No Quarter Shown

From the city of A Coruña to the Cabo Vilán is a ruggedly beautiful coast of long, lovely beaches, and cliffs that fall straight down to the waves. It's a lonely coast, though. Only the beaches are frequented. There are few villages and towns right on the coast. Especially after Laxe heading west. There the coast becomes more accidental and there are few places where boats can take shelter in a storm. The only towns on the coast there, Camelle, Arou, and Santa Mariña, are in sheltered coves where small boats could be brought ashore, or where a sea wall could be built to further shelter the cove. From Santa Mariña to Cabo Vilán, and down around the corner of the map to Camariñas there are no settlements. The coast was too rough for our ancestors to even think about it. Upon that coast the storms from the Atlantic have always battered their hardest and has made it difficult for fishermen to ply their trade. That is the Costa da Morte, the Coast of Death.

The entire Costa da Morte actually stretches from Malpica to Cabo Finisterre. The name comes from the danger posed by storms and currents to boats and ships that pass by there. Since Roman times more than nine hundred ships have gone down along that coast, from fishing vessels to cargo ships. Some remain more present in people's collective memories than others. There was an English ship in 1830 (some say 1850) headed for the Antilles that tried to find shelter from a storm one night. The ship broke up on the rocks at Laxe and only the captain and a sailor survived. Sixteen people died, including the captain's wife and twelve-year-old son. The bodies were washed ashore the next day, but the priest, a rabid Catholic, denied them burial in the cemetery because they were Protestant heretics. So, the sailors were buried nearby by the neighbors, and the wife and son were buried in the garden of a householder who lived next to the church. For many years the captain came every year to visit his loved ones. The tomb is still there.

Another shipwreck, in Camelle in 1927, was not as tragic and more lucrative for the town. It was a ship carrying cargo that ran aground and had a hole banged in its side. No one died and the captain thought the ship could be saved, but it couldn't. As the days passed and the decision was debated, some of the cargo left through the hole. Some left voluntarily, carried by the tide, other left with a little human help. At that time Camelle was a very isolated community, that lived mostly towards the sea. The road was not much more than a cart track, and cars very rare. The passengers were evacuated and the captain remained behind, keeping guard over the wreck. But he had to call in help from the Civil Guard. The ship was loaded with champagne, rich fabrics, medicines, machinery, flour, and cans of what seemed to be white paint. At least that's what the neighbors who found them thought. They couldn't read the French on the labels, so when they opened one and saw there was a viscous white liquid in it, they assumed it was white paint. Up till then they had used whitewash for their houses. 

So they painted some of their houses with it, and the first day the sun came out afterwards, the flies went straight for the feast. It was a fly's paradise. It wasn't paint, it was condensed milk, something the townspeople had never seen yet. Some of the present-day townspeople say that was a lie invented to showcase the backwardness of the area in those days. Others say it's true and that it happened to their grandparents. I suppose it depends on whom you believe.

The guards on board also had a problem. They couldn't leave the ship for fear the townspeople would finish lifting everything. But they needed fresh water. So, they used the champagne in the hold in its absence. Let's just say the company that had chartered the ship got less than half its cargo back.

Another shipwreck, one that still lives in our collective memory as a part of the history of our beautifully dangerous coast, is that of the training ship, the Serpent. One hundred twenty-five years ago tonight, in 1890, during a gale that made it impossible to discern the dark land from the dark sea, that ship went aground on Punta do Boi, between Cabo Vilán and Arou. It was a training ship headed for Sierra Leone and had had difficult weather since leaving Plymouth. As it approached Cabo Vilán, through the rough seas and high wind no one could see the feeble light of the tiny lighthouse at Vilán. The present lighthouse, the oldest and most potent electric lighthouse of Spain, was still being constructed and only came into service in 1896, too late for the Serpent.

And so there was a navigational error made which brought the ship too close in to shore. When it reached the Punta do Boi, the unforgiving teeth of the rocks bit into the hull and stranded it. The captain ordered full throttle on the engines to try to break away, but the Serpent was too impaled, and nothing could be done. The lifeboats were ordered, but the open hand of the furious waves smacked them into the water and washed men off the deck into the maws of the waiting sea. Men were drowned and smashed against the rocks. One hundred seventy-six souls were on the ship. Three survived. They, instead of being sent against the rocks, found a current that washed them up on the Praia de Trece, right next to the point. Frederick Gould, Edwin Burton, and Onesiphorus Luxon walked inland and found themselves at the village of Xaviña, whose residents took them in and brought them back to life. 

The next day, the villagers led by the priest (more of a Christian than the one at Laxe), went down to the scene of the tragedy and started dragging corpses up onto land. Over the next few days one hundred forty-two bodies were given back by the sea. The rest settled into the sea's bosom and were never found. The villagers buried them all right in front of the Punta do Boi, where their ship now lay, twelve meters beneath the waves. English soldiers later came and built a stone wall around the grave. And every year until 1950, on the tenth of November, a British man-of-war would anchor right offshore and fire off a salvo. In 1990 the grave was made decent once more, and since then a representative of the British government comes and pays his respect, along with local dignitaries.

We have been to the place, the Cemiterio dos Ingleses, a few times. The first time we went we were the only ones there, with the exception of a couple of leisurely fishermen. The last time was during a holiday week and there were too many tourists. I recommend going on an off-day during the winter. And if there are rough seas, better. The area has a beauty that takes one's breath away and is a fitting resting place.