Loe Bar is associated with
some of the earliest wrecks known in detail. On 20
February 1492 a wine laden ship came ashore there. A
"John Beull of Ambell" and a gang seized
eight butts of wine from the powerful Arundel family
of Winnianton, whose seizures of wrecked ships were
already famous.
In 1723 a case
involved salvage of cable and anchor of a ship which
sank at Mullion Island. In 1730, two large anchors
were salvaged. In 1744, William Johns of Penzance
recovered timber, anchors, guns, pewter, iron and
copper at Meres, near Mullion. In 1755 the complete
bottom of a ship was landed, including a yard and
part of a mast at Porthpeopr. Debris came ashore
including barrels of butter and wine, pitch, hides,
and timber.
In December 1779 a
wine laden Dutch ship Slando
Welvern
was wrecked in Gunwalloe. In 1782 the brig Maria
Elizabeth
bound for Hamburg with wine and fruit was lost below
Predannack Head and the ship, Torrington, with wines, was lost on
Loe Bar during a winter gale. The Pola came ashore at Gunwalloe in
January 1792 with hemp and cider. On 11 November 1799
a foreign vessel was wrecked at Mullion and all
perished. An unusual wreck occurred on 18 May 1802 on
Loe Bar when a French mackerel boat drove ashore in a
gale. Eight were lost but six survived and were fed
and clothed by John Rogers of Penrose.
In the space of
several weeks in the winter of 1807, there were two
disastrous shipwrecks within two miles of each
other. The government transport ship James and
Rebecca
was returning with a squadron of an ill-fated Buenos
Aires expedition struck the Halsferran cliffs just
east of Gunwalloe shortly before midnight on 6
November. Half of her 200 on board were taken off by
a rope chair, but eighty were aboard, including the
captain, when the ship broke up at eleven the next
morning. Ten sailors, twenty-eight troopers, and
three children were drowned and buried in a common
grave on the cliff top with a recitation of the
Lord's Prayer by a local man.
(Larn and
Carter, Cornish Shipwrecks)
