Nevertheless, there were also attacks on the south coast of Cornwall by North African pirates who would carry off men, women and children to slavery.  One event, on this day in 1760, is best described by Sabine Baring – Gould in ‘Cornish Characters And Strange Events’ (1899):-

‘An event occurred at Penzance in the year 1760 that deserves to be remembered. Great Britain had been engaged in the Seven Years War; and notwithstanding the successes of 1759, when Rodney bombarded Havre, Boscawen had routed and dispersed the Toulon fleet off Lagos, and Hawke had defeated the fleet of De Conflans near Quiberon, there was still a certain amount of alarm in the country, a dread of predatory incursions, and if this fear existed inland, it was most acute upon the coast.  On the night of the 29th, September,  Penzance was alarmed by the firing of guns, and soon after by the intelligence that a large ship of a strange appearance had run ashore near Newlyn. Half Penzance poured out in that direction in the grey of early morning.

But on reaching the strand they were panic-stricken to see on the ship, and drawn up on the beach, a number of ferocious – looking individuals with baggy trousers, and red fezes on their heads, and each armed with a scimitar, and with brass-mounted pistols stuck in their girdles. Thereupon the half of Penzance that had turned out now turned tail and made the best of their way back to the town, crying out that the Turks had landed and were intent on massacring the inhabitants of Penzance, plundering their houses, and carrying away their wives and children into captivity to become galley-slaves or to fill the harems of these Moslem monsters. 

A volunteer company was called out, where they found 172 men, who were surrounded, deprived of their weapons, and marched to a spacious building called ‘The Folly’, on the Western Green. As there were some of the captives who could speak the lingua franca, and there was here and there to be found a magistrate or an officer who had a limited knowledge of French, it was at last elicited from these men that they were the crew of an Algerine corsair, carrying twenty-four guns, from nine to six pounders.

The captain, believing himself to be in the Atlantic, somewhere about the latitude of Cadiz, had cheerily in the dark run his vessel into Mount's Bay, and was vastly surprised when she struck, and still more so when he found himself surrounded by Cornishmen and not by Spaniards. A cordon of volunteers was accordingly drawn up round ‘The Folly’ to prevent all intercourse, intelligence was conveyed to the Government, and orders were issued for troops to march from Plymouth so as to surround the whole district. After some days, the people of the town and neighbourhood were suffered to approach and contemplate the strangers. Their dress, long beards and moustaches, the dark complexion and glittering eyes, made them objects of curiosity.