Up the creek
Philip Marsden is a romantic historian. This is the story of Falmouth from its early days until the end of the age of sail. He writes with great love of the town near which he has lived all his life, and keeps darting from its history into personal anecdotes about expeditions made in his old motor launch Liberty, sometimes in search of pirate treasure. It makes for an attractive book. Until the 17th century there was no town of Falmouth. Its present centre is still known as ‘the Moor’, a place where swampy land meets the tide; a bog, in fact. For this reason the original town was founded up creek at Penryn, and even when the Killigrews, the leading family of the region, first began to build round their house at Arwenack, the place was known as Smithwick.
