In December 1862 the Truro schooner "Arwenack", 92 tons register, with a cargo of Copper Ore from Devoran, bound for South Wales lost her masts in a storm in the Mounts Bay. The crew were believed to have abandoned her. The coastguard at Mullion Cove saw a small boat capsize outside the breakers, the boat and oars coming ashore with no one aboard. The "Arwenack", drifting in the southerly gale went aground in a cliff bound cove between Gunwalloe Church Cove and Poldhu. Within an hour 50 men were found to be in the process of taking away the cargo. Most of the boat had been stripped and less than one ton of the Copper Ore remained. The crew of 5, 4 Cornishmen and a Prussian all drowned. The movement against "wrecking" (unauthorised removal of goods from a shipwreck), began in the 1740s with condemnation of the practice by Methodist preacher John Wesley.