Augusten Elliot, Witness and the Wreck of Hope

An Augusten Elliott was one witness to Margery Flann’s Will. Augusten must have been known to Margery for her to ask him to act as witness, but how after all this time we do not know.

The Elliotts were a well established Portland family and there is no apparent direct connection with Margery. In later years there were marriages with Elliotts that were not surprising in such a close knit community; for example, William¹ Comben married an Ann Elliott in 1604, John Lowman 1805, married in 1833 another Ann Elliott, a William Flann married in 1837 Mary Elliott and another Mary Elliott was wife of William² Lowman (1806-67).

We do however know a little of him as indicative of a way of life and of him and others living on Portland in Dorset in those years, for seventeen years later on the 15th July 1749, a contemporary report states he was charged with:

Feloniously stealing and carrying away ten ounces of gold and twenty ounces of silver from the ship called Hope.

This was a 30 gun ship owned by Amsterdam merchants returning up Channel from the Spanish South American colonies laden with a valuable cargo, including gold and silver worth £50,000, still a lot of money and a considerable fortune then. She got embayed in West Bay by a south westerly gale and was driven ashore on Chesil Beach. Helpless the ship began to break up and the local populace descended in their hundreds armed with cutlasses, clubs, hooks and the like to loot the cargo, overcoming all attempts by the crew to defend the ship and its cargo.