Guernsey Martyrs burned alive
PLUS: Charles and Camilla visit Guernsey + President Garcia crashes in Saints Bay
The Guernsey Martyrs were burned at the stake this week in 1556, after having been found guilty of being protestants. One of the women was heavily pregnant, and she gave birth to a boy while being burned. Although some of the spectators rushed to save the child, the bailiff threw it back into the flames to be burned alongside its mother.
Had they received the usual punishment for deviating from the monarch’s beliefs, the women would first have been strangled. In that way, the burning that followed would be more of a cremation than an execution. However, the rope that was being used for this purpose broke. Rather than delay matters further, the burning proceeded as planned, with the women still alive and fully aware.
The BBC made its first ever broadcast from the Channel Islands this week in 1956 when it transported the whole of its western region’s equipment to Herm and bounced a live programme back to the mainland via Cherbourg and Paris. The programme was such a success that it repeated the process a couple of weeks later, on that occasion broadcasting from Sark.
Prince Charles and Camilla visited Guernsey this week in 2012 to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. They toured the walled garden at Saumarez Park where Prince Charles tried plate spinning, then performed the official opening of Les Bourgs Hospice.
Two ships run ashore
The President Garcia, which had crashed in Saints Bay when it mistook a navigation light for a lighthouse was at last refloated this week in 1967. The ship was full of coconut kernel, which brought with it a plague of beetles that put the island’s tomato crop at risk.
And, this week eight years later, the Point Law oil tanker ran aground off Alderney. Fortunately she had already offloaded her cargo at St Sampson as the rocks she struck in bad weather punctured every one of her compartments.
A valuable racing yacht was scuttled off Guernsey this week in 1947, in accordance with its owner’s will. The date of its sinking had been kept secret so that nobody could rescue it from its fate. It had previously raced against the king.