until finally the whole territory, forming the site of Lancaster Bay, would be submerged and appropriated by the rapacious hosts of Neptune. The "Shell Wharf" would be covered in a manner exactly similar to the more recently lost fields off Rossall; and as illustrations of land carried away from the west coast in that neighbourhood, may be instanced a farm called Fenny, at Rossall, which was removed back from threatened destruction by the waves at least four times within the last fifty years, when its re-building was abandoned, and its site soon swept over by the billows; also the village of Singleton Thorp, which occupied the locality marked by "Singleton Skeer" off Cleveleys until 1555, when it was destroyed by an irruption of the sea. Numerous other instances in which the coast line has been altered and driven eastward, between Rossall Point and the mouth of Ribble, during both actually and comparatively modern days might be cited, but the above are sufficient to support our view of the former connection of "Shell Wharf" with the main-land, and its gradual submersion. If on the map, the Bay of Lancaster be detached from that of Morecambe, the latter still retains a most imposing aspect, and its identity with the Moricambe Æstuarium of Ptolemy is in no way interfered with or rendered less evident. The foregoing, as our antiquarian readers will doubtless have surmised, is but a prelude to something more, for it is our purpose to endeavour to disturb the forty years of quiet repose enjoyed by the Portus Setantiorum on the banks of the Wyre and hurl it far into the Irish Sea, to the very limits of the "Lune Deep," where, on the original estuary of the river Lune, we believe to be its legitimate home. No locality, as yet claiming to be the site of the ancient harbour, accords so well with the distances given by Ptolemy. Assuming the Dee and the Ribble to represent respectively, as now generally admitted, the Seteia Æstuarium and the Belisama Æstuarium, the Portus Setantiorum should lie about seven miles[1] to the west and twenty-five to the north of the Belisama. The position of the "Lune Deep" termination is just about seven miles to the west of the estuary of the Ribble, but is, like most other places whose stations have been mentioned by Ptolemy, defective in its latitudinal measurement according to
- ↑ Ptolemy gives the longitude as ten minutes, but at such a height a minute would scarcely represent a mile.
