“Our ship, Employment, met with a French ship of some force, bound to Newfoundland, who made a prize of her. The French were determined to send her directly to St. Malo; when John Gardner, the master, treated to ransome her, and agreed with the captors for £1,000 sterling. The French did strip the sailors of most of their clothes and provisions; and coming out of a hot climate to cold, before they got home they were so weak that they were scarce able to work the ship, and the mate being not an experienced pilot, spent time in making the land, and was embayed on the coast of Wales, but with difficulty got off, and then made the Isle of Man, and stood for Peel Fouldrey, but missed his course, so that he made Rossall Mill for Walna Mill, and run in that mistake till he was embayed under the Red Banks, behind Rossall, so as he could not get off; and it blowing hard, and fearing she would beat, they endeavoured to launch their boat; but were so weak that they could not do it, but came to an anchor. She struck off her rudder, and at the high water mark she slipped her cables and run on shore, in a very foul strong place, where she beat till she was full of water, but the men got well to land. But it was believed if they had been able to launch the boat and attempted to land in her, the sea was so high and the shore so foul, that they might have all perished. This happened on the 8th month, 1702, and we had early notice of it to Lancaster, and got horses and carts with empty casks to put the damaged sugars in, and to get on shore what could be saved, which was done with much expedition. We got the sugar into Esquire Fleetwood’s barn, at Rossall, and the cotton wool into Bispham chapel, and in the neap tides got the carpenters at work, but a storm came with the rising tides and beat the ship to pieces. The cotton wool was sent to Manchester and sold for £200.” In the early years of this century Bispham contained a manufactory for the production of linsey-woolsey. The building was three stories in height, and employed a considerable number of hands. Subsequently it was converted into a ladies’ school, and afterwards pulled down. Two or three residences in the township near the site of the old manufactory still retain the names of ‘factory houses,’ from their association with it. There is a small Nonconformist place of worship in the village, surrounded by a wall, being partially covered with ivy and overshadowed by trees. This edifice is called Bethel Chapel, and a date over the doorway fixes its origin at 1834. In 1868 a Temperance Hall, comprising a reading room, library, and spacious lecture and assembly room, was erected here by subscription, and forms one of the most striking objects in the village. The Sunday school connected with the parish church, and situated by its side, was erected also by subscription, in 1840, and rebuilt on a larger scale in 1873.