Old wrecks proved deadly
AUGUST 20, 1959, was a “scorching hot day” at Aberavon beach as hundreds gathered to enjoy the weather and scenery.
It was peak holiday season with day-trippers and families travelling from all over Wales to enjoy a day on the warm sand.
But tragically not everyone who arrived at the beach that day made it home alive as two young children died while playing on two old shipwrecks just 200 yards from the promenade.
Colin Walters, 75, was on the beach that day and, despite being only a young teenager at the time, remembers the “absolutely awful” incident “like it was yesterday”.
He said: “I was 14 then, nearly 15, and it was a scorching hot day and the beach was very, very crowded with a lot of daytrippers there. I was there with friends on the beach and the tide was coming in and it came up to the two wrecks near the pier.
“I was further down the beach when it actually happened and I could see crowds gathering so my friend and I went over and there was a big circle of people. Right in the middle of them were the two children. I saw two boys lying there and our family doctor was actually working on one of them. The boy was blue.”
The two children Mr Walters could see laying on the sand turned out to be eight-year-old Keith Williams from Gwauncae-gurwen and 10-yearold Sandra Chamberlain from Briton Ferry. They had been playing on the SS Brodland and SS Ethelwalda shipwrecks near to Aberavon’s old pier along with three others who were thankfully saved.
“As children growing up in Aberavon we were always taught not to play in the wrecks,” said Mr Walters. “So even though I didn’t witness the incident unfold I can imagine what did happen.
“Day-trippers would be dropped off at the pier and they would settle near there and the children would go out to sea. You could see the outlines of the two wrecks and in the middle of them was sand. When the tide was further out the children would go into the wrecks and play in the sand and the water used to come in, surrounding both wrecks. The children wouldn’t necessarily notice they were slowly getting surrounded by the water and that’s what unfortunately happened there.”
Mr Walters said there was one reason in particular why this day stuck so vividly in his mind. It was seeing the friends and families of the deceased looking so upset later that afternoon.
“The reason I remember it so well is because I was playing cricket in the evening. I had to walk past the local hospital where they took the children, there were ambulances there and lots of people, probably relatives and fellow day-trippers, outside by the emergency department. They were all crying and it was terrible to see.
“We were used to things happening on the beach, people falling off the pier and things like that, but this time it was so surreal because those children there with a large group and they didn’t go home.”
The seriousness of the incident meant it was widely reported that week in the South Wales Evening Post.
One headline read: “Five children trapped on wreck by tide - two die.” Underneath it was reported that hundreds of holidaymakers stood watching the children’s “grim struggle” and the attempts made to save their lives.
Another story was written following the inquest into the two deaths. The coroner called for the fatal wrecks to be removed after a doctor, William Stephenson, told the hearing the two children could not swim and had died of “asphyxia due to drowning”. The deaths were recorded as misadventure by the coroner.
The two lethal wrecked ships had been on the beach for about 40 years before this disaster happened.
Crew aboard the SS Ethelwalda met their fate while entering Port Talbot’s docks on October 30, 1911. The ship was carrying a cargo of pit-props at the time according to local history website Swansea Docks. The boat was built by John Readhead and Sons of South Shields in 1890 and was owned by the Whitby-based J H Harrowing Steamship Company.
Two years later the SS Brodland followed in its footsteps. On January 20, 1913, the ship fell victim in “heavy seas and a fierce gale” as it was driven ashore near to the North Pier in Aberavon. It was carrying 2,500 tons of Welsh coal at the time which was bound for Puntas Arenas in southern Chile, according to Swansea Docks.
All 42 crewmen were brought safely ashore by a rescue team in an operation lasting three hours during which time hundreds of workmen raced to the beach to give assistance.
But there was more devastation wrought by the two wreckages. According to Port Talbot Historical Society four young boys had also fallen victim to the ships while examining them on the beach in 1932.
However it was only the most recent incident in summer 1959 that triggered action to clear the ships from Aberavon beach in 1961.
In a cruel twist of irony it was discovered during the removal operations that the SS Brodland had been constructed from materials manufactured at the nearby Port Talbot steel works.
Local resident and former Afan Lido worker Harry Worth, 73, remembers what happened after the initial removal operation, which proved only partially successful.
He said: “After the children drowned the local authority decided to blow them up – with limited success. They removed a lot of it but then in 1974 they reappeared – you could see skeletons of both ships.
“The local authority again did work to remove what they could [in 1976]. It was quite dangerous when they were just covered with water because children could run down the beach not seeing them. We haven’t seen them reappear on the beach since then though.”
Though the remains of the two ships can no longer be seen at Aberavon beach their legacy remains in the physical form of the RNLI lifeboat station on the seafront, which was established in the years that followed the 1959 disaster.
There you can also see a massive anchor which belonged to the SS Brodland. It serves as a reminder of those affected by the wreckages including the children who died as well as the crews on board the two ships.
Robbie Harris, 69, is the former RNLI secretary at the Aberavon station. He and Mr Worth both played a part in the effort to bring the anchor to the station in 2000 from council land where it had been sitting since its discovery in 1972.
Mr Harris said: “A group of local businessmen and local workers got together and decided a lifeboat was required on the beach due to it being busy.
“[Mr Worth] was a local authorities manager [in the 1990s] and he prompted me about the old Brodland anchor that had been recovered following the wreck.
“It was basically just in a council yard doing nothing so I spoke to a few local councillors and they decided to give us the anchor.
“I arranged with builders from Andrew Scott, who were very helpful with the lifeboat station for a number of years, to pick the anchor up from the council yard – it had been there for 40 years.
“We arranged with the builder of the station to put two plinths down and the council kindly donated it to the station and it’s there now with a little plaque made by apprentices in the steelworks.”
The plaque reads: “Plaque commemorates saving of 33 lives from the SS Brodland, wrecked on Aberavon sands on January 20, 1913. The anchor from this vessel was kindly donated by Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council.”