The characters' struggles against Dracula weren't entirely in vain after all. Yes, Clemens was the only survivor and the vampire did make landfall, in spite of everything the heroes did to avert this. But in the film's somewhat-altered continuity, the Demeter wrecked on the coastline rather than sailing intact into port, its hull staved in on one side by the rocky shore. As a result, many of the fifty crates of Transylvanian soil which Dracula had stowed on board - the native earth he plainly requires, to have bothered hauling it all the way to England - must have gotten smashed, their contents spilled out in the collision or washed away as the tide invaded the derelict's broken hull. Originally, he must've been planning to disperse those crates across dozens of daytime hiding places, ensuring that any potential hunters couldn't possibly track down and purify them all. Instead, by forcing a shipwreck before the vessel had actually reached London, Clemens, Anna, and the last surviving crew members managed to make the subsequent work of Van Helsing's monster-hunting party a lot easier.
