First World War wrecks

Railways 200: a maritime perspective, Part Three

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All Aboard!

In the last blog we looked at the 19th century rise in passenger travel and the drive to make the connectivity between trains and ships an ever more seamless experience for both passengers and cargo. But how could that experience be made even more seamless?

Train ferries: the beginnings

The answer: by making it multi-modal! The concept had its origins in Scotland, on boats on the Forth & Clyde Canal onto which railway wagons were loaded from the Monkland & Kirkintilloch Railway from 1833 onwards [1].

As stated in Part Two, the new ‘rail and sail’ technologies were brought into use on existing routes, with trains serving existing ports. In the next – also Scottish – case, this included ferries traversing the Firth of Forth. The passage across from Burntisland to Granton evolved towards a conventional train-ferry-train arrangement, but from 1850 onwards trains were rolled on to the purpose-built paddle steamer Leviathan and rolled off again at the other end. This permitted the carriage of ‘goods, minerals, etc. without breaking bulk’, i.e. without having to be unloaded from the train, loaded on to the ferry, unloaded off the ferry, and once more loaded onto the train. [2]

‘The first experimental trial took place on Wednesday last . . . 12 trucks, laden with coals and general merchandise, were taken on board at Burntisland in about seven minutes. The time occupied by the steamer in crossing was 25 minutes, and the trucks were safely run ashore at Grandon in the course of three minutes afterwards.’ [3]

The train ferry had a 40 year lifespan until the Forth Bridge – still in operation today – effectively replaced it in 1890.

Train ferries: the 20th century

There was a short-lived attempt to run a train ferry to the Isle of Wight between 1884-1888 [4] but it would not be until the First World War that the concept of the train ferry came into its own again in UK waters – more specifically, English waters – meeting a critical need. The Richborough train ferries came into being, with corresponding infrastructure built at Calais and Dunkirk, shuttling war matériel back and forth across the Channel. These were known simply as Train Ferries 1 to 3 (TF1 to TF3). [5]

Historic black and white print of the hull of a vessel propped up by timber props (left of image). The sheer size of the hull casts shadows and dwarfs the tiny figures working underneath (bottom right of image)
Building a Cross-Channel Train-ferry : Underneath the bows (Art.IWM ART 1481) Part of a series by the artist recording shipbuilding on the Clyde, this image is sometimes labelled in other collections as Building a Cross-Channel Ferry. If this is indeed a train ferry, it almost certainly references TF3, which was built on the Clyde by Fairfield, Govan.
Muirhead Bone, Wellington House and Ministry of Information Commission, First World War Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/2634

The then new-fangled medium of film provides extraordinary footage of the train ferry berthing at Dunkirk, a locomotive reversing from landside and coupling up with the wagons, filled with tanks and shells – which also illustrates that the modus operandi was to carry rolling stock only and be re-linked with a locomotive at the other end, not to run a locomotive onto the ferry. Aerial photographs – again a remarkable new hybrid technology facilitated by the war, of camera equipment on board aircraft – of the train ferry making the crossing with wagon-loads of tanks, confirm that locos did not also make the crossing. The film and aerial photos also show that the train ferries were painted in dazzle camouflage – a temporary measure adopted in the latter stages of the war (see our blog on March 1918 for more on dazzle camouflage).

Multi-modal transport here intersects with the temporary – the military train ferries and the ship camouflage regime – in a conjunction of new technologies and new ideas.

Historic black & white photograph of railway wagons on either side of a train ferry, with empty tracks in the middle. The ferry is in port being loaded as the gantry is visible in the background. Wires from the vessel's superstructure criss-cross the foreground.
First World War train ferry
Science Museum Group Collection © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co417786/horwich-collection CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

TF4 was built at Cammell Laird, Birkenhead, for the St. Lawrence River in Canada, but was also rendered obsolete three years after delivery by the opening of the Quebec Bridge in 1917. [6] She was navigated back to Britain for the Southampton-Cherbourg train ferry run over 17 days, which, in a transatlantic landscape of war, was no mean feat for a fairly evidently slow vessel that would have proven very vulnerable both to deep-sea waves and any lurking enemy dangers.

TF4’s time on the Southampton-Cherbourg service was also to be brief, ending in 1919, but she was a remarkable vessel which operated differently to the others, with a platform that could be lowered to connect with the landward end, rather than using linkspans to ‘bridge the gap’ as TF1-TF3 did.

Modern photograph of train ferry model in glass case
Model of the Leonard at the Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead, where she was built, on showing rolling stock conveyed on the raised platform which could be lowered as required. Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons 3.0

Rolling on into the mid 20th century

It would not be until the early 1920s that the train ferries would once more be put to use for their intended purpose, in a joint Anglo-Belgian enterprise between the Great Eastern Ferry Company Ltd. and the Société Belgo-Anglaise des Ferry Boats, for a service to be run from 1923 onwards between Harwich and Zeebrugge. [7]

The question was how to transport the landside infrastructure at Southampton to Harwich. The proposed solution was to ‘load the bridge on one barge, and the towers and machinery on another’ in tow of the tug Plumgarth in early September. This did not end well. ‘When out in the North Sea the weather became very rough, and the continued heavy rolling motion caused slight damage to the barge with the tower on it, and she started to take in water.’ [8]

The master of the tug tried to reach Harwich, but ‘. . . the waves pounded in between the two barges, causing one to drag on the other in a submerged condition.’ [9] The incident occurred on the 5th of September and by the 12th the wreck sites of the barges and the infrastructure had been marked in a Trinity House Notice to Mariners. [10] By the following week one of the barges had been raised, with salvage works ongoing. [11] By the beginning of October the ferry bridge (or linkspan) had been brought ashore at Harwich, but it was not possible to raise the towers.

History does not record whether the second barge was recovered, but it may have been underneath the towers. The wreckage was cleared by explosives, since it lay in the fairway on the approaches to Harwich, but the site is now uncharted, suggesting that any archaeological remains may, at best, be level with the seabed. [12]

Fortunately the towers from Richborough were still available to mesh with the linkspan from Southampton and the Harwich-Zeebrugge service commenced operations in 1924.

Historic black and white aerial view of Harwich harbour, with the train ferry docked in the foreground, with rails running onto the ship at bottom right. The shoreline is seen at right with other ships berthed or moving about in the harbour.
Trinity Pier and the Train Ferry Berth, Harwich, 1952 EAW043676 © Historic England Archive

The Harwich train ferry continued in operation until 1987, alongside the Night Ferry service between Dover and Dunkirk, introduced in 1936. Both services ceased operations for the duration of the Second World War, while the train ferries once more went to war, and TF3 was lost to a mine off Dieppe in 1945. [13]

A vintage colour poster advertising 'The Night Ferry' train service, featuring a nighttime scene with sleeping cars and train details, over a timetable advertising the nightly service in both directions between London and Paris. The poster has evidence of streaks which look like water or oil damage to the left.
British Railways (Southern Region) Night Ferry poster, Barber, 1953
Science Museum Group Collection © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co231568/the-night-ferry CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Both services resumed post-war, the Dover-Dunkirk service ceasing operations in 1980, but the Harwich-Zeebrugge ferry managing to survive until 1987. The berth at Harwich was listed at Grade II that year. [14]

Modern colour photograph of the 1923 gantry, painted in grey, and rusty dock infrastructure, under a cloudy sky.
View of the gantry towers at Harwich Train Ferry Berth from the south-east, 2014
DP165500© Historic England Archive

Trains on board ship

We have seen that small ships could be carried on trains in kit form, and we have also seen that full trains (minus their locomotives) could be carried on board ship, fusing the two modes of transport together. There were other circumstances in which ships carried trains, including locomotives, and other railway materials – wheels, carriages, sleepers, and so on – primarily for export during the expansion of the railways during the 19th century. At that time these export cargoes were often described by the catch-all term ‘railway iron’.

Our earliest example of such a wreck is the Ann, lost in 1844 off Whitby with a locomotive consigned from Newcastle for one of the south coast railways. [15] Even though Britain’s railways were booming, there was no other way to get stock to its intended destination on a network that was not yet fully joined up.

Thereafter losses of ships carrying railway components occurred with some regularity, and underline the truly international nature of Britain’s railway exports. The English brigantine Spartan stranded in Cornwall during a storm in 1846, with ‘railway iron’ from Cardiff for Livorno, for example. [16]

In 1849 the Archelaus of New Orleans foundered at her anchors off Lundy Island, again bound from Cardiff with ‘railway iron’ but for New York. ‘Railway bars’ were regularly brought up from the wreck over the course of the ensuing six months by a number of local vessels engaged in the salvage operation. [17]

Occasionally the wrecks would involve three countries: Britain as the manufacturer and exporter of the railway components, the destination country to which they were consigned, conveyed by a ship belonging to a third country. A good example is the Dutch galliot Jonge Wirther, which again stranded on the Cornish coast en route from Cardiff to Stettin (now Szczecin) in 1846. [18]

The export trade in British railway technology was truly global. The American full-rigged ship Cornelia likewise foundered off the Isles of Scilly while bound from Greenock for Santos in Brazil with rolling stock and railway components in 1861. The Palala was wrecked on Kimmeridge Ledge, Dorset, in 1886 while bound for Durban with a general cargo including wines, candles, tins of paint, and eight railway carriages. [19]

A modern colour 3D scan of a shipwreck showing railway wheels and machinery, covered in sediment.
Perspective view of the Brackenholme and her export cargo of rolling stock components for Denmark lost off St. Catherine’s Point, Isle of Wight, following a collision in 1865 with HMS Supply.
Maritime Archaeology Trust

Such exports continued into the 20th century, including railway carriages consigned for France in the First World War: see our blogs for the Africa, 1915, and St. Chamond, 1918, which also makes a comparison with the Fort Massac, lost in the Thames Estuary with a loco from Darlington consigned for South Africa in 1946.

One story that comes up over and over again with consignments of ‘railway iron’ is its propensity for the cargo to shift, with predictably disastrous results. This happened to the full-rigged ship Ganges in 1881, stranding on the Goodwin Sands en route from Middlesbrough for Calcutta; the clipper South Australian, which foundered off Lundy in 1889 while bound from Cardiff to Rosario (and now a Scheduled Ancient Monument). [19]

Possibly our most extraordinary story of an unfortunate railway cargo concerns the English schooner Georgiana, bound from London for Cork with railway sleepers in 1881. She ran aground near the Manacles and ‘signals of distress were made by pouring paraffin on an old sail and lighting it.’ Though this was successful in alerting rescuers to the crew, it was disastrous as it ‘ignited some of the creosoted railway sleepers’ and burnt the vessel to the waterline. [20]

Coming full circle: the last rail & steamship experience

And finally . . . no blog linking the sea with the railways is complete without referring to the Southend Pier Railway running for most of the length of the Grade II-listed pier, the longest pleasure pier in the world. The pier head is approximately 1 and a third miles out to sea on a stretch of mud flat shoreline in which the sea can recede up to a mile at low tide. Since the pier head therefore stands in deep water, the pier thus served a practical purpose in enabling vessels to draw alongside to take trips out into the Thames Estuary.

This tradition continues today with the regular visits to the pier by paddle steamer Waverley, the last sea-going steamer still operating in the world, to pick up passengers for pleasure cruises in the Thames. Part of the experience is taking the train out to sea! And so we come full circle, for the Waverley was built for the London and North-Eastern Railway (LNER) in 1947, just before the railways were nationalised in 1948.

Historic black and white aerial view of the Southend Pier Railway stretching over water from top left to lower right: the railway is seen in operation with a train towards lower right
A train near Middle Landing on Southend Pier, 1928 EPW024886 Source: Historic England Archive

We hope you’ve enjoyed your voyage on the high seas and the connections we’ve made between trains and ships!

With many thanks to Andrew Wyngard, railway consultant for this blog.

Logo celebrating 200 years of train travel since 1825, featuring stylized numbers and a train graphic.

Footnotes

[1] Hennessey R 2016 ‘The Train Ferries: Part One’ Backtrack (30:11 661-667); ‘The Train Ferries: Part Two’ Backtrack (30:12, 742-747)

[2] ‘Melancholy Accident at Burntisland’, The Scotsman, 30 January 1850, No.3,137, p3

[3] ‘The Floating Railway across the Forth’, Bell’s Life in London & Sporting Chronicle 10 February 1850, p2 [issue not numbered]

[4] Hennessey 2016; Burns R 2023 ‘Train Ferries’, Maritime Archaeology Trust online

[5] ibid. ; Batchelor, S 2014 Port of Richborough and the birth of the cross-Channel train ferry Railway Museum online

[6] Hennessey 2016. She was converted post-war into the oil tanker Limax, and was broken up at Kobe, Japan, in 1932 (Report of Total Loss, Casualty &c. for Limax, 26 January 1932, LRF-PUN-W639-0101-W)

[7] ‘The Harwich Train Ferries’, Harwich and Dovercourt: a time gone by, online (nd); National Heritage List for England, Harwich Train Ferry Berth, official list entry 1187897, first listed 1987

[8] ‘250-ton Ferry Bridge Lost: Lighters founder six miles from port’, Lancashire Daily Post, 6 September 1923, No.11,307, p4

[9] ibid.

[10] Notice to Mariners No.64 of 1923 Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 15 September 1923, No.30,232, p6

[11] ‘The Sunken Train-Ferry Bridge’, Staffordshire Sentinel, 18 September 1923, p3

[12] Shields Daily News, 4 October 1923, No.20,150, p6; ‘The Harwich Train Ferries’, Harwich and Dovercourt: a time gone by, online (nd); examination of UKHO data in and around the position quoted in [10] above

[13] The Loss of the Train Ferry HMS Daffodil Maritime Archaeology Trust, online

[14] National Heritage List for England, Harwich Train Ferry Berth, official list entry 1187897, first listed 1987

[15] Historic England NMHR records

[16] Historic England NMHR records

[17] Historic England NMHR records

[18] Historic England NMHR records

[19] Historic England NMHR records

[20] Historic England NMHR records; Royal Cornwall Gazette, 25 February 1881, p6

Railways 200: a maritime perspective, Part Two

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Full Steam Ahead: Tourism and Freight

In the second part of our three-part Railways 200 special we go full steam ahead . . .

If the railways and the steamship were virtually born together, they also grew up together. The railways not only facilitated the development of new ports and new markets: together they enabled both domestic and international travel for work, study and leisure. They opened up tourist travel, which percolated down the social classes as workers’ holidays began to gain traction with employers and the law – especially to the seaside, to ‘London-on-Sea’ at Southend and Brighton, and to other resorts. Nowhere was it easier to access the sea by rail than at the Kent resort of Ramsgate, decanting passengers straight onto the beach.

Historic B&W aerial photograph of Ramsgate Harbour Station, showing people walking straight from the station onto the beach; a park and genteel terraces in the town are shown in the upper register of the image
Ramsgate Harbour Station, 1920. Ramsgate Harbour Station was operational between 1863 and 1926.
EPW000093 Source: Historic England Archive

Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Bristol

Elsewhere passengers started their overseas journeys by rail. Trains provided connections with steamship and ferry services. Bristol is a city which became a transport hub – Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s transatlantic steamer and early ocean liner, the SS Great Western, entered service in 1838, followed by the SS Great Britain in 1845. (A liner is a vessel that provides a regular ocean-going passenger and/or cargo service between two or more fixed points, in this case Bristol and New York.) From 1841 the Great Western Railway (GWR) terminus at Bristol, also designed by Brunel, provided a connection for passengers to and from the liner, with a hotel also built for the convenience of passengers.

Modern colour photograph, Brunel's old station now beside a busy road with plenty of car traffic. The front elevation is built of cream limestone but areas behind, such as the side returns and chimney stacks, are built of less prestigious and darker Pennant stone.
Brunel’s Old Bristol Station, 2013 adjoining the present-day station. Its Tudor Revival style with its crenellations and oriel windows gives an impression of age and prestige
Peter Broster Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-2.0

In this case the connection was not entirely seamless, as passengers still had to traverse the city, and potentially stay overnight in the hotel, but it is a travel cityscape which sprang from the brain of one man – and one which is still legible in the city today with the Grade I-listed old station next to the present-day Temple Meads (itself built in the 1870s), Grade II-listed hotel (known today as Brunel House) and SS Great Britain in preservation in the city.

Modern colour photograph seen looking down from a nearby window over the SS Great Britain displayed in dock and 'dressed overall' with flags flying between her six masts. and the city beyond. The river is seen to left and foreground.
SS Great Britain in Bristol, 2025
© Anthony O’Neil, geograph.co.uk CC BY-SA 2.0

How many visitors to Bristol today alight from Temple Meads, with Brunel’s original station on their right, to see the SS Great Britain and realise that they are following in the footsteps (or perhaps train wheels!) of passengers making the original transatlantic connection?

The Port of Liverpool and the Great Western Railway

Another ‘nearly seamless’ integration between the railways and port infrastructure can be seen in the Great Western Railway warehouse and office on the dockside at Liverpool, dating from the late 19th century. The GWR did not actually reach Liverpool itself, but goods could be moved by barge between the GWR’s Morpeth Dock at Birkenhead [1] and their warehouse at Liverpool alongside the Manchester Dock (filled in: now underlying the Museum of Liverpool) – a reminder that the railways also joined up with canal and river traffic in many different locations.

Modern colour photograph of Liverpool: edge of dock in foreground with propeller to left and steam crane to right, with the black & white hull of the ship just beyond in the middle ground. The deck lies under the lower roof of the warehouse saying RAILWAY, while the upper structure lies beneath the upper roof structure of the warehouse with the words GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY, creating a visual echo in the composition, also echoed by the building works beyond, and the varied heights and sizes of the Port of Liverpool and Royal Liver Building domes at the top of the image.
In this 2009 photograph the Great Western Railway warehouse is sandwiched between dockside infrastructure and the museum ship Edmund Gardner on the one side and on the other the dome of the Port of Liverpool building, with the Royal Liver Building beyond – two of the iconic ‘Three Graces’ of Liverpool fronting the River Mersey.
DP073748 © Historic England Archive

The rise of passenger travel

As the great age of the steam liner expanded, so also did the railways, and the two fed off one another, not only in Britain, but in parallel developments in other countries in Europe and elsewhere. This in turn enabled mass tourism (Cook’s Tours from 1855 to Europe, for example), emigration, and its darker side, colonialism. The liners, linking with railways on both sides of the Atlantic, made it possible for Charles Dickens to connect with his audiences in the United States and for Frances Hodgson Burnett of Little Lord Fauntleroy fame to regularly criss-cross the Atlantic.

Historic B&W photograph of men, women and children posing beside a railway carriage to the left, steam rising against the roof of the station
Passengers waiting on the platform at Waterloo for the Cunard Steamship Company boat train, probably for Southampton, 1913. The photograph was commissioned by Cunard from Bedford Lemere, who also specialised in photographing newly-built liners.
BL22173/001 Source: Historic England Archive

In the same way, liners grew not only to serve specific passenger routes such as Southampton or Liverpool to New York, or to serve European colonies abroad, but also to become cargo specialists. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the rise of cargo liners and of refrigeration, benefiting not only the growth of fish and chips (see Part One) but also enabling meat to be shipped from South America and Australia under refrigerated conditions, for example by the Nelson Line, and despatched onwards by rail. Our records mark the loss of the Nelson Line’s Highland Fling on Enys Rocks, Cornwall in 1907, and Highland Brigade, torpedoed off St. Catherine’s Point, 1918. [2]

Like the coal magnates of the north-east before them (as covered in Part One), the railway companies saw the potential in an integrated market and a seamless experience. They would run passenger trains to the ports: thence it was but a short step towards commissioning the building of steamers, operating ferry services in their own right, and providing onward travel.

Trains and ships in the Lake District

Sometimes the ‘onward travel’ was a new development in its own right and an extension of the leisure experience within Britain. The steam yacht Gondola, the idea inspired by Venetian travels, as well as her name and hull form, was commissioned by Sir James Ramsden of the Furness Railway Company and entered service from 1859. The Gondola allowed passengers alighting from the Furness line at Coniston to enjoy pleasure cruises on Coniston Water in the Lake District, enhancing their holiday experience. [3]

The links between railways and ships were especially close in the Lake District, because trains could also transport small ships like these: the Gondola‘s hull was transported in four sections by rail and heavy horse to Coniston to be assembled locally, a methodology also adopted for the motor vessel Teal on nearby Windermere in 1938. [4] The railway line to Coniston was closed in 1962 so the link between Gondola and the railway that once brought passengers to her has been broken. [5]

Modern colour photo of the Gondola on the lake against a background of green tree and heather-covered mountains
Steam yacht Gondola on a cruise on Coniston Water in 2011 © Ian Greig CC BY-SA 2.0

The growth of the ferry

Where the railways could most easily dovetail with the steamers and provide the most seamless experience was on what we would today call ‘short-haul’ routes and ferries across to Ireland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. They built on existing ports and routes with a history of passenger demand. The experience could be completely seamless and was a strong selling point. ‘The train comes to a standstill bang opposite the boat’ at Southampton, as described in promotional literature for the Southern Railway in 1931. [6]

The wreck record illuminates how old some of these ferry or ‘passage’ routes could sometimes be. The Duke of York ‘passage boat’ struck the Goodwin Sands in 1791 en route from Dunkirk to Dover – perhaps even with some refugees from Revolutionary France? (Turner was ‘nearly swampt’ on landing at Calais in 1802 as his painting Calais Pier demonstrates.) In 1669 one of the regular packets between Harwich and Hellevoetsluis (the precursor of the Harwich-Hook of Holland service which still continues today), was wrecked at Dunwich.

Some railway + ferry services were run by prestige named trains, such as the Golden Arrow train of the Southern Railway, which linked with the Southern’s first-class ferry Canterbury at Dover, which in turn connected with the reciprocal Flèche d’Or train which took passengers from Calais to Paris.

Steam locomotive in green and black livery with a Golden Arrow on its side (to right of image) and the prominent Clan Line Merchant Navy Class logo, enclosing the line's house flag of a red lion rampant
The post-war Golden Arrow seen at the Railways 200 Greatest Gathering in Derby, August 2025, one of the Merchant Navy class, commemorating the Clan Line. © Andrew Wyngard

In general, the railway steamers had a fairly good safety record, but collisions in fog could and did happen, most notably with the Normandy paddle steamer, belonging to the London & South-Western Railway Company, which was involved in a collision off the Needles in 1870 with considerable loss of life while en route to the Channel Islands. [7]

Another collision in fog which ended more happily was that in the Channel between the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway steamer Seaford, having left Dieppe with passengers for Newhaven, and ‘le cargo-boat’ steamer Lyon, belonging to the French railway firm Compagnie des chemins de fer de l’Ouest, voyaging in the opposite direction under a reciprocal service arrangement. All on board the sinking Seaford were saved by the French ship, which returned to Newhaven, and ‘special trains’ were run for the passengers to get them home, although a few people were sent to hospital with broken legs and ankles. [8]

Vintage Southern Railway booklet cover featuring a map and promotional text for weekend and holiday travel to the continent, dated May 1st, 1939.
1939 Southern Railway brochure with map of connections, the last hurrah of passenger services before World War II. The Art Deco cover design blends stylised ships (white and pink) with steam trains (green) (Author’s own collection)

In 1918 the London & South-Western Railway ferry South Western was attacked by U-boat while on a cargo run from Southampton to St. Malo. More commonly, however, the railway ferries were lost outside both their normal roles and usual routes during both World Wars. They found themselves requisitioned for war service and were sometimes sunk on that service, such as the Southern Railway’s Tonbridge, which pivoted from her cross-Channel service to become a net layer (setting anti-submarine nets), and was sunk by a bomber off Sheringham in 1941.

Railway ferries also played their part both at Dunkirk in 1940 and during D-Day on 1944, including one very special class of ferry which we will take a look at next week in the conclusion to this blog series.

An artistic depiction of the steamship SS Canterbury with the Red Ensign flying astern, steam billowing from her funnels, and heading towards the White Cliffs of Dover
Southern Railway steamer SS Canterbury (of the Golden Arrow service described above) approaching Dover. Walter Thomas, c.1936 Science Museum Group Collection © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum
A vintage black and white photograph of the ship in wartime livery, with an aeroplane flying overhead.
HMS Canterbury (FL 7489) Underway, at sea. As HMS Canterbury, the railway company ferry would participate in Dunkirk and D-Day
Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205124826

All aboard for Part 3 next week . . .

With many thanks to Andrew Wyngard, railway consultant for this blog.

Logo celebrating 200 years of train travel since 1825, featuring the number '200' in stylized red design with a train track element.

Footnotes

[1] The Great Western Railway Warehouse and Office, Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network (CITiZAN), online; photograph of the warehouse and office, CITiZAN, online

[2] Historic England NMHR records

[3] History of Steam Yacht Gondola, National Trust, online

[4] Gondola, National Historic Ships, online; Teal, National Historic Ships, online; MV Teal, Windermere Lake Cruises, online; ‘Lake Flotilla’, Liverpool Echo, No.17,595, 6 June 1936, p4

[5] Andrews, M and Holme, G, 2005 The Coniston Railway (Pinner: Cumbrian Railways Association)

[6] Leigh-Bennett, E P and Fougasse 1931 Southern Ways & Means (Plaistow: Southern Railway)

[7] Historic England NMHR records. It should be noted that the comment on the safety record pertains principally to records of losses within English waters, which are relatively few by comparison with the regularity of the service and the number of journeys undertaken; however, other wrecks did occur outside English waters, around the other home nations, the Channel Islands, and the coast of France.

[8] Historic England NMHR records; ‘A Channel Steamer Sunk: Loss of the Seaford‘, Morning Advertiser, 21 August 1895, No.32,535, p5; ‘Le Naufrage du Seaford’, La Marseillaise, p3 (in French)

[z] Railways 200 Fridays – PS Waverley, National Historic Ships, online

Railways 200: a maritime perspective, Part One

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Parallel lines – the growth of the railways and the steamers

Historic sepia postcard of parallel rows of multiple railway lines stretching into the distance, with the vertical posts of the coal hoists of the dock just visible to the top of the photograph. The postcard bears the punning title on the front 'Just a few lines from Immingham'
Postcard of the railways towards Immingham Dock around 1912 from the C J Wills & Sons collection. The firm of C J Wills & Sons were railway contractors whose work included Immingham Dock, built for the expansion of the coal trade initially. In the distance the coal hoists servicing the southern side of the dock can be seen.
AL0589/054/01 Source: Historic England Archive

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the world’s first passenger-carrying railway service on the Stockton and Darlington Railway on 27 September 1825 we take a look – in a three-part special – at the close relationship between the railways and the sea, a mutually interdependent relationship from the very beginning.

It’s a story full of surprises, so read on!

Steam ships and steam trains were forged in the same era on the anvil of the Industrial Revolution. The world’s oldest surviving steam locomotive is Puffing Billy, built 1813-14 for the Wylam Colliery near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Meanwhile the wreck record demonstrates that steam ships stuttered into life on small passenger vessels in inshore waters, but were prone to disasters: in 1817 a steam packet on the River Yare exploded just after leaving Norwich for Great Yarmouth, with the loss of half the passengers. [1]

Later that same year. the Regent steam packet, a ‘fine vessel of its kind’ which had apparently cost £1100 to build, suffered a fire en route to Margate. According to a passenger, the fire came from the wooden casing on the deck surrounding the chimney of the steam engine. (Just like today, the press was keen to hear from survivors of any incident and print eyewitness accounts.) There were only two buckets on board to put out the fire, so all that the master could do was order everyone on deck and close all the hatches to deprive the fire of oxygen. He then made a signal of distress and directed the vessel towards Whitstable, the heat trapped inside still keeping the boiler going.

There was ‘terror and agitation’ among the passengers and the fire was ‘only kept from penetrating through the deck by the constant application of water’ from the two buckets to hand, but fortunately the vessel ‘grounded on the sand at Whitstable, when three boats from that place, which had overshot them, arrived to their assistance, and safely took on board all the passengers and crew’, who included children. The vessel burnt to the waterline and as the tide ebbed the keel and engine were exposed on the sand. [2]

‘King Coal’: the railways and the coal industry

From the beginning the railways were intimately connected with the coal industry. The earliest railways originated in the horse-drawn waggonways which brought coal out of the pits to waterways for onward despatch to market. Puffing Billy and its sister engine Wylam Dilly demonstrate the evolution of the waggonways from horse power to steam power.

View of Wylam Dilly locomative from above in a museum setting, giving prominent attention to its tall chimney and small size
Wylam Dilly at the National Museum of Scotland
Kim Traynor CC-BY-SA 3.0

At this period coal was not directly loaded onto the collier brigs of the Tyne from the shore, but taken out to the ships by the flat-bottomed barge-like Tyne keels, who gave their name to a standardised measure of coal (one keel = 21 tons 4 cwt). The keelmen of the Tyne went on strike in 1822 and a strange story persists that the Wylam Dilly locomotive was loaded onto a keel in order to break the strike by towing a number of keels behind her.

"Wylam Dilly" B&W illustration depicting the locomotive converted to a paddle tug on the River Tyne, surrounded by ships and the Newcastle skyline.
The ‘Amphibious’ Wylam Dilly, the print that tells a remarkable tale
Image © National Museums Scotland

This attractive story seems difficult to substantiate, however: it seems an audacious experiment which would surely have attracted the attention of the press. However, while both local and national newspapers devoted many column inches to the keelmen’s strike and the authorities’ and colliery-owners’ responses, the press is remarkably silent on such an event – despite the twin novelties of steam propulsion at sea, still in its infancy, and the repurposing of a railway engine for riverine use. [3]

The story does, however, serve as a neat illustration of the fundamental links between the railways and the sea, linked by coal. From the outset the powerful coal magnates of the north, landowners with several collieries, saw the potential in facilitating the links between the coalfields and outlets to the sea for domestic export, the best route to moving large quantities of coal. It was this great trade in coal from the 16th century onwards that gave rise to the expression ‘coals to Newcastle’ as an expression for a futile endeavour: coal was Newcastle, benefiting from the rich Durham and Northumberland seams, and the trade was so profitable that ships taking coal to London ran in ballast (empty) on the voyage home: there was no real need for a return or exchange cargo.

The railways and the ports

Just five years after that inaugural passenger service in 1825, the Stockton and Darlington Railway was linked to a new port at Middlesbrough on the Tees for the transhipment of coal via the River Tees, but the demand soon outgrew the port and further development was needed.

Historic B&W aerial photo of rail lines surrounding a dock in the foreground, with several ships in it. In the middle ground is the Tees with the Transporter Bridge to left, and in the background a rural landscape contrasting with the industrial riverscape
Middlesbrough Dock and the Transporter Bridge, 1949
This post-war view of the dock (opened 1842) and the Transporter Bridge (opened 1911) well illustrates the integration of rail and maritime transport, replicated in many locations across the country
EAW024124 Source: Historic England Archive

At the same time the Marquis of Londonderry saw an opportunity to develop Seaham on the Durham coast to ship the coal from his nearby coalfields, connected by a railway line from Rainton from 1831. [4] The increase in maritime trade was not without its hazards: the number of shipwrecks associated with the region grew commensurately with the growth in shipping using the port. [5]

Coal thus made of the north-east a perfectly closed-loop economy. Coal was used in the manufacture of iron and steel for the engines and bodies of locomotives, trains and steamships, which were themselves powered by coal. Shipbuilding flourished accordingly in Britain’s industrial centres, particularly where there was a strong coal hinterland. Built using coal, powered by coal, and destined to carry coal, the steam collier built on the banks of the Tyne and the Wear unlocked cargo capacity for ever greater shipments of coal to meet demand. Coal created both its own demands and the means to fulfil them.

In terms of the coal trade, railways were intended at the beginning – through the development of port connections – to serve the shipping of coal, and not to replace it. The growth in freight hauled by rail, including coal, never did put the steam colliers out of work for many and complex reasons, not least the fact that from the outset the railways facilitated access to the ports, and hence port development by the coal magnates.

From our 21st century perspective, this approach, while understandable in terms of the bigger picture, seems counter-intuitive. The reliance on shipping rather than devolution to the railways to reach the domestic market would certainly come to place Britain in great danger during the two World Wars. Coal was needed to, quite literally, ‘keep the home fires burning’: it was required for factory production, for domestic heating, lighting and cooking, to build and to power the trains that connected the country, for shipbuilding and to bunker both British steamers and ships from all over the world arriving at British ports. It was therefore vulnerable to supply disruption and economic loss in both income and ships – and, of course, human lives.

Historic black and white print of three men lit up by the engines into which they are shovelling coal in a vast and dark space symbolising the power of the engines and the size of the ship, and underlining the fact the machines depend on these men.
Heroes : in the stokeholds of the Mercantile Marine
Three stokers shovel coal aboard ship
James McBey, 1917 (Art.IWM ART 1409). Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/17930

The steam colliers were vital, and thus became a clear target of the Scarborough minefield laid by enemy shipping during the First World War. During the Second World War colliers likewise had to contend with mines and the ever-present possibility of a U-boat strike or bombardment from the air. [For a little more on the attacks on collier shipping in the First World War, see our previous blogs on Sir Francis (June 1917) and The Schooners’ Last Stand, (September 1917).]

Fish’n’Chips

As well as taking goods to market – and facilitating their international export as well as domestic circulation by sea – the railways also brought fish from market. The expansion of the railway network over Britain coincided with the development of the steam trawler exploiting the fish stocks of the North Sea and North Atlantic.

The catch could be brought to market more quickly by steam trawler and onward despatch by the burgeoning railway network meant that from the late 19th century onwards inland communities could benefit as much as coastal communities from ready access to fish. It was a cheap meal – because it could be brought in quickly and in quantity – and a nutritious and filling one, particularly important for the diet of working-class communities in industrial cities.

The steam fleets of Kingston-upon-Hull, Grimsby, and Fleetwood were particularly noteworthy, and well placed to reach the great cities of the industrial north and the Midlands – and beyond – by railway. The steam trawlers and the railways together made fish and chips a national dish.

Streetscape of brick terraced houses with round-headed door frames and windows. To right is a shop window bearing a stained glass Art Deco sunrise design with the legend 'Titus Street Fisheries' at the top.
Titus Street Fisheries fish and chip shop, 38 Titus Street, Saltaire, taken c.1966-1974, from the Eileen Deste collection. DES01/01/0626 © Historic England Archive

The wreck record parallels the twin growth of the steam trawler and the railways. Our earliest record of a steamer in the fishing trade being lost at sea in English waters dates from March 1853. The George Bolton was a ‘new screw steam schooner, which had been introduced in the fishing trade for the purpose of expediting the conveyance of fish from the coast of Holland to the London market’. She was supplied with a ‘full cargo of cod-fish, shipped on board of her from the numerous craft engaged in those fisheries, for Grimsby, where she would discharge her cargo, and thence conveyed to London by railway.’ Her boilers exploded off the Humber, almost cleaving her in two, and she sank, although collier brigs in the vicinity were able to rescue survivors, some much scalded by the explosion. [6]

Part 2 follows next week with the ever-closer connections between trains and steamers in the 20th century

With many thanks to Andrew Wyngard, railway consultant for this blog.

Logo celebrating 200 years of train travel since 1825, featuring a stylised number '200' in red with the zeros reminiscent of train wheels and terminating in the British double-arrow train logo

Footnotes

[1] Historic England NMHR records; ‘Horrible explosion of a steam packet’ Lancaster Gazette, 12 April 1817, No.826, p1

[2] Historic England NMHR records; ‘Total Loss of a Margate Steam Packet’. Stamford Mercury, 11 July 1817, No.4,503, p4

[3] The source for the story appears to be the print presented by Forster Bros, based at Scotwood-on-Tyne, depicting the Wylam Dilly ‘made to answer as a paddle tug’ in 1822 (reproduced above and in Grelling, M, nd, “Wylam Dilly: one of the world’s oldest locomotives”, National Museums Scotland). but it does not appear to be a contemporary record of events. It is undated: the typefaces and grammatical details in the caption appear more consistent with the mid- to late 19th century. It was certainly extant by 1912 when it was republished in a Newcastle paper in 1912 (Newcastle Daily Chronicle, September 10, 1912. p3) to celebrate the centenary of Henry Bell’s steamboat, the paddle steamer Comet. The newspaper credits Messrs Ord and Company, 45 Hartington Street, Newcastle, as the source of the print. John Shute Ord, shipbroker, was resident at that address in 1911 (England and Wales Census, 1911).

The caption reads “Wylam Dilly” Taken off Railway Waggon Way and fitted on a Keel called “Tom and Jerry”, at Lemington, and made to answer as a Paddle Tug, going by Quayside, Newcastle. By the mid-19th century the practice of capitalising nouns in English was very old-fashioned, but persisted to some extent in press circles, and this may be a hallmark of the print. i.e. it was handled by a press associated with the newspaper industry. There were Forsters owning tugs on the Tyne from the 1830s at least: Scotswood appears in connection with Forster ownership from the 1870s to the 1920s. There is sufficient detail in the print to suggest details from memory, perhaps from local rivermen as the Forsters had been – Tom and Jerry was a popular novel and play of 1821, just the sort of inspiration for a vessel name that was very common, Lemington was the end point of the Wylam waggonway to the river, and both Wylam and Lemington were places name-checked in acounts of the strike.

So far, so plausible – yet the print remains puzzling, in the face of the silence in the contemporary press on the Wylam Dilly‘s purported use on the river in 1822 and the fairly rudimentary nature of the paddle wheels as shown more by the movement of the water than in size or action. So far the origin of the story remains untraced, but the ‘presented’ caption at the bottom suggests to me that the original was commissioned or presented for a local publication on local industrial heritage. Wylam and Lemington were key locales in the strike, and Wylam Dilly in use on the waggonway at that time – that much is certain. Whether the locomotive actually made it onto the river is less certain.

[4] Seaham Town Council, nd, Seaham Harbour 1828-1851, published online

[5] Cant, S 2013 England’s Shipwreck Heritage: from logboats to U-boats (Swindon: English Heritage) p179

[6] Historic England NMHR records; ‘Blowing up of two Steam Vessels, and Loss of Life’, Morning Advertiser, 14 March 1853, No.19,258, p3

The Gotha in the Thames Estuary

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Gotha IV 656/16

Today’s record which commemorates a loss on 12 August 1917 came to the Historic England’s national marine database in a roundabout way, when a piece of personal research took a maritime turn and I ended up discovering the story of an aircraft lost in the sea all those years ago.

Background: Dipping briefly into the personal to provide some background, inspired by the national commemorations of the First World War (including Historic England’s commemorative research and this blog’s own Diary of the First World War) I undertook a research project on my family in the Great War, and not a moment too soon, because my principal oral history source and the last living link to the Great War generation has since passed away.

All the other centenary commemorative activities undertaken by many organisations, individuals and historians, have created a rich resource and a considerable legacy of their own, in a freely available online format. They are hugely helpful to anyone researching the events and locations of the Great War today – among them the Red Cross, the Imperial War Museum, and First World War aviation and air accident history experts, particularly the work of Ian Castle of Zeppelin Raids, Gothas and Giants: Britain’s First Blitz, 1914-18.

The story and the challenge: My great-aunt from Southend-on-Sea told the story that as a young woman she had seen British aircraft in combat with Gothas over the Thames Estuary during the First World War, with a dogfight as part of the event. (1) I wanted to see if I could identify the particular event concerned from just those few words gleaned at second-hand.

British aircraft in foreground with Allied roundels on upper wings pursued by a German aircraft with the Iron Cross visible on its left upper wing, the right on fire. Other aircraft are visible in the background amid white clouds and black smoke.
An Aerial Fight, Louis Weirter, 1918. This Imperial War Museum commission shows a dogfight between British and German biplanes. © IWM Art. IWM ART 654. Original source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/37417

So what happened during that dogfight? There were several aerial incidents during the First World War over the Thames Estuary, but most could be eliminated on the following grounds:

(a) they were too early, since the Gotha saw service only from 1916 onwards;
(b) they involved aircraft other than Gothas, such as Zeppelins;
(c) they took place at night, when she is less likely to have seen or watched the aircraft;
(d) they were bombing raids either unopposed or opposed only by ground artillery; or
(e) they were events in which German aircraft were pursued by British craft without engagement.

The most likely incident, therefore, is one that took place in the early evening of a summer Sunday on 12 August 1917, when the resort of Southend-on-Sea was still full of day-trippers. I suspect it is likely that perhaps my great-aunt, at the age of 18, was out on a Sunday stroll on the promenade looking out over the sea, perhaps even out with her fiancé, who was later killed in action, and whose name, full of grief, she took to the grave with her.

As usual, accounts of incidents during the war vary tremendously, because of differing individual perspectives, the ‘fog of war’, ensuing propaganda claims and counter-claims by each side, and confusion with other similar incidents in the same action all being factors in sometimes making it difficult to obtain a clear and objective account of events.

It all happened very fast, too, which meant it must have passed in a blur for the combatants, and for historians a century later a very difficult task to decipher.

At 5.20 pm British aircraft scrambled from their bases on either side of the Thames Estuary to intercept German aircraft off the Thames. At 5.30 pm Gotha bombers arrived off Southend from their base at Gontrode, Belgium, with the Thames an easy flight path to follow right to the heart of the capital, where they intended to discharge their bombs.

One Gotha broke away from the eastbound trajectory along the Thames to attack Margate around 5.40 pm but was subjected to anti-aircraft fire from the ground and was then chased by RNAS pilots virtually all the way back to Zeebrugge. (2)

The other aircraft carried on at first towards London, with a couple of bombs being dropped on Rochford airfield (where Southend Airport now is) around 5.50 pm, and reaching as far east as Canvey Island, before turning back against the increasing headwind from the south-west and heading on a roughly ENE course, dropping bombs on a path between Leigh-on-Sea, Southend, Bournes Green and Little Wakering, pursued by 61 Squadron of Rochford.

This phase of the action was over land, but close enough to the coast to be visible to day-trippers and cause them to abandon their socks and shoes on the beach. (3) The death toll from bombs in Southend itself was something like 25-30 persons. (4) 61 Squadron then pursued the Gothas out to sea, and at this point pilots from RNAS Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey, on the opposite side of the Thames, also rose up to engage eight Gothas as they turned back east.

In the meantime Flight Lt Harold Spencer Kerby, who had joined the pursuit of the lone Gotha off Margate, on the north-eastern coast of Kent, peeled away north-westwards in his Sopwith Pup following the sight of ‘anti-aircraft fire bursting in the direction of Southend’ to join four other ‘British machines’ against the eight Gothas, so this was approximately 6pm or so. (5)

Historic B&W photo of man in biplane, front propeller to left, on a hard-standing, trees and shrubs on the horizon visible just below the lower wing.

Sopwith Pup single-seat fighter biplane. Copyright: © IWM. 67558 Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205129173

According to eyewitness Kurt Delang of Kasta 15: ‘One single-seater fighter followed us on our course along the east coast of England. This Englishman attacked our Gotha[s] constantly from above and very soon caused heavy damage to our aircraft.’ (6) In other words, Kerby was straightaway on the attack. The Gothas at this point were certainly tracking the coastline from the landward, but Little Wakering was their last landside point and after that they moved out to sea from the Essex coast.

I suspect that this point of the incident is what my great-aunt witnessed from Southend-on-Sea, as she would have been able to see Kerby in his Sopwith Pup making for the anti-aircraft guns at Shoeburyness which came into play as the Gothas moved out to sea, and going on the attack as he crossed their paths. (Kerby described their course as north-easterly, but the trajectory of the bomb drops across the area suggest an ENE course.) (7)

Kerby made a fruitless diving attack about ’30 miles to seaward’ then climbed and singled out ‘one Gotha 4,000 [ft] below the formation, but still flying with it. I attacked from the front and drove him down into the sea, where I observed him turn over. One of the occupants I saw hanging on the tail of the Gotha.’ (8)

The aircraft in the sea was Gotha IV 656/16 of Kasta 16, Kagohl III. (9) Unteroffizier Kurt Delang of Kasta 15 described the same incident in such a way as to suggest it refers to the same incident, albeit with a different outcome: ‘We were already down to 500 metres above the water when the Englishman again attacked. Then he flew beneath us for a long time . . . and pulled up straight in order to gain altitude and strike again from above.’ Delang’s account then diverges considerably from Kerby’s: ‘When the British single-seater had attained only a modest speed, he was right in the sights of our machine guns. Flames burst out . . . he plunged into the North Sea.’ (10)

Accounts then become somewhat more muddled with various claims from all parties as to the place of loss. Other German sources (11) stated that the crew of Delang’s aircraft, had ‘shot down a British single-seater near Southend,’ with two other British losses also claimed on this raid, of a triplane near Margate and a two-seater near Southend.

However, there are no records of Kerby or any other British pilots being shot down that day in home waters, and the only aircraft losses on that day on both sides were on the Western Front, including Delang’s Gotha, which crash-landed just short of its home base at Gontrode. What they reported seems to have been the loss of one of their own. (12)

Historic black & white photograph of light-coloured biplane with Iron Cross markings on fuselage and tail, with three men standing beside the tail.
Gotha G IV RG + 406/16 of Kagohl III in December 1916. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gotha_G_IV_2.jpg

How could this happen? It was difficult to mistake the two aircraft, with the much larger three-man Gotha bomber having a distinctive pattern of vertical struts arranged in a 2-2-3 pattern between each pair of wings, compared to the Sopwith Pup with its single set of two struts on either side, and each side had recognition markings. As the painting at the top of the article shows, however, smoke and cloud could obscure the view and rapid decisions taken in an emergency could lead to the ‘fog of war’ descending. They fired, but did they miss Kerby and strike one of their own instead as the aircraft danced their fatal dance in the sky?

The confirmation of air combat results is both very specific and very vague. It certainly name-checks the principal theatres of action at Southend and Margate and seems to suggest a wide spread of British aircraft, a one-seater, a two-seater and a triplane, but does not name the models downed, and in any case the main British production triplane, the Sopwith Triplane, saw service overseas, not in home defence. This may therefore be an example of a claim demonstrating some results from what was otherwise an abortive mission which did not achieve its target.

So where did this take place? Delang reported Kerby’s first dive as ‘along the east coast of England’, suggesting that land was in sight at that point, i.e. the Essex coastline, although Kerby suggests it was further out to sea. British sources attribute the loss of Gotha IV 656/16 to ‘some way off Southend’, but this is consistent with Delang on the ‘British’ loss ‘near Southend’. Other German sources suggest that 656/16 was lost off Dover, but not in combat.

The incident certainly took place some distance offshore because Kerby circled the capsized Gotha before ‘returning to England’, and threw a lifebelt to the crew member who had got out onto the tail, which certainly suggests he had a good look at the aircraft and was able to identify it, as shown by the illustration immediately below.

Men in military uniform examining the damaged tail of a downed aircraft, with IV and an Iron Cross legible on the side.
Portuguese and British troops inspecting the tail of a German Gotha G.IV heavy bomber, brought down in the Portuguese sector, France. Copyright: © IWM Q 64432) Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205311688

Kerby then attempted to direct some destroyers bound for Dunkirk to assist the stricken aircraft, but his signals were ignored, although these nameless destroyers provide a further clue.

Those destroyers help point us in the direction of where the aircraft came down. The aircraft pursuit took a roughly ENE course along the Essex coast, as revealed by the bomb drops, and the respective pilots’ accounts, then out to sea. Other than the abortive engagement off Margate, no action took place over the Kent coast, so Dover appears too far south for Kerby’s destruction of the Gotha, and Delang’s account that an aircraft had been shot down into the North Sea also suggests a locale further north than Kent. The German source that claimed 656/16 was lost ‘off Dover’ would naturally have had less knowledge of the English coast than the British pilots, so we can suggest that the destroyers Kerby saw are unlikely to be those of the Dover patrol.

Instead, the destroyers he attempted to signal are more likely to have been those of the Harwich patrol, where the 10th Destroyer Flotilla was part of the Harwich force. These destroyers were thus steaming on a south-easterly course and would have been using the swept War Channels safe, as far as possible, from mines, and keeping well clear of the notorious sandbanks at the entrance to the Thames Estuary.

Additionally, for the German aircraft, an easterly course from Essex was unsustainable for their return flight to Gontrode in Belgium with fuel supplies running low, especially after taking evasive action, so at some point the Gothas would also have had to start to bear on a south-easterly course, for which the Dover area would also have been too far south. It thus seems more likely that 656/16 was downed before the formation began to turn their course for home.

We can see that the British aircraft were quite capable of pursuing the Gothas virtually all the way back to Belgium, and, as we have seen, others in this incident were certainly followed 40 to 50 miles out to sea. This suggests that Kerby’s estimate of action some 30 miles offshore is probably correct, with the final downing of his quarry perhaps a little further east and intersecting with the destroyers he witnessed from Harwich making for Dunkirk.

The most likely area fitting the criteria of an easterly to north-easterly course some 30 to 40 miles out to sea from the populated areas of the Essex Thameside coast, and intersecting with the Harwich-Dunkirk route taken by the destroyers, is an area just off the south-western tip of the present-day London Array Wind Farm. Although 30 miles sounds a long way offshore from Essex, this area in fact lies within the UK limit of territorial waters (12 miles) given its greater proximity to the Kent coastline.

Outcome: I was not at all hopeful that I would even be able to identify the incident my great-aunt witnessed. Years of professional historical research have taught me that sometimes the unexpected happens and a trail that seems at first to be unpromising proves to be a fascinating piece of research (and vice versa). Even so, I was astonished that by retracing the flight paths of Flight Lieutenant Harold Spencer Kerby and Unteroffizier Kurt Delang, I ended up with a record of an aircraft lost to the sea, and one which was new to the Historic England national marine database.

Footnotes:

(1) As told by the author’s great-aunt (1898-1994) to her father (1922-2020), and preserved in an unpublished family history document, Serena Cant 2018

(2) The Globe, 13 August 1917, No.38,093, p1; http://www.iancastlezeppelin.co.uk/12-aug-1917/4593992454

(3) The Globe, 13 August 1917, No.38,093, p1; http://www.iancastlezeppelin.co.uk/12-aug-1917/4593992454

(4) The Globe, 13 August 1917, No.38,093, p1; http://www.iancastlezeppelin.co.uk/12-aug-1917/4593992454

(5) The Globe, 13 August 1917, No.38,093, p1

(6) Kasta = German, short for Kampfstaffel (Squadron);  http://www.airhistory.org.uk/rfc/Kagohl3-diary.html

(7) http://www.airhistory.org.uk/rfc/Kagohl3-diary.html

(8) The Globe, 13 August 1917, No.38,093, p1, Harold Spencer Kerby’s own words, derived from official sources and repr. in Franks, N. 2012 Sopwith Pup Aces of World War I (London: Bloomsbury Publishing); http://www.airhistory.org.uk/rfc/Kagohl3-diary.html

(9) Kampfstaffel (Squadron) 16 of Kampfgeschwader der Obersten Heeresleitung (German Army High Command Bomber Squadron) 3, also known as the England-Geschwader/Englandgeflieger, or English Squadron: http://www.airhistory.org.uk/rfc/Kagohl3-diary.html

(10) http://www.airhistory.org.uk/rfc/Kagohl3-diary.html

(11) Also quoted in http://www.airhistory.org.uk/rfc/Kagohl3-diary.html

(12) https://aviation-safety.net/ http://www.iancastlezeppelin.co.uk/12-aug-1917/4593992454

Diary of the War: April 1940

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HMS/M Unity

This month the focus in our diary of the war at sea is on the submarine HMS Unity, sunk on 29 April 1940.

One of the key dangers for submarines in the early decades of the 20th century was the risk of collision with surface ships, although this risk lessened with the increasing sophistication of detection technologies.

At the same time, while convoy provided ships with a degree of safety against a common enemy, it also occasionally raised the risk of collision with other ships in the convoy. For example, there are sporadic reports of collision in convoy in English waters during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, while they also occurred during the First World War (see our previous post on War Knight, 1918).

For HMS Unity it was a collision of causes, as well as a collision in fact, as she came in contact off the Northumbrian coast with a surface ship, the SS Atle Jarl.  Unity was on the North Sea patrol and left her base at Blyth on 17.30 on 29 April 1940 on a northerly course in conditions of poor visibility, while Atle Jarl was steaming south in convoy from Methil to the Tyne. Neither vessel saw the other until they were virtually on top of one another and Atle Jarl struck the submarine upon the port bows, sinking within five minutes. (1) Four of the Unity‘s crew would lose their lives: Lt John Niven Angus Low and AB Henry James Miller went down with the submarine, while Leading Seaman James Sneddon Hare and Stoker 1st Class Cecil Shelton drowned before the boats sent out from the Atle Jarl could rescue them. (2)

Historic B&W photograph of submarine on the surface of an otherwise empty sea.
HMS Unruly, like HMS Unity a U-class submarine, seen from the air in February 1945. © IWM (A 28318)

The voyages of both vessels were connected with the same event on the international stage – the fall of Norway on 9 April 1940. On 6 April Atle Jarl had left Shields on the north-east coast for Trondheim in Norway. She put into Methil Roads in Scottish waters the following day then set off for Norway, but events then forced her to put back. She then left Methil to return to Shields on 29 April. (3) On that same day Unity‘s intended voyage was in the opposite direction, to Norway, where the Allies were still involved in a campaign to dislodge the Nazi occupiers.

The previous month Unity had made headlines in Britain and the Netherlands with her rescue of eight survivors from the crew of the Dutch trawler Protinus, who had been bobbing about without food or water in an open boat in the North Sea for six days, after their vessel had been attacked and sunk by a German aircraft. Two men were killed in the attack and two succumbed afterwards as they drifted: eerily prefiguring the losses aboard Unity, two in the incident and two in the sea afterwards. The survivors were landed at a Scottish east coast port and Unity‘s crew ‘received the congratulations of Queen Wilhelmina, of Holland.’ (4)

Historic B & W photograph of men surrounding a survivor in a cork lifejacket.
A survivor from Protinus is helped from HMS Unity by her crew in one of a sequence of photographs which shows individual survivors being landed. Some of these images were then published in Dutch newspapers. © IWM (A 16)

The loss of Unity herself, however, was a completely different matter. The press was silent on the subject, although allusions to the rescue of the Dutch fishermen cropped up at intervals during the war, either as her crew subsequently took part in successful engagements, or were awarded medals. The only clue to the submarine’s loss, perhaps, was that they gained these awards in other vessels: but this would only be known by the men and their families, and to the outside world their presence aboard other submarines would have been masked by the transfer of postings through career progression, particularly for officers.

It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we are able to read between the lines.

For example, the news that AB Jones had received the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) for ‘daring, enterprise and devotion to duty on successful patrols in HM Submarines’ was accompanied by a reminder of the Protinus rescue and the fact that he was ‘subsequently posted to HM Submarine Utmost.’ (5) Most of the crew were indeed subsequently divided between Utmost and Upright, and at least one went to submarine P311. (6) 

Nor were the survivors the only ones to receive gallantry awards. On 16 August 1940 both Lt Low and AB Miller were posthumously awarded the Empire Gallantry Medal, which was exchanged for the new award of the George Cross instituted just a month later. Even then only their branch of service was recorded: ‘HM Submarines’ – but the citation was specifically for ‘gallantry in loss of ship in collision’. (7) 

The sinking of Unity by collision at 7.15pm on 29 April ‘off the Farne Islands’ did not reach the public domain, but was reported on 1 May to the War Cabinet, who were also notified that ‘Divers from Scapa were being hurried to the Tyne.’ (8) It was noted at the next day’s meeting, however, that diving operations had been unsuccessful and that: ‘The few men remaining in her could only be saved, however, if they made their own escape by using the Davies [sic] apparatus.’ (9)

Historic B&W photograph of man wearing the apparatus in a tank while the trainees watch.
An instructor coming to the surface during a demonstration of the Davis apparatus, as trainees for the submarine service look on, at HMS Dolphin, Gosport, 14 December 1942. © IWM (A 13884)

It was only after the war in Europe was over in May 1945 that the news of Unity‘s loss made its way into the public domain when the Admiralty ‘revealed its secret losses, which could not be announced before without giving Germany information.’ (10) 

The managed lack of information was one thing; it was a necessity for the safe conduct of the war and for public morale, and did not mean at all that nothing was done behind the scenes. As we have seen, the War Cabinet was notified of a rescue attempt, and the gallantry of Lt Low and AB Miller in remaining behind and assisting their crewmates to escape, even at the risk of their own lives, was recognised within months of the event.

In the interim, a Court of Inquiry was convened at Blyth. There it emerged that the poor visibility was not the only contributory factor to the disaster, but a missing piece of information had also played its part in shaping the course of events, and that was an entirely different matter.

A signal had come through to Blyth from Rosyth to warn of the impending Methil-Tyne convoy in the swept war channels, but this, for some reason, had not reached Unity. This reasons for this were examined in detail, but no-one recalled having sight of the signal – neither the signalman who should have been able to collect it before sailing, nor the navigating officer, nor the commanding officer. Procedures at the shoreside signal distribution office were minutely examined to account for the discrepancy, but as the confidential papers had gone down with the submarine, there was no conclusive paper trail to demonstrate or corroborate whether the signal had been collected or not collected, never seen or seen but overlooked in the haste to put to sea. (11)

These seemingly routine tasks could make the difference between life and death, and it could be said that ‘for want of a signal a submarine was lost’, and four lives. Whether her presence would have altered the course of the struggle for Norway, we will never know, but it is a reminder that in wartime each person was a very small cog in larger cogs that moved enormous wheels, and individual events had a cumulative effect on outcomes far away. The history of Unity also reminds us that while ships have always saved people from wrecks, only to be wrecked in their turn (sometimes many years later), under the circumstances of war these sequences of events were both more frequent, and compressed into shorter spans of time.

 

References: 

(1) Atle Jarl entry onwarsailors.com 

(2) Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, results for 29.04.1940

(3) p1 of Atle Jarl‘s convoy register (in English), National Archives of Norway, repr. on warsailors.com

(4) Algemeen Handelsblad (in Dutch), 30 March 1940, No.37,063, p3; Daily Record, 1 April 1940; Middlesex Chronicle, 16 May 1942, No.4,352, p5

(5) Birmingham Post, 7 November 1940, No.25,681 p3

(6) Middlesex Chronicle, 16 May 1942, No.4,352, p5; Evans, A. 1986 Beneath the Waves: A history of HM Submarine losses 1904-1971 (London: William Kimber)

(7) London Gazette, Friday 16 August 1940, No.34,924, p5059; TNA ADM 1/11525

(8) TNA CAB 65/7/1

(9) TNA CAB 65/7/2

(10) “Naval Chronicle”, Hampshire Telegraph & Post, 25 May 1940, No.8,469, p12

(11) Evans, A. 1986 Beneath the Waves: A history of HM Submarine losses 1904-1971 (London: William Kimber)

 

Looking at the weather

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The wreck of the Heidrun

I am very pleased to welcome my next guest blogger for this edition, local wreck historian Robert Felce, who has kindly shared with us his research into the history of the SS Heidrun, lost off Mullion, Cornwall, in December 1915.

Over to Robert:

As the Great War raged from 1914-18 on the Western Front there was also war on the high seas from the Atlantic to the Baltic, and from the English Channel to the Mediterranean. Ships from many lands fell victim to German mines and torpedoes, and neutral countries such as Norway were not immune.

This is the story of the SS Heidrun, built in 1871 by Palmer’s of Jarrow as the iron screw steamer Vildosala. (1) As Vildosala she had run down the SS Kottingham in 1897 and was involved in 6 further collision events. (2) In 1902 she was sold to Libau (then part of the Russian Empire as the Governorate of Courland, now Liepāja in the modern state of Latvia) as the Dalny or Dal’niy, then to her final owners in Christiana (now Oslo) as the Heidrun in 1909. (3)

Throughout her career she appears to have operated primarily as a collier, which also seems to have been her wartime role, and we can place her on a voyage from Swansea to Rouen with coal in November 1915. (4) On 24 December 1915 Heidrun once more departed Swansea Coal Docks for Rouen with anthracite coal and 15 crew, under Capt. Gustav Olsen. (5)

Swansea had a long-standing connection with Norway, which arose from the importation of timber pit-props from Scandinavia for use in the coal mines of South Wales, with coal being transported back to Norway. A Norwegian church opened in Newport in the 1890s but was physically relocated to Swansea in 1909-10. (6) [Take a look at Historic England’s picture gallery for the Norwegian church, Rotherhithe, built in 1927, including its war memorial dedicated to the seamen of Norway lost in the First World War, which was listed in 2017.]

Simple black and white church with small black Nordic spire, and flagpole adjacent to the church.
Norwegian Church, Swansea, in its present position, having been relocated in 2004 for the second time in its history,  this time within Swansea. © Ann on geograph.org.uk (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Rouen, on the River Seine, was used as a supply base for the British, and was also a major hospital base for injured soldiers, with a number of large, well-run, hospitals. Coal was a much-needed resource for both the French and English troops, as well as the French population.

As the Heidrun set out on her ill-fated journey, the Christmas truce of 1915, less well-known than the 1914 equivalent, was taking place on the Western Front. Coal-fired braziers were lit in No-Man’s Land and troops on both sides sang hymns and exchanged small gifts. (7). For the Heidrun, the weather on the outward journey south towards Land’s End was poor, with a developing low pressure system bringing SW gale force winds, not the most attractive way to spend Christmas. (8)

Mullion Coastguard were later to report that, about 10.30am on 27 December, at the height of the gale, a steamer was observed some 4 miles off Mullion pitching and tossing in the terrible sea that was running in Mount’s Bay, buffeted by the ‘howling’ SW gale. For half an hour, her laboured progress was watched with anxiety by those on shore – and then she disappeared from view. (9)

Sandy beach enclosed by green field headlands, clear blue water under a blue sky.
Church Cove, Gunwalloe, north of Mullion. © Bob Felce (Mullion)

There was no help at hand, and no ships close by to go to her aid. The last Mullion lifeboat had been removed in July 1908 and in such a SW gale the Penzance and Porthleven lifeboats would have been unable to launch.

Evidence of the steamer’s identity gradually reached the shore when wreckage and lifebuoys were washed up bearing the names Heidrun and Christiana. The coastguard passed the information to Lloyd’s in Penzance, who matched the information with the departure of the Heidrun from Swansea on 24 December.

There were no survivors, with an unidentified male body being recovered at Halzephron on 28 December, and two more at Poldhu on 29 and 30 December. (10) At the subsequent coroner’s inquest evidence of drowning was given and the evidence of the wind and tide led to their identification as the crew of the Heidrun. (11) Two further bodies were found at Porthleven on 25 January, with it being concluded that they were ‘found drowned’ and probably came from the wreck of the Heidrun. (12) There is no recorded evidence that the bodies of the remaining crewmen ever came ashore. On 10 February Heidrun was added to Lloyd’s ‘Missing’ list. (13)

It seems that much of the above information was never subsequently considered and it was recorded in some quarters that she had quite likely struck a mine (for example, ‘missing, presumed mined’ in Lloyd’s War Losses). (14) Reviewing the sinking also suggests that there has since been only a superficial examination of weather data at the time of loss.

However, in the Meteorological Office (Met Office) summary for the month of December 1915, gales were reported ‘every day’ from the 22nd onwards, in particular noting that:

A deep system travelled up from the Azores, arriving on the Irish coast in the morning of the 27th and reaching Denmark the following day. It was a fast-moving system . . .  marked by the most destructive gale of the month with a strong to a whole SW gale, raging over England generally . . . with violent squalls . . . winds which attained a velocity of 39 m/s [metres per second] at Plymouth and 40 m/s at Scilly and Pendennis.’ (15)

These wind speeds at the time Heidrun was passing through Mount’s Bay, (which lies between the observation points of Scilly to the west and Pendennis to the east), translate to 87-89mph [140-143kph]. Further detail is available in the daily weather reports, showing that at Newquay, Cornwall, the wind was WSW force 8 all day, while on the Isles of Scilly it was observed to be at SW force 8 between 7am and 1pm, gusting at 39 m/s at 9am. At Falmouth the wind was observed to be at WSW force 9 between 8am and 1pm, gusting to 40 m/s at 9.45am. (16)

Historic hand-drawn weather chart on a blue background.
Meteorological Office chart for 27 December 1915. © Crown Copyright 1915. Information provided by the National Meteorological Library and Archive – Met Office, UK

It is suggested that the evidence for a mine or torpedo strike is not present as no evidence of an explosion was seen or heard by the watchers on shore. [Serena adds: Assessment of the other wrecks in English waters for that month strengthens this suggestion. In terms of losses to war causes, December 1915 was a relatively quiet month, with one vessel torpedoed, one sunk by gun action, and 11 mined, primarily among the minefields on the east coast. (17) 

No other vessels were lost on 27 December 1915 to storm conditions, but on 31 December, another ship, the schooner Dana of Helsingør, was a victim of the storms reported by the Met Office as continuing up to the end of the month. (18) She sprang a leak after labouring for several days across the North Sea in a storm with high seas, again consistent with the Met Office’s reporting of its trajectory. It was then decided to steer for the nearest land, and she drove ashore at Cullernose Point, Northumberland. (19)]

The date of the Heidrun wreck in 1915 also excludes another cause of loss particular to Norwegian ships later in the war, in 1917, which also specifically affected those leaving Norway itself. Even so, it is an interesting story in its own right and worth covering briefly here. In 1917 Norwegian concern grew over a number of their ships which had been mysteriously lost at sea, mostly with all hands, although the survivors of some of these mysterious incidents reported sudden explosions and fires which broke out in such a manner as to convince those present that they were due to ‘infernal machines’ – rather than an explosion through an external cause such as mine or torpedo. (20)

Investigations by the chief of Oslo police, Johan Søhr, led to the discovery of a bomb plot led by one ‘Baron von Rautenfels’, a Finnish national who was working for German intelligence under cover of the diplomatic service. Diplomatic baggage was used to courier explosives into Norway, including incendiary devices disguised as pieces of coal to be placed in the coal bunkers, where in some cases they were discovered shortly after leaving harbour in Norway. (21) [An online album by Norwegian broadcaster NRK (in Norwegian) depicts the quantities of smuggled bombs. The sixth picture in the album shows a bomb disguised as a piece of coal.]

Thus the very specific wind conditions under which the Heidrun was labouring on 27 December 1915 seem the most likely explanation for her loss, probably compounded by other factors. Was the fully-laden steamer able to handle such sea conditions and high winds? Might she have developed an engine fault or had water ingress through open hatches, which were both common causes of foundering for colliers? [Serena adds: for example, the fate of her compatriot Odd, which foundered in 1910 with all hands in a gale off Woolacombe, Devon, sounds very similar. In 1894 the British collier Zadne capsized and sank off Worthing, which was attributed to a shift in her cargo, while another British collier, the Grimsby, sprang a leak and foundered off Westward Ho! in 1897. Such incidents were not, of course, unique to colliers or confined to steamships, but certainly give an idea of the variety of severe structural and mechanical stresses possible under ‘stress of weather’, in the historic maritime phrase. (22)]

We may never know, but by November 1916 242 Norwegian ships had been sunk, comprising 182 steamers and 60 sailing ships, insured for 142m kroner or almost £8m. By 1918 the figures for Norway’s commercial shipping losses had risen to 829 ships for 1,240,000 tons, representing an insurance loss of approximately 1,000m kroner. (23)

The toll in lives lost was immense, including the 15 crew of the Heidrun. Following enquiries from the lost crew’s relatives in Norway some 20 years ago, a memorial stone was placed in the burial ground at the Church of St. Winwaloe, Gunwalloe.

Modern B&W photograph of simple gravestone carved only with text.
Headstone commemorating the lost crew of the Heidrun: G Olsen, J Olsen, P Rasmussen, R J Knudsen, A M Andersen, P Mortensen, M Santa, D Rickard, H Waather, A Alberti, E M Løvle, T Sihanna, J Syrgraven, A Brenha, and C Carlsen.  © Bob Felce (Mullion)

The wreck now attributed to the Heidrun in Mount’s Bay was described in 1981 as the ‘wreck of an old steamer of the era 1880-1900’ and has since been observed as having a 2-cylinder compound engine, consistent with the vessel as built at Palmer’s, Jarrow, in 1871 and replaced by their subsidiary, John Eltringham, South Shields in 1881. (24) No anthracite cargo was observed, and it may well have been washed away, particularly given the collapsed state of the wreck, but the recovery of a maker’s plate before 2003 enabled identification of the site as the Heidrun. (25)

The wreck is no longer intact and has collapsed outwards. Perhaps this is partly due to historic salvage, but from the 2003 observations one feature jumps out: the port boiler was in place but the starboard boiler lies at an angle. (26) Could this suggest one of the possible mechanical stresses on the vessel during that storm over a hundred years ago?

Footnotes: 

(1) Auction Notice for Vildosala and Chavarri, The Gazette for Middlesborough 1.5.1872

(2) Kottingham wreck: Lloyd’s List 1.11.1897. For some of the other incidents, please see, for example, collision with Patria, off Berdyans’k, Lloyd’s List 2.5.1878; collision with Tagus at Shields, 1894, Aberdeen Press and Journal 6.2.1894; Drogden lightship incident, York Herald, 25.6.1899; collision with other steamers in Gravesend Reach, Shields Daily Gazette 20.7.1901, all as Vildosala; and as Dal’niy, collision with Fountains Abbey off Queensferry, Linlithgow Gazette 10.11.1903

(3) Shields Daily Gazette 28.11.1902; Lloyd’s List 24.5.1909

(4) Shields Daily News 9.11.1915

(5) The Scotsman 30.12.1915

(6) http://www.swanseadocks.co.uk/Norwegian%20Church.htm

(7) “The forgotten Christmas Truce” , Daily Telegraph, 26.12.2015

(8) Met Office Digital Library and Archive, Monthly Weather Report for the Meteorological Office, Vol. XXXIII (New Series), No.XII, December 1915

(9) “The Mullion Disaster”, Cornishman, 6.1.1916

(10) “The Mullion Disaster”, Cornishman, 6.1.1916; Cornishman, 13.1.1916

(11) Cornishman, 3.1.1916

(12) “Bodies washed ashore at Porthleven”, Cornishman, 27.1.1916

(13) Cornishman, 10.2.1916

(14) Lloyd’s War Losses for the First World War: casualties to shipping through enemy causes 1914-18, p299

(15) Met Office Digital Library and Archive, Monthly Weather Report for the Meteorological Office, Vol. XXXIII (New Series), No.XII, December 1915

(16) Met Office Digital Library and Archive, Daily Weather Reports for December 1915, 27 December 1915, p112

(17) Source: examination of Historic England National Record of the Historic Environment database, April 2020

(18)  Source: examination of Historic England National Record of the Historic Environment database, April 2020

(19) Handelsministeriet, 1916: Statistisk oversigt over de i aaret 1915 for danske skibe i danske og fremmede farvande samt for fremmede skibe i danske farvande indtrufne søulykker (in Danish) (Copenhagen: Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri)

(20) The Globe, 25.6.1917

(21) “Bombs at Christiana”, Cambridge Daily News, 25.6.1917; “Discovery of a vast German plot against Norway”, Yorkshire Telegraph and Star, 25.6.1917

(22) Source: examination of Historic England National Record of the Historic Environment database, April 2020

(23) Gloucestershire Echo, 5.12.1916; Derby Daily Telegraph, 6.1.1919

(24) “Vildosala fitted with new engines”, Shields Daily News 2.9.1881; UKHO No. 16233; “Wreck Tour 49: The Heidrun“, Divernet, nd, originally published in Diver, March 2003

(25) UKHO No.16233, “Wreck Tour 49: The Heidrun“, Divernet, nd, originally published in Diver, March 2003

(26) “Wreck Tour 49: The Heidrun“, Divernet, nd, originally published in Diver, March 2003

 

 

Diary of the Second World War: October 1939

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U-16

In wartime there are some vessels whose fate seems to involve one thing after another, exacerbated by the ‘fog of war’ in which events are not wholly clear even to those who have taken part in them: War Knight during the First World War was a case in point, and U-16 on 25 October 1939 another.

The news of U-16‘s loss followed the recent tragedy of HMS Royal Oak, torpedoed in the apparent safety of the Scapa Flow anchorage, Orkney, on 14 October 1939, by U-47 under the command of Günther Prien. Barely six weeks into the war it was already apparent that the U-boat threat to Britain was significant.

On the afternoon of Tuesday 24 October 1939 an anti-submarine indicator loop at St. Margaret’s Bay, Kent, picked up suspicious activity in the Straits of Dover. The Kingfisher-class patrol sloop HMS Puffin and the requisitioned trawler HMS Cayton Wyke were sent to investigate. So far the defence of the Straits of Dover differed little from the previous war in the use of loops (see post of August 1918), of smaller patrol vessels in the form of naval and requisitioned fishing vessels, and of a mine barrage.

As their counterparts had also done in the previous war, one after the other, the two vessels dropped depth charges in the vicinity of their target some three miles east by south of St. Margaret’s Bay. (1)  

It seems that the effect of this was to disable the submarine, but not so severely that communications were disrupted: the U-boat was able to send a radio message in the early hours of 25 October 1939. (2) 

On Thursday 26 October, a German U-boat was discovered stranded on the Goodwin Sands but with no explanation of how it had got there. A statement prepared by the Admiralty and widely disseminated in the press, said:

‘How the submarine went aground was not explained last night. Gunfire was heard off Deal on Wednesday, when it was believed that an enemy submarine might have been attacked, but nothing could be seen because of mist.

‘Another theory is that the submarine may have been sunk a few days ago off Folkestone and may have drifted or bumped along the sea bed and become fast on the Goodwins.’ (3)

There was not only a sea haar, but also a smokescreen thrown up by the Admiralty. Both ‘theories’ allowed to materialise in the press certainly had a germ of truth to them – an enemy submarine was certainly attacked ‘a few days ago’ somewhere between Deal and Folkestone barrage. An emphasis on ‘gunfire’ nicely side-stepped the use of depth charges or the presence of a mine barrage, although some further conjecture from Deal also made it into the press release, albeit still carefully worded:

‘It is thought possible at Deal that the U-boat did not go on to the Goodwins under her own power, but was sunk in deeper waters by depth charges or bombs and that some of her bulk heads may have remained undamaged, permitting her to bump along the seabed, carried along by the current.‘ (4) 

To coin a phrase apt in the maritime context, the waters were muddied by a claim that ‘a large German submarine has been sunk by the French. This is confirmed by the finding of the bodies of the crew. A message from Dunkirk states that the British Admiralty was represented when the French authorities gave a Naval funeral yesterday to a U-boat officer and five German sailors . . . ‘ (5)  

This funeral was well attended by both French and British naval representatives, and jointly led by both Protestant and Catholic clergy to cover Germany’s two principal religions. (6) The Yorkshire Post was of the view that the funeral was ‘almost the last flicker of chivalry in warfare’.

The German High Command admitted the loss of three U-boats. (7)  Five are recorded as lost for the month of October 1939, but none of these are attributed to French action. Two were depth-charged by British ships in the North Atlantic south-west of Ireland on 13 and 14 October respectively (U-42 and U-45) , and three in the Straits of Dover: U-12, which was mined on 8 October; U-40, which also fell to a British minefield on 13 October; and U-16, attributed to a British minefield. (8) 

Could French action have contributed to the demise of U-16? The French press reported that their Navy had recently been active and that a patrol vessel had recovered some bodies from a submarine sunk off Dunkirk. (9) That patrol vessel was the Épinal, which had launched a night attack on a submarine on 26 October (presumably in the early hours of that day), while acting on intelligence that U-boat activity was expected in the Straits of Dover on 26-27 October. (10)

It thus seems that the Épinal might have been the last on the scene, which is also suggested by her crew recovering the U-boat commander alive. (11) Action by British and French patrols, unknown to each other, would also account for the actions reported in the press as heard at different times in different places. Some sources suggest that the Épinal was first on the scene, with the British second, but this fits less well with the time frame and the known actions of Puffin and Cayton Wyke. 

That U-boat commander subsequently died despite being taken to hospital. He was identified as Kapitänleutnant Horst Wellner and, it seems, the loss may have been attributed to U-14. It is possible that his lifejacket was marked U-14, which he had commanded up until two weeks previously, his service aboard U-14 ending on 11 October 1939, before taking on the command of U-16 the following day.

The British and French press widely reported the discovery of ’50 or 60′ bodies, surely a conjecture or an exaggeration for propaganda purposes, since the normal crew complement was 22-24. (12) In total 19 bodies washed ashore or were picked up at sea on the Kent coast, near Dunkirk, and Ameland, Netherlands. (13) It seems likely that four bodies were recovered from the wreck by the British, since four German seamen whose date of death is 25th October 1939 are buried in Cannock Chase German Cemetery, namely, Paul Hanf, Hans Keil, Rolf Krämer, and Friedhelm Mahnke, and these four, together with the other 19 bodies, would fit with a crew complement of 23. (14) 

Did the Goodwin Sands themselves play a part in the U-boat’s loss? It would have been all too easy for a disabled submarine to drift helplessly and become ensnared upon the sands, an easy prey for any patrol vessel happening by. The ‘Demon Sands’ headline in the Manchester Evening Press made good copy and the article rehashed the many legends of the Goodwin Sands: though fanciful, it almost seems to suggest that the Sands themselves had reached out to snare the enemy. (15)

The expression ‘ships that pass in the night’ reveals a fundamental truth about not only shipping movements but also shipping losses: a spider’s web spins out interconnecting one wreck with another. Wellner in U-14 (which would be scuttled in 1945 off Wilhelmshaven as the Allies closed in on Germany) had been responsible for the reconnaissance mission which had led to the very recent loss of HMS Royal Oak in Scapa Flow. (16) 

Similarly, U-16‘s British attacker HMS Cayton Wyke would herself be lost to war causes on 8 July 1940, near the U-16 on the Goodwin Sands: her position of loss links her both to her victim and to the landscape of war in which she served as patrol vessel. HMS Puffin would survive the war, closing the war as she had begun, by accounting for a German submarine.

By the end of October the U-16 was regarded as unsalvageable: ‘The submarine is little more than a shattered wreck, and the remains are gradually sinking into the sand owing to the continuance of the bad weather.’ (17) 

Fairly unusually for the Goodwin Sands, where even very recent wrecks have disappeared completely, the site of the U-16 has a secure charting history since early 1940 as the location of a submarine, although the identity of the site is not confirmed.  (18) However, the description of her position  ‘near’ two other wrecks, now among those which have disappeared, may provide a clue to their location: the uncharted Sibiria and the Val Salice, both lost in the same storm in 1916, whose charting is now regarded as ‘dead’. (19) This suggests that in 1939 either that they remained partially visible or at least their positions were still within living memory among the seamen of the Kent coast.

 

(1) based on the location of the vessel identified as U-16, UKHO 13666.

(2) https://uboat.net/boats/u16.htm

(3)  or example, in The Scotsman, Friday 27 October 1939, No.30.083, p9, and elsewhere in the British national and regional press.

(4)  Birmingham Mail, 27 October 1939, No.22,988, p9

(5) Belfast News-Letter, 30 October 1939 [no issue number] p5, and also reported elsewhere in the British press.

(6) Nord-Maritime, 29/30/31 October 1939, repr. http://dkepaves.free.fr/html/u_16.htm (in French) ; Yorkshire Evening Post, 27 October 1939, No.15,302, p6

(7)  Belfast News-Letter, 30 October 1939 [no issue number] p5

(8) uboat.net

(9)  Nord-Maritime 29 October 1939, repr. http://dkepaves.free.fr/html/u_16.htm (in French)

(10) ibid; also an article from 11 years later in Le Nouveau-Nord, 27 October 1950, clearly commemorating the anniversary of previous events, similarly repr. http://dkepaves.free.fr/html/u_16.htm (in French)

(11) Le Nouveau-Nord, 27 October 1950, repr. in http://dkepaves.free.fr/html/u_16.htm   with further commentary on the same link (in French)

(12) https://uboat.net/types/iib.htm

(13) https://uboat.net/boats/u16.htm

(14) Commonwealth War Graves Commission 

(15) Manchester Evening News, 27 October 1939, No.21,989 p1, p6

(16) Konstam, A. 2015 U-47 in Scapa Flow: The Sinking of HMS Royal Oak 1939 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd) p20

(17) The Scotsman, 31 October 1939, No.30,086 p11

(18) UKHO 13666

(19) North-Eastern Gazette (later Middlesbrough Gazette), 27 October 1939 [no issue no.], p1; Val Salice, UKHO 13729

Diary of the War: December 1918 and after

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The Aftermath

Visitors to the Cenotaph in Whitehall may occasionally pass by and wonder why the end date of the First World War is inscribed as MCMXIX (1919) and not MCMXVIII (1918). Dating inscriptions on some war memorials follow this practice, while others adhere to the conventional dating (as we now understand it) of 1914-1918.

The usual explanation for the use of 1919 derives from the Armistice of 11 November 1918 being a cessation of hostilities, rather than a formal peace, which was delivered by the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919.

At the Armistice land soldiers could put down their guns and retire from their artillery posts at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 (although, as the recent commemorations have shown, there were pockets where it didn’t quite happen like that).

At sea the naval blockade of Germany would continue until Versailles. The threat of live hostile action was gone, but huge minefields remained a threat, their sweeping a laborious and ongoing task. Until well into 1920, mines regularly caused shipping casualties, resulting in a special section inserted into Lloyd’s War Losses devoted to “Vessels Sunk by Mines after Nov. 11th, 1918”. (1)

Thereafter shipping losses due to mines tailed off, but stray mines adrift from their original fields, and hence incapable of being swept up, since their locations were unknown, remained a persistent but deadly nuisance to shipping right up to 1925. The Swedish sailing vessel Hans, lost that year with the majority of her crew off Gotland, is the last reported mine casualty.

Within English waters, the post-war victims of mines included minesweepers: HMS Penarth, off the Yorkshire coast, 24 February 1919 and HMS Cupar, off Tynemouth, 5 May 1919. Among civilian shipping the English collier De Fontaine was mined off the coast of Kent on 16 November 1918, while the Norwegian cargo vessels Bonheur and Eidsfos sank after striking mines off Coquet Island on 23 December 1918. Trawlers faced particular dangers: Strathord brought up a mine in her trawl off the Yorkshire coast on 23 February 1920, ironically after having seen service as a minesweeper.

Occasionally fishing vessels could trawl up other relics of the war. On 20 November 1920, the Brixham trawler Our Laddie fouled a wreck and brought up ‘the 30ft section of a trawler’s mainmast, with shrouds and wire stays intact . . . where the mainmast was broken was found a huge piece of shrapnel.’ (2) The men of the Our Laddie identified the vessel as the remains of the General Leman, lost in a gunnery attack on 29 January 1918 on several fishing vessels off Start Point by UB-55.

The General Leman had belonged to Milford Haven but was clearly a sufficiently familiar sight off the coast of South Devon for the Brixham trawlermen to identify her mast – from among the several vessels of the fleet sunk on that day nearly three years previously. Possibly some of the men who hauled the mast aboard or those who saw it delivered to the Brixham quayside had been eyewitnesses to the incident and were able to piece together the identification.

There was also another group of vessels which would otherwise not have been lost in the seas around the United Kingdom during this period, had the war not taken place. Most famously, of course, the interned German High Seas Fleet was scuttled by order of Admiral Ludwig von Reuter on 21 June 1919 at Scapa Flow, Orkney, Scotland, where the remains of the battleships König, Kronprinz Wilhelm and Markgraf and the cruisers Brummer, Dresden, Karlsruhe and Köln are today protected under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.

The events at Scapa Flow have tended to overshadow another group of German vessels in the historical record: the U-boats which began arriving at Harwich in groups from November 1918, to be surrendered outright. They were then disposed of by the Admiralty, chiefly by sale for breaking, although some were retained for the Admiralty’s own use in experiments and trials.

In contrast to the warships at Orkney, therefore, the wrecks of German origin within English waters during the post-war period principally comprise the remains of U-boats, although a few other German naval vessels are known, such as the cruiser SMS Baden, scuttled off St. Catherine’s Deep on 16 August 1921.

Some of the U-boats were expended in trials (for example, a group of five or six submarines beached at Falmouth following trials, then broken up, although some remains exist). Others, stripped of their engines, foundered or were driven ashore after parting tow en route to the breakers, such as U118 at Hastings in April 1919 (covered in a previous post). In other words, the sea effectively did the job of the breakers for them – to put the submarines entirely beyond use – although it must have been a source of chagrin to the commercial buyers, who had often purchased the hulls from the Admiralty for considerable sums.

Some of the German surface fleet also met similar fates within English waters. The torpedo boat destroyers S24 and T189 parted tow on 12 December 1920 and went ashore on Roundham Head and Preston Sands respectively while bound from Cherbourg for Teignmouth for scrap. Others still were simply abandoned and left to rot, such as the destroyers V44 and V82, identified at Whale Island, Portsmouth, in a piece of research published by the Maritime Archaeology Trust as part of the ‘Forgotten Wrecks of the First World War’ project in 2016 – check out their new interactive map viewer.

Aerial photograph of green saltmarsh with remains of submarine hull in centre, orientated NNW-SSE, the outline of the hull being broken at the upper right.
The remains of a U-boat, believed (at the present state of knowledge) to be UB-122, lie abandoned on Stoke Saltings, Medway, Kent. © Historic England 27196-027

The aim in writing this post is to make the reader aware of the wide variety of post-war shipping casualties, mercantile and naval: those which came about in clearing up the weapons of war, the painful reminders of past losses (as a 1938 fishing chart (3) had it, the East Coast was ‘one mass of wrecks’ of the Great War), and those which came about through the peace process.

The Diary of the First World War concludes here, but will of course remain archived on this blog for reference and we will continue to showcase the breadth and diversity of our maritime heritage around the coasts of England.

A new Diary of the Second World War, following a similar format, will commemce in September 2019 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of its outbreak in 1939.

(1) Lloyd’s of London. 1990 Lloyd’s War Losses: The First World War: Casualties to Shipping through Enemy Causes 1914-1918 (London: Lloyd’s of London Press Ltd.)

(2) Western Morning News, 15 November 1920, No.18,939, p4

(3) Close’s Fishermen’s Chart of the North Sea, 1938

Diary of the War: November 1918

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

The Day before the Armistice

I began this maritime ‘Diary of the War’ with an entry for August 1914 in the waters off the Northumberland coast. As we approach the centenary of the Armistice on 11 November 1918, we return once more to that stretch of coastline.

From her inception to her service to her demise, HMS Ascot was entirely a product of the First World War. She was the first of a Racecourse-class of minesweepers built under the Emergency War Programme from 1915 in response to that need for sweepers which, as our August 1914 post demonstrated, was so pressing from the outset of the war, and entered service in January 1916. The Flower-class sweeping and anti-submarine sloops built at this time were also commissioned by the Emergency War Programme, of which HMS President, ex-HMS Saxifrage, moored in London, was one, built at Lobnitz, Renfrew.

Photograph of HMS President moored on river in predominantly black and white dazzle camouflage scheme, with some red, against a backdrop of buildings on the river bank.
HMS President is one of three surviving Royal Navy ships of the First World War and is shown here in her centenary dazzle scheme by Tobias Rehberger, 2014. By DieSwartzPunkt Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

The Racecourse-class minesweepers were commissioned from the Ailsa Shipbuilding Company at Troon, who were specialists in constructing paddle steamers for the ferry and excursion steamer markets, which retained a strong preference for paddle steamers, otherwise (with the exception of paddle tugs) largely obsolete in other contexts by the 1870s.

The purpose of the maritime War Diary has not only been to illustrate the underwater cultural heritage of this landscape of war around England’s coastline, but to also to highlight some developments as the war progressed and to demonstrate the diversity of vessel types and nationalities involved.

The commissioning of new paddle steamers to go to war may seem an extraordinary decision, but it fits into this theme. Their typically shallow draught, suitable for river or estuary service, was ideal for minesweeping, and commissioning smaller specialist shipbuilders made full use of Britain’s shipbuilding capacity at need.

In fact, both World Wars saw the use of both purpose-built and requisitioned paddle minesweepers, even if they gained something of a reputation for being ‘wallowy’ and uncomfortable at times. Their use was characteristic of an inventive and flexible approach to adapting shipping to wartime use and conditions, which has also been one of the themes emerging from the War Diary.

Black and white photograph taken from a steamer at sea showing another paddle steamer beyond and on the right.
First World War: Paddle minesweepers off Harwich, April 1918. © IWM (Q 18823)

Black and white photograph of paddle steamer marked with pennant number J66 to the left, with its funnel echoed in the chimneys of the industrial buildings beyond.
Second World War: HMS Plinlimmon, ex-Cambria, in her wartime livery circa 1940 as a minesweeper, perhaps shortly after participating in the Dunkirk evacuation. Built as an excursion steamer in 1895, she was typical of many auxiliaries in seeing service during both World Wars (as HMS Cambridge in the First World War). Source: Historic England Archive CC80/00195

On 10 November 1918 HMS Ascot was three days out from Portsmouth for the minesweeping base at Granton, when she was sighted by UB-67 and became the last Royal Navy loss, the last vessel sunk in English waters, and the last vessel sunk by direct enemy action in the First World War anywhere in the world. (The Norwegian Ener was the very last loss of the war at sea on 11 November 1918, sunk by a mine off Fair Isle.)  (1)

On 20 November 1918 a press release announced the loss of Ascot:

‘The Secretary of the Admiralty announces that HM paddle minesweeper Ascot was torpedoed and sunk with all hands on the 10th inst. by a German submarine off the North-East Coast of England.

‘Six officers, including two mercantile marine officers, and 47 men, including eight mercantile marine ratings, lost their lives.

‘The next-of-kin have all been informed.’ (2)

Of all the terrible events in the ‘war to end all wars’, few things can have been more unbearably distressing and poignant for families than to hear that their fathers, husbands, brothers and sons had been killed so close to the Armistice. Such tragic losses touched many families, including my own, with one of the more famous examples the war poet Wilfred Owen, killed in action on 4 November 1918.

Her crew are commemorated on the imposing Grade-I listed Commonwealth War Grave memorials at Plymouth and Chatham. The wreck has been identified east of the Farne Islands by her bell and paddle wheels. (3)

The Armistice marked an end to the fighting, but not to the war itself: the final cessation of hostilities came with the Treaty of Versailles between Germany and the Allied Powers, signed on 28 June 1919, along with other separately-negotiated peace treaties. For this reason some war memorials, such as this one at Euston, London, state the dates of the war as 1914-1919, but there were other reasons too. For seamen there was no longer any danger of shellfire, underwater torpedo or aerial attack, but in some respects the war was not yet properly over. Hence the Diary of the War will conclude with a final ‘post-war’ post in December 2018.

Fearless of storm or foe,
Guarding the traffic of the east and west,
Giving with hearts heroic of their best,

The brave mine-sweepers go.

The Mine-Sweepers, Editha Jenkinson

Charcoal and wash sketch of two men on deck, distinguished by their yellow oilskins, with features of the deck also picked out in yellow.
Bridge of a Paddle Sweeper, North Sea, Geoffrey Stephen Allfree: Imperial War Museum Commission c.1918 © IWM (Art.IWM ART 775) It seems fitting to conclude this tribute to HMS Ascot with an artwork by Allfree, who is commemorated along with his vessel, ML247,  in our September 1918 post.

(1) Lloyd’s War Losses: The First World War: Casualties to Shipping Through Enemy Causes 1914-18, facsimile edition, Lloyd’s of London Press, 1990, p238; skipet.no

(2) Widely reproduced across the national and regional press: for example, Western Morning News, 20 November 1918, No.18,323, p6

(3) UKHO No.4397

Musical instruments in the Sea

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

The tale of a harp

Earlier this year Historic England were contacted by the finders of a diverse assemblage of artefacts from the wreck of a steamer off the coast of Sussex, including a metal plate which was all that was left of a harp, its wooden body and catgut strings having long since disappeared. The identity of the wreck was unknown – and colleagues passed on the enquiry to me to see if I could find a potential match for the site among the records on the Historic England shipwreck database.

Curved metal plate with pegs and holes on a wooden table.
Figure 1. Harp plate from the unknown wreck off Sussex. © Mike Rountree

On the whole musical instruments are very rarely represented in the documentary record although they turn up occasionally as archaeological finds. Occasionally they are named in the cargo, from the Charles, wrecked in 1675 off the Lizard with unspecified music instruments from Lisbon, to the Preussen (subject of a recent post), which stranded off Dover in 1910 en route from Hamburg to Valparaiso with a cargo which included pianos.

More often we come across references to musical instruments as personal possessions, and not always on board the wrecked vessel either. During the collision of the Belgian steamer Jan Breydel with the Norwegian steamer Salina near the Goodwin Sands in 1921, the Salina came off worse and sank with loss of life, but those on board the Jan Breydel also feared for their lives. One passenger gave a press interview, saying that: “If our boat had been fifty yards further on, there would have been no interview this morning, for the Salina would have struck just about the point where I was sitting.”

That passenger was the violin virtuoso Jan Kubelik (1880-1940), who also said that his first thought was for his precious Stradivarius, known as the ‘Emperor’ Stradivarius, around which he placed a lifebuoy. (1) That instrument still exists today – so a near-shipwreck was just one of many incidents in its 300-year history. It also reminds us that many high-status instruments have a traceable history. (By contrast, the Wreck of the Week War Diary for June 1918 shows that a young violinist survived, although his violin did not, but as it was not ‘his best’ it was clearly the least of his worries!)

The history of the harp would prove crucial in helping to unlock the possible identity of the ship, together with the context of the cargo. Other finds from the same wreck included a number of ‘teardrop’ or ‘torpedo’ bottles marked “Bradey and Downey, Newry”, “F W Kennedy, Limerick”, and “Bewley, Evans and Company, Mary Street, Dublin”.

Green bottle with moulded lettering reading BEWLEY EVANS AND visible, against a white background.
Figure 2. Torpedo bottle, probably for mineral water, which was part of Bewley Evans and Company’s bottling business. © Mike Rountree

The latter were mineral water bottlers and suppliers with a company history which seems to fizzle out around 1863, (2) suggesting a terminus ante quem for the date of loss, and a voyage beginning in or calling at Ireland. Other finds appeared more likely to be of Continental European origin, such as a large blue and white painted earthenware pot, and are as likely to be interpretable as personal household effects as cargo.

Enter the engraved metal plate from the harp. It was still legible, though much corroded, revealing that it was made by Erard, specialists in prestige harps at their London showroom during the 19th century. The firm had been founded in France, but the French Revolution drove Sébastien Erard out of the country, leaving his brother-in-law to carry on the Paris business.  The London and Paris branches then came to specialise respectively in harps and pianos.

Each of Erard’s harps sold from the London showroom was individually numbered with a ‘patent number’, the ledgers for which survive at the Royal College of Music Museum and Archives. The patent number on this example was extremely difficult to read after so long in the sea, and was initially interpreted as 6331 or 6339. Harp 6331 was sold to a clergyman in 1871 and returned for repair in 1874: he retired on the grounds of ill-health in 1875 and died in London in 1906, and harp 6339 was sold in 1864. Both of these post-date the apparent cessation of Bewley and Evans’ operations in Dublin by 1863, and there were no obvious wrecks that fitted the criteria in terms of location, date, or origin post-dating 1864.

Further examination of the patent number in a higher-resolution photograph kindly provided by the finders, and comparison with the lettering of other surviving Erard harps in online collections at the V&A and National Trust suggested that the number could well be 5331, which was the suggestion I put forward to the finders. (Figure 3) The numerals are engraved just to the right of the word ‘Patent’, at the point where the plate begins to curve downwards, (Figure 4) so that each numeral is smaller than its predecessors (compare the two 3s). They are set in an ornamental cartouche of engraved curlicues which have provided a matrix for the further pitting of the metal around the digits.  The semi-circular feature between the tops of the second ‘3’ and ‘1’ was especially ambiguous.

Detail view of corroded and pitted metal in which the numbers 5 3 3 1 are just legible.
Figure 3. Detail view of number on the recovered harp plate. © Mike Rountree

Detail view of top of harp, showing strings and pegs with engraved lettering on a metal plate underneath.
Figure 4. Detail view of harp made by S&P Erard in 1858, now belonging to the V&A. © Victoria and Albert Museum

The record for 5331 also survives in the ledgers, noted as built in 1839 and sold to a Mr S J Pigott of 112 Grafton Street, Dublin, on September 30, 1840. He was very heavily involved in Dublin musical society, with showrooms for the sale or hire of harps and pianos at those exact premises – including Erard harps. (3)

A key selling point highlighted in his advertisements was that the instruments were sourced from London, so clearly regular buying trips were made. It is unclear what happened next in the case of this particular harp: whether it was for sale in his shop following its import from London, or whether it was intended for his personal use. If the former, the customer is also likely to have lived in Ireland; if the latter, it may have either remained within the family or have been sold after his death. This part of the story so far remains untraced.

It seems clear that the harp is likely to have been a personal possession on its final voyage, reinforced by the presence of what are likely to be other domestic effects aboard; that its voyage is likely to have originated in Ireland, given the bottles from Dublin, Limerick and Newry as cargo; that the vessel was a steamer from the site as observed; and that the wreck took place before 1863 as the date by which one of the bottling firms seems to have fizzled out; and somewhere on the coast of Sussex.

The candidate that most closely matches the criteria is the steamer Ondine of Waterford, which sank on 19 February 1860 following a collision off Beachy Head with the schooner Heroine of Bideford. The position of loss as reported does not quite tally with the position of the site as located, but this is not at all uncommon, since wreck remains are often identified some distance from the reported place of loss. This would not, therefore, necessarily exclude the Ondine from consideration, particularly as she otherwise matches the criteria so closely.  Additionally, while steamers were common at this date, they had not yet ousted the sailing vessel, which significantly restricted the pool of potential candidates for the wreck site.

Ondine was a regular visitor to London and left Dublin as usual on 15 February with passengers and a general cargo, calling at Falmouth, Plymouth and Southampton en route. Her profile fits well with the finds on site as she was carrying both passengers, providing the context for the movement of personal effects, and cargo, which would fit with the bottles as found. At each port some passengers disembarked and others came on board, so the total number of passengers is difficult to ascertain, but a ‘good many faces’ were looking down at the survivors in one boat as they got away. (4)

It seems that three boats got away, one led by the captain, one the mate, Edward West, and one the second mate, Richard Burke, with a fourth boat being smashed. The captain’s boat was swamped, and all presumably drowned; the mate managed to save 20 persons, who were seen straight away by the Heroine, which picked them up. Of those who got into the third boat with the second mate, only two passengers survived, one of whom, one Marsh, had been on holiday to his wife’s family. His wife and two children got away with him in the same boat, but he suffered the agony of seeing them perish one by one from exposure or drowning, one child in his arms. The mate and the other survivors were very near the end of their resources, with their boat badly damaged and only saved from sinking by its cork lining, when discovered by the Thetis steamer, who sent a boat to pick them up.

One strange circumstance was the presence of an unnamed lady passenger. Richard Burke recalled in his testimony that the captain most particularly adjured him to look after this lady as she got into his boat. Unfortunately, along with the chief stewardess, she was one of the first to perish from his boat. Was, she, perhaps, the harp’s owner?

Further research on the wreck site and in documentary sources will help to confirm whether the wreck is indeed the Ondine, but no other candidates in the historical record appear to fit the archaeological discoveries so well. It’s very common for a maker’s plate to confirm the identity of a wreck, but who would have thought that a maker’s plate for a harp could put a candidate for a wreck’s identity in the frame? There is more research to be done on both the wreck site and in documentary records before this possible identification can be confirmed or discarded in favour of another, but it is a fascinating story that demonstrates the depth of detective work involved in putting a name to a wreck.

With many thanks to Mike and Sue Rountree and to Guy Freeman for sharing their story and photographs of the discovery, and to Dr Anna Maria Barry at the Royal College of Music Museum, who says: ‘The RCM Museum and Library team are delighted to have helped with the identification of this wreck. We are lucky enough to look after the Erard ledgers, and have answered many enquiries about serial numbers – but this is by far the strangest request we’ve had! The story of the shipwrecked harp demonstrates the way in which musical instruments can offer a unique insight into our social history.’ The RCM Museum have also blogged about the wreck: http://www.rcm.ac.uk/about/news/all/2018-05-21museumblogharp.aspx

(1) Shields Daily News, 24 September 1921, No.19,522, p3

(2) British Newspaper Archive searches: no advertisements for the firm later than 1863, supported by (undated) material from Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History

(3) Erard harp ledgers, Royal College of Music Museum. Samuel Pigott announced his move to premises at 112 Grafton Street, advertising Erard and other harps and pianos, in the Dublin Evening Packet and Correspondent, 4 November 1837, No.1,513, p1. The company continued to sell harps and pianos from the same premises even after Samuel’s death in 1853 (British Newspaper Archive searches). In fact the business continues today as McCullough Pigott in Dublin.

(4) Liverpool Mercury, 23 February 1860, No.3,752, p3