At the base of Castle Zawn is the rusted remains of the RMS Mulheim, small former scrap carrying ship.
A little while ago a friend and I ventured to the end of the country in search of a famous Cornish shipwreck. Parking just up the road from Land’s End, we then took the sign post parked for Sennen beach on the right side of the road. The winding path eventually came close to the main coast path and we joined on, following it until we reached Castle Zawn. Here, we peaked over the cliffs, giving us our first view of the wreck.
It was in March 2003 on a routine voyage from Cork, Ireland to Lubeck in Germany that disaster struck this small vessel. As it headed around Land’s End the chief officer fell and was knocked unconscious when the leg of his trousers caught on his chair. At approximately 5am on the 22nd, as the chief officer came around, the Mulheim was already on route for rocks.
The six-man crew quickly called in the coastguard and were promptly rescued by helicopter and taken to Sennen Lifeboat Station. Efforts were made to try and salvage as much as possible from the now well grounded ship; a conveyer belt was set up to transport large bags of cargo up the cliff, although some was still lost to the sea.
Over the following years the continuous rough seas around Land’s End have broken the ship down to the rusted shell it is today; roughly a third of it appears to still be sat in Castle Zawn, the small cove it now calls home.
Access is free to everyone via the coastpath. While it is possible to climb down the cliff to the wreck, this is unsafe and the remains are not secure in anyway, so this is best avoided.
There is a paid car park at Land’s End, or you can risk your wingmirrors parking further up the road into Sennen, or in Sennen itself.
BBC News (2003) ‘Ship wrecked by “trouser snag”’, 6 August. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/3128323.stm.