Polzeath Stories Maria Asumpta

Ten Souls Rock? 

Don't know what people think of this idea but it seemed to make sense to me today when suggested by one of the Maria Asumpta Memorial walkers.

Seven souls plus the three lost when the Maria Asumpta went down makes 10 and 10 is an interesting number for many reasons. One is connected to the Romans who placed a great deal of importance to this area of Cornwall because it's where they got the tin for their Empire (one of only three places they got it from and you can see Tintagel from Seven Souls and the Mulberry Quarry is up the Camel Estuary so Romans must have gone around the Rumps Cliff Castle by sea although it's not known if they used it themselves. 

The Romans had a great system for controlling rebellious groups who were unlucky enough to be in their expanding but ultimately flawed Empire and it was based on the number 10.  Their system of taking every 10th person from a group and executing them as a warning to the others gave us the word "decimate"!.

The word today, “decimate”, means to destroy and you'll know that other words with the prefix deca mean ten of something... so that a decade is ten years, and a ten-sided shape is a decagon.