In 1845 a serious attempt was made to secure the buried dollars. The position of the wreck was located, iron stanchions were fixed in the cliffs, and a stone dam built out to enclose the spot, with the intention of pumping out the water, but when those preparations were on the eve of completion a storm came and utterly abolished all the works. Another party of adventurers tried, about 1865, and sank a shaft into which the sea burst, and in 1872 a further effort was made. The scheme of operations was on this occasion altogether different, the idea being to introduce pipes into the water and by powerful pumps to suck up the sand and incidentally the dollars. But storms made short work of that enterprise also. Attempts are even now in progress for the recovery of the treasure that has been waiting over a hundred and twenty years for the finding.
A mysterious wreck, not, however, so mysterious but that it was quite certainly the result of foul play, happened on Gunwalloe sands on April 21st, 1890. The steamship Brankelow, from Cardiff for Cronstadt, with a cargo of 3,000 tons of coal, ran at full speed ahead at midnight on to the sands. Fortunately it was not rough weather at the time, and the crew were got off safely, although it was stated that they were all drunk. The cause of the vessel being driven directly for the land was found to have been a malicious tampering with the compasses by Trades' Union men at Cardiff, and by violent damage done wilfully to it on the voyage. Two magnets had been inserted at Cardiff, by which the needle was wrong to the extent of five points. The Brankelow eventually became embedded in the sand and was a total loss.
Up out of Gunwalloe the road skirts Halzaphron Cliffs, and thence descends to the sands of Loe Bar. At Halzaphron on November 4th, 1807, the ill-fated Susan and Rebecca transport, homeward-bound from Buenos Aires, was wrecked. Of the 180 on board, forty-one were drowned and buried on the cliff-top. H.M.S. Anson took the sands on Loe Bar, December 28th, 1807, and was wrecked, with the loss of her captain and sixty sailors.
LOOE POOL.
Loe, or properly Looe, Bar is a belt of sand thrown up by the sea, obstructing the outflow of a stream called the Cober, which has too feeble a discharge to clear away the obstruction, causing the valley running two miles and a half inland to Helston to assume the aspect of a lake. In the summer these waters would to some degree percolate through the sand, but in the winter's rains they could not escape so quickly, and consequently the level of Looe Pool would rise by some ten feet or more, a source of some inconvenience. From this arose an ancient custom, by which the corporation of Helston presented the lord of the manor with a leathern purse containing three-halfpence, soliciting permission to cut the sandbar and so permit the water to escape. Permission graciously accorded, workmen were engaged who cut a trench in the sand, and so the stream burst through and regained its summer level. This done, the sea began to choke up the outlet as before, and the process was repeated the next winter.
This quaint old custom is now a thing of the past, it having been of recent years somewhat belatedly realised that a culvert constructed under Looe Bar would effectually drain the waters off, without the periodic cuttings.
But Cornwall being the Cornwall of legends, it was known perfectly well that satanic agency and not natural forces originally produced Looe Bar. Time was, according to these legends, when Helston was a thriving port, with trading vessels sailing up the estuary. It was Tregeagle who did the mischief. Every one in Cornwall has heard of Tregeagle, the dishonest steward, who pervades many legends and lives in many centuries, these stories not being particular in the matter of ten centuries or so. Set to work by St. Petroc at Gunwalloe, his task was to carry sand in sacks across the mouth of the estuary and empty them at Porthleven. Laden with a sack of enormous size, the doomed spirit was wading across when one of the wicked demons, who were always on the watch for him, tripped him up, and the contents of the sack fell into the sea.