Strange Tales of Shipwrecks and Rings

I’ve just picked up a copy of Robert Goddard’s latest book, Name to a Face. I quite like Robert Goddard’s books anyway, but it was this bit of the blurb on the back that really caught my eye…

“...When Tim Harding agrees to do a favour for a friend by bidding on his behalf for an antique ring at auction, little does he know of the secrets that tie the ring to three tragedies: the sinking of HMS Association off Scilly in 1707, a murder in Penzance thirty years later and the drowning of a journalist diving at the Association wreck site in 1999… “

The reason this caught my eye is that a good friend of mine was diving the HMS Association and he found a gold ring. The original is in a museum on Scilly but he had a copy made, which he showed to me once - and this is no ordinary ring, for it is a death ring. But it not the only ring with links to the Association.

This is what he told me.

The cover photo [of the book] is of Porth Hellick in Scilly, where the body of Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell was washed ashore in 1707 after the wreck of the Association. So the legend goes, the island woman who found his body stole an emerald ring from his finger before he was buried, and gave it up on her deathbed a quarter of a century later

Fascinating stuff!! I can’t wait to read this book!!