‘Halloween’ At Soar Mill Cove
Laden with tea and bound for London,
The clipper Halloween set sail
But became embroiled in heavy seas, wild weather
And storms from a force-nine gale.
Once Eddystone Lighthouse was sighted and a new course set,
The exhausted crew’s misplaced relief
Was replaced by horror and helplessness,
For off the Hamstone, the Halloween came to grief.
Floundering upon rocks off Soar Mill Cove,
Forecastle and cabin smacked by a wrecking sea,
The crew was forced to climb the rigging,
Which parted and shook off the ship’s company.
Flares were fired in desperation, a deck bonfire was duly lit;
The wind-blown flames writhed and curled,
Yet no landsman noticed these helpless signals,
As gales tore at the clipper, with breakers hurled…
Three volunteers determined to carry a line ashore,
In a final attempt, their shipmates to save:
Two blundered to the foot of ragged cliffs,
The third succumbed to a sea-water grave…
Scrambling upwards, shivering, cold,
The pair roused a farmer from his winter fire,
Who eventually alerted the Hope Cove lifeboatmen,
But their rescue would be tricky, lengthy and dire.
The Halloween’s near-frozen crew of nineteen
Was lifted, precariously, to safety aboard,
Their numbing exposure the great concern,
Yet the clipper would soon spill its precious hoard…
A formidable barrier formed inside Soar Mill Cove,
As the cargo of tea was flushed from the hold,
Then within three days, the stricken clipper broke up,
In early January’s howling gusts of ice-cold.
The skeletal shell, the clipper’s soul,
Would become abandoned and forgotten,
Interred beneath several feet of unforgiving sand,
A monument: rusting, wasting and, rotten…
Pete Ray
The Halloween carried tea from Foochow to London and took 155 days to reach Eddystone but the new course set led the clipper into storms, huge seas and fog.
The ship was wrecked on the 7th January, 1887.
The cargo of tea left a 12 foot barrier in Soar Mill Cove!
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