one in Cornwall can actually
converse in the old tongue anymore. A remarkably
provocative way to introduce yourself to a proud,
fiercely independent, elderly woman. Who has
survived a lifetime of hard labor, no less. Exactly.
And it backfires brilliantly. She completely
goes off on - She scolds him in an angry tone
for two or three minutes straight. An absolute
torrent of cornish. Barrington actually notes
in his records that the language sounded very
much like Welsh. But here is the context that
makes it hilarious. The guide had previously
warned Barrington about Dolly. Right. He told
him that whenever he went to buy fish from her
and didn't offer a fair price, she would grumble
at him in this unknown tongue. So she wasn't
reciting poetry or delivering a high -minded
historical speech for the antiquarian. No. She
was basically unleashing her premium, top -tier
fish haggling curses on this fancy London gentleman.
She just gave him both barrels. It is deeply
amusing, but you know, if we peel back the humor,
it reveals a profound tragedy. It does. Consider
the psychological weight this woman carried every
single day. Imagine being the absolute final
vessel of an entire linguistic history. Every
single idiom, every cultural inside joke, every
nuance of how her ancestors categorized the stars,
the weather, the sea, it was all locked inside
her mind. and there is no one left on the planet
to share it with in its pure native form. The
isolation must have been deafening. Okay, let's
unpack that. It's hard to wrap our modern minds
around. Imagine being the very last person on
earth who remembers how to use the internet.
That's a great analogy. Or like imagine you are
the last person alive who knows the melody to
a beautiful complex song. You can hum it to yourself,
but no one will ever sing the harmony with you.
You can't collaborate. You can't banter. You
can just echo. It forces a total internal retreat.
Because language is the architecture of our shared
reality. When you lose the language, the building
collapses. You become an island of one. And the
author of our source material poses a very interesting
hypothesis. He suggests that when the Cornish
language finally died with Dolly Pentreith. Who
lived to be 87, by the way. Right, despite her
epitaph erroneously claiming she was 102. Yeah.
But the author suggests that the historic isolation
of the Cornish people died with the language.
Which is a bold claim. And her epitaph is brilliant,
written by Mr. Thompson. It reads, Not in the
church, with people great and high, but in the
churchyard doth old Dolly lie. Even in death
she's an outsider. Oh, and we can't forget the
anecdote about her hiding a naval deserter in
her large chimney to save him from the authorities.
Ah, yes. Another classic example of her anti
-authoritarian streak. But I have a huge question
about this whole concept of the culture dying.
Because reading further into the lives of these
people, it really feels like the death of the
language didn't kill the corner spirit at all.
How do you mean? Well, the language faded, yes.
They assimilated linguistically. But that fierce
isolated independence didn't disappear. It's
like it just mutated. They stopped seeking linguistic
separation and started seeking extreme physical
and mental independence instead. Exactly. The
rugged landscape became a blank canvas for a
new type of individualist. That is an excellent
transition and a very accurate reading of the
psychology. When the linguistic barrier fell,
the physical environment remained. And the environment
provided ample opportunity for radical self -reliance.
Which brings us to a man who took that concept
of the internal retreat and manifested it into
solid rock. Daniel Gumm. Daniel Gumm, the stonecutter.
This guy is fascinating. He was born in Lincolnhorn
and he was bred to his trade as a stonecutter.
He spent his days hitting granite with steel.
And the author specifically notes that Daniel
possessed a reserve that exceeded what is observable
in persons. Which is a very polite 18th century
way of saying he was staggeringly introverted.
He just wanted to be left alone. He clearly found
the noise, the gossip, and the endless social
contracts of regular village life completely
intolerable. But he wasn't simple -minded. On
the contrary, he had a burning, almost obsessive
intellect. He was obsessed with reading, with
mathematics, and with astronomy. Right. And he
has a very practical problem. Reading and studying
require time and peace. But living in a village
requires paying rent and paying taxes. Which
requires working constantly. So Daniel does some
mental math and decides to just nope out of society
completely. He moves his family into a cave.
But we must specify the location. It wasn't just
a hole in a hill. He moved near a bizarre natural
geological formation known as the Cheese Ring.
The Cheese Ring, what a name. It's a massive
towering stack of granite slabs that look like
they're defying gravity, resting on the wild
Bodmin Moor. It is a harsh, windblasted, utterly
desolate place. And he decides the freezing granite
is better company than the tax collector. But
what he does with that cave is what elevates
him from a mere hermit to a legend. He doesn't
just sit in the dirt eating roots. He turns his
physical isolation into a monastic devotion to
the intellect. He essentially carves a university
into the rock. Exactly. He used his skills as
a stonecutter to meticulously carve Euclid's
geometric diagrams directly into the granite
slabs that formed the roof and walls of his home.
He transformed his shelter into a permanent textbook.
He would sit up there on the moors far away from
the petty concerns of the town, tracing the stars
and solving complex mathematical equations. OK,
here's where it gets really interesting. But
I have to push back a little bit on the romanticism
here. Oh. Yeah, we look back at Daniel Gumm and
we frame him as this visionary off -grid philosopher
communing with the cosmos. But let's be honest.
You don't buy it. Wasn't he basically the 18th
century equivalent of a guy moving into a van
to dodge his taxes? I mean, I want to read math
and not pay rent. is a highly relatable mood,
but is it genius or is it just weaponized stubbornness?
I think it's a synthesis of both, and it's crucial
to understand how the specific environment of
Cornwall enabled this. Because he couldn't do
this in London. Exactly. In a highly manicured,
heavily governed environment, say, a bustling
city or a heavily farmed aristocratic county,
a man like Gum would not be tolerated. You'd
be arrested for vagrancy. Institutionalized or
forced into a workhouse, because you can't just
claim a piece of the King's land and stop paying
taxes. Right, but the Cornish Moors provided
a sanctuary for radical nonconformity. The land
was so wild, so difficult to police, and so inherently
hostile, that if a man had the physical grit
to survive out there, the authorities generally
left him alone. The landscape tolerated his eccentricity.
It allowed him to carve out an entirely bespoke
existence based purely on his own internal logic.
Grit is absolutely the operative word here. Daniel
Gumm represents a totally static kind of grit.
He plants himself in a rock and doesn't move.
But if we want to talk about grit manifesting
in sheer kinetic energy. We have to look at the
complete opposite end of the physical spectrum.
We have to talk about Mary Kellinac. The marathon
woman of the 19th century. Her story defies physiological
logic. It really does. Okay, so Mary was born
in Pole Parish, which amazingly is the exact
same parish as Deli Pantry. Born on Christmas
Day in 1766. Right. Now, let's fast forward an
entire lifetime. It is 1851. Mary is 84 years
old. 84. And London is hosting the Great Exhibition.
We really need to contextualize the great exhibition
for the listener. This was the absolute pinnacle
of the Victorian era. Housed in the magnificent
Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. It was a global
showcase of the wonders of industry, culture,
and empire. The entire country was gripped by
exhibition fever. Everyone wanted to see it.
Including Mary. She is an 84 year old fish wife
living in extreme poverty at the very edge of
the map. And she decides she wants to see the
Crystal Palace. A completely understandable desire,
but practically economically and physically impossible
for someone in her position. Oh, and not only
that, she decides she wants to pay her personal
respects to the Lord Mayor of London. There were
no trains running directly from Penzance at that
time that she could afford. Impossible for anyone
else. But Mary operates on that Cornish operating
system we've been talking about. She doesn't
have money for a carriage. So she just starts
walking. At 84 years of age. Yes. She walks the
entire distance from Penzance to London. For
context, that is nearly 300 miles. Think about
the physical mechanics of that. Walking on unpaved
19th century roads, through the mud, in all weather,
sleeping rough or in cheap taverns. And the most
astonishing detail. She walked those 300 miles
carrying a basket on her head. Carrying loads
on the head was a traditional method for Cornish
fishwives to transport their catch up at the
steep coastal cliffs. It builds incredible core
strength and posture. But doing it for 300 miles
is an astonishing feat of biomechanics and endurance.
And she was incredibly proud of how she did it.
The historical record emphasizes that as she
made this long trek, Word started to spread about
this elderly woman making a pilgrimage. People
offered her rides in their carts. They offered
her a seat in a carriage. And she famously refused
all physical assistance. She would accept financial
donations to keep herself fed, but she absolutely
insisted on covering every single inch of that
ground on her own two feet. She essentially turned
her journey into an extreme athletic performance
powered entirely by an iron will. She's like
the ultimate extreme sports athlete, but powered
entirely by stubbornness rather than energy gels.
And the payoff is fantastic. She actually makes
it to London. She arrives at the mansion house.
And because her story had preceded her, she gets
an actual audience. He walks into the justice
room. And Lord Mayor looked at her and says,
well, I understand, Mrs. Kalanick, you have come
to see me. And her response is a master class
in pragmatic charm. It is. She doesn't balance
rape. She says, yes, God bless you. I never was
in such a place before as this. I have come up
asking for a small sum of money. I am, sir. What's
brilliant about that exchange is her shrewdness.
She wasn't overawed by the pomp and circumstance
of London authorities. She knew exactly what
she had accomplished. She knew she had become
a public spectacle, a living legend of stamina.
And she immediately pragmatically leveraged that
fame to secure the cash she needed for her journey
home. She had such humor and self -awareness
about the whole thing. And when they asked her
what her ultimate goal was, now that she had
seen the wonders of London, she just said she
wanted to return to Cornwall to end her days.
And she wanted to be buried right next to old
Dolly Pentreith. Which perfectly ties these first
three figures together. Dolly, Daniel, and Mary.
They are all linked by this invisible thread
of defiance. Daniel Gumm and Mary Kellenac are
opposites in motion. One paralyzed by choice,
the other in relentless transit. But psychologically
they are twins. They possess a determination
that looks like sheer madness from the outside
but follows a perfectly rigid internal logic.
They do not care what the consensus of society
is. They are unbothered by normal human constraints.
But this raises a huge question. Where does that
specific unyielding grit actually come from?
Because it can't just be something in the water.
It wasn't just a cultural quirk or a genetic
accident. If we look at the historical mechanisms
of the region, this extreme stubbornness was
an evolutionary requirement. A survival mechanism.
Actively demanded by their deadliest, most constant
neighbor, the sea. The ocean. We touched on it
in the beginning, but we really need to dive
into how the ocean shaped these people. The Atlantic
Ocean surrounding Cornwall is not a benign picturesque
backdrop. It was an active antagonist. It was
a site of incredible naval cruelty, immense physical
demands, and ultimately the catalyst for world
-changing mechanical innovation. The sea forced
the Cornish to adapt, or it killed them. Okay,
let's explore the cruelty first, because the
story of a young man named Robert Jeffrey is
one of the most harrowing accounts in this entire
collection. It vividly illustrates exactly how
brutal the maritime world of the early 19th century
could be. Jeffrey was a young, ordinary guy from
the fishing village of Pulpero, and he became
an impressed sailor. We must clarify the mechanics
of impressment for the listener, because it sounds
like a euphemism, but it was a horrifying reality.
It was essentially legalized abduction. Entirely
legal, justified by the state's desperate need
for manpower during the endless naval wars with
France. Press gangs, armed groups of sailors,
would literally roam the coastal towns of Cornwall,
bust into taverns or homes, kidnap able -bodied
men, and force them onto warships. You could
be a fisherman coming home to your family and
the next morning you are trapped on a frigate
bound for the West Indies subjected to military
discipline. And that is exactly what happens
at Robert Jeffrey. He is kidnapped from his life
and forced to serve on a naval vessel commanded
by a man named Captain Lake. And Jeffrey, probably
miserable and resentful, makes a mistake. He
steals some beer. Now naval discipline was notoriously,
horribly harsh. Floggings with the cat -o -nine
tales were routine for minor infractions. But
Captain Lake's punishment for the stolen beer
goes completely off the rails of even 19th century
military justice. He decides to play God. He
orders Jeffrey to be marooned. He literally dumps
him on an island called Sombrero. And Sombrero
is not some lush tropical paradise with coconut
trees and fresh springs. No. It is a barren,
desolate rock in the West Indies. There is no
water. There is no food. There is no shelter.
Just baking relentless sun and sharp stone. Captain
Lake literally sails away and leaves this kid
to die of dehydration and exposure. It is an
act of breathtaking callousness. The psychology
of an officer who can look a young man in the
eye, drop him on a dead rock and go down to his
cabin for dinner is chilling. Lake assumed the
sea and the sun would execute Jeffrey for him.
And yet Jeffrey survives. It defies belief. He
survives for over a week on this blazing rock.
Imagine the physical and mental torment. The
text details how he stayed alive by eating raw
limpets he pried off the rocks. When it rained
he would desperately lick the moisture out of
the tiny crevices in the stone. He refused to
give up. And miraculously, after eight days,
an American schooner spots him, rescues him,
and takes him to Massachusetts. But the narrative
doesn't end with his rescue. The aftermath is
equally fascinating from a societal perspective.
Because eventually the story of this marooning
leaks back across the Atlantic to England. And
the public outcry is absolutely massive. It goes
viral, essentially. It gets picked up by William
Cobbett's political register, which was one of
the major reformist anti -establishment publications
of the era. The public is so outraged by this
abuse of power that the Admiralty is forced to
act. The pressure builds until Captain Lake is
actually court -martialed and dismissed from
the Royal Navy. Which was incredibly rare. For
a high -ranking naval officer to be held accountable
and stripped of his rank for the mistreatment
of a common kidnapped sailor demonstrates just
how deeply this story struck a nerve. But Jeffrey's
survival itself is the ultimate testament to
that innate Cornish hardiness. He was dropped
onto an anvil and he simply refused to break.
He beat the sea at its own cruel game. He endured.
But the sea didn't just test their passive endurance.
It tested their pure active physical strength.
And nobody exemplifies the sheer muscular power
required by this environment better than Anne
Glanville. Anne Glanville of Seltash, a truly
formidable figure who took the demands of the
water and turned them into a display of absolute
dominance. Formidable is putting it mildly. Anne
was a married woman whose husband fell severely
ill, leaving her as the sole economic provider
for a large family. Now, in a lot of places in
the 19th century, a woman in that position faced
absolute destitution. The workhouse was usually
the only option. But Anne lived in Saltash, on
the River Tamar. She knew the water, so she becomes
a waterman, a champion rower. We really need
to break down the physical mechanics of what
she did for a living to truly appreciate her
strength. The source notes that she would regularly
ferry 70 to 80 bags of corn down the river alone.
Let's do the math on that. A standard bag of
corn in that era could weigh anywhere from 100
to over 150 pounds. Let's be conservative and
say 100 pounds. 80 dags is 8 ,000 pounds, four
tons of cargo. Four tons of dead weight loaded
into a heavy deep keeled wooden boat. And she
had to propel that mass using only long wooden
oars fighting against the complex tidal currents
of the river estuary. The sheer biomechanical
muscularity, the cardiovascular stamina required
to move that kind of weight day in and day out,
is almost difficult for a modern person to comprehend.
She was an engine of human flesh. She was a powerhouse.
Yeah. But here's what I love about Anne Glanville.
She didn't just grind out a miserable survival.
No, she took this immense strength and she turned
it into an art form. She formed a rowing crew
made up entirely of saltash women. They dressed
in these matching, highly coordinated outfits.
White frocks with pink sashes. And they started
entering the local regattas. Competing in the
four Ord gig races, which were fiercely contested,
highly prestigious events in the coastal communities.
And they didn't just beat the other women's crews.
They famously entered against the top male crews,
the strongest sailors and fishermen in the region,
and they beat them. They became so dominant that
they actually traveled across the English Channel
to Lahav. in France and absolutely smoked the
French champion teams. They were international
superstars of rowing. What stands out to you
about her character beyond the physical accomplishments?
Honestly, it's a tiny quote used by one of her
neighbors to describe her character to the historian.
Oh, the farthing quote. Yes. The neighbor said
Anne was honest to a farthing, clean as a smelt.
I just love the poetry of that. It perfectly
captures this idea of someone who is tough as
nails, physically intimidating enough to row
four tons of corn, but deeply principled. Meticulously
proud and universally respected. She wasn't brutalized
or degraded by the hard labor. She was dignified
by it. She harnessed the kinetic energy of the
sea and made it work for her. But the sea wasn't
always an antagonist you could just endure like
Jeffrey or overpower like Glanville. Often the
sea was overwhelmingly, instantaneously lethal.
And that lethal nature is what drove our next
figure, Henry Trengraus, to engineer a brilliant,
world -changing mechanical solution. Henry Trengraus.
Okay, this is a story where tragedy directly
sparks innovation. Henry lived in the town of
Halston. And to understand what he did, we have
to go back to that freezing December day in 1807
that we talked about at the very beginning of
the show, the wreck of the Anson. The Anson was
a 44 gun frigate, a massive ship. It ran aground
on a sand bank in Mounts Bay during a horrific
gale. And Henry is standing right there on the
beach. He is part of the helpless crowd watching
this nightmare unfold. And the specific horror
of the Anson wreck wasn't just that the ship
was being destroyed, it was the geography of
the wreck. The ship was stranded incredibly close
to the shore. It was perhaps only a hundred yards
out. But in a full Atlantic gale, that hundred
yards of boiling surf is an impassable wall.
Exactly. The waves are so violent that any rescue
boat launched from the beach is instantly flipped
and smashed. And the sailors on the ship are
trying to throw ropes to the shore. But the hurricane
force winds just blow the ropes right back in
their faces. Henry is standing there watching
over 100 men drown, listening to them scream.
Yeah. And there is absolutely nothing anyone
can do to bridge that tiny fatal gap. Most people.
If people would carry that trauma for the rest
of their lives and perhaps never look at the
ocean again, it would be a source of paralyzing
grief. But Trengrouse processes that trauma differently.
He internalizes the horror and converts it into
a structural engineering problem. He asks a vital,
practical question. If human muscle and thrown
ropes cannot penetrate the wind, what can? How
do we build a bridge of rope across a hurricane?
And his solution is absolutely brilliant. He
invents the life -saving rocket apparatus. Let's
explain the mechanics of how this apparatus actually
worked because it revolutionized maritime rescue.
Right. So he realizes that a heavy rope is too
thick to shoot and the wind catches it. So he
attaches a very thin, very light, incredibly
strong cord to the end of a specially designed
gunpowder rocket. The rocket has the aerodynamic
thrust to pierce right through the gale winds.
You aim it from the beach, fire the rocket over
the rigging of the wrecked ship. Once the freezing
sailors grab that light cord, what happens next?
The people on the beach use the light cord to
pull a much thicker, heavier rope across the
water. The sailors tie that heavy hazard to the
mast. And suddenly you have a zip line. Then
they use that heavy line to pull over a chair
or a breeches buoy, and they can pull the sailors
to the beach one by one, suspended above the
deadly waves. He also, by the way, invented an
early version of the cork life jacket to keep
them afloat if they fell in. He essentially dedicates
the rest of his waking life and his personal
fortune to perfecting this system so that what
he saw on the beach that day would never happen
again. And it worked. The physics were sound.
It eventually became a standard piece of life
saving equipment utilized by coast guards globally,
saving literally thousands upon thousands of
lives over the next century. But here's where
we must connect his story to the broader. often
tragic theme of how society treats its most vital
innovators. Yeah, this is the part that makes
me angry because Henry Trengrouse pours his own
money, his own time and his entire life into
developing, testing and lobbying for this apparatus.
He travels to London. He begs the Admiralty to
adopt it. And what is his reward for saving thousands
of lives? Almost nothing. Almost nothing. The
government and the maritime establishment are
incredibly slow to act. When they finally do
begin to adopt his methods, they offer him a
poultry sum. 50 pounds here, a diamond ring from
the Tsar of Russia there. Compensation that doesn't
even come close to covering the fortune he spent
on research and development. He dies impoverished,
leaving his family in financial ruin. The establishment
slowly adopts his lifesaving patch, but leaves
the man himself to fade into total obscurity.
It's a stark contrast to someone else mentioned
in the source material, Sir Goldsworthy Gurney.
Oh, the steam carriage guy. Yes. Gurney was another
Cornish man who invented the steam carriage.
He got a knighthood. He got fame. He got wealth
because his invention moved cargo and made money.
Trengrouse's invention only saved lives. The
profit motive versus the altruistic motive. Exactly.
Trengrouse is like the ultimate open source software
developer. He sees a fatal flaw in the system
that is getting people killed. He builds a software
patch that literally saves the entire network.
He hands it out to the world for free, begging
them to install it. And he dies completely broke
while the massive bureaucratic establishments
reap all the benefits. It raises an important
question, doesn't it? Why is it that society
so often fails to reward its most practical altruistic
saviors during their lifetimes? Why do we build
statues to generals who end lives, but bankrupt
the engineers who save them? I think it's because
guys like Trengrouts aren't businessmen. They're
obsessed with the fix, not the patent. His motivation
was the ghosts of the men on the Anson, not a
profit margin. He couldn't play the political
game. But you know, when you take a step back
and look at all these traits we've discussed?
The extreme self -alliance of Daniel Gumm, the
physical toughness of Mary Kellenac and Anne
Glanville, the unrewarded engineering brilliance
of Henry Trangros. Yes. When you combine all
of that and you add in this constant grinding
battle against a hostile environment and a government
that either kidnaps you for the Navy, ignores
your inventions, or taxes you into poverty. You
get a very specific very potent psychological
mix. You get a population that over generations
learns to completely reject conventional centralized
authority. Because from their perspective, what
has London or the Crown ever done for them except
extract blood and money? Exactly. The extreme
isolation breeds a fierce anti -authoritarian
streak. And in Cornwall, this rejection of the
crown took two very distinct, very dramatic forms.
One was a sort of organized, highly structured,
almost justified criminality. The other was a
literal messianic rebellion. Let's examine the
criminality first because it operates on a fascinating
moral axis. We have to talk about the Carters
of Prussia Cove. Specifically, John Carter. The
King of Prussia, which is just a top -tier criminal
moniker. It is a magnificent title. And how he
acquired it is quite telling of his personality.
As a young boy, he and his brothers were playing
soldiers. John forcefully claimed the title King
of Prussia for himself after Frederick the Great,
the brilliant military tactician. And the name
stuck so hard and his local influence grew so
vast that the actual geographical cove where
they operated was renamed Prussia Cove. It is
still called that on maps today. the ultimate
power of personal branding. So John and his brother
Harry are smugglers. This is the golden age of
Cornish smuggling. Tea, brandy, silk, tobacco.
Bringing it in from France to avoid the exorbitant
government taxes. But the Carters aren't your
typical cup throat rum soaked pirates. Not at
all. The source describes them as brilliant.
highly organized logisticians who defrauded the
King's revenue on a massive industrial scale.
Yet they were deeply fiercely pious men. That's
the part that blows my mind. Harry Carter, especially,
was a devout, highly religious man who literally
held church services for his crew on Sundays.
It's a fascinating study in cognitive dissonance.
Or, perhaps more accurately, it shows how isolated
communities construct their own morality. The
Carters saw absolutely no contradiction between
deeply held religious ethics and systematically
robbing the national exchequer. In their minds,
the massive taxes imposed by a distant parliament
in London were fundamentally unjust. Therefore,
evading those taxes was not a sin against God.
It was merely a localized, aggressive, free trade
policy. They are like a Robin Hood mafia that
pauses to say grace and read scripture before
pulling off a massive, highly coordinated heist.
And my favorite anecdote in this entire book
perfectly illustrates the bizarre, rigid moral
code of the King of Prussia. The Penzance excise
store raid. Yes. Okay, so picture this. The excise
officers, the government customs agents, managed
to pull off a major bust. They intercept a huge
cargo of the Carter's smuggled goods. They confiscate
it, transport it to Penzance, and they lock it
all up inside the heavily fortified government
excise store. This represents a massive financial
blow to the Carter operation, a total loss of
inventory. Right. So what does John Carter do?
He doesn't just write it off. He organizes a
night raid. He and his men ride to Penzance.
They bring fro bars and heavy tools. And under
the cover of darkness, they physically break
into this fortified government building. It is
incredibly brazen. But the crucial detail is
what they do once they are inside the vault.
This is the incredible part. They don't just
loot the place blind. They are standing in a
warehouse filled with confiscated goods from
all sorts of smugglers. But they meticulously
go through the inventory. They find exactly the
goods that were confiscated from them, they carry
those specific barrels and crates out, and they
leave everything else completely untouched. They
don't take a single ounce of tea or brandy that
belongs to the Crown or to a rival smuggler.
It requires a staggering level of discipline
and a highly sophisticated internal tracking
system. Exactly. And the punchline is the next
morning. The government authorities walk in,
they see the breach doors, they look at the highly
specific, curated nature of the missing inventory,
and they know exactly who did it. The officers
literally say out loud John Carter has been here
because of his strict honor among thieves He
only took back what he considered rightfully
his. It perfectly encapsulates the dark complex
side of that Cornish isolation mindset. When
a person or an entire community is completely
disconnected from the consensus of wider society,
they are forced to invent their own rules. They
develop a strict internal moral code that makes
perfect sense to them, even if it is technically
illegal. For the Carters, it was a code of honest
smuggling. But when that detachment from reality
goes even further, when a mind completely severs
its tether to both the law and to reality, it
can result in absolute tragedy. Which brings
us to the final and undoubtedly the darkest story
in our deep dive today. We were looking at the
mechanics of radicalization in an isolated mind.
We're talking about John Nichols Tom. Now, John
Nichols Tom starts out as a relatively normal
guy. He was born in St. Column, the son of a
landlord. He was educated. He grew up and he
became a spear merchant running a business in
Truro. But the source notes that his mother had
a history of severe mental instability. She was
locally nicknamed Cracked Cherry. And at some
point, Tom loses his mind. And it's not a quiet
internal breakdown. It is a spectacular, constantly
escalating public detachment from reality. He
begins to assume grand, fictitious identities.
It starts with aesthetic changes affecting unusual,
highly theatrical dress, growing his hair and
beard out. Then he starts claiming titles. Yeah.
He claims to be the Knight of Malta. When that
isn't enough, he declares himself the King of
Jerusalem. Then he claims he is the rightful
Earl of Devon and campaigns for Parliament on
that basis. He's just constantly leveling up
his delusions of grandeur. And finally, he crosses
the ultimate psychological threshold. He claims
to be the Savior, the Messiah. But he isn't just
wandering around blessing people. He mixes this
extreme religious messianic complex with fiery,
highly radical political oratory. Now, we need
to be clear here. We're just reporting what the
text says impartially, but this is the 1830s.
The text describes how he goes around delivering
these incredibly potent speeches denouncing the
church, denouncing the wealthy aristocracy and
preaching absolute equality and the forced redistribution
of wealth. And the profound tragedy is people
actually listen to him. We must understand why
they listened. Tom eventually relocated to Kent
where he began preaching to populations of agricultural
laborers. These people were living in desperate
grinding poverty. They were subjected to harsh
new poor laws. They were deeply resentful of
the wealthy landowning class and they were furious
at the heavy ties they were forced to pay to
the church just to survive. So they were a powder
keg of legitimate socioeconomic grievance. Precisely.
and Tom was undeniably charismatic. He weaponized
their very real, very legitimate pain using his
own delusions of divine authority. He told them
that God was on their side, that he was God,
and that he would lead them to an earthly paradise
where they would own the land they worked. And
it culminates in the horrific tragedy of Boston
Wood in May of 1838. Tom gathers this band of
deeply devoted, heavily radicalized followers.
They are marching through the countryside. The
local authorities are terrified, so they send
a constable named Mears to arrest Tom. And Tom
simply pulls out a pistol and shoots the constable
dead. Which crosses the Rubicon from political
agitation into armed rebellion. The military
is immediately called in. A detachment of soldiers
arrives. There is a literal bloody battle in
the woods. Tom, leading his followers, charges
the soldiers and shoots a lieutenant. The soldiers
open fire. Tom is killed instantly, along with
several of his followers. It's an absolute massacre.
And perhaps the most chilling detail from the
historical source is the psychological aftermath
among the survivors. His followers were so utterly
devoted to him, their minds have been so completely
pulled into his distorted reality that even after
they saw him shot dead by military muskets, they
expected him to rise from the dead. Women were
purportedly washing his wounds with water, waiting
for his resurrection. So how do we process John
Nichols, Tom? Where is the exact line between
a charismatic political visionary fighting for
the poor and a dangerous apocalyptic cult leader?
Because in the beginning, before the religious
fanaticism took completely over, people were
clearly listening to his political ideas about
wealth and equality. It is a critical distinction.
The line is crossed when the message ceases to
be about the liberation and empowerment of the
people and becomes entirely about the absolute
aggrandizement of the leader. Tom's initial rhetoric
tapped into real pain. But by declaring himself
the messiah, he demanded the total suspension
of his followers' critical thinking. He didn't
want citizens. He wanted zealots. Exactly. He
wasn't giving them political tools to improve
their lives. He was demanding absolute, unquestioning
obedience to his delusions. And in an isolated,
impoverished, desperate community, that kind
of absolute certainty, a man who tells you he
is God and he will fix everything, is incredibly
seductive and incredibly dangerous. It's the
ultimate terrifying extreme of the independent
spirit we've been discussing. It is a mind that
secedes not just from the laws of society, but
from the laws of reality itself. That is a chilling
way to put it. Succeeding from reality itself.
And honestly, it brings us full circle on this
entire journey. It really does. We have traveled
from the linguistic isolation of Dolly Pentreth,
an old woman scolding a gentleman in a dead tongue.
We looked at Daniel Gumm, a man who literally
carved geometry into a cave wall to escape society.
We walked 300 miles with an 84 -year -old woman
carrying a basket. We survived a desert island
with Robert Jeffrey, rode four tons of corn with
Anne Glanville, and watched Henry Trengraus invent
a miracle rocket only to be forgotten. We watched
the King of Prussia politely rob the government.
And we watched a mad messiah lead desperate men
to their deaths in a wood. Why should you, the
listener, care about these forgotten ghosts of
Cornwall today? because they represent the absolute
ultimate expression of living life on your own
terms. In a modern world where we all increasingly
consume the exact same media, where we eat the
same globalized foods, wear the same mass -produced
clothes, and speak the exact same cultural language,
these Cornish eccentrics challenge you to ask
a terrifying question. What makes you distinct?
If you were stripped of the safety and the consensus
of modern society, what weird, wonderful, or
perhaps terrifying shape would your character
take? Consider this as a final thought to mull
over long after we finish. The geographic and
cultural isolation that forged these incredible,
bizarre personalities, the bad roads, the impenetrable
language, the terror of the sea, the darkness
of the mines, has been almost entirely erased
by modern technology. Today we can travel to
Cornwall in a few comfortable hours on a train.
We are instantly, constantly connected to the
hive mind of the internet. We must ask ourselves,
are we losing the cultural mutations that drive
human evolution? Will the hyper -connected, synchronized,
deeply monitored world of today ever allow for
a Daniel Gumm or a Dolly Pantryth to exist again?
Or have we, in our relentless pursuit of a frictionless,
unified global society, engineered true raw eccentricity
out of the human race forever? That is a thought
that is going to stick with me for a very long
time. Are we two connected to be truly unique?
Thank you for coming on this deep dive into the
source material with us. I really encourage you
to go look for the strange, the wonderful, and
the unexplainable characters hidden in your own
local history. Because when you look away from
the center of the map, when you trace your finger
back down to the edge where the lines just stop,
that's where the real story begins.