St Ouen's Bay is the long, straight west coast of Jersey, five miles of sand facing the Atlantic swell, with reefs off both ends and dunes behind. It is a beautiful beach and, for sailing ships, a lethal one.
The legend Visit Jersey tells is set in the autumn of 1495. Some of the people living along the bay, the story says, were wreckers. On a dark night they lit fires along the shore so that ships out at sea would take them for the lights of a harbour and steer in. Five Spanish ships did exactly that and ran onto the rocks. Four of them broke up.
The fifth held together long enough for an old man and his daughter to reach land. Instead of thanking anyone, the old man turned on the wreckers and cursed them. The sea would have them. A year later, the story ends, it did: the sea came up over the land and drowned the people who had lit the fires.
The curse fits a cluster of Jersey traditions about St Ouen's Bay, including the manor of Le Brequette said to have been swallowed by the sea near L'Etacq, and the petrified forest whose stumps show at low tide. Great storms and sand blows really did change this coast over the centuries. What we have not found is any contemporary evidence for the five Spanish ships or the drowning of the wreckers, and the tale follows a pattern told on many Atlantic coasts.
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