The earliest documented account of a wreck in the area was carried by a Portland newspaper article of 1847 which described "a wreck, about two miles on the Belfast side of Warrnambool…of…a three hundred ton vessel …thrown completely into the hummocks". The article went on to connect the wreck to the 1841 discovery of a number of articles of French manufacture found strewed along the beach. In 1981, writer Ian McKiggan also found further evidence of an 1841 French shipwreck in the area in the journal of Government Surveyor C.J. Tyers. Tyers wrote that the wreckage (including a keg containing a boat compass by maker Devot of Harve) indicated an unknown French whaler had been lost in the area.