As we approached The Carracks, a group of inshore rocks between St Ives and Zennor off the coast of Cornwall, our skipper Adam Kerr gave out his instructions.

“Take her nearer to those rocks — we might see some seals.” At the tiller was Paul Armitage, a local artist, and soon enough he had guided the boat to within a safe viewing distance of rocks which, in 1916, became the grave of the Enrico Parodi after the vessel struck nearby Gurnard’s Head in thick fog.

This time, roughly an hour into sailing Barnabas from St Ives to Penzance, conditions were benign. Within minutes a grey seal had appeared, poking its head above the water and wearing the habitually curious expression that gave rise to the myth of the selkie, the seal that metamorphoses into human form.

Such intimations of romance come easily aboard the Barnabas, a 40ft Cornish dipping lugger built in 1881. She — for all boats are female, though why it is so has always eluded me — worked out of St Ives where she was built for Barnabas Thomas.

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In the heyday of the Cornish lugger she would have been crewed by five men and a cabin boy and would have sailed to the Western Approaches and Isles of Scilly for the spring mackerel fishery, venturing on to Ireland in the summer as the catch switched to herring.

Barnabas is the only survivor from St Ives of a 1,000-strong fleet of fishing boats which were known as lug rigged seine and drift net craft. They were registered at Cornish ports after compulsory registration was introduced in 1872. Today, having been fully restored by the Cornish Maritime Trust, Barnabas plies a gentler trade.

These days she sails Cornish waters for members of the trust, giving a taste of life on the old luggers. Given the opportunity to crew Barnabas, I jumped at the chance, though not without some reservations after Tom Rickman, one of her skippers, had told me: “Barnabas takes her toll. A lot of people who sail her come back with an injury.”

Arriving at Smeaton’s Pier in St Ives, Barnabas looked harmless enough, moored in the bay. In the distance Godrevy Lighthouse — which inspired Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse — rose out of the light haze covering the quiescent blue of the sea.

In such still waters there would be no option but to use the engine, fitted in 1996 to comply with modern safety requirements, to round St Ives Head and pick up the sea breeze which Kerr was sure would be blowing. When we found it, I understood what Rickman meant: manhandling the outsize masts and rigging of the boat was no easy task.

The two masts of the Barnabas are made of Douglas fir and strength, as well as skill, is required to haul up the huge foremast lug and heavy sails. A glancing blow from the block and tackle used for uphauling would send you overboard. The main mast is known as the foremast, while behind is the mizzenmast whose top is painted in barber pole red and white stripes.

The paintwork was to assist with identification when luggers returned to harbour: in Barnabus’s heyday Cornish ports would have been crammed with hundreds of vessels. Boys whose job it was to row to incoming vessels, needed to know which boat was theirs.

With the village of Zennor behind us and Barnabas in full sail we hugged the rugged Cornish coastline. Ahead were the Happy Return and the Ripple, two other surviving luggers. As they sailed into the sun their black silhouettes gave rise to thoughts of the luggers’ alternative use: smuggling. Paul Greenwood, author of Once Aboard a Cornish Lugger, says: “The Cornish smuggling luggers earned a ferocious reputation, but the crews were well rewarded for the risks they took. For a run to Guernsey or Roscoff and back, a crewman was paid £10, probably more than he would earn in three months working as a fisherman.”

On we sailed, past the surfing beach of Sennen Cove and towards Longships Lighthouse. Kerr allowed me to take the tiller, a task I didn’t take lightly given that the reefs around Land’s End are among the most treacherous in the world. Numerous ships have foundered here, and one of them, the RMS Mulheim, lies wedged against the cliffs, a reminder to any passing sailor of what can go wrong.

I found myself clasping the tiller as if my life depended on it, desperately scanning the sea for white water which might signal barely submerged rocks, but Kerr, 75, and with the classic seadog’s silvery beard, was all equanimity.

“I had to choose between art and the sea, and chose the sea,” he said, a choice which may not have been easy given that Kerr is the grandson of Lamorna Birch, the landscape painter. Kerr lives in his grand-father’s house in Lamorna Cove, which came into view not long after we had navigated the Runnelstone, yet another deadly reef. Now retired, he is the principal skipper for the trust.

Kerr could no doubt have told me why it is that all boats are female, but my mind was on other things. I thought of Lamorna granite, used in the construction of Bishop’s Rock, Britain’s tallest lighthouse that heralds the Isles of Scilly; of running contraband from port to port; of lost skills and, as we moored in Penzance wet dock, of the sheer hard work of fishing these old Cornish luggers.

But most of all, I thought of the munificence of the Barnabas: resplendent, romantic and, on this occasion, content to let me dream without taking her toll.

More information available at cornishmaritimetrust.org.uk

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