Most of the year, the Devereux is invisible — a shape under the sand at Whiterocks beach that only the lowest tides hint at. In February and March 2022, a run of severe storm surges stripped up to 2 metres of sand off the beach and left the wreck fully exposed for months, drawing local divers and snorkellers and, eventually, marine archaeologists from the Department for Communities’ Historic Environment Division and Ulster University.
The wreck
The Devereux was a large Victorian merchant barque, built in 1834 and weighing 425 tons — owned at the time of her loss by Charles Bigg Esquire of London and captained by James Terry. She’d left Quebec in late August 1864 carrying a cargo of timber, bound for Strangford Lough, and had very nearly made it: she’d almost crossed the Atlantic when a severe storm hit about 60 miles off Tory Island, Co. Donegal. The storm sprang a leak and washed most of her deck cargo overboard, injuring one of the crew.
A fishing boat off Malin Head spotted the ailing ship and raised the alarm. A pilot from Inishowen Head boarded and took charge, bringing her into Lough Foyle, and two steamships set out to tow her clear — but the tow cables gave way, and the Devereux drifted, struck the Skerries off Portrush, and sank close to shore at Whiterocks on 5 September 1864. The crew got off safely.
The auction
The wreck made local and national news at the time. A surviving auction notice from the Derry Journal, 17 September 1864, records exactly what was salvaged and put up for sale: 38 pieces of elm, 125 red pine, 416 white pine, 2,100 deals, and 429 pipe staves — “all First-Class Timbers.” The wreck itself was listed for auction too, though evidently no buyer came forward: it’s still lying at Whiterocks 160 years later.
Rediscovery
The wreck lies mostly buried and is only periodically exposed during severe storms and beach erosion — the 2022 exposure was the most complete in living memory. While it was surveyed, the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) installed a new maritime heritage exhibition at Portrush Coastal Zone, including underwater video of the wreck and a small wooden pin recovered loose among the ballast stones — the only artefact so far to come off her.
It’s a genuinely different kind of wreck story to the Girona, the Spanish Armada galleon lost off the Causeway Coast in 1588 (see our myths and legends page) — no treasure, no legend, just a well-documented 19th-century merchant ship that nearly made it home and didn’t, resurfacing every few decades to remind Whiterocks what’s under the sand.
Sourced from “The Devereux Shipwreck – a 19th Century Barque at Whiterocks” by Colin Dunlop, Marine Heritage Advisor at DAERA, published in Discover Portrush Magazine.