Cockermouth is a market town in Cumberland (now Cumbria) in north-west England, at the meeting of the rivers Cocker and Derwent. It was the birthplace of Fletcher Christian, leader of the 1789 mutiny on HMS Bounty, whose family were the Christians of Milntown in the Isle of Man.

The Cumberland connection ran both ways for generations. Hutchinson's history of the county is cited by the Manx antiquaries for the Christians having been established in the Isle of Man as early as 1422, having previously been settled in Wigtownshire, so the family moved between the three coasts of the Irish Sea.

Other Cumberland families married into the Manx gentry in the same period. John Senhouse, High Sheriff of the county, died in 1767 and was succeeded by his son John, who in 1775 married Margaret, daughter of John Taubman of Castletown. Mary, daughter of John and Bridget Senhouse, married Edward Law, Bishop of Carlisle, and among their children was the son who became Lord Chief Justice as Lord Ellenborough, whose opinion was relied on in the settlement of the Duke of Atholl's Manx claims.