XIII. Of the sea.
... To prove the supereminence of the upper sea in our times, a new and yet wonderful thing is added. For on a feast day in greater Britain, after hearing the solemnities of the Masses, the people were leaving the common church everywhere, in a very cloudy weather and, because of the density of the fog, in the darkness, a ship's anchor appeared, fixed around a stone mound below the walls, with a rope stretched out and hanging in the air. [ i.e. dangling from the sky itself ]
The people were astonished, and while they were discussing this with each other, they finally saw the rope moving as if they were working to pull out the anchor. So while it was being pushed around for a long time, a voice was heard in the thick air, like the cry of sailors struggling to retrieve the anchor that had been thrown. And no delay: the hope of work being frustrated, the sailors let go of one of their own, who, according to the skill of our men, was pulled down by a vicarious exchange of hands by the anchor rope.
And when he had already pulled out the anchor, he was seized by those around him and, as if he were making a shipwreck at sea, he expired, choked by the moisture of our thick air. But the sailors above, thinking their comrade had been shipwrecked, cut the anchor rope after an hour, abandoning the anchor and sailing away.
In memory of this event, therefore, the hardware of the door of that basilica was wisely constructed from that anchor, which is open to public view.
There is yet another more wonderful thing in that region. There is a castle in the county of Claudius Castria, called Bristol, opulent and planted with very wealthy citizens. This is the port by which one passes from greater Britain to Ireland.
At one time, when a native of that place had sailed to Ireland; leaving his wife and children at home, after a long voyage, when the ship was running in the remote parts of the Ocean, the aforementioned citizen sat down to feast with the sailors for about the third hour.
And when the meal was over, the citizen was washing his knife on the side of the boat, when it suddenly slipped from his hand; At the same hour, through the open window of the citizen's house in the attic, which the English call a skylight, a knife was stuck on the table placed before the citizen's wife. The woman, struck by the novelty of the object, was astonished, and putting away the knife that had long been familiar to her, she learned long after, when her husband returned, that the date and time of the voyage coincided with the day of the reception.
Who then, from the published testimony of this fact, will doubt that the sea is above our dwelling in the air or above the air?
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(More Gervase of Tilbury I translated from Latin, written circa 1200)
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