Faithful Steward

The Faithful Steward, sailed from Londonderry, Ireland to Philadelphia carrying 249 immigrant passengers, cargo and was mastered by Captain Conolly M'Causland.

While carefully groping their way toward the expected landfall, the crewmen were surprised to come upon shoals. The Steward ran aground near Indian River Inlet, Delaware on the night of Thursday September 1, 1785.

Every attempt was made to run it off the shoals and sandbars after sounding in 4 fathoms of water. The keel of the Faithful scraped the bottom until it shuttered to a halt. The Captain was unaware because there didn't seem to be any sighting of land.

On the morning of September 2, after a long night of attempts, the Faithful Steward realized they were doomed. They were located about four leagues from the Cape Henlopen near Indian River.

They realized they were stuck and even cut off the mast trying to save the ship.
By this time they were only 100 yards form the shore. With a storm raging over them the ship started to break into pieces. The boats had difficulty disengaging from the wreck. The long boats that had been put into the water drifted ashore before they could be manned. All relief was cut off except by swimming ashore or getting on pieces of the wreck and drifting in.


All the lifeboats that were launched were capsized. Of the 249 passengers, more than half of them women and children, only 68 were saved. The inhabitants from Lewes town came to the beach to plunder the bodies of their goods. 

Among the cargo aboard the ship were Spanish reales and pillar dollars and the gold of English Rose Guineas, plus 400 barrels of half pennies.

Rumors spread of the affluent passengers and of a secret cache of a half million British gold pounds.

Not all that treasure has been found but many of those coins are still found today on Coin Beach just north of Indian River Inlet. That is where the beach gets it's name: the coins left behind from the fallen Faithful
Steward.

With permission from David Seibold from his book Shipwrecks, Sea Stories and Legends of the Delaware Coast (available in our retail stores)