Title
Seine, wrecked at Perran, December 27th 1900
Subject
Barque, Steel
Nitrate
Shipwreck
Wreck
Description
The largest and best-known sailing-ship wreck in Perran Bay was the French nitrate clipper Seine, an elegant three masted steel barque of 2,630 tons gross launched in 1889 by La Porte of Rouen for the celebrated fleet of A.D Bordes et Fils of Bordeaux.
She and others like her were known as 'Bounty Clippers', owing their handsome looks to the French navigation bounties, a subsidy which enabled owners to sacrifice capacity for fine lines, instead of settling for the 'wall-siders' and 'bald-headers' of their British counterparts.
The Seine was a particularly smart ship, sporting whit masts and yards and the traditional painted ports, with a long forecastle and poop deck.
On December 27th 1900, eighty-one days from Iquique to Falmouth for orders with nitrate, the Seine encountered a WNW gale of Scilly. By midnight, Captain Guimper had abandoned all hopes of making port, and at 10:00am, the Seine, under reefed fore-topsails, was sighted from St Agnes Head. The Perranporth and St Agnes rocket brigades were assembled when, early in the afternoon, the big clipper ran in the north of Chapel Rock, and they spliced both their hawsers into a single long one to reach her.
Six sailors and a delirious cabin boy were landed before the Seine, gave and an extra violent roll that broke the hawser. Six Newqay youths waded out under her bows, a line was flung down to them, and another five men slid to safety. Captain Guimper was the last to leave the doomed to the breakers, a gutted steel shell which broke up on the next flood tide. A fortnight late the wreck of this once beautiful clipper was sold to Newquay sea captain for a mere £42.
Description from Clive Carter, Cornish Shipwrecks: The North Coast (London: Pann Books LTD, 1970), p.86-87.
She and others like her were known as 'Bounty Clippers', owing their handsome looks to the French navigation bounties, a subsidy which enabled owners to sacrifice capacity for fine lines, instead of settling for the 'wall-siders' and 'bald-headers' of their British counterparts.
The Seine was a particularly smart ship, sporting whit masts and yards and the traditional painted ports, with a long forecastle and poop deck.
On December 27th 1900, eighty-one days from Iquique to Falmouth for orders with nitrate, the Seine encountered a WNW gale of Scilly. By midnight, Captain Guimper had abandoned all hopes of making port, and at 10:00am, the Seine, under reefed fore-topsails, was sighted from St Agnes Head. The Perranporth and St Agnes rocket brigades were assembled when, early in the afternoon, the big clipper ran in the north of Chapel Rock, and they spliced both their hawsers into a single long one to reach her.
Six sailors and a delirious cabin boy were landed before the Seine, gave and an extra violent roll that broke the hawser. Six Newqay youths waded out under her bows, a line was flung down to them, and another five men slid to safety. Captain Guimper was the last to leave the doomed to the breakers, a gutted steel shell which broke up on the next flood tide. A fortnight late the wreck of this once beautiful clipper was sold to Newquay sea captain for a mere £42.
Description from Clive Carter, Cornish Shipwrecks: The North Coast (London: Pann Books LTD, 1970), p.86-87.
Date
1900-12-28
Identifier
COLLINS.179B
Coverage
Perranporth, Cornwall