Beside the bar is a cabin made
from the timbers of the Herzogin Cecilie, a clipper that ran aground
on the Ham Stone in Soar Mill Cove in 1936. This beautiful ship had won the
famous 'Grain Race' but in this case her cargo let her down. Seawater entered
the hold and the swollen grain burst her apart. Luckily no lives were lost.
Some of our regular residents remember going to view the wreck when they were
children. Enterprising farmers charged one penny for the use of their land for
viewing!
“No completely satisfactory explanation has been found for this large
windjammer to find herself so many miles off her course. Foggy conditions were prevailing in the Channel
on the dreadful night of 25th April 1936; miscalculations of one
kind or another may have played a part in this tragedy but the captain had already
had experience of bringing the ship up the Channel on one previous
occasion. There were thirty-one people
aboard at the time of the misfortune and most of these were taken off by the
Salcombe Lifeboat at about 8am on the Saturday morning, the 26th April. The lifeboat returned in the afternoon and
stood by as the sea had become too rough for it to get along side the Herzogin
Cecilie”.
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