The Wreck at Sharpnose Point

by Jeremy Seal

This is a captivating mystery of the best kind - the sort that really happened. While walking through a cliff-top graveyard in the village of Morwenstow on the coast of Cornwall, Jeremy Seal stumbled across a wooden figurehead which once adorned the Caledonia, a ship wrecked on the coast below in 1842. Through further investigation, he began to suspect the locals, and in particular the parson, Robert Hawker, of luring the ship to her destruction on Cornwall's jagged shore. Wrecking is known to have been widespread along several stretches of England's coast. But is that what happened in Morwenstow? Seal weaves history, travelogue and vivid imaginative reconstruction into a marvellous piece of detective work.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Maritime, Nautical, Mystery, Historical

338 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Jeremy Seal is a writer and broadcaster. His first book, A Fez of the Heart, was shortlisted for the 1995 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. He is also the author of The Snakebite Survivors' Club and The Wreck at Sharpnose Point, and presenter of Channel 4's ‘Wreck Detectives’. He lives in Bath with his wife and daughters.

Reviews

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeremy Seal excels at constructing fine tales on seemingly flimsy premises: his fear of snakes was the springboard for the harrowing Snakebite Survivors' Club, for example, while a quest for a fez unfolded into the wonderful cultural travel book, A Fez of the Heart. I enjoyed both of these books so much that I put Seals on my "Promising Contemporary Authors" watch list and bought this earlier work from a used book seller.

Then, as is so often the case, the book sat on my groaning "to read" shelf, neglected.

Then one day it caught my eye. "Ah! Smuggling on the Cornish coast! Shipwrecks! That's the ticket!" It was just the sort of book that, although I hadn't realized it until that moment, I was casting about for.

(I am a great believer in the Right Book for the Right Time. If the reader is not in a receptive mood, then what's the point?)

True to form, Seal takes a chance encounter and proceeds to spin an elaborate narrative, interweaving his efforts to find out what happened to the Caledonia with a wonderfully full-bodied speculative account of what might have happened to the ship and its crew. He threw himself into both the research and fictional reconstruction with admirable abandon, yet there's an elegance to his writing and, above all, a commitment of heart that I found quite alluring.

Was there really enough material there to justify a book?

Well, not really. But that's missing the point.

The point is this: In the absence of time travel, writers like Jeremy Seal are perhaps our best hope of experiencing the past. Or perhaps I could compare him to a medium, connecting to the spirits of the long dead. While we may not sanction his methods or conclusions, those with a bit of adventure in their souls and a longing for the past will relish the journey he takes us on.

[Phil K · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author, Jeremy Seal chronicles his experience researching the 1840s shipwreck of The Caladonia in this book. The first half of the book is almost exclusively the author's experiences of going to different libraries and government depositories for information. This is generally not exciting reading.

Then towards the middle of the book, Seal writes a sort of narrative of the Caladonia's final voyage as if the reader is along for the journey. As a reader, I was not sure how much of this narrative were truly based on the accounts of the ship's lone survivor and documented ship's records vs. how much was made up to 'fill in' the story.

There was much interesting history in this book. Specifically about shipping, economics, trade, and governance. But the language was too flowery to keep me fully engaged. Seal also makes the experience personal to him, which I could not fully appreciate.

[Marcella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by a dad who would go read some old shipping records or walk down a beach on the weekends. It was nice!

Biggest takeaway is that I had no idea how much international shipping was going on in the mid-19th-century.

[theduckthief · Rating 3 out of 5]

"She stood beneath oaks and sycamores on high ground, close to the lych-gate and the stone outhouse that formed the graveyard's southeast corner. A train of celandines lay at her feet. She was dressed in a tam-o'-shanter and a sporran, and held a cutlass and a round shield on which a flowering thistle was carved. A sash hung from her left shoulder, and beneath it was a glimpse of chain like mermaid scales. Painted white she was almost life-size."

On a trip to Morwenstow, England, Jeremy Seal finds a wooden ship figurehead propped up as a gravemarker and wonders how she came to be on dry land. His investigation leads him to the Caledonia, a ship wrecked off the coast in 1842. After searching through local records, he begins to suspect the locals were 'wreckers' who purposely ran the ship aground, looted it and possibly killed its crew. But he needs evidence and while the coast has a history of shipwrecks, it's difficult to prove his theory. While searching through Morwenstow, Seal recreates what life might have been like on board the Caledonia and how they might have met their tragic end.

Seal has a way with words, as evidenced by the quote above. His writing has a lyrical, haunting quality to it that adds to the recreation of the shipwreck. As well, Seal gives the reader a taste of shipboard life in the 19th century. We follow his search through church records, microfiche and local legends. Piece by piece he constructs a narrative of what might have happened but the amount of time that's passed leaves large holes in his body of evidence.

The problem with this book was, it could have been great. But Seal has so little real information to go on that he ends up padding the book. This includes the recreation, which at most is general and best guess as to what really happened during the shipwreck. But the recreation takes up the majority of the book, with the Seal's search for evidence a poor runner-up. Ultimately the ending was unsatisfactory with no real payoff.

[Kevin Tole · Rating 3 out of 5]

The figurehead of the Caledonia, wrecked on the North Cornwall coast, marks the mass grave of the crewmen of whom all but one perished when the ship was wrecked at Higher Sharpnose Point close to Morwenstow church. This brings the very Reverend Hawker into the story. A Cornish eccentric who wrote his sermons, poetry and many writings in a wooden hut made from salvaged timbers high on the cliff above Vicarage Cliff.

To anyone that knows the area and the church at Morwenstow this book represents the story of that figurehead. Unfortunately the excellent research is marred by these passages where the writer feels he has to write a 'novella' like account of what was happening on the ship through the voyage which is all full of utter bollix and "top gallants and halyard" stuff. Its a pity because it really distracts from the quality of the research. You are advised to skip these sections. The writing throughout is all a bit florid unfortunately. Had the 'interludes' been left out the it would have got another star. Also the quality of the illustrations is really pretty poor and deserves to be better.

Really of interest only to those that know the area and the figurehead.

[David Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful read. I didn't expect to but I loved the combination of the painstaking detective work involved and the fictionalised account of what might have (surely did?) happened to the ship and its crew. The deft way that the story is interwoven with the known facts brought the whole tragedy of the sailors and their ship to life. My favourite read of 2007.
Update March 2011: I have now been to Morwenstow in Cornwall to see the grave and the figurehead. It was a drizzly, misty and generally awful day and all the better for it. The original figurehead has been moved into the church for safe-keeping and replaced by an exact replica marking the grave. We walked across the fields to the cliffs and sheltered in Hawker's hut above the heaving sea which we could feel crashing against the foot of the cliffs 400 feet below while gulls wheeled about overhead crying mournfully.

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining and engaging, but not entirely history by any means. Half of the book is the author making discoveries and talking to people, his own discovery of information, and the tools that he used. The other half is his fictionalized account of how events might have happened, from the prospective of the lone survivor of the wreck.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book several years ago while staying on the north Devon coast. I've not forgotten the pleasure I had from reading it and recommend it to all and sundry. It is a fascinating and worthwhile read.

[Saturday's Child · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read.

[Penny Holt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story with an excellent description of how to do research.