Many rotted; others were beached, and were converted into stores and lodging houses.
In 1770 Captain Cook here beached his ship the "Endeavour," to repair the damage caused by her striking a reef in the neighbourhood of the estuary, which he could only clear by throwing his guns overboard.
Beached in the Falklands by a gale off Cape Horn, she became a coal hulk for five years, then rotted.
The exhibition is bursting with fascinating and unusual exhibits including a tank of live piranhas, the giant mole and a beached sea creature.
Among his most important canvases must be reckoned "The Pilot Cutter" in 1866, "The Salmon Poachers" in 1869, "The Lifeboat" in 1876, "Highland Pastures" in 1878, "The Beached Margent of the Sea" in 1880, "The Newhaven Packet" (bought by the Birmingham Corporation), and "Catspaws off the Land" (bought by the Chantrey Fund trustees); in 1885, "Mount's Bay" (bought by the Manchester Corporation) in 1886, "Nearing the Needles" in 1888, "Machrihanish Bay, Cantyre," in 1892, "Hove-to for a Pilot" in 1893, and "Glen Orchy," a landscape, in 1895.
