Round past Old Town is the rocky head of Giant's Castle, and then Porthellick.
PULPIT ROCK.
Porthellick, the "Bay of Willows," is a flat, shallow strand, where the scant herbage at the foot of Sallakey Down dies gradually away upon the beach. At one extremity of the Bay is the curious pile of granite rocks resembling a loaded camel, kneeling, and at the other a rude fragment of granite has been set upon another, on the sand, to form a rough and ready monument, marking the spot where the body of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel was buried.
The story of the naval disaster in which the Admiral and nearly eighteen hundred men were lost is one of the most tragic associated with Scilly. A squadron consisting of the flagship Association, the Eagle, Phoenix, Lenox, Royal Anne, St. George, Romney, and Firebrand, returning from an expedition against Toulon, in October 1707, lost its course in foggy weather. On the 22nd the Association struck on the Bishop and Clerks rocks and immediately went down, with all on board; the Eagle and Romney were also lost, together with the Firebrand, but a few on board the last were saved. The other vessels miraculously escaped. A great deal of mystery was made respecting the disaster and the fate of the Admiral, and a legend, long implicitly believed, gained currency that the shipwrecks were entirely due to the savage obstinacy of the Admiral, who, it was stated, not only refused to listen to a sailor, a native of Scilly, on board, who warned him that he was steering too far northward, but actually had the man hanged from the yardarm for presuming to know better than his superiors. That such a story should ever have gained belief in itself shows us how undesirable service in the Royal Navy must then have been. The sailor, the story goes on to say, asked one favour before he was turned off—that he should be allowed to read a portion out of the Bible. It was granted, and he read the 109th Psalm, one of the cursing Psalms, with this salient passage: "Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.... Let his posterity be destroyed, and in the next generation let his name be clean put out. Because his mind was not to do good, but persecuted the poor, helpless man, that he might slay him that was vexed at the heart."
The whole story is a fabrication, simply elaborated out of the narrative told by George Lawrence, quartermaster of the Romney, to Edmund Herbert, Deputy Paymaster-General of Marines, and detailed in his report of 1709. Lawrence was the one man saved from the Romney, and he said that about one or two o'clock on the afternoon of October 22nd, the Admiral called a council of officers, to discover in what latitude they were. All agreed they were off Ushant, except the master of the Lenox, who said they were off Scilly. Then a lad also declared a light they presently made was Scilly light, whereupon all the ship's crew swore at him.
Among the many contradictory stories told of the finding of Sir Cloudesley Shovel's body on the sands of Porthellick, the most tragic version is probably the most truthful. It was at first given out that he was dead when found, and he certainly was buried here, where the rude stone monument now stands—a spot where, superstition says, grass will never grow. Four days later, the body was dug up, identified, and eventually given a State funeral in Westminster Abbey.
No one could tell what had become of a very valuable emerald ring the Admiral wore, and his widow offered rewards for it, in vain. But many years later, about 1734, a woman of St. Mary's, then lying at the point of death, made the terrible confession that the Admiral had been washed ashore, exhausted, but still living, and that she had choked him, to secure his clothes and jewellery. She produced the ring, which was sent to Lord Dursley, afterwards Earl of Berkeley. It has been set with diamonds in a locket, and in that form is still possessed by the Berkeley family.
