VII Stories of the Wrecks
Scillonians revel in a wreck, just as the soldier loves a battle and the fireman loves a fire. But theirs is a happier case than the soldier’s, for their duty calls them to save life instead of to destroy it.
I remember hearing of a girl near the Land’s End who had been describing a wreck and how she had taken the little babies from the arms of the rescuing seamen, and carried them up the shore, two at a time, to where they could be warmed and cared for. “A wreck is lovely,” said she; “I’d go miles to see one. Of course I’m very sorry for the poor people, but oh, I do love to be there when there’s a wreck!”
Here spake a true daughter of the sea, and the spirit that inspired her is the same that animates the brave fellows who man our life-boats. And it is the spirit of the Scillonians. The love of wrecks is in their island blood. Centuries of wrestling with the sea, and wresting from it the treasures it had stolen or was threatening to steal, have made this a part of their very nature. And how much better that it should be so; that the cry of “A wreck!” instead of inspiring them with horror and paralysing their efforts, should fill them with a kind of fearful joy, and nerve them to work wonders in saving life and property.
There is no need to say that to save human life is always their first consideration. If efforts in this direction are unsuccessful or only partially successful, a gloom falls over the islands, and the salvage-seeking loses much of its zest; but when all lives are saved the joy is unmixed, and no pity is wasted on the insurance companies, who are usually the chief sufferers.
There may or there may not be any truth in the stories that long years ago Scillonians used to show their love of wrecks by doing their best to cause them. Nowadays it is certainly true that they make every effort to prevent one when they get the chance. But it too often happens that the vessel is on the rocks before there is any consciousness of danger or signalling for help.
Now that the great sea-lights encircle the islands, and warn all vessels away from the danger-zone, it is seldom that any wrecks occur except during a continued fog. Fog was the cause of the great disaster in 1707, in which Sir Cloudesley Shovel lost his life, when four ships of the British fleet were wrecked on the western rocks. Fog, again, occasioned the loss of the “Schiller,” the German mail-steamer that struck on the Retarrier Ledges in 1875, and went down, with a death-roll of three hundred and ten. There are many who remember the terrible gloom that hung over the islands at that time, and the making of that sad array of nameless graves in the little burial-ground of Old Church.
And it was fog that caused the wreck of the “Minnehaha,” in April, 1910, when that great Atlantic liner, 600 feet long, and drawing six fathoms of water—the largest vessel that has ever been wrecked at Scilly—struck upon the Scilly rock. She was bound from New York to London, and for three days it had been quite impossible to take observations on account of fog. The look-out was searching eagerly for the “Bishop” light when suddenly rocks loomed up close to the vessel and the next moment she struck. The passengers, awakened by the shock, rushed on deck in great alarm, but being reassured by the captain, they went below again to dress. In a very short time boats arrived from Bryher, and the passengers, who were already in the ship’s boats, were safely piloted to that island, where they were treated with all possible kindness. Provisions ran short, but fresh supplies were fetched from the ship. So little inconvenience did the passengers suffer that some of them declared that the nicest way of arriving in England was to be wrecked! They could not speak highly enough of the way in which they were treated by every one—and of the care that was taken, not only of themselves but of their personal belongings, many of which had been left lying about in their cabins.
This was just the right kind of wreck, from the Scillonian point of view, for not a single life was lost, and there was a tremendous amount of salvage-work to be done in the weeks that followed. For further details I cannot do better than quote some letters I received from a friend who was there all the time.
“St. Mary’s, April 18th.
“The gun went last night or very early this morning. Of course I flew out of bed, and if it had not been for my landlady’s nerves I would have flown out of doors. The noise of the gun had hardly ceased to vibrate when men came out of the houses and began to run, and it has puzzled me ever since to know if the Scillonians sleep in their clothes, for they had them on, and how they got into them passes my comprehension.
“The life-boat I heard launched with a cheer about ten minutes after.
“It was a thick fog, and the boat, as you will see by the papers, is the ‘Minnehaha,’ with a crew of 100, 64 passengers, and 300 cattle. She struck on the Scilly Rock, near Bryher; and I believe everybody is safe on Bryher by now. They hope to float the vessel off at full tide. They have wired to Penzance for the ‘Lyonnesse’ to come and fetch the passengers, so I don’t think she will worry about such trifles as our mails to-day.
(Later the same day.)
“‘Wrecking’ is delightful work. I feel quite capable now of tying a lantern to a cow’s-horn. All morning I have been out in the damp fog, and all St. Mary’s also. The policeman had to shoo the children into the school.
“They are now landing the passengers’ luggage, and a cheer went down the quay on the arrival of a large teddy-bear. The purser of the vessel says they have been in fog three days. They struck just where the cocoanut vessel struck before.
“All the boats rushed across to the wreck this morning, but the captain stood with a pistol in his hand and dared the men to come on board. When the vessel is proclaimed hopeless there will be a rush—thousands of tons of cargo on board, and they are throwing heaps overboard to try and get her off, but the universal prayer is that they won’t, as it will be a harvest for Scilly. All the same, there is much sympathy with the captain.
(Later still.)
“The passengers have just arrived from Bryher, and considering they were wrecked whilst in their beds, they look intensely respectable. They were chaffing and joking as they came up from the quay. The crew also are here, and sleeping, I think, in the Town Hall. Everybody is half crazy with excitement. Tons of stuff are being thrown overboard, and grand pianos and motor-cars are floating in Hell Bay. (Nice for your sketch!)
“April 20th.
“Between one hundred and two hundred men have come over from the mainland to help with the salvage, and they are sleeping in the Town Hall, Church Hall, Rechabite Hall, etc. Most of the crew leave to-morrow; the passengers got off yesterday, and will have reached London last night.
“What with the custom-house officers, salvage men, and police it is very difficult to smuggle anything, and so far I have only managed a pencil, not from lack of zeal but from lack of opportunity. Motor-cars and grand pianos are towed in—in cases. I believe a grand piano loose is of a sulky nature when in the sea, and instead of allowing itself to be towed it does its best to settle down comfortably at the bottom, and takes the boat with it if the rope is not quickly cut—at least, that is one experience of which I was told. The boats arrive laden with everything under the sun—clocks, and food, and anti-pain tablets, squirts, dress-lengths, wheels, typewriters, sewing-machines, phonographs, boxes of jewellery, boxes of oranges, barrels of apples, pencils, meat-skewers, and lots of tobacco and cigarettes. The policeman is kept quite busy trying to puzzle out the contents of the different boxes. One lady has lost a £1,500 motor-car. They say the value of the cargo is greater than that of all Scilly and Penzance put together. It is all insured, but unfortunately the vessel is not.
“The cattle are on Samson. The poor dears had to leap off the wreck into the water—a height as great as from the top of the church tower. To-day one could see the vessel quite well from here; it was not so foggy. I am hoping to get out to her soon, but it would mean paying pounds at present, as the men are all so busy.
“I think most of the boys have been bad from smuggled cigarettes, and everybody is having a fine time.
“April 26th.
“I have just come in from the wreck; we went to Bryher this afternoon. The ‘Minnehaha’ is this side of the Scilly Rock, resting on a plateau of rock not far from Hell Bay. She does not look a bit as if she were wrecked. I believe they are putting bags of air under her in hopes of raising her to float her off on some high tide. The divers are at work, but many do not expect to get her off unless they cut her in halves. One diver landed on an old wreck—one that had struck on Scilly some time ago.
“There is indignation amongst the men, as they have only been offered £2 a head for the cattle they saved, and last time they had £5; and they say these are larger and were more difficult to save.
“Wrecking is still the only topic with everybody. The goods are now being taken out of the stores and shipped to London. There were twenty-six carts working on Saturday, and they stretched from the Post Office to the quay. Fifty tons of coffee was only one little item of salvage amongst many others.”
Later came the welcome news that the “Minnehaha” had been successfully floated off. The rock was cleverly blasted away from inside of her, and with the help of several tugs she got clear away. Finally, with the pumps going all the time, she was able to make the journey to Falmouth by her own steam-power.
Quite another kind of wreck was that of the “Thomas W. Lawson,” which occurred at Christmas-time in 1907, and made a great and painful sensation in the islands. She was a seven-masted sailing-vessel, one of the largest in the world. Her sails were named after the seven days of the week; they were worked by electricity, and could all be set in three minutes. Her anchor was also raised and lowered by electricity. She was bound for London from Boston, and carried a cargo of oil, many thousands of gallons of oil, in tanks.
There was a heavy gale blowing, and she signalled for a pilot to bring her into harbour. Pilot Hicks on St. Agnes was busy planting potatoes, but he threw down his spade at once, and went aboard of her. She was then out beyond Annet amongst the western rocks. A graphic description of what followed was given to us by an islander:—
“We stood at the door and watched her; we could see her lights still in the same place when we went to bed between ten and eleven o’clock, but in the morning she was gone. It is supposed she dragged her anchor in the night, or that the heavy seas broke both the anchor-chains. St. Mary’s life-boat had been out to her, but their mast was broken, so they went back to repair it. Otherwise they would have stayed by her all night, and would probably have sunk with her when she went down. It was agreed that a flare should be sent up from the vessel if help was wanted from St. Agnes during the night, but no signal came. The gale increased in fury, and the vessel went down, and the pilot and nearly all on board were drowned.
“When she was knocked to pieces on the rocks, the tanks of oil escaped from her hold and burst open. The oil floated upon the waves; we could see it washing up here on the shore. At first we could not think what it was—it made the water look black; but soon we learnt from the smell—in fact, we were almost driven away by the smell. They say if it had caught fire it would have cleared the islands, it would have been like a sea of fire, and the smoke would have suffocated all the islanders. As it was, many of the rabbits and birds on Annet were killed by the oil, and lay dead upon the shore.
“It was a horrible time. Everything seemed to reek of the oil. The very spray on the windows ran down in oily blue streaks for long after, and even now, when eighteen months have passed, we can still smell it at times.”
The pilot’s son went off in a boat with some hope of finding his father, and then swam through the boiling surf with a rope round him and succeeded in rescuing two men, the captain and the engineer. They had been washed all along the west coast of Annet to Hellweathers, where they were picked up. A third man was saved, but he lost his reason and died. All of them were simply saturated with the oil, besides being terribly beaten about, and with limbs broken.
The pilot’s son had two magnificent gold watches sent him from America—one from the President of the United States, and the other from the owners of the vessel; and he was also awarded a silver medal for his bravery.
Sometimes great risks are run in doing salvage work. In August, 1909, there was a thick sea-fog, which lasted from Friday night to Sunday morning, and stopped the “Lyonnesse” from sailing. A grain-boat lost her bearings and struck on Lethegus’ Ledge, off St. Agnes. The crew were all saved; but a man and a boy from Hugh Town who were at work on the cargo went down with the vessel when, without warning, she sank. If she had lasted a little longer, forty or fifty islanders would have been occupied in saving the bags of grain, and must infallibly have been drowned. This tragedy attached a sad import to the notice which was posted up on the warehouses for weeks afterwards—“Maize for sale.”