Curious farmer who helped to rescue shipwrecked crew of German steamship
WEDGED into an inlet on Anglesey’s iron coast is what remains of an ill-fated German steamship. When, 120 years ago, its shipwrecked crew scrambled ashore, the men feared they’d been stranded on a “desert island”.
The Hamburg-based Bothilde Russ was en route from Liverpool to Cardiff, to load coal, when it foundered in fierce south-westerly gales on the evening of Monday, January 26, 1903. Driven onto rocks at Aberffraw Point, just down the coast from St Cwyfan’s Church (the Church in the Sea), the crew anxiously waited out the storm.
At 1.30am, when the tide had receded sufficiently, 15 men clambered down a ladder, negotiated razer-sharp rocks and set about exploring this strange and foreign land. Seeing no lights, they called out in German in the darkness.
Cold and wet, with desperation setting in, the crew was spared further deprivations by the arrival of a local farmer carrying a lamp. For Mr RD Owen, of Penrhyn Isaf Farm, it must have been an unaccustomed sight: a bedraggled group suddenly appearing out of the night and babbling in a foreign tongue.
In fact, he’d seen a light off the coast earlier but, not knowing a ship was on the rocks, he’d sensibly retired for dinner with his wife. After talking the matter over with Mrs Owen, he had second thoughts and decided to take another look.
“To his amazement, he found that the light was stationary,” reported the Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald four days later. “He then knew the vessel was aground and immediately returned to the farm.”
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Saddling a horse, Mr Owen, made off at speed to Aberffraw Post Office, 1.5 miles away, to report what he’d seen.
There he roused Mr JH Thomas, the postmaster, to telegraph for help. When the Bangor post office didn’t reply, nor others, Mr Owen hurried back to Aberffraw Point and, en route, woke the local policeman, PC Roberts. Clutching a lamp, he then set out to investigate.
On finding the wandering group of German sailors, communication was tricky. A couple spoke halting English but, struggling to understand them, Mr Owen simply beckoned them to follow him.
Having survived the storm, the men got lucky a second time when being found by a farmer. Back at Penrhyn Isaf, Mrs Owen prepared a meal for 15. When they’d eaten, she found a bed for 11 of them and a change of clothes for the rest.
After seeing his visitors made comfortable, Mr Owen again saddled his horse and rode “post-haste” to Ty Croes railway station near Llanfaelog. Here, he persuaded the signalman to wire the Holyhead signal box for help.
“All the residents of the farm did their utmost to make the unfortunate mariners welcome,” reported the Herald. “The men were loud in their praises of the kind-heartedness of Mr and Mrs Owen and in fact of all the farmhands.”
Less fortunate were the ship’s captain and chief engineer, who had chosen to remain on board. While their crew slept with full stomachs in a warm Anglesey farmhouse, their misery was to last several more hours.
First to arrive on the scene, with their “life-saving apparatus”, was Rhosneigr coastguards.
As dawn broke, a lifeline was thrown to the Bothilde Russ and the two stranded men were hauled ashore through heavy surf.
During the day, the survivors were joined by the German vice-consul at Holyhead and the local secretary of the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society. Rumours swept the island and scores of local people hurried to the scene, only to find a nondescript steamer instead of the Atlantic liner they’d been promised.
Slightly reluctantly, one imagines, 13 of the crew were that evening transferred from the farm to Holyhead’s Sailors Home. The next day they were paid off and dispatched to Liverpool on the 2.50pm train.
The ring robbers of west Angleseyfor centuries Anglesey’s rocky western coast has snared the unwary and the unfortunate.
Another to founder there, on October 7, 1889, was the HMS Express, a Royal Navy Forester-class gunboat.
An unwieldy hybrid of timber and iron, only 12 Foresters were ever made and half were sold off within a few years of being built.
Most survived only as unglamorous coal hulks and base vessels.
Amongst the earliest to be launched, on July 16, 1874, was the Express. Built by William Doxford, Sunderland, she was a composite of steam and sail, carrying two boilers and a three-masted sailing rig. Planked with wood, the boat had an iron keel and frame.
Within a decade, steel began replacing iron and weaker-hulled boats like HMS Express quickly became obsolete. By September 1889, she had been sold to G Rodrigues of Liverpool.
Destined for relative obscurity, her eventual fate was sealed by a force 11 gale that hit the Irish Sea as she was being towed from Plymouth to Liverpool. Parting company with her tug, she hit rocks off Aberffraw.
Her four-man crew was rescued by the tug.
What happened next was reminiscent of the activities of the Crygill wreck looters who, in the late 18th century, operated along the coast near Rhosneigr. Notoriously, in order to steal her rings, one robber deliberately drowned a captain’s wife as she struggled to reach shore from her ailing vessel. Six men were later prosecuted and one, Sion Parry, was tried and hanged.
A century later, after the demise of HMS Express, William Jones of Aberffraw was found to have pilfered articles from the wreck. Among them was a ring belonging to the ship’s captain.
For some time there has been confusion over the identity of the Aberffraw wreck which, at first glance, appears almost like a giant-sized Meccano house claimed by the sea. It is that of the Bothilde Russ, not the Express.
What eventually happened to the Express is unclear. It seems likely she was recovered and sold for scrap.
On August 15, 1890, the Carnarvon [as the title was then spelled] and Denbigh Herald reported that an old gunboat had been beached by the Valley foundry on Stanley Embankment, Holyhead. “(It) is to be broken up for old iron,” said the paper.