English ships, in these days, were raking the coast of the Cape from their stations at Tarpaulin Cove and Provincetown, but in November, 1778, a sorry landing was made when “The Somerset, British man-of-war,” sung by Longfellow in his “Landlord’s Tale,” struck on the murderous Peaked Hill Bar off Provincetown and, lightered of guns and ammunition, at high tide was flung on the beach. For two years, patrolling the coast or “swinging wide at her moorings” in the harbor, she had been a familiar sight to patriots ashore, and now, without observing too closely the letter of the law, they were to take what the sea gave them. Rich records some preliminary amenities between the captain and a company of visitors from Hog Back, one of whom, “a short old man with a short-tailed pipe,” asked for the captain, and Aurey, supposing him in authority, received him civilly. “Well, cap’n,” drawled Cape Cod, “who did you pray to in the storm? If you called on the Lord, he wouldn’t have sent you here. And I’m sure King George wouldn’t.” Whereupon the captain: “Old man, you’ve had your pipe fished.” An anecdote that goes to show not unfriendly relations between adversaries. In due time the captain and crew, to the number of four hundred and eighty, were marched to Boston to the exultation of all beholders, and the Board of War stripped the ship of her armament. But before and after this was accomplished, the neighborhood engaged itself with plunder, and there seems to have been some confusion in the right to loot. “From all I can learn,” wrote Joseph Otis, of Barnstable, “there is wicked work at the wreck, riotous doings.” He excused himself from the duty of regulating matters there as his father, the old chief justice, lay a-dying. “The Truro and Provincetown men made a division of the clothing, etc. Truro took two-thirds and Provincetown one-third. There is a plundering gang that way.” Certainly Barnstable was too remote to share in the largess. Mr. Rich had seen canes made from the Somerset’s fine old English oak, and cites a certain silver watch, part of the “effects,” that was still keeping good time at Pond Village. Drifting sands piled up to conceal the wreck, a century later swept back to disclose her to the gaze of the curious, and then again buried the bones of her.