Title
St. Guenole, wrecked at Gribba Point, November 1st 1948
Subject
Shipwreck
Description
Eleven years passed, and the tragedy of the Vierge Marie was repeated. Again, it was the usual 'wreck weather' for the western cliffs: hazy with heavy ground seas, the aftermath of a hard south-west gale. Shortly after one o'clock in the morning of November 1st 19148, the coastguard on watch at Treen saw the lights of a motor vessel emerge from a fierce squall of rain and head straight for the surf beating upon Pedn-e-Vounder sans. In response to the rapid blink of Aldis Lamp, she turned eastward and vanished round Logan Rock headland.
Though she made no signal, either to acknowledge the warning or to ask for help, he called out Treen LSA Company and another coastguard and went down into Penberth Cove. There was no sign of the mysterious ship, but the wind was thick with the stench of fuel oil.
Suddenly her saw a young man washing about in the surf and despite almost being swept away, dragged him out and carried him to a nearby cottage.
Search parties began to scour the cliffs. A lifejacket marked 'ST GUENOLE-ROUEN' was pickier up on the rocks near the cove, and at dawn a vessel of about 500 tons was found bottom up beneath Gribba point, less then half a mile away. The St Guenole, a steel tar tanker owned by Cie Mar de Transport de Goudron of Rouen, bound in ballast from Nantes to Irvine on Clydside with a crew of twelve, was a total wreck. Twenty-three-year old Andre Fourcin, the sailor saved by the coastguard, was the sole survivor.
The St Guenole rusted away beneath the Penberth Cliffs and the memory of the wreck slowly faded.
Description from Richard Larn and Clive Carter, Cornish Shipwrecks: The South Coast (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1971), p.211-212.
Though she made no signal, either to acknowledge the warning or to ask for help, he called out Treen LSA Company and another coastguard and went down into Penberth Cove. There was no sign of the mysterious ship, but the wind was thick with the stench of fuel oil.
Suddenly her saw a young man washing about in the surf and despite almost being swept away, dragged him out and carried him to a nearby cottage.
Search parties began to scour the cliffs. A lifejacket marked 'ST GUENOLE-ROUEN' was pickier up on the rocks near the cove, and at dawn a vessel of about 500 tons was found bottom up beneath Gribba point, less then half a mile away. The St Guenole, a steel tar tanker owned by Cie Mar de Transport de Goudron of Rouen, bound in ballast from Nantes to Irvine on Clydside with a crew of twelve, was a total wreck. Twenty-three-year old Andre Fourcin, the sailor saved by the coastguard, was the sole survivor.
The St Guenole rusted away beneath the Penberth Cliffs and the memory of the wreck slowly faded.
Description from Richard Larn and Clive Carter, Cornish Shipwrecks: The South Coast (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1971), p.211-212.
Date
1948
Identifier
WRECKS 32HF 101
Coverage
Lands End
Street Name
Saint Guenole