This month we are taking a closer look at our shipwreck and lifesaving objects. Perhaps the most famous of the histories at the museum is that of inventor Henry Trengrouse. Apart from artefacts associated with the sad demise of ships and their crews along the Cornish coast, and that end up in museums such as ours, stories of shipwrecks have also left a legacy of mythology and folklore in the enigmatic space between land and sea.

Shipwrecks have also piqued the imaginations of artists, creating meaning from the detritus that is left on the seabed and that breaks up along shorelines. Tom Kaniok, the artist behind our current exhibition The Shipping Forecast is no exception and this new body of work including painting, drawing and animation, explores the material consequences of the wreck of the SS Ocklinge.

This artistic imagining led me to wonder what documentary sources existed about the ship. Thanks to the British Newspaper Archive, I was able to find out how and why the Ocklinge was wrecked. Indeed the story was reported more widely than the Cornish newspapers.

On 4 March 1932 the Steam Ship Ocklinge ran aground on the Manacle rocks off Lizard Point and was eventually wrecked at Lowland Point near Coverack. She was carrying a cargo of iron ore. The ship could not be safely retrieved and was abandoned by her crew and rescuers after a couple of weeks because of unfavourable sea conditions. The ship was left to break up and her cargo of haematite – iron ore – continues to wash up on the coast today.

A Board of Trade Inquiry at a Cardiff court took place in September. The Evening News of 15 September 1932 reported that the courtroom was crowded as members of the press and public eagerly waited to hear how the ship was wrecked. It was reported that the Ocklinge was on her maiden voyage having recently been purchased and renamed by Messrs. Constants Ltd. She had left Bilbao in northern Spain and was on a voyage to Port Talbot, South Wales, having stopped at Falmouth. The captain, Michael Driscoll, master mariner, claimed thick fog obscured the Lizard Lighthouse when the ship crashed into rocks. However, the court found Capt. Driscoll negligent and also guilty of making false statements about the circumstances of the incident.

Dr. Tehmina Goskar
Research Curator.

Image: Richards Brothers, Penzance, “SS ‘Ocklinge’, Coverack, 1932.” Accessed: https://www.cornishmemory.com/item/BIL_1_024.