She was outbound from North Carolina to Liverpool in January 1883. Fortune was sadly not with the Star of Hope as she ran into a force 10 gale that forced the crew to abandon ship. The Star was wrecked off the Sefton coastline, between Ainsdale and Formby Point.
Today, she is known to vanish then show herself again as the Irish Sea tides and shifting sands dictate.
Strangely, not far from Wilmington USA lies a town called Southport. How ironic that she met her doom close to another Southport a long way off in the UK.
She was 120 feet in length.
The Star of Hope’s timber frame remains in amazing condition when we think of how many savage tides have crashed into her over the years.
For that terrible night in 1883, the Royal Lifeboat Institution report on the New Brighton Station that...
‘On 26 January the lifeboat was launched on service to reported flares but could find nothing. Several heavy seas were shipped and two men were washed out of her, one was rescued, but the other, Charles Finlay, was drowned.’
A strange feeling tells me that she never really met her doom that night. She just doesn't know how to stop. She's still ripping through the tides; chasing the wild skies with the westerly breeze filling her sails...
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