A port bow view of the Dutch three-masted schooner aground on Perranporth Beach. The photographer was standing on the beach near the bow looking northward towards the cliffs in the background. The ship has a ladder propped up off the port bow and people are on deck, including two on the bowsprit. A number of horse and carts are stationed off the starboard bow with empty baskets. A man is standing on a ladder going up to the deck from that side. A large group of people, including childdrren and women, are on the beach off the port side.

The Voorspoed was on passage from Cardiff to Bahia, Brazil, but encountered heavy weather in the Channel. The ship was heavily laden with coal and machinery and had taken on water from seas breaking over it. Voorspoed was blown inshore into Perran (or Ligger) Bay and beached in the morning of 7 March 1901. The rocket brigade rescued the seven crew and one cabin boy (from Newcastle upon Tyne). The captain was reluctant to leave but did so eventually. The cargo was salvaged during the afternoon although some thought it more looting, as the captain is reputed to have said afterwards: 'I have been wrecked in different parts of the globe, even in the Fiji Islands, but never among such savages as those of Perranporth.' The ship was refloated on the next tide.