I started to read again some of the stories about the rescue of sailors from shipwrecks on Scilly.

I realised that although I have written about the Pilot Gigs that carried out the rescues, I had not put in a picture of a gig. So here is a recent picture of the 'Golden Eagle' which will give some idea of the scale and fragility of the boat.

Perhaps, as well, it might be worth showing what a gale looks like on Scilly when it starts to blow a bit. The following two pictures were taken in September when it was comparitively warm - unlike the vicious cold winds of December when the 'Delaware' was wrecked in 1871.

To understand the bravery and superb seamanship of the Scillonians who performed these rescues, you have to imagine the gig in a sea and gale which had already destroyed a much larger vessel.

They only had muscle-power to propel them, and a strong determination never to let the sea claim another victim. They, after all, live by the sea and on the sea and were no strangers to drownings amongst their own comunity. There are too many epitaphs on Scillonian gravestones that simply state 'Lost at Sea'.

Living on Scilly and sailing the waters around the islands, the memory of earlier seamen is never very far away. These are dangerous waters for sailing ships - more have been wrecked here than anywhere else on earth. Tens of thousands of souls breathed their last as the sea took them to Davy Jones' Locker. It is a spiritual place as a result.

It is also a very ancient place which has been occupied by man for about 5,000 years. No one, by definition, knows what happened on Scilly in Pre-History, but we can still see the stones and rocks that litter the islands much as they have for millenia.

Which stones are natural, and which are placed and formed by man, can be hard to distinguish.

The islands have the largest concenration of Bronze Age graves in Europe. Wherever you look, there seem to be strange alignments and rows of stones. It is a ritual landscape.

The curious stones illustrated here are worn by the weather (they think), but in a way that makes them even more fantastic.

No wonder then, that so many primitive people worshipped stones that were apparently formed by a hand that was not human.

Many stones became sacred as a result. Often they were seen as marking an 'acupuncture' point in the earth, piercing the soil and pointing to the heavens.....

They still exert a kind of mysterious power, a sort of magentic attraction, which is why I always tip my hat to them as I sail past in my little sailing boat in the summer. They've been here for ever, and new-comers like us - I think - should show respect.....