Himself alas! a victim fell
To the relentless wave.
"But though his mortal part be dead,
His spirit lives above;
Where he may bathe from dangers free
In seas of heavenly love."
It is a disastrous sign of the times that at Cury, and here at Gunwalloe, Ritualistic excesses are alienating from the Church of England even those few who have hitherto adhered to it. These doings so angered the people a year or two back that they threw the pictures and candles and other Romish frippery into the sea; but the folly of it goes on, and theatrical parties, wrongly styled religious processions, of clergy proceed occasionally, with pomp of vestments and swinging of incense, to the shore, reciting prayers for those drowned at sea, who, poor souls are quite beyond this sort of thing. Even the bunches of flowers the children are taught to throw into the waves don't help them to salvation.
GUNWALLOE.
Among the many wrecks at Gunwalloe, the story of what is called the "Dollar Wreck" stands out most prominently. On a stormy night in 1787 a Spanish vessel struck on the cliffs by the church and became a total loss. She had among her cargo a great quantity of silver dollars, computed at the lowest at seventeen tons weight. Ever since that time the story of the "dollar wreck" has been kept alive, not only by tradition, but by scattered coins being occasionally flung upon the beach by the waves, after some exceptionally heavy storm. Gunwalloe, in fact, reeks with well-authenticated stories of dollars. The earliest among these is that of a wonderful dream by a Mrs. Jose, not long after the wreck. She saw in the vision a heavy bag of dollars lying on the sands, and begged her husband to go and secure it. He laughed the idea to scorn, but she persisted and was so in earnest about it that she got up and dressed; and there, sure enough, lay the bag of dollars. But just as she was rejoicing over the find, a number of wreckers happened along this way and seized the treasure for themselves, quarrelling over it until they resorted to bloodshed.