The Wreck of the SV. Carl at Booby’s Bay
Ref: Submerged
At the outbreak of the First War in 1914, the Sailing vessel Carl, launched in 1893 by Ribson & Co of Maryport, and registered in Hamburg, found herself in Cardiff docks where she was impounded after being surprised at sea and suspected of being an enemy minelayer.
Three years later on October 7 1917, the Carl was being towed to London to be broken up for scrap, when she broke free in the storm.
In a letter to the Padstow Echo in 1966, Lieutenant Commander Langford of the Royal Navy, recalled his mother’s eyewitness account of the Carl’s demise. ‘The Carl went aground on the outer reef,’ he wrote. ‘Two Admiralty tugs came from Devonport to try to refloat her. The tugs managed to pull the vessel off the reef but in doing so broke both of their towing hawsers. Completely out of control and pushed by the storm the Carl ended up on the inner reef which was only yards from the shore. She was examined by salvage experts who found no real damage, so the tugs had another go, and once more broke both their towing cables. The Carl however, broke her back in the rolling waves, and was declared a total loss.
Everything of any use was stripped from the vessel, and she was left to rot on the beach, where over the years, she became buried under the sand.
The photo above was taken in May 2007. However, the wreck has occasionally been uncovered since as the sands shifts. The tip of the anchor shown in the photo to the left is usually visible at low tide.