A view from the cliffs at Land's End looking down onto the upturned hull of the French wooden schooner Espiegle (1903) mostly submerged off the rocks at the foot of the cliffs. A few masts and yards are floating nearby.

This is a copy negative from an original print. Graphite has been used on the emulsion side to highlight the yards and spars.

The wooden French two-masted schooner Espiegle was on passage from Port Laurnay, France to Swansea with a cargo of pit props, having left on the Sunday morning. The schooner ran into fog off Longships and the crew lost their bearings. They struck a rock close to Tol-Pedn with such force that it threw the crew of their feet, carried away the bowsprit and stove in the bow. The back-swirl took the ship back off-shore where it began to sink and capsized. The crew escaped in the punt, including the captain's black retriever dog, but the cabin boy was swept away and drowned. They were rescued by the Coastguard with breeches buoys and cliff ladders. Two weeks later the wreck reappeared in a gale spreading the cargo around Mount's Bay. 'The Times' reported in an article relating to another abandoned French ship that the French Government had awarded Oliver Haskins, formerly chief officer of the coastguard at Tol-pedn-Penwith, Cornwall, a bronze medal in recognition for his services to the shipwrecked crew of the French schooner Espiegle, of Treguier, which had been stranded at Tol-pedn-Penwith on 14 October 1912. [The Times, 25 September 1913, page 10].