His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was signalized by a terrific hurricane.  The storm came up Channel from the south-west.  A strange vessel of foreign rig went on the reefs of Harty Race, and was broken to pieces by the waves.  The only man who came ashore was the skipper.  A crowd was gathered on the sand, on horseback and on foot, women as well as men, drawn together by the tidings of a probable wreck.  Into their midst rushed the dripping stranger, and bounded suddenly upon the crupper of a young damsel who had ridden to the beach to see the sight.  He grasped her bridle, and shouting in some foreign tongue, urged the double-laden animal into full speed, and the horse naturally took his homeward way.  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.  He 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 at once succeeded to the management and control of the house, which thenceforth became a den and refuge of every lawless character along the coast.  All kinds of wild uproar and reckless revelry appalled the neighborhood day and night.  It was discovered that an organized band of smugglers, wreckers, and poachers made this house their rendezvous, and that “Cruel Coppinger” was their captain.  In those days, and in that far-away region, the peaceable inhabitants were unprotected.  There was not a single resident gentleman of property and weight in the entire district.  No revenue officer durst exercise vigilance west of the Tamar; and to put an end to all such surveillance at once, 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 vessels, one, a full-rigged schooner, soon became ominously conspicuous.  She was for long the chief terror of the Cornish Channel.  Her name was The Black Prince.  Once, with Coppinger on board, 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 on board The Black Prince, and obliged to save his life by enrolling himself in the crew.  In 1835, an old man of the age of ninety-seven related to Mr. Hawker that he had been so abducted, and after two years’ service had been ransomed by his friends with a large sum.  “And all,” said the old man very simply, “because I happened to see one man kill another, and they thought I would mention it.”