One of the greatest hazards
in Mount's Bay was the sudden shift from southwards to
south-west. Ships comming up the Channel would be
blown into the bay; those entering or leaving the bay
would be pinned up against the eastern cliffs, and
chaos would reign off Mullion where scores of ships
and boats would be anchored. In 1862, four wrecks
alone were caused by such veering gales.
In 1867, after two
days of a furious gale, ship after ship stood shelter
under Mullion cliffs; then on the night of 5 January
the wind veered SSW. A frantic scramble ensued as
nineteen schooners raised anchor and headed to sea.
Two ships collided, the Margaret and the Cherub. One of the crew of the Margaret
leaped unto th Cherub only to find she was crippled
and uncontrollable. He was able to come ashore with
her crew. The Margaret was
slightly damaged in the bows and lay at anchor with
three other schooners.. The weather turned sunny and
clear an the gale dropped to a light breeze; but the
barometer was falling, a heavy ground sea broke on
the beach, and the tide was ebbing away beneath them.
The Margaret was beyond rocket
range so a messenger was sent to Porthleven for a
lifeboat. When the men on shore realized it would
take too long for Porthleven to answer, they sent
another message to the Lizard.
The would be
rescuers attempted for the Margaret's
crew to float a line ashore, but the crew seemed
ignorant of its peril and stood leaning on the
bulwarks blithely waiting for rescue. At almost dead
low water the ship parted her cable, broached to,
broke in two amidships and disintegrated. The captain
clung to some of the wreckage but failed to reach
rocket lines shot to him, and was swept away.
The other schooners
lay out further in safety. One, the Hearty, took off the crew of the
iron schooner Ebbw Vale and eventually landed them
safely at Plymouth. The Ebbw Vale
broke her cable in the rising south-west gale that
evening and drove in close two the other two wrecks.
(Larn and
Carter, Cornish Shipwrecks,
pages 151-152.)
