On Jan 29, 12:39 pm, Martin wrote:
On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 12:18:17 +0000, Sacha
wrote:
[...]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main...07/01/23/ftwre...
"Misery and starvation in the area made for barbarity, and when Admiral Sir
Cloudesley Shovel was wrecked on the Scillies in 1707, a local woman killed
him
for the sake of his rings, then stripped the body of its rich clothes. Another
local West Country record describes a drowned woman whose ears were bitten off
for the sake of her earrings."

Violent times, to put it mildly!

I first heard the story from a local in 1952, they can hardly blame visitors if
they repeat these stories.

Shovell's original DNB entry tells the story as fact; and the latest
edition, while cautious, clearly isn't disposed to discount it out of
hand:

[October 1706] At about eight, in dark and rainy weather, lookouts in
several ships suddenly saw rocks and the loom of the St Agnes light.
Several warning guns were fired, but before the flagship could
manoeuvre she struck the Outer Gilstone Rock in the Isles of Scilly
and sank quickly. Most of the nineteen vessels in the fleet escaped a
similar fate, but the 54-gun Romney was wrecked on the same rocks,
while the 70-gun Eagle sank off the Tearing Ledge, just south-east of
the Bishop and Clerks rocks. Of the 1315 men in these three ships,
there was only one survivor, a quartermaster from the Romney.
Shovell's body came ashore from the wreck on the south side of St
Mary's Island at Porth Hellick Cove. The fact that he came ashore more
than 6 miles from the wreck site, in close proximity to the bodies of
his two stepsons-Sir John Narbrough and James Narbrough-a pet dog, and
the flagship's captain, suggest that they had been able to leave the
wreck together in a boat. Numerous legends and traditional stories
surround these events. The most persistent is the alleged confession
of a woman in the 1730s, who on her deathbed reported that she had
found Shovell alive on the beach and, coveting the emerald ring on his
finger, took his life. As her dying wish, the parish priest sent the
ring to James, earl of Berkeley. In 1879 a similar ring was in the
possession of the Berkeley family, but has not been traced since.

There are several books on the incident.

--
Mike.