Wheel Wreck 1804
Marker: recorded wreck position (Age of Sail).
Key facts
| Name | Wheel Wreck | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Year lost | 1804 | English Wikipedia lead text (year following a loss verb, parsed) |
| Era | Age of Sail | derived from year |
| Ship type | shipwreck | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Sea / ocean | North Atlantic Ocean | Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon |
| Nearest coast | England | official dataset |
| Position | 49.9407, -6.2730 | Historic England Protected Wreck Sites, listed latitude/longitude (OGL v3) |
| Protected Wreck | List entry 1000086 | Historic England |
| Designated | 2007-03-07 | Historic England |
| Restricted area | 1.77 ha | Historic England |
| Grid reference | SV 93525 13263 | Historic England |
About the wreck
The Wheel Wreck is the remains of a shipwreck lying in Crow Sound off Little Ganinick in the Isles of Scilly. The wreck site consists of a discrete mound of cargo that appears to consist of numerous sizes of different iron wheels, cogs, clack valves, tubes and boiler pipes. Lead scupper pipes and other small artefact material show the ship was once present; however, not much remains of this vessel today. A Trotman-style anchor lies some 60m from the site, and this, along with the cargo, dates the site to sometime just after 1835. It has been published that this may be the wreck of the Padstow; however, as the latter was lost in 1804, this can not be so, as neither boiler tubes nor Trotman anchors had been invented then. The wreck was discovered by local diver Todd Stevens in 2005 and investigated by the archaeological contractor for the Protection of Wrecks Act in 2006. It still remains unidentified. However, it is most likely to be a ship called the Plenty which is recorded locally as having sunk "within 1 mile of the principal island" in 1840.
The archaeological contractor has, however, identified the cargo as tin-mining equipment, presumed to have been from a foundry in Cornwall.
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: 49.9407, -6.2730 (Historic England Protected Wreck Sites, listed latitude/longitude (OGL v3); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: North Atlantic Ocean
- 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.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Wheel Wreck (revision 1316115718), 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. Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Nearby wrecks
- HMS Colossus 1798 · 5 km
- Bartholomew Ledges Wreck 6 km
- HMS Firebrand 8 km
- Hollandia 1743 · 8 km
- HMS Association 1707 · 13 km
- U-1208 1945 · 13 km
Browse more: UK & Ireland wrecks · wrecks off England · North Atlantic Ocean · Age of Sail