It is quite rare for a person to have two graves, but Capt.E.G.W.Davidson was such a man, with a memorial in Thurlestone Churchyard in Devon, and his actual grave in Islay.

The grave in Thurlestone.

I am extremely gratefull to Nick Hide, Captain Davidson’s Grandson, for the information and most of the photos below. Ernest George William Davidson was born in 1874 at Rangoon, British Burma. His father was a senior Colonial Police Officer who had served for a brief period in the Rifle Brigade on a purchased commission in the 1860s The Family were descendants of one of the junior lines of the extensive Davidson of Tulloch family, the chiefly family of the Clan Davidson. This Davidson family can be traced back to Cromarty, on the coast of Eastern Scotland in the 1650s. Later they became v. successful London West India Merchants., & purchased Tulloch Castle, Dingwall in 1760.

EGW.Davidson as a Midshipman.

By the time EGWD is born, this mercantile heritage & wealth had virtually all gone but the family still had an extraordinary status. EGWD’s uncle was Sir Arthur Davidson, a Royal Equerry from 1891-1922. Ironically, EGWD never wanted to join the RN but had no choice, joining in 1889 as cadet as 14 year old.

EGW.Davidson’s wedding day.

The wrecking of the Otranto The Otranto was an unlucky ship from the day she launched, or rather wasn’t. It took two goes to get her down the slipway at Belfast’s Workman Clark shipyard, once on the 23 March 1909 and then successfully on 27 March, being finally delivered to her owners, the Orient Steam navigation Company, in June of that year. Although she was intended for the London – Australia run as a passenger and mail carrier, she spent the summer of 1909 cruising in Northern European waters and finally left London on her maiden voyage to Australia on 1 October 1909. Here she had some success and was back in England in time to take part in the King George V’s Coronation Naval Review on 26 June 1911.

Otranto in happy times.

One week after Great Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914 the Otranto was requisitioned by the Admiralty for conversion to an auxiliary cruiser, having six 4.6 in (120 mm) guns fitted. She was sent to the South Atlantic to join Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock’s West Indies squadron. It was this squadron that was subsequently diverted to the South-East Pacific to intercept the German Far East squadron under Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee, which was attempting to make for Germany after the loss of its base in Tsingtao, China, to a joint Japanese-British force. It was Otranto which spotted the German squadron on 1 November 1914 off the Chilean coast. The subsequent battle, known as the Battle of Coronel, was a victory for the German squadron, but Otranto managed to escape along with the light cruiser Glasgow. Following the battle, Otranto was ordered to the Falkland Islands to act as a guard ship, but returned to the England in March 1915 after her ex-Merchant Navy crew threatened to mutiny. By May 1915, Otranto was in the Pacific patrolling the West Coast of America Otranto. She continued this task until recalled back to Britain, where in June 1918, she became an armed troopship employed in ferrying American soldiers to the Western Front in Europe.

EGW.Davidson wearing the uniform of a Commander RN.

Only six weeks before the Armistice and the end of the Great War, the Otranto was part of convoy HX50, bound for Glasgow and Liverpool, bringing with it 20,000 U.S servicemen and commanded by Captain Ernest George William Davidson. One of the soldiers wrote “Our trip was uneventful until the night of the 1st October when we collided with a French fishing schooner. We did not suffer any damages, but the schooner was sent to the bottom. There was no loss of life, as we picked up all of the crew, of thirty-six French sailors. We were delayed four or five hours.” On 5 October the American escort ships handed over to two British warships (HMS Mounsey and HMS Minos) off the west coast of Ireland and the convoy began the final leg between the North East coast of Ireland and the Western Isles of Scotland. By now the weather had turned nasty with the wind whipping up huge seas and the convoy having to make their own way in the deteriorating visibility.

Otranto becomes a wartime Trooper.

It was then that disaster struck. On 6 October 1918 the Otranto collided with HMS Kashmir, another liner turned troopship. The subsequent court of enquiry, found that land was sighted so close to the ships that they needed to take immediate action, but because of the very high wave height and flying spray they were unable to visually signal their intentions. Otranto thought it had seen Ireland and turned sharply to port, while Kashmir correctly thought the land was Islay and turned sharply to Starboard – with the result that they collided! Kashmir was virtually undamaged and made it safely back to port, but the Otranto was badly holed on the port side forward, and in the heavy swell, began to list. Captain Davidson, nursed the ship towards Islay, but the water soon swamped the engine room, and so with the rugged cliffs of Islay so near, there was nothing for it but to anchor and hope for the best.

Capt. Davidson in his cabin.

Help came in the form of the destroyer HMS Mounsey, commanded by Lt Craven. He circled the stricken liner while Captain Davidson ordered many of the men to strip off their heavy clothes and be ready to jump as the Mounsey crept in towards them. The American soldiers lined the boat deck waiting patiently for rescue, and as the destroyer came near enough, they jumped for their lives. With huge wave sweeping over the foundering ship, many fell between the two ships and were washed away, but many more made it to safety. Four times the Mounsey came in, and altogether rescued almost six hundred men. By then the Otranto had dragged her anchors and was starting to drift towards the rocks. HMS. Mounsey, in danger of swamping herself with her huge cargo of troops, left for Belfast. There was nothing more she could do. When the Mounsey arrived in Belfast, many of the survivors were hospitalised there, until eventual transfer to England. Probably none of the survivors saw action in the Great War, as it ended soon afterwards on 11 November 1918.

The troopship, Kashmir.

The Otranto was now in a very bad way. She had grounded on the shore near Machir Bay, and with the heavy seas pounding her continually against the rocks, the ship eventually started to break up, and soon sank with the loss of 431 lives (351 American troops and 80 British crew members). Captain Davidson perished with his ship, and was last seen on deck,still valiantly trying to organize some sort of evacuation for the soldiers and crew left on board. During the followwing days, bodies were washed up all over Machir Bay, including that of Capt. E.G.W. Davidson.

Captain Davidsons grave at Islay.

Machir Bay.

The official recording of Finding Capt. Davidsons body.

Chart showing the wreck of the Otranto.

In 1940 Britain stood alone again the might of Germany who had conquered most of Europe. At sea the U boat packs waged a savage attack against Allied shipping which struggled to bring supplies to a beleaguered Island. As fast as the Allies built ships, the U boats sunk them. In 1941, 38 ships were sunk by the Wolf Packs, and one of them was the SS Gairsoppa. Along with a cargo of iron and tea the ship was also transporting 240 tonnes of silver bullion desperately needed to finance the War Effort.

The S.S.Gairsoppa

In December 1940 the Gairsoppa left Calcutta in India and steamed around the African coast to Freetown in Sierra Leone to join convoy SL 64 which was heading for Liverpool docks in England. The unescorted convoy left on 31 January 1941 and at first all went well. Most of the ships were quite elderly and so kept the convoy speed down to about eight knots. However as the convoy got closer to the British Isles the weather worsened and the Gairsoppa carrying nearly 7000 tonnes including the silver found it hard to maintain even this slow speed without burning more and more fuel oil. Captain Gerald Hyland became very worried about the situation so much so that he doubted that he would be able to reach Liverpool at all. As his fuel slowly started to dwindle he sent a signal to the convoy leader and requested permission to leave the convoy and proceed as best he could to the nearest port, which was Galway on the west coast of Ireland. On February 14 1941 the Gairsoppa broke away from the convoy and turned slowly towards Ireland. Two days later she was picked up by a Focker Wulf Condor a long range spotting plane. The aircraft lazily circled the ship all the while sending out her position to the nearest Wolf packs. One of the closest U Boats was U Boat 101 commanded by Ernst Mengerson and he could not believe his luck. Here was a heavily loaded cargo ship miles from anywhere with no escorts just waiting to be sunk. Ernst sped to the area, ordered his crew to start the attack and fired his torpedo at the vulnerable ship blowing apart the ships No 2 hold and snapping off the Gairsoppa’s foremast which carried the radio ariel. As fire and smoke raged through the ship, Captain Hyland, unable to send a distress gave the order to abandon ship.

Ernst Mengerson

As the men started to lower the three lifeboats the U Boat surfaced and sprayed the upper deck with machine gun fire. One of the lifeboats falls were severed in the hail of bullets and crashed down into the sea. Dozens of men leapt overboard to escape the murderous fire, including Second Officer Richard Ayres. As soon as Ayres and some of the men got into the boat they began to frantically row away from the sinking ship fearful of being pulled down with it. Somehow they managed to get clear and watched with horror as the Gairsoppa sunk beneath the waves barely twenty minutes after it had been torpedoed. There had been85 people on the Gairsoppa, but when Richard Ayres looked around the stormy sea, none of the other lifeboats were to be seen. On his boat were 31 men, eight white but most were Indian seamen known as Lascars. Nobody else knew how to sail a small boat, so Ayres immediately got to work organizing things. After fitting an oar to take the place of the damaged rudder he set course to the east and hopefully land. The next thing he did was give the Indian seamen any spare blankets as they were suffering dreadfully from cold and shock and rigged up a small canvas shelter.

Richard Ayres

For food they had some tins of condensed milk and some dry biscuit that they had great difficulty swallowing as they had very little water. Each man was limited to half a pint of water a day and so some of the Lascars started drinking the seawater in an effort to swallow the biscuit and relieve their thirst. Unfortunately if you drink seawater there is too much salt in it and your kidneys cannot produce urine, so you become even more dehydrated and eventually die. On the eighth day the water completely ran out and as Ayres could not stop the Lascars drinking the seawater, they started to die from dehydration and also frostbite.

St.Wynwallow Church

Inside St. Wynwallow Church

After thirteen awful days at sea one of the men croaked the word they had all despaired of ever hearing. Land! As the boat topped a wave, there was a dark outline on the horizon and a faint blink of light. As the boat edged nearer they could see clearly the outline of the Lizard Lighthouse. They had sailed over 300 miles from where the Gairsoppa had sunk. Richard Ayres sailed the boat towards a small rocky cove and as he got to the entrance a huge wave swept in and overturned the little boat tipping all of them into the water drowning all but three of the crew. The next wave partially righted the boat and Ayres managed to scramble on board helping Thomas and Hampshire onto the upturn keel only to have another breaker capsize the boat again. Hampshire was washed away to his death but Ayres and Thomas were thrown up onto the rocks. As they scrambled up the rocky beach to safety another larger wave thundered in and knocked Thomas over and he drowned yards from safety. Overwhelmed by the catastrophe Ayres gave up all his will to live and was on the point of surrendering to his fate when he heard voices urging him not to give up.

Robert Frederick Hampshire,radio officer.

Three girls Betty Driver, Olive Martin and her sister who were evacuees from Tottenham had been walking on the cliffs when they had spotted the little boat and the drama that followed. One sped away across the fields to get help and the other two raced down to the beach and shouted to the men, begging them to keep swimming. Soon the first girl arrived with a Coastguard called Brian Richards who threw Ayres a rope and pulled him to safety. Later the bodies of Thomas, Hampshire and two Lascars were recovered and buried close by in St. Wynwallows Church. Nobody ever discovered what happened to the other life rafts and the men in them.

Grave of an unknown crewman.

In an almost cruel twist of chance Ayres had piloted his boat to Caerthillian Cove just a few miles from his home. All that way, to be robbed of the chance of saving all those lives, when so close to safety, it was no wonder that Richard Ayres on his return to the sea nine months later hardly ever talked about it. He had no need to reproach himself as he had done everything and more to bring his shipmates home safe. In the end the sea always has the last word. Ayres was awarded an M.B.E. in recognition of his outstanding efforts to keep his fellow survivors alive as well as Lloyds War Medal for bravery at sea. Richard Ayres served out his war service in the Royal Naval Reserve and carried on into civilian life dying in 1992. He was a very brave man who’s life made a difference. Would that we could all say the same.

Some of the walks around the Lizard, including Church Cove.

Under a salvage agreement the British government has agreed to pay Odyssey Marine 80% of the value of cargo recovered, which could include silver bullion and silver specie. Odyssey expects to start operations at both wrecks in the second quarter of 2012. Gairsoppa lies in approximately 4,700 meters of water, about 300 miles off the coast of Ireland. The hull is upright and lying in an east-west orientation, the torpedo hole being clearly visible. it is quite easy to find the graveyard at St Wynwallow Church, Landewednwack. Drive to the Lizard and head for Church Cove, as Landewednwack does not figure on most car maps. the graves are just at the top of the stairs that are set into the wall of the car park.

Thomas Edward Lawrence, born in 1888 was better known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia. A complex, charismatic man, Lawrence rose to fame during the Arab Revolt of 1916 when he tried to get Arab support for the British War effort in the region. Before the First World War Lawrence had been an archaeologist who worked for several seasons on the British Museum’s excavation at the Neo Hittite site of Carchemish, near Jerablus in North Syria, which is now the Turkish Syrian border and it was on his travels here, and in other Arab areas, that he conceived a respect and liking for the Arab people.

Lawrence, as most people today know him.

In 1914, Lawrence joined the Arab Bureau of the British Intelligence Department in Cairo, and immediately became involved with the Arab Nationalist Movement and the general politics of the area. During this time he also became extremely interested in Aerial Photography and pioneered its use in the development of map making. He devised his own system of laying the photos in a grid pattern to use as a basis for a map and taught the pilots how to take the photographs that he needed, acting as a Liaison Officer between the Royal Flying Corps and the survey teams on the ground. When his ideas were successfully tested at Gallipoli, Aerial Photography soon came into widespread use.

Lawrences birth place ‘Gorphwysfa’in Tremadog, Wales.

Lawrence and Leonard Wooley at Carchemish 1913

In June 1916, Sherif Hussein of Mecca started the Arab revolt. Lawrence became the principle Liaison Officer between the British, commanded by General Allenby, and the Arab forces led by Prince Faisal. He also became a great exponent of what is now called ‘combined operations’ by persuading the Arabs to incorporate pilots and their aircraft into their hit and run operations, as well as using horses, camels and infantry. Lawrence himself famously led raids on the Hejaz railway and in a stroke of bold genius captured the strategic port of Aqaba. This was a remarkable achievement which made Lawrence into a national hero in England and an object of almost veneration to the Arabs. By 1918 Lawrence and the Arab forces had captured Damascus where they set up a short lived Arab Government. Then, as now, the politics of the region defied all efforts to reach satisfactory agreements between the various tribes and the whole thing sank into minefield of distrust and enmity. But Lawrence, always a fierce advocate of a free Arab State,, fought on trying to bang heads together and vigorously arguing for Arab freedom at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Alas all his arguments fell on deaf ears, and feeling that he had been sidestepped by the political establishment, he left the Conference, took up a research fellowship at All Souls College Oxford, and started to write his monumental work, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Lawrence in British Army Uniform,1915

Between 1921 and 1922 he worked for Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office, attended the Cairo Conference and was the British representative in Trans Jordan. Lawrence was a Colonel by now and extremely famous for his exploits with the Arabs during the War. He thought this was unjustified, as he felt that somehow he had betrayed the Arabs, and if he had worked harder, been more eloquent things might have been different. Still, he wrote to anybody with influence that he could think of, trying to get them to see things his way, and when nothing came off it all, he had a bit of a breakdown. Heartily sick of his celebrity he determined to leave the Army and hide away as an aircraftsman in the R.A.F. under the assumed name of John Hume Ross. The idea of the famous Lawrence of Arabia hiding as an aircraftman was the equivalent today of Tony Blair joining the Conservatives. The Press had a field day when they found out and the whole thing developed into a complete media circus. The R.A.F were appalled, blamed Lawrence for the whole thing, and had him dismissed from the R.A.F for conduct unbecoming an officer.

Lawrence with his beloved Brough Suprior motobike.

You can see it at the Imperial War Museum

In 1924 Lawrence joined the Tank Regiment at Bovingdon in Dorset under the name of Thomas Edward Shaw, which he later adopted legally by deed poll. He didn’t like the Army, in fact, he loathed it and pressed all the influential friends that he had made in the Army and Government to get him back into the R.A.F. but to no avail. His mental health by now was deteriorating to the point that he had convinced himself that only in the RA.F would he have a future worth living for. Finally he wrote such a despondent letter to one of his friends that the recipient took it to be a suicide threat. Fearing a huge scandal if one of Britain’s Great War hero’s was to kill himself, the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin intervened, so in 1925 Lawrence rejoined the R.A.F. He was first posted to Cranwell, then in 1926 he served in India as a clerk in the engine maintenance department.In 1927 he was sent to RAF Miranshah, a remote base on the border with Afghanistan. Miranshah was home to one squadron, five officers, 25 airmen, and 700 Indian scouts. Lawrence arrived in late May 1928 and was given simple clerical duties. His peace and quiet didn’t last long. By September, the British press was printing fictional reports about the mysterious Colonel Lawrence, claiming that he was spying in Afghanistan. All sorts of stories were whipped up by the press. One that he had become a Holy Man, and another that he was trying to raise an Army against King Amanullah in Kabul. All of them were completely untrue, but once again Lawrence was in the eye of a media storm. However, the tales of covert action stirred fierce anti-British sentiment. An alarmed foreign secretary, Austen Chamberlain, found Lawrence’s presence in India to be, as he described it, “very inconvenient.” so in 1929 he was pulled out of Afganistan and sent to R.A.F.Mountbatten. it was here that he became involved with testing the fast rescue launches that became the famous R.A.F rescue boats. (see Sunderland flying boats for more details)

One of Lawrence’s Class 200 boats.

Even while doing an airman’s work, Lawrence socialized and corresponded with an astounding number of notable political and artistic figures, including George Bernard Shaw, Robert Graves, Nancy Astor, Thomas Hardy, Noel Coward, E. M. Forster, Siegfried Sassoon, William Butler Yeats, John Buchan, and of course, Trenchard, Churchill, and Liddell Hart.

Lawrence in R.A.F.uniform.

By March 1933, however, Lawrence had been returned to regular airman duties at Mount Batten and this bored him, so on March 6, he requested a discharge. When the story leaked, it caused a great deal of trouble ensued. Everyone, including senior government officials, assumed Lawrence had been fired. Very high-level inquiries came down on an uncomfortable RAF. Did Lawrence, they asked, have any complaint about his treatment? Lawrence reported he had no complaint and would stay if given something worthwhile to do. Within days, he was posted to the RAF Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment at RAF Felixstowe.

Lawrence of Arabia’s simple grave.

Lawrence of Arabia’s simple grave.

The next couple of years were very happily spent traveling to R.A.F. boatyards inspecting equipment. In November 1934, he moved to RAF Bridlington, on the North Sea—his final posting. In February 1935 Lawrence left the R.A.F. for good. He did so with considerable regret, as Lawrence wrote to Air Chief Marshal Edward Ellington, the RAF head. His letter said, in part: “I’ve been at home in the ranks and well and happy. … If you still keep that old file about me, will you please close it with this note which says how sadly I am going? The RAF has been more than my profession.” Barely two months later, Lawrence suffered massive injuries in a motorcycle crash. He never came out of a coma, and died on May 1935. He was only 46 years of age.

The Funeral with Churchill attending.

The Funeral with Churchill attending.

The grave of T.E. Lawrence is in the delightful village of Moreton. The graveyard is a few yards from the chuch, up the main road, but well sign posted. At his funeral the church was packed with people from all walks of life including Winston Churchill. Moreton is only a short distance from Clouds Hill the small cottage where Lawrence spent the last days of his life. It is a tiny place run by the National Trust, who have left things more or less as they were when Lawrence lived there. It is all very evocative of the man, with his books, music, and a little model of his beloved launch, Biscuit. There are no facilities here so most people walk or drive the short distance to Moreton for a cup of tea and lunch at the very pleasant Moreton Tea Rooms, where they have lots of Lawrence memorabilia.

Moreton Tea Room.

Clouds Hill

A few hundred yards down the road from Clouds Hill is the spot where Lawrence had his motorbike accident. There is a layby there now, with a tree sheltering a small memorial. The whole area is quite untouched and probably looks much the same as it did in Lawrence’s time.

The Memorial where Lawrence crashed.

The Memorial where Lawrence crashed.

The Memorial where Lawrence crashed.

The village of Mortenhamstead nestles snugly into the edge of Dartmoor, and in its church is a small brass memorial which commemorates the death of Lt. Robert Middlemist R.N. He was killed on 20th January 1921 whilst serving on board the submarine K5. The K5 left Torbay on 19January 1921 with the K8, K15, K10 and K22 for a mock battle in the Bay of Biscay. The K5 had an experienced skipper in Lt.Com Gaimes but a new crew. Robert Middlemist was an acting Lt.

The Brass Plaque

The Brass plaqueThe submarine K5 signaled its intention to dive on 20 January when 120 miles south west of the Scilly Isles. She never surfaced, and it was presumed that she had exceeded her safe depth. All fifty seven officers and men were killed. All that was recovered was a battery cover and a sailor’s ditty box. At first this just seems to be another sad death of a young man serving his country. But the fact that it happened in a K class submarine makes it much more significant.

The Village Church

The Village ChurchThe K class of submarines was the brainchild of Admiral Jellicoe. At 339 ft long they were nearly twice the size of most other submarines. They were made this long to achieve a top speed on the surface of 24 knots. Unfortunately this meant that when the submarine dived, the bow could be at crush depth whilst the stern was still near the surface. The submarines were steam driven (really) with two funnels that had to be retracted before the dive could take place, and this was a constant source of leaks and problems, and was of particular concern in the case of a crash dive or bad weather.

Always having accidents.

Always having AccidentsThe K class were very unhappy ships that suffered a great deal of accidents. K13 for instance, sunk with all hands on her acceptance trials. In the end the submarines were scrapped and two of the hulls that were still being built were given over to an even more peculiar class of submarine, the M class. These also both sank with all hands.

Twice as big as most other submarines.

If ever there was a Boy’s Own hero then Shackleton is it. Scott is famous for failing to return from the South Pole, but Shackleton is famous for surviving against all the odds and going back and rescuing all his men. The bitter irony of that episode is that many of his crew who endured such hardship and triumphed over all that adversity, perished in the slaughter right at the end of the First World War.

Ernest Shackleton

Ernest Henry Shackleton was born in Ireland in 1874. He left school at sixteen and joined a ship bound for Valpariso and sailed all over the place for the next ten years. In 1900 he joined Scott in the National Antartic Expedition, became ill and was sent home, which was a great blow to his pride. For a while he worked as a journalist and then organised his own Antartic Expedition, Nimrod (1907-1908) One of his parties reached the South Magnetic pole and another led by Shackleton got within 97 miles of the South Pole.

Shackletons Grave

Shackleton’s next and most famous expedition’s objective (1914-1917) was to cross the Continent from the Weddle Sea to Mucmurdo Sound. Everybody knows the tale so I will just recount it briefly. There are loads of books (some listed at the end) and other information easily available for those who want to go into more detail.

The Burial Party

The expedition set out from London on Aug 1 1914 after being given special permission by the Admiralty even though War had been declared. They reached the Weddle Sea on Jan 10 1915, where their ship the Endurance, was trapped and frozen by the pack ice for nine months. Finally the pack ice crushed the Endurance and she turned over and sank. Boats and supplies were salvaged and the crew drifted on the ice flows as far as Elephant Island in the South Shetlands.

Summer in South Georgia.

Realizing that they could not all go on to South Georgia 800 miles away, Shackleton left most of his men at Point Wild (named after his second in command) and with five others sailed on to South Georgia in a twenty two foot open boat the James Caird, arriving two weeks later. Unfortunately they were on the wrong side of the island and they could not sail around, so they had to land, and walk across the mountainous island on foot eventually reaching the whaling station at Stromnes Bay. Can you imagine, two weeks in an open boat in winter, in dreadful condition’s. Blizzards, temperatures below freezing and mountainous seas, and then when you reach land you have to struggle over the mountains to the other side. Inspirational just does not do it justice.

This was about four times bigger than the ship(still summer).

After two failed attempts, one from Gritviken, Shackleton finally rescued all his crew from Elephant Island aboard the Chilien steamer Yelcho sent from Punta Arenas one hundred and five days after he had left them. You just couldn’t make it up.It is one of the greatest survival stories of all time.

The Endurance trapped in the ice. Photo Frank Hurley.

On his final expedition (1921-1922) Shackleton, in failing health suffered a heart attack in Rio de Janerio. He recovered from this enough to carry on towards South Georgia where he suffered another attack, which killed him on 5th January 1922. His widow (for whom the term ‘long suffering’ must have been coined) chose South Georgia as his final resting place. His grave is at the old whaling station of Gritviken, alongside those of the whalers who died over the years. It’s a very evocative place, even now with the whaling station in ruins. Gritviken, South Georgia

Hauling the boats across the pack ice. Photo Frank Hurley

The graveyard is over to the left of the settlement, and to get to it you have to walk up a muddy track picking your way through elephant and fur seals and dodging the many penguins. The scenery is magnificent, and by looking at it, you get some sense of what the man must have been like.

Launching the James Caird. Photo Frank Hurley.

Shortly after my visit to Gritviken we managed to pass near Elephant island. We could not land as an iceberg almost as big as the island was blocking the channel and the ship couldn’t get in. As the weather turned from sunshine to sleet and snow and the mist came down, the Skipper cruised as close as he could to Point Wild, which is were Shackleton left the rest of his crew before going on to South Georgia. At first it did not look as if we would be able to see it but at the last moment the weather eased off and there it was, Point Wild.

Elephant Isand, you can see the icebergs to the left and right and the ice in the forground.

Half an hour later it started to snow, but there in the murk was Point Wild just to the right of the iceberg.

To have been, however briefly, in the same waters as Shackleton and his crew and to see what he had endured gave all of us a great feeling of pride in the man, and a hope that there are still their like around if we ever need them. And to think this was summer and they did it in winter. As I said before, you just couldn’t make it up.

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Dotted all along the coast of Devon and Cornwall are scores of churches that sprang up over the centuries to serve the multitude of small fishing villages. Most probably because of the dangers involved in fishing, people felt much closer to their Maker. and the church had a very important part to play in their lives. Nowadays the fishing fleets have long since gone into decline, and most of the villages have turned towards tourism in order to make a living. Today people are not so strong on religion, but inexplicably people still seem drawn to these little churches.

The grave of Petty officer William Wood of HMS.Goliath.

The crew of HMS.Goliath.

During the summer you can go to almost any church or graveyard and find people wandering around soaking up the atmosphere. It would seem that more and more people are becoming interested in local history and of course graveyards and churches provide a huge fund of local information. For the wreck hunter graveyards are truly fascinating places. Quite often the search for a new wreck can result from reading a fading inscription. on some worn slate tombstone. Sometimes, visiting the grave of people who lost their lives after being tragically wrecked, somehow brings the whole story to life and makes it a real event, instead of some dusty secondhand tale.

Quite often it is impossible to find the wreck at all, and all that’s left is the memory of a story written on a fading tombstone.

• St. Keverne Church
• The Hera
• The Anson
• The Caledonia
• The Crossowen
• The Penlee Lifeboat Disaster
• The Dragon
• H.M.S. Cressy
• The Slapton Sands Tank
• The Salcombe Lifeboat Disaster
• Burial at Sea
• Holbrook V.C.
• Admiral Shovell and the Association
• Gossamer
• The Queen
• The Ganges Memorial
• Titanic
• The Schiller
• ‘Buster’Crabb
• The K5 Submarine Distaster
• The Wreck of the Kyber
• Lawrence of Arabia
• The wreck of the S.S. Gairsoppa
• Goliath – William Earnest Wood
• Captain.EGW.Davidson and the Otranto
• Percival Cocks and the Navasota
• The Lugger Victory and the Northern Belle

Although most of the graves for the Titanic victims lie in Halifax Nova Scotia, there are a few scattered around the West Country. Some of these graves are really in the strictest sense only memorials, as the bodies of the people that they commemorate were never recovered. One such grave lies near where I live, in Ford Park cemetery Plymouth, and remembers Henry Philip Creese, a Deck Engineer on the Titanic.

Henry was born in Falmouth and served his apprenticeship at Harland and Wolff in Belfast. He was with the White Star line for fourteen years, and joined the Titanic on 6th April 1912. On his death he left a widow and two small daughters. The stone at Ford park is not his only memorial. He is remembered on various Engineering memorials around the Country, and on family graves in Falmouth and Southampton.

Henry Philip Creese

In an interesting aside to the Titanic story, it turns out that many of the bodies were recovered from the sea by a cable laying ship the Makay-Bennett which was based at Turnchapel in Plymouth. At the time of the disaster she was in Halifax Nova Scotia, her other base, when she was chartered by the White Star line (owners of the Titanic) to recover what bodies she could from the scene.

In all she recovered 116 mutilated and unidentifiable bodies which were given burial at sea, and another 190 which were taken back to Halifax. Whilst other ships were involved in the recovery operation it was the Makay-Bennett that became world famous as the ‘Titanic’s Coffin Ship’.

The grave at Ford Park cemetary.

The crew of the Makay-Bennett were obviously very affected by their grim task, but never lost their sense of humanity. Most of the bodies that they had recovered were interred in the Fairview cemetery in Halifax, and one of the bodies was that of an unknown two year old boy. The crew considered it their privilege to club together to erect a headstone over the poor child.

The Makay-Bennett.

In a strange twist, the child was identified a few years later as Gosta Paulson, and it was found that his mother was buried just a few feet away. One of the few silver linings to a dreadful calamity.

These excellent books by John Avery are available from Beech Books, 2 Beech Court, Beech Avenue, Southampton, Hants. SO18 4TS

These excellent books by John Avery are available from Beech Books, 2 Beech Court, Beech Avenue, Southampton, Hants. SO18 4TS

For another memorial see St. Kevernes Chuch in this section.

The Parish of Veryan extends along the South Cornish coast from Pendower Beach in the west, to Portholland in the east. Inland it reaches to Reskivers in the Parish of Tregony. It is a delightfully quiet little Cornish hamlet, but since the road runs right through it you could easily be forgiven for ignoring it. However a stroll around is recommended as it has some very old buildings and a smashing Pub. The church is dedicated to the Cornish Saint Symperian, and goes back certainly to Norman times, and possibly as far as the sixth century.

The Church.

In the churchyard is one of the most unusual graves that I have ever come across. It commemorates the last resting place of the nineteen crew of the German Barque Hera, which was lost when it hit Gull Rock in 1914. (The full story of this wreck can be found in the Falmouth section. Hera)

The Grave.

The grave is approximately twenty-two yards long by one yard wide and edged with granite. The middle is filled with granite chippings with small stone tablets placed every so often along its length. The nineteen unfortunate souls are buried in a line head to toe, two deep.

Photo by Paul Thomas

Dedication from Owners.

Photo by Paul Thomas

The grave was paid for and dedicated by the German owners of the Hera, Rhederei-Aktien-Gesells Chaft. Some restoration has been recently carried out on this grave, but the main headstone has been left slanted backwards resting on a granite stone.The inscription is particularly apt and rather moving.

The Inscription.

The fog hid the light of the harbour

With danger unseen on the lee

The crew brave and true did their duty

In the face of a terrible sea

Missing the light sailing homeward

The ‘Hera’ went down in the deep

Missing their faces we mourn them

Sacred is the spot where they sleep

All honour to brave brothers resting

Safe home in God’s harbour at last

God’s blessing abide with their mothers

Till sorrow and partings are past

Map showing the Village of Veryan

I am very gratefull to Photo by Paul Thomas for the graveside photos. Read all about his Great Grandfather,William Leuty who was on the lifeboat that went to the aid of the Hera. Its all in the Falmouth section.

Between Start Point and Dartmouth lies Slapton Sands, a two-mile ribbon of sand with a precarious road running along its top. The village of Torcross is the gateway to the Sands, and in its beachfront car park stands a restored Sherman tank raised from the nearby seabed in 1984.

The Sherman Tank.

At first you would think that this is a fitting reminder of the American Forces who were billeted here during the Second World War, but it is much, much more. This Tank commemorates one of the biggest losses of life during the War, and is the unofficial Tombstone for 946 men who lost their lives during exercise ‘Tiger’, many of whom may still lie buried in unmarked graves.

Memorial Plaque.

In the run up to the invasion of Europe tens of thousands of American troops were billeted around this area so that they could undergo training for the imminent sea borne landings in France. The Americans were to assault a beach in France codenamed ‘Utah’, and Slapton Sands was almost a perfect replica.

Evacuation Area.

In order to train under battle conditions live ammunition was to be extensively used including aerial strafing and artillery bombardment. Because of this 3000 people were summarily evacuated from their farms and villages in 1943, and the American Army moved in. Over the weeks that were to follow the Army held live firings and made many mock attacks on the beach until all was ready for the full dress rehearsal.

Damage caused by offshore bombardment.

Over 30 thousand troops embarked in their assault craft with all the equipment that they would need to land on the coast of France, including tanks. In the early hours of April 28th 1944 this huge armada of assault ships and escort vessels were all milling around out at sea getting in position to start the Exercise when a Flotilla of E boats operating out of Cherbourg, under the command of Hans Shirren, got in amongst the allied ships and caused utter chaos.

Landing craft on Slapton beach.

With the sea bombardment just starting the escort ships did not realize what was happening and opened fire on each other. In the resulting carnage ships were sunk, and nearly a thousand men lost their lives. The E boats got away scot-free and the next day the beaches were littered with dead bodies with more being brought in on every tide. More casualties were caused that night than actually happened when ‘Utah’ was stormed for real on D Day, and the whole thing was such a fiasco that it was all hushed up for years and many of the dead were buried in unmarked graves.

Ken Small

Ken Small who campaigned for years to recover the Tank, uncovered the whole heartrending story whilst researching how the tank came to be lying just off the beach, and produced his best-selling book The Forgotten Dead that tells the whole story.

Ken Small riding the Tank as it is raised from the sea in 1984.

Another memorial further along the Sands.

Leslie Thomas’s The Magic Army is an impressive and often very moving novel, and is a great fictional account of the story as seen through the eyes of the locals and the American troops.

Channel Firing: Tragedy of Exercise Tiger

Another excellent book about the dreadful loss of life in the run up to D Day.

It is with considerable regret that I have heard that Ken has died of a long illness on 15th March 2004. He is buried at Stokenham Church, just a short distance from ‘his’ Tank

Flowers on Kens Grave.

Flowers on Kens Tank.

Kens Grave

Every year the Royal Tank Regiment Association (Plymouth Branch) organise and hold a Memorial Service by the tank in Torcross (all are welcome). It is held on the nearest Sunday to the 28th April (“Exercise Tiger” Anniversary) This year was the 70th Anniversary of the tragic event. During the service Dean Small (Ken’s son) and Laurie Bolton (USA) unveiled a plaque in honour of Ken Small who sadly passed away in March 2004. Laurie Bolton’s uncle lost his life aboard LST 531. Laurie has become a point of contact for many of the surviving veterans and family members.

Dean painting the tank.

Dean with Laurie Bolton.

Dean said “I am proud of my dad’s achievement’s and am privileged to be involved with the tank memorial”. Laurie said “The tank and the memorial site gives people a tangible place to visit and think of there loved ones, and remember the sacrifice made for the freedom we enjoy today”.

Sgt Louis Bolton

Memorial Plaque to Ken Small

If you would like to learn more, please visit

Exercise Tiger Memorial

Although the Scilly Isles has had many awful shipwrecks, one of the worst was the S.S.Schiller, a German ferry which hit the Retarrier Ledges in 1875. The Schiller was one of the largest vessels of her day, and was making a fast transatlantic passage from New York to Hamburg via Southampton. She was carrying a cargo of sewing machines, gold coins, 254 passengers and 118 crew.

The S.S.Schiller ( from a drawing by Gibson ).

On the evening of the 7th May, the Schiller was somewhere off the Scilly Isles and encountered thick fog. She slowed to 4 knots, and her lookouts kept watch for the reassuring sight or sound of the Bishops Rock Lighthouse or foghorn. Neither were seen, and the Schiller slowly crept inside the Bishops Rock and struck the Retarrier Ledges. The Captain managed to reverse off the reef, but two large waves smashed the ship broadside to the ledges and the hull started to break up.

Artifacts from the wreck in the St Mary’s Museum, Scilly.

Many of the lifeboats were fatally damaged when the Schiller struck, being ground against the rocks, and most of the others were found to be defective due to poor maintenance. As some were cut loose, they just fell into the sea with all their passengers and were crushed between the ship and the rocks. Panic spread and there were extraordinary violent scenes, with men pushing away women and children from the boats so that they could save themselves. The crew were just as bad, and many of the women and children took refuge in the main cabin. Their relief was short lived as the roof was torn off by a huge wave, which sucked all the women and children out onto the deck, where more waves threw their bodies into the sea and drowned them.

The Schiller Memorial by Sally Sharrock

The Captain tried to restore order by firing into the rioting passengers but it was no good. In the end only two boats bearing just 27 people managed to get away. As the Schiller started to slip further into the water people took to the rigging where many were killed or maimed by flying chains and other sailing gear. The Captain had ordered signal cannons to be fired to notify those on shore of their distress, but they were mistaken for requests for a pilot cutter. However at daybreak a cutter from St. Agnes, set out to investigate more reports of gunfire and were shocked to come across the remains of the Schiller. They picked up five survivors and rowed back to St Mary’s to raise the alarm.

The Inscription on the Memorial reads:

In memory of Louise Holzmaister. Born at New York May 15th 1851. Lost her life in the wreck of the SS Schiller off the Scilly Isles may 7th 1875. Her body resting in the deep. This monument has been erected to her memory as a mark of affection by her huspand.

The Mohr family, all lost.

The Mohr family, all lost.

Boats came from all over to try and find survivors but they were few and far between. Some people had managed to get to the small uninhabited islands and were rescued but for the rest hope had vanished. The boats searched for hours but all that was left were lifeless bodies and ships debris floating on the water. Of the 254 passengers and 118 crew only 37 survived. None of them were children.

The Scillonians took great care to gather as many of the bodies as possible, identify, and bury them with reverence and dignity. So impressed were the German Government, that when the Two World Wars broke out between England and Germany, orders were sent out to prevent bombing or attack of the islands in recognition off the kindnesses that the Islanders had shown their countrymen all those years before.

I am extremely gratefull to Bryan Donohue for the following photos and information about his great great grandfather, Louis Beald, who was a cabin boy on the Schiller and survived its sinking.

Louis W Beald

Louis W Beald’s Obituary

Louis W Beald’s Obituary

Bryan Donohue says….The photo of Louis Beald in the irrigation colonization group photo is from his volunteer / charity work. He was a Master Mason in the Freemason fraternity. Many of his contributions throughout his life were to make this world a better place to live in by making something out of nothing and leading people to follow their dreams by teaching them to use their abilities to better mankind as a whole. Two of his sons had also became Freemasons as well, and their wives, members of the Northern Star.

On October 27 1916, the Salcombe lifeboat, William and Emma, was launched to go to the aid of a stricken Plymouth schooner Western Lass that was aground at Lannacombe Bay.

The Salcombe Lifeboat.

Fifteen men took her out in the teeth of a furious southwesterly gale and managed to cross the notorious Bar at the mouth of Salcombe Harbour. As the lifeboat made its may through the huge breakers on the Bar, a message came to say that the Prawle Rocket Company had been able to save all of the crew and the lifeboat was not needed. Unfortunately there was no way of getting a message to the lifeboat so it plunged on through the stormy sea to the wreck of the Western Lass. The cox’n, Samuel Distin, could see the rocket line hanging off the schooner and in the pale light of dawn realised that there was no one left to save.

William James Foale – Peter Heath Foale (Senior.)Peter Heath Foale (Junior)

All the lifeboats crew were by now soaked right through and freezing cold. There was nothing left but to get safely back. As they approached the Bar with its huge turbulent breakers some must have doubted the wisdom of trying to get through but in the end they streamed a sea anchor from the stern and took in most of the sail. Just as these preparations were complete a massive wave hit the stern of the boat throwing it broadside to the waves. All the crew were thrown in a great heap to the other side of the boat so when the next wave hit, it just turned the boat over and threw all the men into the sea.

John Ashley.

Several of the men managed to hang on to the upturned hull of the boat but in the end all but two were swept away. ‘Eddie’ Distin and William Johnson were the only two to still be alive when the wreckage of the lifeboat was washed up under Rickham.

The Brave Crew.

To a small community such as Salcombe such a disaster was a hammer blow, but with the Great War running its brutal course life just had to go on as many a wrecked or torpedoed seamen would still look for help from these small coastal villages. A new lifeboat was found and with it a new crew. But the Cox’n was one of the survivors, ‘Eddie’ Distin.

Thomas Putt

James Alfred Canham

Albert Distin

James Henry Cove

John Ambrose Cudd – Francis Cudd

Albert Edwin Wood

---

These books are great references but they are now out of print.

These books are great references but they are now out of print.

You should be able to find them second hand.

Falmouth has one of the great natural harbours of the world and is a haven for ships in a westerly or a south westerly storm. However in an easterly gale vessels lying in Carrick Roads are exposed to the full force of the easterly winds which blow straight in between the headlands. Many a ship has dragged its anchor and ended up on the treacherous rocks of Trefusis Point, and one of these was the Government transport Queen, returning from the Peninsula War with the bulk of a British regiment, together with their families, and ten French prisoners of war.

Mylor Churchyard.

Just after Christmas 1813, the Queen, under the command of Captain Carr, left Lisbon and joined a small convoy bound for Portsmouth. There were over 300 people on board and they had a rough passage, so it was with some considerable relief that they sighted Falmouth on Jan 10th 1814, and anchored in Carrick Roads. Despite there being a strong easterly wind and a forecast of more unsettled weather, the Captain only laid out his port anchor with a much reduced length of cable. Even so she lay happily there for three days until the afternoon of Thursday 13th, when she began to drag her anchor. The watch on deck failed to notice what was happening at first, and by the time they notified Captain Carr it was too late.

The impresive memorial.

The starboard anchor had no cable secured to it, and while this was being brought up, the Queen was being rapidly blown towards the shore. When preparations were nearly complete, the port anchor gave up the fight, its rope parted and the Queen was adrift at the mercy of the winds. As she sped across the sea, the crew still valiantly struggled to get the starboard anchor ready, the passengers started to panic screaming and shouting, and the whole enterprise fetched up with a huge crash on Trefusis Point. As the Queen drove onto the Point she broached- to, and huge waves smashed over her carrying all before them and flooding the vessel from stem to stern.

In the confusion attempts were made to fire a cannon as a distress signal but the sea swamped the cannons and by now heavy snow was falling making it almost impossible for anyone to see the wreck from the shore. The Captain ordered all the masts to be cut away, and as they fell the ship gave a sickening lurch which caused guns to be cast adrift and bulkheads to break. As the hull gave way, all below were either crushed to death or drowned. In less than twenty minutes of striking Trefusis Point the Queen had been reduced to matchwood.

Some of the troops managed to scramble ashore but daylight revealed the true horror of what had happened. Scores of bodies washed about in the shallows, many entangled in the ships rigging. Others lay strewn around the rocks were the sea had thrown them. Only eighty five soldiers, nine women, one child, and four prisoners survived. Captain Carr and his entire crew except for the bosun and a cabin boy, perished in the disaster. Some two hundred and fifty bodies were eventually recovered, but not before the looters had been at them. A number of the surviving troopers were eventually court martialed for robbing the corpses.

The Union Star was a brand new mini bulk carrier launched only weeks before her disastrous end. Her Captain Henry Morton and his wife Dawn watched the launch at the Danish port of Ringkobing. On December 11 1981 captain Morton set sail on his maiden voyage to Ijmuiden to pick up his cargo of fertiliser, which was to be delivered to the Irish port of Arklow. On board for this first trip were his wife, two teenage daughters, and a crew of four.

The Village of Mousehole.

Three days later in hurricane force winds the Union Star ran into trouble eight miles east of the Wolf Rock when sea water managed to get into her fuel supply. It was the beginning of the end. By Saturday night, just five days after the voyage had begun, the Union Star lay battered and wrecked on the Cornish coast, and Henry Morton, his wife, daughters, and all his crew had perished. What made the tragedy infinitely worse was the further loss of eight men, the complete crew of the lifeboat Solomon Browne, which itself was smashed to pieces on that dreadful night when it tried to go to the aid of the Union Star.

The wreck of the Union Star.

Because of the truly awful weather the helicopters scrambled from Culdrose could do little to help, and it was left to the Penlee lifeboat, the Solomon Browne, launched at twelve minutes past eight in the evening from the little village of Mousehole. Under the leadership of the Cox’n Trevelyan Richards the lifeboat struggled down to the Tater Du rock braving forty-foot waves. In a magnificent effort the lifeboat snatched four people from the stricken Union Star, radioed her intentions back to base, and then went in again to try and save the rest. That’s when disaster struck.

The Brave Crew.

What happened nobody will ever know for sure, but with such huge waves so close to the shore the lifeboat probably got smashed against the Union Star’s hull and then pounded into the troughs of the waves against the seabed itself. What ever, all the crew perished and the Solomon Browne disintegrated. Anyone living in Devon and Cornwall that day was stunned by the news. For most of us, seamen or not, the lifeboat is our favourite charity, you see their little boat shaped collection boxes everywhere.

The Landlord was a crew member.

We all pay lip service to the dangers, but we hadn’t, thank God, had a disaster for years. The awful reality of ordinary men, most with wives and children, taking such extraordinary risks suddenly hit home, especially as we were all happily gearing up for Christmas. I went and saw the wreck of the Union Star a couple of days later and it was not a pretty sight. Nobody could have lived through that, but the crew of the lifeboat tried, and in the end that’s all anyone can do. I hope that I would have had their courage, but somehow I doubt it.

The Memorial.

Twenty years on the scars have healed and Mousehole is just another pretty Cornish village, but all around are little echoes of that fateful day. The most evocative is in the Parish Church of Paul, a village just up the road from Mousehole (an easy walk of about a mile) Here in this beautifully simple old church is a granite stone topped by a lantern containing a crystal chalice. The inscription says it all.

Map showing Mousehole and Paul.

Most churches in Devon and Cornwall will have some tales to tell, but if you have not done this sort of thing before, probably the best place to start would be St. Keyerne Church, which more or less overlooks the infamous Manacles reef.

A Victim of the Manacles Reef.

Exactly how many ships have come to grief on the Manacles is not known. Some say a thousand, others as many as three thousand. What we do know however, just by looking around the graveyard at St. Keverne’s is that many hundreds of people have been drowned on those treacherous rocks.

The Mohegan

I suppose the Mohegan is the best known shipwreck and for such a large loss of life the headstone, in the form of a granite Cornish cross, is quite unspectacular. However it’s very simplicity speaks volumes for the care and understanding of the local community, and provides a sincere tribute to the one hundred or so poor souls entombed beneath it.

Thomas Bullock

A short distance away is a small cluster of graves near a stunted tree. One is to the memory of Thomas Bullock chief mate of the Bay of Panama, which was wrecked on 10 March I89I at Nare Head with. the loss of twenty three lives, most of whom are buried at other churches.

 

Directly in front of this grave is a stone covered plot surmounted with a plain cross resting on a small two tiered plinth. Beneath these stones are interred the bodies of one hundred and four officers and men of the7th Hussars, who were lost in the transport Dispatch when it was wrecked on the Manacle rocks in January 22 I809, whilst returning from the Peninsular War.

H.M.S. Primrose

That terrible Sunday morning whilst the villagers of Porthoustock were desperately trying to save whom they could from the Dispatch, news suddenly came of an. even worse tragedy. The brig H.M.S. Primrose of eighteen guns had struck at the north end of the Manacles reef, and although valiant efforts were made to rescue the crew of a hundred and thirty two officers and men, only one was eventually saved. So in just one terrible night the Manacles had claimed at least two hundred and fifty souls.

H.M.S. Primrose Inscription.

Just behind these last two graves is another weathered headstone with the barely legible inscription Spyridion Vagliauo. This ship was a Greek owned steamer which hit the outer rocks of the Manacles on the 8th of February 1890. The crew all safely abandoned the ship and took to the lifeboats. Unfortunately one of these over- turned whilst the crew were attempting to land, and thirteen men including the Captain was drowned.

Spyridion Vagliauo

The headstone was erected by the wife of the ships engineer, William Hislop, who was drowned, aged thirty one .

Perhaps the most insignificant memorial is a small rounded, weather beaten piece of slate bearing the name John. The headstone may be small but it commemorates probably the worst disaster of all.

The John

The John was a barque of 486 tons engaged in transporting emigrants from Plymouth to Quebec in Canada. On the night of 3 May 1855, the John had two hundred and eighty seven passengers and crew on board when she hit the Manacle rocks, and was later driven broadside on to the rocks off Lowland Point. In the rush to get off the ship, the crew fought with the passengers for places on the lifeboats, the Captain being one of the first to leave. In the event one hundred and ninety three people were drowned, including sixty six children and sixteen infants.

The Captain was later arrested and convicted of manslaughter, and several ‘locals’ received prison sentences for looting the dead bodies as they were washed up on the beach. One hundred and twenty people were eventually buried in a mass grave, and the small headstone put up by a grateful survivor. Maybe it’s size somehow reflects the amount of shame felt by all concerned in this tragic episode.

Carronade from ‘Primrose’.

As you wander around the churchyard you will come across other graves and mementoes from long past wrecks, like a carronade from H.M.S. Primrose, and a memorial plaque to John Smith, a radio telegraphist, who lost his life in the Titanic.

Perhaps most poignant of all is the memorial to James Hill who died in 1919 aged eighty four. He was the coxn of the Porthoustock lifeboat, and played a leading part in rescuing the survivors from the Mohegan. So in this graveyard lie the rescued and the rescuers, the brave and the cowardly. All that’s left of all those brave deeds and the tragic loss of life are a few stone memorials.

Titanic

Yet somehow, thanks in some part to the discoveries made by divers, their stories have leapt the void of history, and are once again ‘real’. This link with the past is one of the great fascinations of wreck diving, and surely gives some purpose to the many memorials scattered in little churches all along the Devon and Cornish coast.

In Australia, if you drive from Melbourne to Sydney along the Hume highway you eventually come to the little town of Holbrook 245 metres above sea level at the start of the Snowy Mountains. It’s a small farming town with two pubs and a road that goes right through it. There is nothing to distinguish this town from a dozen others, except of course the Submarine stuck right in the middle of the town.

H.M.R.A.N. sub Ottway in Holbrook.

So what’s a submarine doing in a town 400 kilometres from the nearest seaport? Well the story starts back at the time of the First World War when the town of Holbrook was called Germanton. The inhabitants, being very patriotic, thought that they should change the towns name to something more suitable. Several names were suggested but were all turned down, then came the news of Lt Holbrook’s magnificent achievement in the Dardanelle’s. The town petitioned the District government and changed the name of their town to Holbrook. So what did Lt. Holbrook do?

Norman Holbrook on a visit.

On 13th December 1914 he and a crew of fifteen took their submarine B11 and snuck into the Sea of Mamara against heavy opposition from enemy shore battery’s and torpedoed and sunk the Turkish battleship Messudiyeh. The return journey down a narrow channel with every shore battery for miles around shooting at them must have been a nightmare. The compass was out of order and the submarine kept running aground. In the end it had to submerge for nearly eight hours (an unheard of duration for those days) as it felt its way down the narrow channel to safety. Unbelievably they all survived. Holbrook was awarded the Victoria Cross, and every man in the crew was also decorated, an unprecedented honour.

Holbrook and his crew of the B11.

Over the years until his death in 1976 Norman Holbrook visited the town several times and was extremely popular. In 1982 his widow Gundala Holbrook donated his medals and other memorabilia to the town and it is now housed in the excellent Woolpack museum. In amongst all the interesting photos and artefacts is the top of the periscope from Normans old submarine B11.

Scale model of B11.

The citizens of Holbrook however wanted a fitting memorial to Holbrook and in 1972 had a one fifth scale model of his submarine placed in the town park, and later in 1988 a statue was unveiled. For a while everyone was content.

Holbrooks Medals

Periscope

Statue

In the meantime the town had forged an unlikely alliance with the Royal Australian Submarine Squadron and in 1995 they donated the fin of the decommissioned submarine Ottway which was one of six Oberon class subs that the Navy operated. A working party was established to see how they could erect it when word came that they could purchase the rest of the sub, or rather the ‘outer skin’ down to the waterline. Thousands of dollars were raised and Gundala Holbrook made the amazing gift of one hundred thousand Dollars, which enabled the project to forge ahead.

Gundala Holbrook

In order to get the sub to Holbrook it was cut into sections and transported down the Hume Highway on huge trailers. Some journey. Now the submarine lies in the park, not only dedicated to Holbrook but to ‘all those brave men who have served in submarines in war and peace.’ The official dedication took place on the Queens Birthday weekend on 7-8 of June 1997 with Gundala Holbrook as the official guest. I wish I could have been there.

The Sub down to its ‘waterline’.

Incidentally near the sub is a mark 8 torpedo commemorating the actions of Lt. Stoker R.N. D.S.O. and the crew of the Australian sub AE2. But that’s another story.

If you get a chance to go to Holbrook take it. The people are real farming folk, but they just love their town and have a real affection for, and pride in Norman Holbrook.

Sign at the entrance to Holbrook.

To have a town named after you is a fitting memorial for a brave and decent man.

The Gossamer was a 734 ton tea clipper, and two months before she was wrecked near Prawle Point she had been the second ship home in the annual tea race from Shanghai to London. On her fateful voyage she had been outward bound to Australia with a general cargo, four passengers and twenty four crew. She had a stormy start to her voyage with very bad conditions in the Channel.

Chivelstone Church.

Captain John Thomson stayed on deck for hours and eventually went two nights without sleep. When he finally went down to his cabin he fell pole-axed into his bunk. Unfortunately while he slept the pilot got roaring drunk. The Coastguards on Prawle saw the Gossamer attempt to tack and when she failed, reef in most of her sails and drop her two anchors. The noise of the anchor chain going out awoke Captain Johnson but there was little he could do but pray the anchors held. For half an hour they did, but then both cables parted and the Gossamer went full tilt onto the shore about a hundred yards from the optimistically named, Landing Cove. Thirteen were drowned immediately and the Captain was seen to lash his bride of just two weeks to a spar in the hope that she would stay afloat. For a time the two of them clung to the storm tossed bit of wood until the sea took them in its cold embrace. Ironically the pilot survived and was found guilty of manslaughter. Near the entrance to Chivelstone Church is a tombstone to Captain Johnson and his wife Barbara Kerr who came from the Isle of Bute in Scotland. It was Barbara Thomson’s first and last sea voyage.

I think the inscription says it all.

This memorial was erected in 1872 and records the names of the fifty three boys who died between 1866 and 1899 whilst training to become sailors in the Royal Navy. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars the Navy no longer used impressment to make up its numbers, but instead had improved the terms and conditions of seamen and offered them a pension after a fixed term of service. In order to train enough recruits it was decided to use a number of laid up ships as training establishments and moor them in various harbours around the country.

The Memorial.

Boys aged fifteen to seventeen were then asked to volunteer for service in the Royal Navy, serving at least a year on one of these ships. H.M.S. Ganges was one of the ships chosen, and she was moored just down from a small dockyard at Mylor, where the marina is now. She was a second rate three masted ship, 196 feet long carrying 84 guns. She was made of teak and launched from the Bombay Dockyard in November 1821. She had a largely uneventful service, and was the last sailing battleship to round Cape Horn without the aid of steam.

The Memorial.

However it was on the 20th March 1866 that the name of ‘Ganges’ entered into naval history, for it was then that she was moored here at Mylor and started a tradition of training boy seamen that would last for over a hundred years. The ship itself remained at Mylor for thirty three years and trained nearly fourteen thousand boys. Unfortunately the boys remembered here were to remain forever. Most died of influenza or measles which were fatal in those days, but eight died of accidents, and in the same period sixteen of the crew also died. The ship was removed from Mylor on 27th August 1899 and moved to Harwich where she continued to train boys until a shore establishment was built at Shotley Point in 1905. This tradition carried on untill 1976 when changing times saw its closure.

The famous mast. You can just see the boy at the top.

I must confess an interest here. In 1963 I was in the Junior Royal Marines and I competed at Ganges in the inter services swimming and water polo. The big feature of Ganges was its enormous ship’s mast, and naturally we were challenged to a race up the top. I got to the top of the mast and thought that was enough, only to be pushed aside by a boy who proceeded to stand on the button on one leg. None of our swimming team dared to do the same. It was the only time as a Royal Marine that I was beaten by another Service. Shame.

This film was made by John Douglas.

Two miles inland from Hope Cove lies the tiny village of Malborough. Inside the church are many memorials to the generations of local families, many of who drowned in the unforgiving seas between Bolt Head and Bolt Tail. But our interest lies outside with a small slate stone that’s lettering grows faded and worn. It is here that the bodies of the Chambers family lie, three boys and a girl. The inscription reads:

Here lye the Bodies of Daniel Mary and Joseph Chambers. Sons and daughters of Edward Chambers of Jamacia who were shipwrecked at Cat Hole in this Parish.

Model of an East Indiaman, slightly later than the Dragon.

Between Bolt Head and Bolt Tail lies five miles of the most dangerous waters along this coast. Well over three dozen ships have come to grief on these unforgiving shores and only God knows how many lives have been lost. For the Dragon, a British East Indiaman, homeward bound from Jamaica with a cargo of rum and sugar, the end must have been very swift. Besides the Chambers family, four seamen were drowned but Captain Gleast and ten of his crew survived. In the lottery of life they had won a reprieve but the hopes of the Chambers family had gone forever with only this weathered stone to show that they ever existed.

The weathered Headstone.

So what of the Dragon? Did she still exist, mangled and broken at the bottom of the cliffs, or had she been smashed to pieces and completely dispersed. It was worth a search.

The bottom here is sand with large boulders that have fallen off the cliffs close inshore. Because the water is so shallow and clear it was possible to do a really intensive search over a few days, but nothing was found. This did not come as a complete surprise to us, wrecks are rarely where they are supposed to be, so we moved the search area 100 yards along the base of the cliffs. Very soon we found an anchor and then stumbled across the wreckage of the Deventia.

The bay in front of Lantern Rock is where the Dragon sleeps.

We rather lost interest in the Dragon and completely discounted the anchor at the wrong age. However further research showed that it ‘could’ be from a ship of the Dragon’s period. After a couple of years the sand covered everything and that was the end of our investigations, but I still keep an eye on the area, and one day who knows, the sand might just move back out and reveal all.

Location map.

I am grateful to Susan Coney for the b/w photos of Capt. Hitchins and the Crossowen. Capt. Hitchins was her great uncle.

It is not often that you can come across a ship abandoned on the beach with all her sails still set. But that’s what happened to some early morning walkers on 7th May 1908 when they came across the Scottish registered brigantine Crossowen adrift on Yarmer Sands with only three feet of water in her hold. Of the crew there was no sign. So what had happened?

Crews Grave.

Capt. Hitchins with some sailors,probably not from the Crossowen.

The Crossowen had embarked a cargo of china clay at Parr the previous day and it can only be assumed that when she left port she became enveloped in a dense bank of fog that had blanketed the south west coast that day. She ended up far to close inshore, and struck Burg Island. The crew, thinking that they were sinking, launched the ships boat and rowed for the shore. Unfortunately they rowed towards the mouth of the nearby river Avon and became overwhelmed by the breakers on Batham Beach. All were thrown into the crashing surf, and it was only later that their drowned corpses were plucked from the waters around the river Avon’s mouth.

The Captains Grave.

Capt. Hitchins.

Six bodies are buried in Thurleston Churchyard together with an unknown boy who, whilst not on the official crew list, was presumed to have been aboard. Their communal grave was erected by public subscription from the local villagers. Later a separate stone for the Captain was placed nearby.

Captains inscripton.

The Crossowen, seen below aground at Yarmer Sands near Thurlestone, was built at Grangemouth in 1878 by Adamson, and originally called the Omega. A 115 feet long with a gross tonnage of 237 tons, she is a sad testament to the old superstition that says, it is bad luck to change a ships name.

The Crossowen.

The Crossowen.

It always amazes me how many echoes of history lie hidden away in little country churchyards deep in the Devon and Cornwall countryside. One such memory is contained within the confines of the 12th century church of St. Nicholas and St. Cyriac in the village of South Pool near Salcombe, Devon.

The Parish Church of St Nicholas and St Cyriac.

Mounted on one of the church’s walls is a bronze tablet commemorating the death of John Aubrey Froude R.N. a Midshipman who died on board H.M.S.Cressy in 1914.

H.M.S.Cressy.

He was sixteen years of age. The sinking of the Battleship Cressy, together with the Battleships Aboukir and Hogue on the 22 September 1914 was a disaster in itself, but was made all the more significant because it ushered in the dawn of a terrible new weapon, the submarine.

The Plaque reads:

To the memory of John Aubrey Froude R.N. Son of Ashley Froude C.M.C of Collapit Creeck Kingsbridge and Ethel Aubrey Froude daughter of Captain A.P.Hallifax of Halwell In this parrish and only grandson of James Antony Froude Regus Professor Of modern history Oxford University He died in the discharge of his duty At the age of 16 When serving as midshipman in H.M.S.Cressy This ship was sunk by a German Submarine In the action in the North Sea on September 22 1914 while she Had stopped to rescue the survivors From H.M.S. Aboukir and Hogue Previously sunk in the same action

H.M.S.Aboukir.

At the outbreak of the First World War all the great sea powers had submarines in their fleets, but it is fair to say that virtually all the Navy’s despised them and nobody had any real idea of their deadly potential.

H.M.S. Hogue.

All this changed on the 22 September 1914 when Otto Weddigen in command of the German submarine U9 came into contact with three British battle cruisers, the Hogue, the Aboukir, and the Cressy. Weddigen sunk all three in under an hour causing the loss of 62 officers and 1085 men.

Leutnant Otto Weddigen.

In that one hour Weddigen in his primitive submarine had inflicted more causalities on the Royal Navy than Nelson’s fleet suffered at Trafalgar. In sinking these three cruisers Weddigen brought home the awful reality of submarine warfare. Naval warfare would never be the same again.

The Submarine U9

Weddigen returned to a hero’s welcome, was promoted and given a new submarine. But his luck was not to last. Two months later in command of his new submarine U29 he was rammed by H.M.S. Dreadnaught and sunk. There were no survivors.

Map of Area.

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If you want to learn more about Otto Weddigen and how the submarine developed, try this video.

At Morwenstow, on Cornwall’s wild Atlantic coast, lies the church of St. Morwena and St. John the Baptist. In its churchyard are buried many victims of the sea, but one grave has a well-preserved ships figurehead as a memorial instead of the more usual slate headstone. This figurehead once graced the bows of the ‘Caledonia’, and depicts a Scottish Amazon complete with sword and shield, Tam’o shanter, and sporran. Thanks to the liberal application of gallons of white paint over the years, she is in remarkably good condition and has become known locally as ‘The Last Virgin of Morwenstow’.

The Figurehead.

So what’s the story? The Caledonian was a Scottish brig of some five hundred tons built in Arbroath. During September 1842 she was homeward bound from the Black Sea port of Odessa, when she had to call into Falmouth in order to bury a crewmember who had died of his wounds after being stabbed in a knife fight in Constantinople. ( Istanbul) The Caledonia then left for Gloucester in order to discharge her cargo of wheat. As she left Falmouth a fierce north westerly gale was raging. Around one o’clock in the morning of the 8th of September the look out saw huge waves breaking on Sharp nose Point close to leeward.

Front View.

The Captain, Peter Stevenson, shortened sail and tried to stand clear, but he was too late. The ship refused to come up and soon smashed onto the rocks at Sharp Nose Point. When they hit, the Captain ordered all the crew into the rigging, but no sooner had he done so than the mast smashed down throwing everyone into the raging sea where they all perished. The only survivor of the crew of ten was Edward le Dain from Jersey who miraculously managed to scramble ashore and collapse on the rocks where a farmer fond him, and a tortoise in the awakening dawn.

Postcard from Morwenstow.

The Captain, aged only twenty-eight, is buried immediately underneath the figurehead. The rest of the crew, together with some other seamen, including the Captain of the Alonzo of Stockton wrecked in 1843, perhaps as many as forty in all, are buried by the ‘Upper Trees’. A tall granite cross with the words ‘unknown yet known by all’ was erected in 1924 and marks the spot. At the time three upturned keels were placed there together with some oars forming a rough cross, but they soon disintegrated.

The Stone Cross.

In a rather bizarre twist, the figurehead weighing over one hundredweight was stolen in October 1968. It was later found slightly damaged abandoned in a field at Abbottham Cross, Bideford. No reason for the theft was ever found but at the time it sparked memories of the ‘Virgins’ legend that supposedly said she would rise up with her crewmen and strike the offenders down with her sword.

Location Map.

There is an excellent book about this wreck which blends fact with fiction.

Click on the photo below to see more.

I am extremely grateful to Jim Knight for some of the information and photos in this article

Lionel Crabb was born in 1909 to Hugh and Beatrice Crabb who lived at the time in South London.(he later got the nickname ‘Buster’ in honour of the American swimmer, turned actor, Buster Crabbe) They were a poor family and Crabb’s father Hugh was listed as Missing during the Great War. For most of Crabb’s early days he was brought up by Frank Jarvis, a relative of Beatrice who came to stay after the War. For a short and unhappy time Lionel went to school at Brighton College but then transferred to H.M.S.Conway, a Naval Academy. When he left school he was a bit of a drifter having lots of different jobs, and not much liking any of them. In the end Crabb tried to join the Navy in 1939 when he was twenty eight. He was refused on medical grounds, was to old to join the Reserves, so he joined the Merchant Navy instead.

Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb.

When the Second World War started up he trained as a Merchant Seaman Gunner, and because of this he was able to join the Royal Navy Patrol Service that used trawlers to clear mines. At last he was where he wanted to be. Unfortunately he had to have a medical at some stage, and when he did, it was found that he had a weak left eye, and so he was banned from further sea service. Fed up, Crabb volunteered for Special Duties, and ended up becoming a mine and bomb disposal expert. He was sent to Gibraltar in 1942 to work with the Mediterranean Fleet Clearance Diving Team. His job was to make safe the mines and warheads that the divers discovered. After doing this for a while he thought he could be of more use if he became a diver, and applied to join the Team. Crabb hated the idea of any sort of fitness training, smoke and drank heavily and could only just swim three lengths of a swimming pool, but the head of the Diving team Lieutenant Bailey, accepted him because he was good at mine disposal. (incidentally, when I did my Ships Diver training in 1967, there was no requirement for you to be able to swim)

Davis Submersible Escape Apparatus.

In those days diving equipment was very rudimentary, as up to the outbreak of the Second World War the Navy did not consider the Diver to have an offensive role, and used them mostly for clearance diving or repairing ships bottoms. However attacks by the Italians using Midget Submarines during the First World War put soon paid to this idea. By the time the Second World War started the Italians had become much more sophisticated, and by 1941 had damaged two battleships, H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth and H.M.S. Valiant in the port of Alexandria. By the time Italy surrendered, their midget submarines had sunk 190,000 tons of merchant shipping, and over 90,000 tons of Allied warships. Bailey and Crabb built up the Underwater Working Party, and when Bailey broke his ankle, Crabb took it over. Crabb had to constantly adapt to the Italian threat especially when the Italian’s started to use human torpedoes. The unit secretly took up residence in an old battered steamer called the Olterra moored in a neutral Spanish port just five miles from Gibraltar.

The Italians used this a a secret base.

On board the Olterra the Italians made a workshop to equip their subs and cut an entrance hole below the waterline so that the human torpedo’s could be launched in complete secrecy. On the 7th December three of these were launched to attack shipping in Gibraltar Harbour, and it was only because of Crabb’s vigilance along with his assistant Leading Seaman Bell, that all the attacks were foiled. Just imagine it. With no proper equipment, no suits, just overalls, no fins, just plimsolls, and to breathe a Davis Submersible Escape Apparatus, the two of them patrolled in the dark searching ships bottoms never knowing if a mine was about to go off.

Members of Decima Mas, the team Crabb was up against.

Ironically the Italians surrendered the next year and Crabb was able to not only visit the Olterra to recover various bits of submarines, but he also visited the Italians who had used them. They apparently had a great respect for Crabb and were happy to assist him in his quest to develop these weapons. For all this work and much more, Crabb was awarded the George Medal, and promoted to Lieutenant Commander. Interestingly leading Seaman Bell also got the George Medal and was promoted to Petty officer. This was a bit unusual as it was usually Officers that got the gongs, with the men getting a bit of praise.

The George Medal.

Crabb was then sent to Venice to clear the harbour of wrecks, and when that was finished he was awarded the O.B.E. In 1945 he was moved to Palestine to head up an underwater bomb disposal team and was demobilised in 1947.

Crabb’s other medals.

Some say that he was then recruited into one of the Secret Services. It is a fact that he was recalled to help with the affair of the sunken submarine Truculent that sank with all hands in the Thames Estuary, and in 1956 he was listed in the Navy List as Commander Crabb, Special Branch, based at H.M.S.Vernon in Portsmouth. In 1953 he was supposed to have been in the Suez Canal, and a year later was unsuccessfully engaged to look for the Tobermory Galleon. In October 1955 Crabb was apparently instructed by the Royal Navy to find out why the Russian Cruiser Sverdlov was so manoeuvrable. The ship was in Portsmouth as part of a Spithead Review and since the Americans were also very keen to find out, the mission was overseen by them. Crabb swam to the bottom of the ship where he found a large hole from which a propeller could be lowered to provide more thrust for the bow, which explained the Cruisers superb manoeuvrability. It was the success of this mission that seemed to spur on the idea of inspecting the bottom of the Cruiser Ordzhonikidze which was due in Portsmouth in April 1956 carrying the Russian President Kruschev and his Foreign Minister, Bulganin on a good will visit.

Crabb in 1950 whilst divng to find the Tobermory.

By now Crabb was 46 years old, unfit and a very heavy drinker. On the night of 17th April 1956 he an another un-named man took rooms in the Sally Port Hotel. The next day the Russian ships arrived and tied up at the Suoth Railway Jetty in the Dockyard. That night Crabb was seen in Havant having a drink with some old friends and then he caught the train back to Portsmouth. He was never seen alive again. Less than two months later a body in a diving suit was found floating off Pilsey Island in Chichester Harbour. The body was minus its head and hands thus making identification very difficult. Crabb’s ex wife and his current girl friend, Pat Rose could not say with any confidence that the body was Crabbs. However an inquest recorded an open verdict and the Coroner said that he was satisfied that the body was that of Commander Lionel Crabb.

Recent information (March 2010) has led me to believe that I was wrong about the body being recovered two months after the event. At the time, Jim Knight was a member of an R.A.F. Marine Craft Unit stationed at Portsmouth and has given me the following information which casts a different light on subsequent events.

Jim Knight.

Cmdr. Crabb’s body was not found 2 months after his disappearance. It was 14 months from the 19 April, 1956 to 9 June, 1957.The Body was not found ‘floating around’ in Chichester Harbour. It was in fact brought to the surface by 2 net fishermen, from Prinstead or Southbourne, West Sussex. They made some sort of SOS signal that was seen by the lads in the Air traffic control tower at RAF Thorney Island. ATC in turn notified us at the Marine Craft Section in the mid morning. Myself and two other members of 1107 MCU detachment were duty week end crew. We had an old World War Two 40 ft assault landing craft which was used for inshore and harbour rescue, and in this craft we made our way to Pilsey Island which was only about a mile up channel towards the Solent. We found the fishermen with their net tangled up, with what eventually turned out to be Cmdr Crabb’s body.Untangling the net, we hitched the body onto the lowered front ramp and got it on board. You are correct in that the head and hands where missing, and in the cavity where the head had been, were hundreds of small crabs, and other such creatures. The odour was abominable.On returning to the MCS (Marine craft Section) we were able to run almost up to West Thorney road, due it being still high tide. Waiting for us on the bitumen, were a mob of RAF Officers, 4 men in long black overcoats, RAF Ambulance, local Police and many unknown onlookers.The body, still clad in a frogman’s suit was removed to Chichester Hospital for examination and identification.Later, we members of the Marine Section discussed the incident. None of us could see how the body was indentified. With the advent of DNA, perhaps it could now be proven one way or the other, if the body was that of Cmdr Crabb. Among those on the beach that day was Group Capt. Boxer, Station Commander of RAF Thorney Island. The 4 men in black overcoats must have been MI 6 or such.I have checked the RAF records at RAF Hendon, and they told me that all the records for ALC 1948 had been destroyed. It is a pity that no one has ever given credit for the recovery of the Frogman’s body to the RAF Marine Craft Section.

The crew of ALC1948. Photo Jim Knight.

In every report I have read on this incident, there is no mention of our (Marine Craft) involvement in this clandestine affair, much of which is still under wraps. We ourselves, following the dispersal of the official’s, were reminded of the ‘Official Secrets Act’ and told to keep our mouths shut. On my enquiry to the RAF Museums Historical Section for details of the Daily running record (RAF Form 1524) for ALC 1948, for the date of 9/7/57, I was informed the records for many Marine Craft had been destroyed or lost. Was that not convenient. I have contacted some of my ex crew mates some of which have passed on. Only one remembers the incident,but was not involved. I have been trying to get information of this for a number of years now. Just to prove that I did not dream the whole thing.Another coincidence is, that just a few day prior to Crabb’s disappearance, myself and a few apprentice mates (Shipwright’s in PortsmouthDockyard) went to have a look at the Russian ships, unaware that I would be involved with Cmdr. Crabbe’s espionage attempt again in 14 months, but this time as a National serviceman on RAF Marine Craft.

Photo Jim Knight

In the photo above, you can see the front ramp door behind my back. This we dropped to water level to secure the frogman’s body, then raised slightly, to prevent sinking ourselves. Only one other member of this crew was involved in the recovery. That is the chap sitting on the side holding his cup of tea. L.A.C Ray Howes. (I believe he lived somewhere near Hornsea, S/E Yorkshire) I am standing next to the cockpit, with my back to the ramp door. The aerial was for the “PYE” phone VHF Radio. It was a short distance radio which we were able to contact Thorney Island Air Traffic Control.

Ray Howes.

MI6 and the Admiralty tried to cover the story up and made a complete hash of it. The day after Crabb disappeared all his belongings also disappeared from the hotel, as well as the relevant page in the hotel’s register. The press had a field day, and the incident sparked off a major diplomatic row with the Russians who accused the British of a bungled attempt to spy on their vessel. The then Prime Minister, Anthony Eden was furious when he found out what MI6 and the Admiralty had done, as he had expressly forbidden any such operation. A security blanket was thrown over the whole thing, and even today the major facts of the case have been reclassified so as not to let them into the public domain until at least 2050. Sir John Sinclair head of MI6 was forced to take early retirement and some other senior civil servants were severely censured.

The Ordzhonikidze at Portsmouth.

So what really happened? Well you can take your pick There have been about ten books written on the subject, and acres of newsprint. In some he was captured by the Russians and brainwashed. In others he defected, and of course the Navy said he wasn’t there at all. However its fairly certain that Crabb did swim out to the Russian vessel. But what happened next is down to who you believe. The most credible evidence seems to be a Joseph Zwerkin who was an ex member of the Soviet Naval Intelligence. He was interviewed in Israel in 1990 where he had moved after the fall of Communism. He stated that a diver had surfaced near the ship and had been shot in the head by one of the ships crew. Seem’s about right to me. All the secrecy surrounding this affair seems to be not so much about Crabb and what he did, but rather about what the various Government Agencies did, why they did it, and why did they cover it all up. It is interesting to find out that the Official Government Documents relating to this affair are not scheduled to be released until 2057.

Crabb’s grave in Milton Cemetery.

I decided to put this story in the Tombstone section because Crabb was a bit of a hero to me. I come from a generation of divers that remember him as one of the ‘greats’ In the same way that a Copper would stop you for speeding in the old days before camera’s, and say the immortal lines, ‘who do you think you are Stirling Moss’, we in the Service would be told off for doing something daft in the diving area with the line ‘who do you think you are, Buster Crabb’. If you want to get a flavour of the man have a look at the film The Silent Enemy which depicts his time in Gibraltar. Not a bad epitaph.

Busters Grave.

‘Busters grave can be visited at Milton Cemetery, Milton Road, Portsmouth.

John Bevan has written a new book that is meticulously researched for the historians, but will also give all those conspiracy theorists, plenty to bite on.

Every so often you come across something completely outside your experience. One day, Dave and me were diving on one of our favourite areas for bottle collecting. The bottom is just gentle sand ripples, and for a quiet dive I was just content to drift over the area in the hope of finding the odd stone bottle. On this occasion I found more than I bargained for in the shape of a small wooden casket. Well actually, about seven of them. They were just protruding from the sand, were quite dirty and as I could not quite make out what they were, I stuck one in the scrap sack and carried on with the dive. Up top we tipped out the sack and there was the little casket. It was made of some sort off hardwood now black with water stain, had a series of holes drilled in the sides, and had a weighted bottom.

Dave with the ‘casket’.

Dave immediately recognize it as a cremation casket. Luckily the box was still intact, as he was diving next he took it back down and replaced it in the sand. On his dive he saw three more but left them alone. We dived the area several times after that and saw the odd one or two, but after a couple of years with the action of the wind and tide the sand covered all of the caskets over and we have not seen any for years. However it made us think why they were there. Was it a convenient and cheap way of disposing of the poor victims of Plymouths dreadful bombing during the War when several graveyards were blown up? Or were they much older and possibly the cremated remains of plague victims? In order to find out I contacted one of Plymouths oldest Funeral Directors Walter. C. Parsons who started up as long ago as 1842. I showed them a photo of the casket and they immediately recognize as a type of cremation casket used for burials at sea.

The joints were glued together.

They also dispelled any ideas I might have had about plague or war victims. They also told me that they did not think the casket was pre War, because most of them had their joints glued together, and the ones we had found were still in fairly good order. Apparently burial at sea is still carried out but under very strict controls. Usually the people who request this service are ex. Navy or have some connection with the Navy. When it is convenient the Navy take out any caskets on one of their warships and commit them to the deep with an appropriate service. If you have no connection with the Navy then a fishing boat or some other vessel is chartered and the same is done. You can of course have a complete ‘burial’ at sea, and this used to be done in an area a couple of miles off Rame Head.

Sometimes wreaths are dropped on Anniversary’s.

Unfortunately on a very few occasions the bodies were not properly weighted, and they floated into shore causing distress all round. The regulations have been tightened up recently and now the nearest place you can be ‘buried’ is the Needles reef. Walter. C. Parsons does not offer this service, as it requires a specialist company, but could no doubt organize it if required.

One of the most poignant shipwreck images that I have ever seen is the photograph by F.W.Gibson of the temporary grave of Rear Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell in the Scilly Isles. His body had been found floating in the shallows along with many others during October 1707 in the aftermath of one of the greatest maritime disasters England had seen. Four ships and two thousand men had been lost on the Scilly Isles’ treacherous rocks and once again the main cause of the disaster was the navigators inability to accurately calculate their Longitude. This was not due to their carelessness, but to a lack of proper compasses (most were not made of brass and so rusted up at sea) and a clock that could keep accurate time at sea. The only good thing to come out of the Association disaster was that it speeded up the search for a method of accurately discovering Longitude. The best brains in the land including Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley (he of the Comet) were put on the case, and a prize of ?0000 was offered, a colossal sum for those days. In the end it was a clock maker called Edward Harrison who collected the prize, but it took him until 1773 to perfect the chronometer, and his various clocks, one made entirely of wood (with all the working parts) can still be seen at the Maritime museum in Greenwich.

The grave of the Rear Admiral. The spot is still marked today with twoo large stones and a brass plaque. (Photo Frank Gibson)

So what of the Association that caused this entire furore? On the 29 Sept 1707 twenty-one Men of War were at anchor at Gibraltar getting ready to sail back to Britain. The Commander in Chief of this Mediterranean Fleet was rear Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell, on board his flagship Association. All that summer Sir Clowdisley and his Fleet had harassed the French and laid siege to the port of Toulon. The sea bombardment of Toulon had been extensive but frankly hadn’t been all that effective because of the huge earthworks that had been thrown up all around the town. The wear and tear on the ships was relentless, and as the winter approached it was time to return to the safety of England where there were suitable dockyards to effect repairs and somewhere to escape the coming storms.

Bill Saunby, Reciever of Wreck with the first finds from the Association in 1967. (Photo Paul Armiger)

The Fleet headed out into the Atlantic and set course for the English Channel. Almost immediately the weather worsened and by the 21 October the storms had pushed the ships well of course. By now they should have been somewhere off the entrance to the Channel, but were in fact approaching the Scilly’s. The Fleet’s sailing masters realizing they were lost hove too to take depth soundings. The depth varied from 300 feet to over 800 feet, so the Fleet, thinking they were still near the Channel blundered on unknowingly towards the Islands. The next day the storms seemed to be worse, and all the time the ships were being driven closer to the land. At eight o’clock in the evening of the 22 October the Association smashed into the Outer Gilstone Ledges at the South Western edge of the Scilly Isles. The entire crew perished as the ship disappeared in a welter of broken wood and angry sea’s. Following behind the Association was the St. George. She struck the same rocks as the Association but managed to bounce of only loosing part of her stern gallery. Three other ships were not so lucky.

Sir Clowdisley Shovell.

The seventy- gun Eagle ran into the Tearing Ledge close to the Bishop’s Rock (no light house in those days) and sank in 130 feet. The Romney disappeared with out trace, her timbers mixed with all the others that had come to grief on the Rosevere Ledges, and the Firebrand, staggering along the southern side of the Western Rock finally sank between Annet and St. Agnes Islands. The last ship the Phoenix ran ashore between Tresco and St. Martins. All in all, four warships, over two thousand men and a famous Rear Admiral were lost. The nation was stunned.

Read all about the Association in this great book.

The finding of the Association by a Royal Navy diving team (featuring Richard Larn) and the subsequent salvage of a vast amount of silver coins by Terry Hiron and Jim Heslin have been well documented. I was lucky enough to meet them both, and have a dive on the Association back in —– In those days Terry and Jim used to allow visiting divers access to the site to help with the donkey work. It was a great experience and although I never found any coins I did help re discover a cannon.

Jim Heslin and Terry Hirron.(photo Paul Armiger)

So what became of Sir Clowdisley Shovell? Local legend has it that he was still alive when he was washed ashore, and that he was murdered by two women for a large emerald ring that they hacked his finger off to get. The truth is probably less lurid. The Admirals body was found washed up in a sandy bay near Porth Hellick almost seven miles from where the Association was wrecked. A local fisherman, Harry Pennick pulled him in, and found a tin box in his pocket, which contained the Admirals Commission. The body was then temporarily buried on the beach near where it had been found. By order of Queen Anne the body was later exhumed, embalmed by a Dr. Yonge of Plymouth (no mention of missing fingers) and given an elaborate funeral with a memorial in Westminster Abbey to mark his place in the Nation’s esteem. You can easily find it in the south aisle near the choir and very fine it is.

The Memorial at Westminster Abbey.

The inscription reads:

Sir Cloudesley Shovell Knt. Rear Adrnirall of Great Britain and Adrnirall and Commander in Chief of the Fleet. The just rewards of his long and faithful Services. He was deservedly beloved of his Country and Esteem’d tho’ dreaded by the Enemy, who had often experienced his Conduct and Courage. Being shipwreckt on the Rocks of Scylly in his voyage from Thoulon. The 22nd of October 1707 at Night in the 57th year of his Age. His fate was lamented by all, But especially the Sea faring part of the Nation to whom he was a Generous Patron and a worthy example. His body was flung on the shoar and buried with others in the sands, but being soon after taken up was plac’d under this Monument which his Royall Mistress has caus’d to be Erected to commemorate His Steady Loyalty and Extraordinary Vertues.

At the western end of the Lizard lie Kynance sands and the sheer cliffs which form the outer edge of Mount’s Bay. Exposed to all the terrible storms that plague this area these cliffs offer no shelter at all and after Gunwhalloe they give way to the notorious Loe Bar, a great bank of sand that separates the estuary of Helston’s river Cober from the sea. This six-mile stretch of sea from Rill Head to Porthleven is the deadliest of all lee shores, and any vessel that failed to weather the Lizard was almost certainly going to become a wreck.

The ship Torrington en route from Opporto to Southampton with a cargo of wine was wrecked here in 1782, and in April 1808 the German ship Herman and August, again with a cargo of wine was lost in a savage winter’s gale. The 110-ton Brig Royal Recovery was completely wrecked on Loe bar in 1809, and barely a month later a large sloop, the Mars went aground nearby.

The Infamous Loe Bar.

The list goes on and on but of all of the tragic wrecks that came to grief on Loe bar, by far the most famous is that of the frigate H.M.S.Anson a 44 gun-fifth- rate commanded by Captain Charles Lydiard. On Christmas Eve 1807 the Anson left Falmouth to take up her station on the navy blockade that was keeping the French bottled up in Brest. It was blowing hard as the Anson made her way down channel, and when Captain Lydiard finally sighted Ushant the storm was so bad that he decided to put about and return to Falmouth. On the afternoon of December 28th the Anson was well to leeward of the Lizard and being a cut down third-rate she was not a good sailboat and the Capt. Realised that he was in big trouble.

The wreck of the frigate Anson on Loe Bar.

All attempts to clear the land failed and the ship rushed down towards Loe bar. Captain Lydiard ordered the topgallants struck to take some of the way of the ship and then released his biggest anchor. It held, the ship pulled around, and rode quite comfortably. The crew breathed a collective sigh of relief, but it was to be short lived. At 5am. On the 29th the anchor cable parted and although another was immediately dropped it only lasted a couple of hours and then it too parted. Seeing that there was nothing else to do Capt. Lydiard ordered the helmsman to steer the boat full tilt at the beach. The Anson got quite close in and then broached too. Luckily its mast fell down and made a makeshift bridge to the shore over which several of the crew managed to scramble to safety, whilst others were pulled ashore by willing helpers from the nearby villages. Even so over 120 men were lost including that of captain Lydiard who was swept away whilst trying to save a young boy seaman.

Location Map of Anson Memorial.

 

The Memorial

The bodies that were recovered from the wreck of the Anson were buried in the cliffs and beaches around the wreck site. This was common practise at the time, and there must be thousands of these unmarked graves scattered all over the West Country. Ironically it was just a year after the Anson tragedy, in July 1808, that an Act of Parliament was passed requiring that all such bodies be given a Christian burial.

The Anson Memorial.

The memorial to the dead of the Anson was erected in 1949 and is very easy to find. You can approach from Porthleven and walk across the sands at low tide, but it’s a pretty hard walk and you have to watch out for the tide coming back in. An easier way is to drive to Chyvarloe and then walk about a mile and a quarter along the top of the cliffs. It is a very scenic walk and ends up with a terrific view of the Loe Bar. If you go in rough weather you will easily understand why the crew had so little chance of escape, and the fury of the waves will astound you.

Plaque

If you want to see one of the cannons, go to the nearby town of Helston (famous for the Floral Dance) The cannon, a thirty two pounder weighing three and a half tons can be found outside the town’s museum, and was recovered from Loe bar by divers from the air station at Culdrose.

Henry Trengrouse.

The only good thing to come out of the Anson Disaster was the invention of the Rocket Firing Apparatus. Amongst the people who witnessed the wrecking of the Anson was a Helston man called Henry Trengrouse. He saw some of the sailors drown yards from safety, and was so appalled by the battered and disfigured corpses that were strewn around the beach that he determined that he must try to figure out a way of stopping it ever happening again. Surely, he thought, there must be some way of rescuing people caught up in these terrible circumstances. The device he came up with was a musket fired rocket line which became the fore runner of the modern day rocket line that has saved thousands of lives over the intervening years, and is still in use to this day.

The story of the submarine is fraught with danger and disaster. The introduction of this weapon into the Royal navy caused uproar because it was considered to be an underhand way of fighting. The first Holland submarines were superseded by the A class, of which thirteen were built. The record of these boats from the time of their launch, to the beginning of the First World War makes grim reading

The A1 was struck by the liner Berwick Castle in 1904 and sank with all hands. The A3 collided with her own depot ship and sank immediately. A4 was sunk at Devonport in 1905 when the wash of a passing ship flooded her ventilators, and the A5 was badly damaged by two petrol explosions also in 1905. The A7 (see sidebar) was sunk with all hands in Whitsands Bay in 1914, and the A9 foundered just outside Plymouth in1906 after being hit by the steam ship Coath. Luckily she managed to resurface and no one was hurt, but two years later petrol fumes killed four of her crew. These unsettling disasters had the effect of virtually halting the flow of submarine volunteers leading in some cases to men refusing to sail on what they thought were unsafe boats.

Some of the broken memorials.

So we come to the A8, that already had a reputation for being unstable, sometimes diving without warning. On the morning of 8 June 1905 the A8 was on a routine training exercise in company with the A7 just outside the Plymouth Breakwater.

Arthur Bunn Crew aged 31.

As was the routine in those days, the A8 ran with her conning tower hatch open whilst the crew prepared the submarine for diving. In those days submarines did not have hydro vanes to dive the boat, but relied on reducing their buoyancy, clapping on a bit of speed (8 to 10 knots) and putting the helm down. This had the effect of driving the boat underwater. The trouble was the buoyancy of the craft wasn’t very much in any case, so quite often the boats would dive weather the Captain wanted it to or not.

Tom Reeve, Chief Stoker,buried with his family in another part of the graveyard.

A nearby trawler, the Chanticleer, commanded by a Mr. Johns saw the A8 going along with its conning hatch open and four men standing on the submarines casing. Suddenly they were swept into the water as the A8 kicked up her stern and sank. The Chanticleer rushed towards the scene and picked up the four men who were Lt. Candy, the captain, Sub Lt. Murdoch, Petty Officer William Waller, and Acting Leading Seaman George Watt.

Survivor- William Waller.

Tugs and divers raced to the scene and rescue operations quickly commenced. However an hour later these had to be stopped when two great underwater explosions rocked the submarine sending a huge spout of water ten feet into the air. From then on it was fairly obvious that all the rest of the crew had perished.

William Bruckland

William Ayloff

George Beedham

John Knight

Steven Birch

Arthur Rylands

James Simpson

Edmund Green

Thomas Cusack

The A8 was subsequently raised and taken to Devonport Dockyard where the bodies of the crew were evacuated through a hole made by removing a metal plate from the hull. This metal plate was apparently later used to make a cross for the men’s’ funeral. The A8 was quickly repaired and was ready in time for the naval manoeuvres in 1906. It is hard now to explain the depth of grief that this tragic incident caused. The King sent a personal message to all the relatives, and the crews’ funeral procession took one and a half hours to cover the two miles from the Dockyard chapel to the Plymouth and Devonport Cemetery where they were to be interred. The crowds numbered in their thousands and thronged the entire route, in some places twenty deep.

Memorial card showing the crew and the A8.

The funeral cortege was over half a mile long, with the dead sailors laid on gun carriages drawn along by naval ratings. The route was also lined by different Army regiments, and the crews from all the ships moored in the Sound in order to shown their respect and to keep the huge crowds from blocking the procession. Through out all this a band solemnly played Chopin’s Funeral March until the procession reached the chapel at the middle of the Cemetery. At about half past four in the afternoon, the final blessing having been said, the firing party discharged three volleys over the gravesite, and four buglers sounded the Last Post. Whilst most of the crew were laid to rest at the Plymouth and Devonport Cemetery Sub Lt. Fletcher was interred at his family home at Mallingford near Norwich. Leading Seaman John Kerswell was laid to rest at Crediton and E.R.A. Vickers was buried at Southsea.

The Funeral Procession.

Most of the graves are together, but are now sadly neglected, their broken crosses lying strewn upon the ground. The Trust that looks after the graveyard has made massive strides in clearing the place up, and there is some suggestion that the Royal Navy will pay to have the memorials repaired. I hope so. Last Poppy Day politicians and Service Chiefs droned on about how we should never forget. But we will, and in the case of these brave lads, we already have.

They deserve more than that.

2006: I am very glad to anounce that the graves of the A8 crew have recently been restored by the Royal Navy.This was in part brought about by the hard work and dedication of the trust that now runs the Cemetry. they have tidied up the place no end, and because of this many more people visit lookng for their relatives. Even so. well done the Navy.

The restored graves are white.

Photo Mrs.D.Barrett

I am very gratefull to David Barrett and his wife, for the information below and the photo’s. My wife and I enjoy looking around historic churches. Near us, at Marlingford, Norfolk, we found a stained glass window in St Mary’s church. It was erected as a memorial to Sub Lieut Fletcher, who perished in the A8 disaster. We knew nothing about it until we found the information on your site and another one. The Fletcher family resided at Marlingford Hall, near the church.

Photo Mrs.D.Barrett