twin town of St. George's, where the admiral left his heart. Liz Jones visited the town and in the first in a two-part series, examines the similarities -- of which there are surprisingly many -- between the Dorset seaport and Bermuda's old capital.

Visitors to Lyme Regis, "the Pearl'' of Dorset, England, now see "St.

George's, Bermuda'' on the town's name sign. This is because the two towns became official twins on 25 July, 1996. As St. George's Mayor Henry Hayward explained, plans are afoot to return the compliment. Eventually there will be a new gateway into St. George's and a new name sign that will also bear the name of Lyme Regis.

Mayor Hayward also explained further connections between the two towns will be promoted. Already St. George's Preparatory School's staff are hoping that their students will be able to communicate by Internet with their counterparts and are planning to put on the net a list of schools, organisations and sports associations. In addition, a 100-year `time capsule', or a sealed box containing photographs and items related to the towns, will be created both here and in Lyme Regis. In St. George's the official sealing will probably happen at the next Peppercorn ceremony in April which means that the box will not be opened until April 2097.

At a public meeting held in St. George's on September 12, Mayor Hayward briefly described the twinning ceremony held in Lyme Regis and called for volunteers to form a twinning association committee.

Lyme Regis and St. George's may not be identical but as is often the case with twins, they do have a common bond in terms of cultural and historical heritage.

Since holidaymaking often involves visiting friends and relations, Bermudians may well want to acquaint themselves with the new (or old?) member of the family. The following information may be useful for those who wish to explore the similarities, and the differences, between the two historic towns.

Hurricanes and Storms In Hertfordshire, Hereford and Hampshire hurricanes hardly happen. But in Dorset they do, as the history of Lyme will testify. In fact, Hurricane Emily in 1987 skimmed over Lyme before heading to Kent and reducing Sevenoaks to One Oak. Lyme was lucky then but other storms (they are not called hurricanes in the UK) have caused enormous destruction and as in Bermuda, they often come in from the southwest.

In 1341, a large chunk of Lyme was destroyed by wind and sea. Tax records show that on November 11, 1377 another storm destroyed the Cobb, nearly 100 houses and 50 ships. As a result, merchants lost their fortunes and King Richard I didn't get his rent for the royal charter. (The charter was granted by Edward I in 1284 -- thus the term `Regis'). During the 15th and 16th Centuries storms continued to ravage the town and the Cobb which meant that frequently Lymers were unable to pay taxes. In more recent history, the Great Storm of November 22, 1821 was a hurricane and caused a 23-foot tide that again wreaked havoc on the Cobb. However, sailors on the rigging of the Unity , a ship caught in the storm, were miraculously saved. Perhaps in the long term the most devastating damage was landfall and cliff erosion which continues today. In the last 25 years, a significant part of the cliff walk between Charmouth and Lyme has fallen away.

St. David's Islanders have long used shark oil as a hurricane predictor but no such tradition exists in Lyme. Perhaps signs of bad weather are the sea mists rolling in to shroud the town and the haunting cries of the seagulls that hover on the roof tops.

The Cobb Lyme's most famous landmark is the Cobb which acts as both a harbour and as a breakwater to protect the town from the sea's "furious rages''. Prior to the 1750s, the Cobb was detached from the beach at high tide and consisted of gigantic cowstones or boulders piled inside a framework of oak trunks. In fact, Lyme was famous for its stone masons who were uniquely skilled at transporting and setting these stones. They fetched them from a beach over three miles away by floating them between barrels, often in appalling weather conditions.

During the 19th Century, stone masons once again were important since they reconstructed the Cobb in Portland Stone, a fact that is interesting to Bermudians because during the same period the Commissioner's House in Dockyard was built in the same stone that is resilient to inclement weather.

Today it looks much the same as it did in the Regency period when it became a major tourist attraction for visitors who enjoyed invigorating walks in the sea air.

Ships and Trade Just as St. George's was for centuries the most important commerce and trading centre in Bermuda, so was Lyme Regis a major channel port for Dorset.

Merchants from as far away as Toulouse in France and Ireland were attracted to Lyme. They preferred to travel by sea as inland roads were scarce. (Again we can see parallels between Bermuda and Lyme since for years settlers on our island travelled principally by boat.) By 1284 Lyme was already an established port which traded wool with France in exchange for wine. By the time Sir George Somers left on his fateful voyage to Jamestown in 1609, Lyme was approaching its peak as a trading centre. It had contacts with the Mediterranean, with Africa, the West Indies and the Americas and it regularly received luxury goods such as sugar, figs, raisins, Malaga and Canary wines, oranges, lemons and sweet potatoes that were sometimes used to sweeten dignitaries' feelings towards the town. Fish, particularly codfish, was also important. Seamen would sail to Newfoundland, fish the cod and then trade it for goods from Spain and Portugal.

As a result of this lucrative trading, sea captains, as well as merchants, could become extremely rich, Sir George Somers being an excellent example. His privateering expeditions to the Spanish Main meant that he could buy two private estates. One of them, Berne Manor, is in Whitchurch and is now a farmhouse restored from a fire that partially destroyed the original in the early 1920s. The original flagstones can still be seen.

Pirates and Smugglers Of course, trading expeditions during the 17th Century and later were fraught with danger, not only from stormy seas but from corsairs or pirates.

Bermudians can well understand this since they too suffered at the hands of such pirates as Captain Lewis or Nicholas Trott. Lyme sailors risked their ships being caught by pirates from the Barbary Coast. If that happened, very often they would be imprisoned indefinitely in Tunis or Algiers, their only hope being that their families would collect ransom for them. The French privateers from the Normandy and Brittany ports were also dangerous, particularly in the 18th Century. One Lyme ship, the Amity , was captured by the pirate Beaubriand-Levesque and handed over to the French. However, Lyme's ship list of 1578 shows that the English could be just as immoral. Several ships such as the Flower de Luce were captured from the French. It was a question of no honour among thieves. Even Sir George Somers could be described as a privateer since much of his wealth derived from booty.

In the 18th and 19th centuries Lyme was heavily involved in smuggling activities, on both sides of the law. Officers of the Revenue Service would patrol the cliffs looking for boats bringing in brandy, silks and tobacco; and small sailing boats or cutters would be available for chase. But often contraband was not brought immediately into land; rather it was sunk off shore in barrels.

Colourful tales about local smugglers are plentiful. One notorious Lyme boat was called Your Name and it was known for enticing people into the Cobb Arms, getting them drunk and "pressing'' them into working the runs. And some smugglers gained a kind of Robin Hood popularity because they used their sailing expertise and courage to save ships in distress as well as to cheat the revenue men. John Rattenbury was one such character.

Shipbuilding When Sir George Somers first arrived (accidentally) in Bermuda, one of the first activities he undertook was to supervise the building of the ship The Patience out of Bermuda cedar. It's highly probable that he gained his shipbuilding skills from first hand experience in Lyme. Shipbuilding and sea ports go hand in hand, as Bermudians well know. As far back as 1293, Edward I ordered a galley of 100 oars to be built at Lyme and inspected it in 1297.

Lyme provided four ships for the Siege of Calais in 1347 and in the sixteenth century Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's Secretary of State, reported that the Cobb ship list boasted 23 vessels. Lyme ships also appear in merchants' and trading records. The Diamond set out to Newfoundland on a fishing and trading expedition in 1608. Interestingly enough, another Lyme ship was called The Patience and got pirated in the Straits of Gibraltar in 1622. Perhaps the name Amity was also common. Lyme's ship, the Amity was captured by Beaubriand-Levesque in 1703, 12 years after Bermudians joined the American Captain Tew on the Bermudian ship The Amity and captured an Arabian ship.

Between 1766 and 1852 at least 102 ships were launched from the Cobb's yard.

Just as Bermuda became known for its sloops, so Lyme was known for its schooners. However, during the 18th and 19th Centuries, merchant ships got larger, too large to be harboured at Lyme and though schooners carrying coal from the Northeast of England continued to come into the Cobb during the 1890s, Lyme's function as a port and shipbuilding centre declined.

Tourism The sea and tourism did not always go hand in hand. For centuries, many people were convinced that a dunk in cold water meant certain death. Fortunately for Lyme, by the middle of the 18th Century seawater was seen to be good for health to the point that people would actually drink it as well as swim in it.

It was fortunate because owing to the decline of the wool trade, and to political corruption, the town was suffering serious economic difficulties.

The first person of note to come to Lyme for medicinal purposes was William Pitt the Younger who as a child was in delicate health. As the 19th Century approached, so the tourist industry grew and by 1804 sea bathing machines, vital to modesty, became a common sight. Indoor baths were constructed and the Walk or the Marine Parade built by Thomas Hollis, a major benefactor to the town. Balls, card games and soirees were held at the Assembly Rooms, the centre of society. Jane Austen of course is as much associated with Lyme Regis as she is with Bath. She apparently stayed in a house on Broad Street but a house overlooking the Cobb is featured in Persuasion. Here is Jane's description of Lyme: "The remarkable situation of the town, the principal street almost hurrying into the water, the walk to the Cobb, skirting round the pleasant little bay, which in the season is animated with bathing machines and company, the Cobb itself, its old wonders and new improvements, with the very beautiful line of cliffs stretching out to the east of the town, are what the stranger's eye will seek; and a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better.'' Concluded in tomorrow's newspaper LYME REGIS' Guildhall ON THE COBB -- A view of the Cobb in Lyme Regis. The Cobb was the centre of shipping activity in the town when it was Dorset's major sea port ans is still a focal point for the town.