Maritime record MWX1544 - Volante

1817 wreck of craft, possibly English, which stranded at Lyme Regis during a storm; a wooden sailing vessel. She was lost in the same storm as the MARY and the UNION.

Stranded / Total Loss <1> This vessel may be identifiable with an unknown French chasse-maree (q.v.), lost at Charmouth `during the gale on Sunday night. <2>

Date of Loss Qualifier: Actual date of loss

'Lyme, Jan. 20. Yesterday it blew a fresh gale from SSE, and during the night increased to a hurricane, which occasioned the highest tide ever known here...Soon after daylight...at 8 o'clock all the walls (in front of the town), breakwaters, and about 300 feet of the centre part of the harbour gave way, when the stone cutting the cables of the vessels, the following were driven ashore and totally lost, viz. VOLANTE, and the MARY, of Lyme; UNION, of Exeter...' <3>

[NB: It is unclear from the punctuation in <2> above whether the VOLANTE belonged to Lyme Regis or not; given the position of loss, it is probable, but cannot be confirmed.]

The building date for this vessel is an estimate based on an average age at wrecking of twenty years. This average is derived from those vessels wrecked on the Dorset coast whose age at wrecking is known.

<1> Larn, R, and Larn, B, 1995, Shipwreck index of the British Isles, volume 1 : Isles of Scilly, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset Section 6, Dorset (AJ) Vol 1 (Monograph). SWX4541.

<2> 1745 onwards, Lloyds list, 24-JAN-1817, No.5146 (Serial). SWX8434.

<3> 1976, Dorset magazine : the county magazine vol. 50, p18 (Article in serial). SWX4560.

<4> Le Pard, G, 1995-2003, Dorset Coast Forum Maritime Archaeological Database, Shipwreck 530 (Digital archive). SWX8707.

<5> National Record of the Historic Environment, 1231505 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Sep 14 2023 4:31PM