Title
Bluejacket stranded on Longships, November 9th 1898.
Subject
Steamer
Ballast
Shipwreck
Wreck
Description
The Cardiff tramp, Bluejacket, struck the rocks sixty feet from the main door of the Longship Lighthouse on November 9th 1898. The wreck came at the end of a long tramping voyage which began on June 4th, under the command of Captain James Thomas, when she sailed from South Shields with coal for Venice, and ended in the course of a voyage from Danzig to Plymouth with railway sleepers.
At five o'clock on the evening of November 9th, the Bluejacket sailed from Plymouth Sound in ballast for Cardiff. The weather was thick, with a strong ESE wind, but shore lights were visible so she was kept at her full speed of ten knots. Before he went below at 9:30pm, Captain Thomas told the second mate to call him when they approached Land's End. Just before midnight the captain was roused by the tramp's engine going full astern.
Even as he made for the bridge from the boiler room by an inrush of water. The Bluejacket was on the Longships and the brilliant flash of the light showed up her already listing docks. The crew, including the captain's wife, took to the boats and were picked up by the Sennen lifeboat and landed at the cove. At dawn the Bluejacket presented a startling sight, poised like a gigantic seesaw across the rocks, at the very foot of the lighthouse.
Eight days after the wreck she was sold to Joseph Breen, shipbreaker of Penzance, who began to demolish her when weather and tide allowed. The Bluejacket, which had been launched in 1883 by J.L Thompson of Sunderland, as an iron screw, schooner-rigged steamer of 2,205 tons gross, was on the Longships in January 1900, when the small tug Chase used by Joseph Green dragged her anchors in a strong westerly age and was herself wrecked beneath the Land's End Hotel.
Description from Richard Larn and Clive Carter, Cornish Shipwrecks: The South Coast (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1971), p.238-239.
At five o'clock on the evening of November 9th, the Bluejacket sailed from Plymouth Sound in ballast for Cardiff. The weather was thick, with a strong ESE wind, but shore lights were visible so she was kept at her full speed of ten knots. Before he went below at 9:30pm, Captain Thomas told the second mate to call him when they approached Land's End. Just before midnight the captain was roused by the tramp's engine going full astern.
Even as he made for the bridge from the boiler room by an inrush of water. The Bluejacket was on the Longships and the brilliant flash of the light showed up her already listing docks. The crew, including the captain's wife, took to the boats and were picked up by the Sennen lifeboat and landed at the cove. At dawn the Bluejacket presented a startling sight, poised like a gigantic seesaw across the rocks, at the very foot of the lighthouse.
Eight days after the wreck she was sold to Joseph Breen, shipbreaker of Penzance, who began to demolish her when weather and tide allowed. The Bluejacket, which had been launched in 1883 by J.L Thompson of Sunderland, as an iron screw, schooner-rigged steamer of 2,205 tons gross, was on the Longships in January 1900, when the small tug Chase used by Joseph Green dragged her anchors in a strong westerly age and was herself wrecked beneath the Land's End Hotel.
Description from Richard Larn and Clive Carter, Cornish Shipwrecks: The South Coast (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1971), p.238-239.
Date
1898-11-09
Rights
Morrab Library
Format
Print
Identifier
COLLINS.028B
Coverage
Longships, Land's End