On The Brink

The nostalgic and heart-warming account of the fortunes of G. C. Fox & Co, a Cornish family shipping business through eight generations.

Peppered with anecdotes, On the Brink is a rich and personal insight into the life and times of the Fox family, whose success in Cornwall and beyond spanned across three centuries. Colourful stories from the author’s own experience of working within the business, along with historical reference, portray an intricate account of the contribution the Foxes made to the history of Falmouth. On the Brink is a diverse and winding collection of accounts and tales which brings alive the activities of the Foxes and the character of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Falmouth. ‘It is a book’, as one of the Falmouth pilots has opined, ‘which had to be written’.

From its beginnings in Fowey in the seventeenth century by members of the Quaker Fox family, G. C. Fox and Company earned an international reputation, which began with the merchant trade and diversified into the fishing industry and the ship agency business. Over a period of 200 years they became vice or honorary consuls for 36 different countries and were also active within the timber and mining industries, with several members of the family becoming eminent scientists.

As well as being a ship agent and former senior partner of G. C. Fox & Co., CHARLES FOX is a garden designer, poet and artist. He is the author of Glendurgan: A Personal Memoir of a Garden in Cornwall (Alison Hodge, 2004), the garden on the Helford River which was established by his great-great-grandfather in 1821 and given by his family to the National Trust in 1962.