⚓ Shipwrecks Map

Hanover

Hanover cannon, Takapuna (right)
Image: Bjankuloski06, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Marker: recorded wreck position (Date not recorded).

Key facts

NameHanoverHistoric England
Nearest coastEnglandofficial dataset
Position50.3352, -5.1843Historic England Protected Wreck Sites, listed latitude/longitude (OGL v3)
Protected WreckList entry 1000072Historic England
Designated1997-07-18Historic England
Restricted area7.06 haHistoric England
Grid referenceSW7349153214Historic England

About the wreck

Hanover was a two-masted brigantine packet ship owned and operated by the Falmouth Post Office Packet Service, which operated between 1688 and 1852.

On 13 December 1763, under the command of Captain Joseph Sherbourne and en route from Lisbon to Falmouth, she was driven ashore by a gale. There were only three survivors out of 27 crew and 40 passengers. The location, near Perranporth has become known as Hanover Cove as a result. At the time she was carrying a large amount of gold and valuables; historical evidence suggests that this was mostly recovered around the time of the wrecking.

The wreck made legal history, when in 1765 an iron trunk containing bullion was recovered. The insurers had already paid out on the loss and the case established that where insurers paid out on cargo and the owners subsequently recovered their property, the insurers were entitled to a refund.

Diving & visiting

This is a designated Protected Wreck under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973. Under the Act, diving on or otherwise interfering with the wreck inside its restricted area requires a licence; see the Historic England list entry for details.

Location

  • Recorded position: 50.3352, -5.1843 (Historic England Protected Wreck Sites, listed latitude/longitude (OGL v3); may be approximate)
  • Nearest coast: England

Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.

OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Hanover (ship) (revision 1327163214), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.

Protected Wreck data © Historic England 2026. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

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Further reading