In 1907, Henry Shore, a retired Royal Navy commander who had served in Fowey with the Coastguard, published a collection of stories after he had interviewed the locals about smuggling. In Shore's fictional ‘society’, created, he said, to protect their identity, the men huddled together over their pints to reminisce about smuggling in the ‘old days’. Wherever there are tales of smuggling, there are tales of wrecking, and thus the story is told:

The ‘parson story’ has to be one of the most common tales found in the anthology of wrecking outside of the false-light narratives; it is ubiquitous in popular histories of Cornish shipwrecks. The earliest version thus far discovered is in James Silk Buckingham's autobiography, published in 1855, where he was told the story during a visit to St Mary's, Isles of Scilly. He was informed it was true, ‘occurring less than fifty years ago’. It is almost certain that the genesis of the tale is of an earlier provenance, but it is unknown where it may have originated. It is narrated, like many tales, as a true story, unique to the location of the teller. However, it is in fact a migratory tale. Versions are found from Padstow and Germoe in Cornwall to the Isles of Scilly to Pembrokeshire in Wales, and undoubtedly in many other places besides.