She is best remembered for her sinking in bad weather on 30 November 1854 with the loss of all hands, most likely after colliding with The Stones, a notoriously dangerous reef off Godrevy Head in Cornwall.

She was carrying a cargo of heavy merchandise and could also accommodate passengers at low rates, though due to the late time of year few people would have taken such a roundabout route.

Later on 1 December it became apparent that an accident had overtaken the Nile when papers addressed to the captain, spars, empty casks and other debris were washed ashore at Portreath.

[1] The ship was thought to have struck the rocks around 2 or 3 am shortly after the flood tide, judging by the disposition of the wreckage in St Ives Bay.

Another man arrived at the ship just as the bridge to the deck was being removed and offered a shilling to a porter to replace it, but was refused; he thus missed the departure and unknowingly escaped the shipwreck.

Many applications have been made from time to time concerning the erection of a light to warn mariners against this dangerous reef, but it has never been attended to, and to that account may be attributed the destruction of hundreds of lives and a mass of property ... Scarcely a month passes by in the winter season without some vessel striking on these rocks, and hundreds of poor fellows have perished there in dark dreary nights without one being left to tell the tale.