Natasha de Chroustchoff: 'Sailors Lost and Found' (2021)

Description

Lede
Shipwreck was an occupational hazard in the days of sail. Storms and gales could overtake the most competent crew and coastlines bristled with hazards. Village churchyards on both sides of the Irish Sea bear witness to lost souls – those who never returned and those who were washed up drowned and nameless.

Story
In the tiny churchyard of Granston, set back from the bay of Abermawr and its smaller neighbour Aberbach, two gravestones bear witness to anonymous victims of the waves. One marks the deaths of Captain Charles Bowlby and his crew of 28 on board the fully-rigged American ship the Charles Holmes, which was driven ashore during the Royal Charter Storm of October 25th 1859. It capsized in Aberbach Bay. All the crew were drowned and nine of their bodies were washed up along the coast nearby. The captain’s body and the rest of the crew were never found but of those that were, some were buried at Granston and some in Llanwnda churchyard nearby. The scattered cargo (iron tools, blankets, crockery and frying pans) was auctioned off locally.

Elsewhere in the same churchyard a gravestone marks the resting place of a nameless man who was washed up drowned at Abermawr on January 19th 1916. The legend on the marker: AND HE SHORTENED MY DAYS IN THE SEA, along with an anchor device bear witness to the man’s fate but nothing is known of his identity. He could have been the casualty of the Great War at sea - who can tell?

Of the sailors who never came home the fate of a few was known: their names and places of death are recorded on family graves and memorials: victims of death by drowning, accident or disease in some distant port or at rest in a watery grave far away. But occasionally there were happier outcomes. The next two stories emerged as a result of research in old local newspapers.

Sometime in the mid-nineteenth century, a teenage lad called Gwilym Rowe from a farm near Fishguard went to sea as a cabin boy. His ship came to grief in the Mozambique Channel, deadly waters for sailing vessels. His family, hearing nothing, assumed him lost and mourned his passing. Years later, a grandson of Fishguard antiquary Richard Fenton emigrated to South Africa – a land of opportunity at the time. As a diamond prospector, farmer and big game hunter Reginald Fenton made frequent trips into the interior. One day, while he was trading with the tribal people of what was then Matabeleland (now Zimbabwe), one of them, a grizzled old man, addressed him in English 'Did you say your name was Fenton? I used to know a Lady Fenton in Fishguard, she gave me pennies when I read to her'. Reginald couldn’t believe his ears – the lady in question could only have been his grandmother. The aged man explained he had been shipwrecked and rescued by local inhabitants with whom he had remained. He had risen to become a tribal elder. His name was Gwilym Rowe. He never returned home but his elderly sister, when told of his survival, wept for joy.

Charles Gronow of Fishguard was a sailor who, in 1883, joined the crew of the British merchant ship Nisero bound for the East Indies. On the return voyage, heading for Marseilles with a cargo of sugar, a storm blew up and the vessel, with Charles at the wheel, was driven on to the coast of Sumatra. The crew survived but the ship was wrecked. Worse was to come: they were taken prisoner by islanders who marched them into the interior and held them captive in desperate conditions for many months, frequently moving them from place to place in intense heat. Several members of the crew died from starvation, exhaustion or disease. The ordeal finally came to an end after many months when a rescue party was dispatched and a substantial ransom paid to the Rajah who had evidently been using the captives as bargaining pawns.

Gronow returned to Fishguard in November 1884, spent the rest of his life catching lobsters and died at a ripe old age.

Factoid
- Abermawr and Aberbach are shingle beaches, a little off the beaten track and very photogenic. Both can be reached by footpaths from the road. Abermawr was a glacial valley where the remnants of a 'drowned forest' can be seen on the foreshore at the lowest tides.

- Nearby Tregwynt Manor was the site of the 1996 discovery by a metal detectorist of one of the finest hoards of coins ever found in Wales.

- Granston is the home of Melin Tregwynt a working woollen mill with a traditional water-powered mill wheel, a shop and a café, altogether a great place to visit.

• https://perma.cc/JRZ2-L4DZ (link opens in new window)