THE FASCINATING, but unfinished, tale of East Lancashire's forgotten castaway David Ashworth - brought to Looking Back last week by 84-year-old Mr John Fowler, of Blackburn - comes to a dramatic conclusion today, more than 130 years after the shipwreck survivor's amazing adventure began.

It is thanks to avid burrower in the archives at Accrington Library, reader June Huntingdon, that the astounding story of Ashworth's 18-month ordeal on a remote and virtually-barren uninhabited island 200 south of New Zealand is now complete.

For she unearthed two 1928 newspaper articles that reveal what happened before and afterwards to the real-life Robinson Crusoe - and, to the delight of Mr Fowler, solved many of the mysteries arising from the missing chapters of his ancestor's story.

But while this is a thrilling tale of adventure, courage and endurance that starts of in Clayton-le-Moors, its dramatic climax on the other side of the world is almost incredible.

For it ends with Ashworth secretly going back to the faraway island where he and fellow shipwreck victims spent all those harrowing months living off seals and seabirds - and meeting his doom out of lust for sunken treasure.

Readers of last week's episode will recall how Mr Fowler, of Nares Road, Witton, understood that his grandfather's cousin, David Ashworth, had been a seaman aboard a ship called the Dundonald which, in 1866, was wrecked off the Auckland Islands archipelago while going to the aid of survivors of the gold-laden American clipper, General Grant, which had sunk in freak circumstances inside a huge cavern on the coast of Auckland Island itself. But a major puzzle was that when the Dundonald's survivors were eventually rescued, he was not listed among them in a newspaper report of the time. Mr Fowler wondered whether he had, in fact, been on board the General Grant instead.

And, indeed, he was. Not only was he one of the fortunate 15 out of the 83 who survived the sinking of the clipper, he was one of the miners on board who were bound for England after striking it rich in the Australian gold rush. According to an American newspaper report from the year before that was forwarded by his niece, Miss Annie Livesey, to East Lancashire in 1928 to provide a local bi-weekly with material for its long-running "Accrington in the 18th Century" series, Ashworth had, after more than 12 years in the goldfields, acquired "considerable wealth."

The miners' gold went down with the General Grant - and so might have nine tons more as the "zinc spelter" listed in its cargo was believed to be secret government bullion bound for the Royal Mint in Britain.

The lure of this was Ashworth's undoing. But his path to a watery grave in search of the lost treasure began in Clayton-le-Moors, where he was born in 1836 and which he left as a child when his parents emigrated to Rhode Island in the United states six years later.

On his 17th birthday, he took off for the newly-discovered Australian goldfields and the luck that made him rich stayed with him when the General Grant sank. He was only one of three saved from the lifeboat he was in after it was swamped. When the survivors landed, they had only one match among them to light a fire - which was kept going the whole 18 months they awaited rescue by a passing ship.

These 15 survivors were in a sorry state, without food or sufficient clothing, living on shellfish at first until a seal was caught which provided them with food and material for clothing, which they sewed with needles made from albatross bones and thread spun from what flax they found growing on the island," says the 1928 account of their ordeal.

Four of the survivors were lost - never seen again - after setting out for New Zealand in January, 1867, in one of the General Grant's small boats and another died the following September before rescue finally came.

Ashworth spent the next two years in New Zealand - which is where he was probably photographed wearing the sealskin suit and hat he had made. But in 1870, he was bound once more for the Auckland Islands, leaving Melbourne in Australia on a ship called the Daphne which he had purchased with two friends - ostensibly for a seal-hunting expedition. But, says the 1928 report: "The real object was to attempt the salving of the General Grant and its valuable cargo. When near the Auckland Island, which David Ashworth knew so well through his previous experience there, a crew of seven, including David and a diver, put off from the Daphne in a small boat with provisions to last a week, so as to enable them to make an attempt on the wrecked vessel.

"Little did their comrades know that they were seeing the last of this intrepid Lancashire man and his companions. Rough seas prevailed for several days after, and when communication was made with the island the men were missing. After waiting five weeks in the vain hope of their return, the Daphne returned to Australia, having given their comrades up for lost, and nothing more was heard of them."

But his story did not end there. In 1927, his niece, Miss Livesey, dedicated three memorial windows in a church in Crompton, Rhode Island, to her grandparents, David's mother and father, and to her uncle himself and during frequent visits to England she donated to the Mercer House museum in Clayton-le-Moors mementos of the Ashworth family which are now in the

Lancashire Record Office in Preston, among them bonnets David Ashworth wore as a baby.

Mr Fowler said: "Annie Livesey used to come over from America about once a year and always stayed with my family."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.