UK's Smallest Most Southerly City

[Mick F]

Moonfleet wasn't swashbuckling, but an adventure, and very sad and moving in places.

It told the story of John Trenchard and Elzevir Block (a smuggler) and Blackbeard's body in the crypt with a locket round his neck with a verse from the Psalms (with a clue due to a mistake) of where his diamond was hidden in Carisbrooke Castle on isle of White. They took the diamond from deep down the well sides and went to Amsterdam to sell it.

They ended up as convicts and branded on their faces and spent years breaking rocks and hard labour. When they were being transported by ship, they were wrecked off Dorset and Elzevir saved John from the undertow on the shingle beach. Elzivir drowned and John eventually married his childhood sweetheart.

Read it at school, and read it half a dozen times as an adult.
Excellent story.

[thirdcrank]

The location of Carisbrooke Castle didn't stick in your mind, though?

[Mick F]

Oops!

I meant Isle of Wight of course!

[661-Pete]

Thanks for the info. I stand corrected. Though, as I recall, there was plenty of fisticuffs and shooting...

[Mick F]

No.
No fighting at all.

John Trenchard used to frequent the graveyard and churchyard as he loved the vicar's daughter and would have a chat or two with her.

One day he noticed a gravestone had been disturbed and he lifted up the stone to find his way into the crypt.
The smugglers had left barrels of booze, and he hid behind the coffins when they arrived again. They left leaving more barrels and made the grave stone secure and John was left trapped for days and nights. He got drunk on the booze as he had nothing else to consume.

Meanwhile he found Blackbeard's coffin and a locket round the skeleton's neck and the rest ............... is the rest of the story !!!