WRECKS ON THE PURBECK COAST. 149 



athwart the cavern : this became accessible, to the prisoners who 

 had crept to the edge of the cavern, or was sometimes blown 

 wihin the reach of those farther in, by the force of the wind ; 

 the noose being fixed, the rope was drawn up, and though in 

 this perilous transit presence of mind and strength of body failed 

 many, a large proportion seem to have reached the quarry in 

 safety before the close of day. 



The loss of the Halsewell is yet remembered by some few aged 

 people of the country, who relate how the surviving sailors cre- 

 ated astonishment as they marched towards London, unaided by 

 Steam or Ship- wrecked Mariner's Societies. The quarry still 

 tells its tale in its name, portions of the ship timbers and copper 

 are from time to time washed up, or discovered wedged in the 

 rocks ; many guns were recovered, and many remain at the foot 

 of the cliffs, but covered with the debris. One other sad memo- 

 rial remains; on the little patch of flat ground where the cliffs 

 divide, and the stream, when there is a stream, descends to the 

 sea, may yet be seen the traces of four long graves. The spot 

 is indeed appropriate. As you stand by the almost obliterated 

 mounds, the eye wanders over little but sea and sky, and the 

 wild solitude of the spot accords with the sadness of the tragedy 

 here played out. Yet the thought will occur that the charity, 

 which we know to have cheered the survivors, might well have 

 honoured the sufferers. Many a barrow in Purbeck attests the 

 pious care which the old inhabitants paid to their dead. And 

 one could have wished that in the eighteenth century, the bodies 

 of Christian men and women, might have met with Christian 

 burial in the neighbouring ancient church-yard of Worth Mal- 

 travers. * 



The stranding of the "Tyne," Royal West Indian Mail Packet 

 Ship of upwards of two thousand tons, three himdred and twen- 

 ty feet in length, which took place on the morning of January 

 18th, 1857, happily led to no such fatal results as those on 

 which we have been dwelling. She was bound from Pernambuco 



* The Register of Worth, notes but one bnrial connected with the 

 Halsewell, that of the body of a man thrown up a month subsequent 

 to the catastrophe. A note entered in the register gives a succinct 

 notice of the wreck. It reports the number of those sav^ as eighty-two. 



