"Locals on the Isles of Scilly woke on 23rd October 1707, completely unaware of the disaster that was still unfolding out amongst the Western Rocks. Wrecks were no novelty here on Scilly, but a disaster on this scale was unprecedented, and its impact and effect on Islanders must have been one of total disbelief as the news spread. During the previous night a fleet of British men o'war had literally blundered into the rocks surrounding the Bishop and CLers, with an appalling loss of ships and men, which was to prove the second worst disaster in the long history of the Royal Navy. Boatmen from St.Agnes and Samson, the enarest islands to the largest of the wrecks, were the first to return with gruesome evidence, floating wreckage and the bodies of literally dozens of drowned men. This Commemoration booklet not only precis events leading up to and after the accident, bubt looks into the effect it most certainly had on both authority and locals alike. The discovery of the corpse at Porth Hellick of Sir Clowdisley Shovell, an admiral as famous in his time as Lord Nelson was in his; Parson Henry Penneck, less than nine months in this idyllic island parish, suddenly faced with the burial of over 1,000 seamen, no wonder he left in December. These and other topics are succinctly covered in this account of Scillies worst ever shipwreck 300 years ago."--Provided by the publisher.