To: Ian@SI who wrote (2957 ) 2/1/2001 2:22:25 PM From: pat mudge Read Replies (1) | Respond to OT --Re more doubloons: Are you that close to the water? Passing pirate ships once used your backyard. ;^) . . .For the moment Ross's mind and memory was still back in that day and night of the 7th of January, 1790, when two vesssels had been blown in on this beach in a storm and when almost a thousand people, most of them miners, had stripped them in a single tide. The seamen, washed ashore, had barely escaped with their lives, and preventive men and a platoon of soldiers had not been sufficient to halt the wrecking. Desperate with hunger and crazed with the drink they had found, the miners carried all before them, and those who got in the way of their loot did so at their own peril. Great bonfires raged on the beach and drunken figures danced round them like demons from a pit. The sea had been awash with rigging, sails, spars, bales of silk and kegs of brandy, and fighting, struggling men and women. . .
