Hazard

Obstruction-(1815)

What is recorded here

Read the whole record

A British merchant vessel named Hazard struck Hailstone Rock in the Farne Islands and sank on 5 September 1815 while travelling from Virginia to Newcastle. Her type, master, cargo and human outcome have not been found in the checked public records. More importantly, the saved seabed point is classed only as a possible 1815 match: it records an obstruction, not an identified hull. Although filed under the nearest Scottish local-area border, both its parish field and the loss place put it in English waters off Northumberland.

The vessel and voyage

The documented Hazard was a British merchant vessel crossing the Atlantic from Virginia to Newcastle upon Tyne in 1815. The short casualty notice does not give her rig, build date, tonnage, home port, owner, master or cargo. Virginia traded many goods through Atlantic ports, but none can be assigned to this ship without a cargo report. Her destination makes the final loss especially stark: she had completed the ocean passage and reached the rocky approaches to north-east England, only to sink among the Farne Islands before arriving at Newcastle.

How it was lost

Hazard struck Hailstone Rock in the Farne Islands on 5 September 1815 and sank. That is the firm outline preserved by the casualty lists. They do not say whether darkness, fog, wind, current, a wrong course or damage to the vessel caused the impact, so none should be added. Lights already operated among the Farnes, and Trinity House had built the present Inner Farne light in 1811, but a light could warn without removing every reef or navigation mistake. The recorded impact place is more exact than the known explanation for how the ship reached it.

Deaths and survival

No crew total, passenger total, named casualty, death count, survivor count or rescue is given in the public records checked for this Hazard. A notice that a ship struck and sank does not prove that everybody aboard died; crews sometimes escaped a vessel even when the hull was lost. It also does not prove that everyone survived. The human result must remain unknown unless a contemporary newspaper, crew agreement, parish burial or fuller Lloyd's report is found. This is particularly important because several unrelated ships carried the common name Hazard.

What remains

The saved national record describes an obstruction and marks its link with the 1815 Hazard as possible. An obstruction may be wreckage, rock, dumped material or another object reported by survey; it is not the same as a positively identified ship. No exposed hull, timber pattern, cargo, bell, measurement, depth or diver identification is supplied here. The one-metre grid reference gives a precise position for the recorded seabed feature, not precise certainty about its name. The point is in Maritime England and was placed in a Scottish Borders folder only by a nearest-border sorting rule.

Why it mattered

Hazard adds a transatlantic loss to the long history of the Farne Islands as a dangerous gateway to the Tyne and other north-east ports. The vessel came from Virginia in the year the wars with Napoleon ended, when sailing ships still carried people and goods through narrow passages using sight, lead line, chart and judgement. The loss also demonstrates why the area's lights mattered: the present Farne lighthouse had opened only four years earlier. The possible seabed match has value for future checking, but its real importance is weakened, not strengthened, if an ordinary obstruction is presented as a proved named wreck.