WRECKS CLAIMED LIVES OF CHILDREN
AUGUST 20, 1959, was a “scorching hot day” at Aberavon beach as hundreds gathered to enjoy the weather. But tragically not everyone 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 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. The tide was coming in and it came up to the two wrecks near the pier.
“I could see crowds gathering so my friend and I went over. Right in the middle of them were two children and our family doctor was actually working on one of them. The boy was blue.”
The two children turned out to be eight-year-old Keith Williams from
Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen and 10-year-old 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. “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, and that’s what unfortunately happened there.”
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”. Another story was written following the inquest. The coroner called for the fatal wrecks to be removed after a doctor, named 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 aboad the SS Ethelwalda met their fate while entering Port Talbot’s docks on October 30, 1911. A picture held by the National Museum of Wales shows 14 crew members who had made it safely