Loe Bar Wreck

President was a 500-ton English East Indiaman built in 1671. She sailed from Plymouth on 1 May 1682 for India and, according to the two survivors' published account, fought six pirate ships together off the Malabar coast. The long return voyage carried East India Company property and private goods. Records list spices, indigo, medicines, Indian textiles, about 100 tons of pepper, a small quantity of diamonds and 'pearl', perhaps polished shell rather than pearls as now understood. A contemporary estimate valued the Company freight alone at at least £100,000, but that is a period claim, not a checked modern value. The cannon site matches a heavily armed seventeenth-century trader, and a bell marked PRESIDENT and 1675/6 recovered historically in the area gives strong independent support to the name.

President stranded at Loe Bar in Mount's Bay during severe winter weather. The survivors' account was published as a loss on 4 February 1684, while some later lists use 9 February; the official Historic England entry identifies the year and place but does not settle that difference. Loe Bar can look like a beach on which a vessel might be run safely, yet deep water close inshore and heavy breakers can turn a ship broadside and pound it apart. President was destroyed before the people aboard could reach safety. Salvage began soon after, which helps explain how the bell reached a nearby estate and why rich cargo was sought for centuries. The modern protected site was reported in 1998 after divers found guns and an anchor. Its date and position fit President, but there is no exposed hull or inscribed object on the seabed that makes the identification final.

William Smith and John Harshfield were the only survivors from about 120 people aboard, so roughly 118 died. Their condition was so poor that, according to the printed account, six weeks passed before they could travel to tell the king what had happened. Their testimony preserved not only the wreck but the earlier voyage and pirate fight. The king commended both men, and the East India Company employed them again at sea. No complete checked list of all those lost is provided by the sources used here, and the total is sometimes expressed as 120 men aboard rather than a separately counted crew and passenger figure. What is certain is the extraordinary survival rate: about 98 per cent died, even though the ship broke up close to the Cornish shore.

The protected site lies in 10 to 11 metres of water only a few metres beyond low water. Several iron guns, an anchor and a large unidentified iron object are scattered parallel to shore. Most guns are badly worn, though one was recorded with a wooden plug still in its muzzle. Dark material spread between them proved mainly to be manganese oxide; it may derive from cargo, but its purpose is unknown. Rock, strong surge and a covering that can change by 3 to 4 metres of shingle make the wreck appear and disappear and move loose objects. Later divers recorded four- and six-pounder guns and watched the anchor and guns shift between years. The named bell survives off site after being used in a manor-house belfry, but its exact recovery place was not recorded to modern standards. The site has been protected since 1999.

If the identification is correct, Loe Bar is one of only a tiny number of protected English East India Company wrecks and a rare physical trace of its seventeenth-century expansion. President's cargo links Cornwall to Indian cloth, pepper, medicines, jewellery and the private fortunes carried beside Company goods. Her fight off Malabar shows that an East Indiaman was both trading ship and armed survivor in contested seas. Locally, the disaster adds an early mass loss to Loe Bar's long record as a ship trap, more than a century before HMS Anson. The two survivors' printed testimony gives unusual voices to the event, while the unrecorded removal of the bell shows the cost of old salvage. Careful seabed study may still confirm the identity and show how the ship broke up; careless recovery would destroy the positions needed to do that.