The Coastguard offered two other incidents that could impinge on the marine scientists’ work. On the 6th October 1949, a 6,300 ton freighter named the Fantree struck the Seven Stones. The crew of fifty-eight was rescued by two Isles of Scilly pleasure boats, the Kittern and the Golden Spray. They were faster than the RNLI Cunard. The Fantree was carrying a cargo of hardwood tree trunks. The large trunks were heavier than water, but years later the logs started to surface, presenting a hazard to shipping. At the time, the Fantree filled and sank. The last Coastguard hazard record was in 1992, but there could be more logs yet to surface. The Coastguard marked the large number of fifty-eight crew members as suspicious.
The second incident on 22nd July 1956 concerned the Panamanian freighter Punta. It rammed the Seven Stones and sank. The crew took to the lifeboats and again the Golden Spray was first to the scene. The Punta subsea wreck was recorded by the Coastguard as a hazard.
The Coastguard asked the scientists to note the position of the wreck of the Flying Enterprise which sank in the winter of 1952 south of the Seven Stones, forty miles west of Falmouth. It left Hamburg 21st December 1951 said to be carrying a cargo of 1290 tons of pig iron and 900 tons of coffee and assorted cargo. It headed toward weather of forty-five feet waves and sixty knot winds. The pig iron in hold two was stacked in a pyramid shape and not tied down. The hold two load shifted. The Flying Enterprise listed forty-five degrees to port, lost power and called Mayday. The Falmouth ocean going tug Turmoil responded and found a US Navy vessel, the John D Weekes, standing by. This vessel refused to assist the Turmoil in securing a tow line. Turmoil’s chief mate, Ken Dancy, risked his life jumping aboard the Flying Enterprise in heavy seas to secure a tow. Turmoil’s captain, Dan Parker, began the dangerous task of towing a heavily listing vessel to the safety of Falmouth Harbour. Ken Dancy was surprised to find only Captain Carlsen on board. The US Navy vessel had taken the crew and ten passengers off. On 8th January 1952 the ship rolled into a ninety-degree list, its funnel lying almost on the sea. Water started pouring down the funnel. Carlsen and Dancy walked along the funnel, jumped into the freezing sea to be picked up by the Turmoil. It was 10th January 1952 and at four p.m. the Flying Enterprise sank.
The US Navy kept watch over the wreck site for some weeks. Rumour had it there was gold and zirconium on board. When the US Navy left the site, divers descended and found a ten-foot square hole cut in hold two. The cargo had gone! Pig Iron! The hot rumour said the cargo was niobium desperately needed for the pressure vessels of nuclear reactors in US submarines.
Captain Carlsen was given a New York hero’s ticker tape reception: strange for a captain who had refused to tow his ship to safety and then lost his ship. Strange that the ship should sail over a Christmas period into the teeth of a storm to deliver low value pig iron
The Coastguard was warning the marine scientists, ‘dangerous cargo may be in the wreck. The prevailing Gulf Stream may have moved the wreck closer to the Seven Stones’.
The Italian Connection
The Falmouth Coastguard keeps watch world-wide over sea going movements. Rescue ‘help’ calls from racing yachts in the Southern Ocean have always been picked up and the nearest shipping been directed to assist.
It was a surprise for the Coastguard to receive a call from a shipping agent in Newport, South Wales to trace a 500 tons Italian tramp steamer. It was a week overdue, carrying a cargo of 50 tons of valuable marble slabs from Sardinia. The transit of this vessel had not been logged with the Coastguard, but enquiries to the French equivalent revealed a vessel of that description lay at anchor off Brest, Brittany, repairing a broken circulating pump.
Normally the vessel was a ‘Trot’ boat delivering coal, oil drums and general cargo between Italian islands and the mainland in fair weather. Built in the 1920s it had perennially missed the scrap heap. The owners could not justify the costs of fitting satellite navigation and radar proximity warning equipment. Registered as a tender to larger vessels, ship to shore radio was deemed adequate. The hull had not been scraped for five years and was home to a host of barnacles and every mollusc imaginable. Under the stern, some molluscs were a metre long. The encrustation limited the vessel’s speed to six knots.
An urgent contract to ship marble to the UK was put to tender. The only available vessel was the trot boat. The owners’ jumped at the chance. The old ‘rust bucket’ was loaded with 50 tons of marble. It would be the first time the trusty bag of rivets had left the Mediterranean to test its mettle against the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay.
In February 1990, the Coastguard warned shipping in the Western Approaches to the English Channel of a 950 millibars depression bringing winds of Force 10 storm to Force 11 violent storm.
The innocent trot boat set sail from Brittany broadside on to the gathering maelstrom. The Newport shipping agent and the Coastguard could only hope.
The waves were cresting five metres above the trot boat. It was being blown on to the Seven Stones reef. With fifty tons of marble on board and a feeble engine, the trot boat had no chance. Doomed to join the other Seven Stones’ wrecks, the ancient wooden hull ground on to the rocks and turned turtle. The forward marble laden hold sank, lodging in the rocks seven
