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Home > News

Press Release

10 March 2014 - Plymouth, England

Wreck on Whitsand Beach Identified

The wreck that has appeared on Whitsand beach has been identified as the Daisy by the SHIPS Project team.

At the beginning of March an old iron shipwreck appeared from the sands of Freathy Cliff in Whitsand Bay, uncovered by a severe south-westerly gale. The name of the wreck was not known, so Whitsand resident Bill Honey and Roger Collins from the Rame Peninsula History Group asked the SHIPS Project to help find out. The SHIPS team went to see the wreck a few days later but by then the wreck was already being covered over by the beach sand, even so the team could see that the wreck was a large iron steamship of an old design. Using the team's database of shipwrecks in the area a ship of the right age and right type was soon identified, followed by research on the Web and in old newspapers the story of the ship was discovered. The wreck is a ship called the Daisy, a 66m long steam coaster that was wrecked in a storm in 1903. The Daisy was originally called the Emerald and was built in Sunderland in 1872, spending her life sailing between ports in Europe and the Baltic.

Just after midnight on 27th February 1903 the Daisy was taking advantage of a break in the stormy weather when she was caught in a fierce gale which blew the ship onto the rocks off Freathy, luckily all the crew were saved by a rescue party on the shore. The ship ended up sideways on to the rocks, broken in three places and over the next few weeks the sea broke her up, and what remained was buried under the beach. The remains of the Daisy can be found on very low tides on the seaward side of the rocks at Freathy Cliff, just to the east of Sharrow Point. A large part of the hull of the ship is there lying on her port side with rigging, fittings and even her iron propeller still in place. The wreck is historically important and would be great to study as it could tell us a lot about how ships were built at that time, so it is a shame that its is being buried by the beach again.

The SHIPS Project is funded by ProMare, a US research foundation.

More information and photographs: http://www.promare.co.uk/ships/Wrecks/Wk_Daisy.html

Contact: Peter Holt, Project Manager, the SHIPS Project
Email: pete@3HConsulting.com
Web: www.promare.co.uk/ships
Mob: +44 (0) 7813 018588
Find ‘The SHIPS Project’ on facebook: www.facebook.com/TheShipsProject