Qualla: Porth Hellick

Porth Hellick: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Bagshaw, CC BY-SA 2.5. On the morning of 23 October 1707, fishermen walking the strand at Porth Hellick on the south coast of St Mary's found the body of a man washed up just above the high-tide line. He had been stripped of most of his clothes and was missing the rings from his fingers. By the description that reached London, the body was Sir Cloudesley Shovell, Admiral of the Fleet, last seen alive eighteen hours earlier on the quarterdeck of HMS Association as she struck the Western Rocks of the Isles of Scilly and sank inside four minutes. Roughly 1,450 sailors had drowned with him. The Cornish word that gives Porth Hellick its name simply means willows cove. It is a peaceful inlet of sand and reed and migrating birds. It also became, on that one October morning, the gateway through which the Royal Navy's worst peacetime catastrophe came ashore.

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Image: Daniel Bagshaw | CC BY-SA 2.5

Porth Hellick: An Admiral on the Sand

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Cloudesley Shovell had spent most of the day before the wreck convinced he was off the latitude of Ushant, the north-west tip of France. He was actually drifting east into the Isles of Scilly. Longitude could not be measured at sea in 1707; sailors used dead reckoning and prayer....

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Image: Public domain

Porth Hellick: Willows Cove

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob Embleton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Porth Hellick takes its Cornish name from porth helack, meaning willows cove. The bay is delineated on the south by the headland of Giant's Castle, an Iron Age promontory fort, and on the north by Porth Hellick Down with its Bronze Age cemetery and Porth Hellick Point. At low tid...

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Image: Bob Embleton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Porth Hellick: The Marsh That Counts

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob Embleton, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Higher Moors and Porth Hellick Pool Site of Special Scientific Interest was designated in 1971 for what its citation calls a wide diversity of habitats with several rare and notable plant species. The land is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. The wetland is one of only three su...

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Image: Bob Embleton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Porth Hellick: The Bird List

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Thorp, CC BY-SA 2.0. Porth Hellick is a serious bird site. Reed warblers and sedge warblers nest in the common reeds along the pool margins. Coot, gadwall, mallard, moorhen, teal and water rail all breed here. In spring and autumn the moors fill with migrants, and in October, when the islands become ...

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Image: Tony Thorp | CC BY-SA 2.0

Porth Hellick: A Coast of Bodies and Birds

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Lally, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is something quietly peculiar about Porth Hellick. The same shingle bar that washed up Cloudesley Shovell in 1707 also washed up oily sand from the MV Cita wreck in 1997, which had to be excavated and removed. The same reeds that host reed warblers in summer once burned as ...

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Image: David Lally | CC BY-SA 2.0