Doom Bar

The Doom Bar is a sandbar at the mouth of the Camel estuary on the north coast of Cornwall. The bar is composed mostly of coarse sediment carried up from the seabed by bed load processes, and it has been shown that there is a net inflow of sediment into the estuary. This inflow is aided by wave and tidal processes, but the exact patterns of sediment transport within the estuary are complex and are not fully understood. There are three persistent sandbars in the Camel estuary: the Doom Bar; the Town Bar at Padstow, about upstream; and the Halwyn Bank just upstream of Padstow, where the estuary changes direction. All three are of similar composition; a large proportion of their sediment is derived from marine mollusc shells, and as a consequence, it includes a high level of calcium carbonate, measured in 1982 at 62 per cent. The name "Doom Bar" is a corruption of the older name Dunbar which itself derives from dune-bar. Although the bar was commonly known as "Dunbar sands" before 1900, the name "Doom Bar" was used in 1761 (as "the Doom-bar"), and it was also used in poetry, and in House of Commons papers in the nineteenth century. == Danger to shipping ==

For centuries, the Doom Bar was regarded as a significant danger to ships—to be approached with caution to avoid running aground. When sails were the main source of power, ships coming round Stepper Point would lose the wind, causing loss of steerage, leaving them to drift away from the channel. Sometimes, gusts of wind known colloquially as "flaws" In 1761 John Griffin published a letter in the London Chronicle recommending methods for entering the Camel estuary during rough weather, particularly while north-northwest winds were blowing and described the bolts and rings he had fixed to the cliffs to assist ships trying to enter the harbour. The committee was told by J. D. Bryant, a port commissioner and Receiver of Wreck for Padstow, that in 1848 Padstow Harbour Association had cut down a small piece of Stepper Point, which had given ships about 50 fathoms of extra "fair wind" into the harbour. Bryant recommended further removal of the point which would allow a true wind along the whole channel past the dangerous sandbar. The select committee report concluded the bar would return through re-silting if it were dredged, and there were insufficient resources to prevent it. Several alternatives were discussed, including the construction of two guide walls to sluice water across the bar, thereby removing it. During the discussions, it was indicated that whilst the sandbank could be removed by a variety of methods, it would not significantly improve access to the harbour, and that a harbour of refuge would be better on the Welsh coast. which, in conjunction with the capstans, bollards and mooring rings, would significantly reduce the risk to shipping. During the twentieth century, the Doom Bar was regularly dredged to improve access to Padstow. By the 1930s, when Commander H. E. Turner surveyed the estuary, there were two channels around the Doom Bar, By 2010 the original channel had disappeared. The estuary is regularly dredged by Padstow Harbour Commission's dredgers, Sandsnipe and Mannin. == Shipwrecks ==

The Doom Bar has accounted for more than 600 beachings, capsizes and wrecks since records began early in the nineteenth century, In 1879, four of his granddaughters and their friend were rowing on the Doom Bar and saw a craft go down. They rowed out to save the drowning sailor. As it was very unusual for women to rescue men all five girls received a Royal National Lifeboat Institution Silver Medal for their bravery. On New Year's Day 1895, she set sail from Newport in South Wales with a cargo of coal for Brazil, but foundered near Lundy Island, losing parts of her mast. or had to be released. Her crew of fourteen and several men who had attempted to salvage her were rescued by lifeboats from Port Isaac and Padstow, following which she rapidly sank. Attempts by three tugs from Cardiff to remove the wreck were unsuccessful, but the next spring tide carried the midsection up the estuary onto Town Bar, opposite Padstow, where it was a hazard to shipping. The Royal Navy Bomb Disposal Unit failed to demolish it and it was marked with a buoy; in March 2011 work started to demolish the remainder of it using saws. == In literature ==

According to local folklore, the Doom Bar was created by the Mermaid of Padstow as a dying curse after being shot. In 1906, Enys Tregarthen wrote that a Padstow local, Tristram Bird, bought a new gun and wanted to shoot something worthy of it. He went hunting seals at Hawker's Cove but found a young woman sitting on a rock brushing her hair. Entranced by her beauty, he offered to marry her and when she refused he shot her in retaliation, only realising afterwards that she was a mermaid. As she died she cursed the harbour with a "bar of doom", from Hawker's Cove to Trebetherick Bay. A terrible gale blew up that night and when it finally subsided there was the sandbar, "covered with wrecks of ships and bodies of drowned men". The ballad, The Mermaid of Padstow, tells a similar story of a local named Tom Yeo, who shot the mermaid mistaking her for a seal. John Betjeman, who was well-acquainted with the area, wrote in 1969 that the mermaid met a local man and fell in love with him. When she could no longer bear living without him, she tried to lure him beneath the waves but he escaped by shooting her. In her rage, she threw a handful of sand towards Padstow, around which the sandbank grew. In other versions of the tale, the mermaid sings from the rocks and a youth shoots at her with a crossbow, or a greedy man shoots her with a longbow. Mermaids were believed to sing to their victims so that they could lure adulterers to their deaths. The mermaid legend extends beyond the creation of the Doom Bar. In 1939 Samuel Williamson declared there are mermaids comparable to Sirens who lie in the shallow waters and draw in ships to be wrecked. In addition, "the distressful cry of a woman bewailing her dead" is said to be heard after a storm where lives are lost on the sandbar. Rosamund Watson's "Ballad of Pentyre Town" uses the sandbank for imagery to elicit feelings of melancholy when talking of giving up everything for love. A Victorian poem by Alice E. Gillington, "The Doom-Bar", relates the story of a girl who gave an engraved ring to the man she loved before he sailed away across the Doom Bar, breaking her heart. Four years later, when the tide was lower than usual, her friends persuaded her to walk out on the sand where she found the ring inside a scallop. Realising he must have tossed it aside on the night he left, she resolved not to remain heartbroken, but to sail out to sea herself. A play, The Doom Bar, about smuggling and wrecking was written in the early 1900s by Arthur Hansen Bush. Although there was no interest in London it was well received in America, and was scheduled to tour in Chicago and New York. A series of mishaps, blamed on the legendary wrecker Cruel Coppinger, culminating in a fire at Baltimore, caused the play to be considered cursed by America's actors' unions and its members were banned from appearing in it. == References ==