Overtaken by the Tide - October 1886
by Kate Jones
Friday 15 October 1886, Mumbles Head: A violent gale blew up the Bristol Channel. The wind roared between the two islands of Mumbles Head. Huge waves crashed on the rocks, sweeping into the two sounds separating the islands; running in, falling back, then back in again. On the lighthouse island Keeper Abraham Ace watched a darkly-clad man picking his way across the sounds from the mainland. The main was his assistant, William Walkey, and the tide was coming in.
It was about three in the afternoon when William Walkey started his trek back from the mainland to the lighthouse. He had been to the village to collect provisions and post. His errands had taken a couple of hours and during that time the tide had turned. He stood at the edge of Middle Island, waiting for the sea to run out before he started to cross the outer sound. He was carrying a bundle or a basket and the sea was swirling around his knees. Walking between the mainland and the lighthouse was always risky when the tide was rising. The fierce gale had been blowing all day and was getting worse. In the Bristol Channel several ships came to grief. At Southend the lifeboat crew and helpers had struggled to launch the lifeboat Wolverhampton to a ship aground across the bay.
Half way across the outer sound with only five yards to go through the water to reach dry ground Walkey stumbled and fell. He picked himself up but the fall was to be fatal. The run of the tide returned, sea flooded across the sound from both sides of the island, no longer knee-high, but up to his waist. He was swept away into deeper water and disappeared from sight.
From the lighthouse island Abraham Ace tried to lower a boat, but in the hurricane-force winds and rough seas he could not get it off. Fifty-year old William Walkey, for three years an assistant lighthouse keeper at Mumbles, had almost certainly drowned.
The violent gale of 15 October 1886 up-rooted trees, ripped roofs off buildings and caused extensive flooding around Swansea Bay. Rivers, streams and over-burdened drainage systems could not cope with the deluge of rain. Sea flooded part of the Mumbles Road leaving behind stones and seaweed. In Swansea itself the incoming tide washed up the town’s streets, much to the consternation of residents.
In the Bristol Channel the equinoctial gale caused casualties to shipping and lives. The Malleny struck Tusker Rock with the loss of 20 and the Ben-y-Coe grounded on Nash Sands. The West Hartlepool steamship Agnes which had gone aground in fog the previous week on Whiteshell Point was smashed to pieces that were strewn across the beaches of Rotherslade and Langland. In Swansea Bay the gale caused the loss of another ship and two more lives.
The loss of the Ocean Beauty in Swansea Bay: The barque Ocean Beauty was owned and managed by the Richardson brothers of Swansea. Recently refitted and considered by Lloyds to be good for another dozen years, she had sailed from Swansea on Sunday 10 October with a cargo of coal and coke, bound for Valparaiso in Chile. Her Master, Captain Davies, had been with the vessel for some 18 months and he had a crew of 14. Bad weather was already affecting shipping in the Bristol Channel and, unable to make headway towards Lundy, Captain Davies was forced to turn back and seek shelter in the Mumbles Roads. He refused offers from the Swansea Harbour Trust pilot to return to port and the ship and crew spent the next few days exposed to deteriorating weather conditions.
‘In a perilous position’: On the morning of Friday 15th Ocean Beauty’s starboard anchor cable parted, and Captain Davies signalled for a tug, Challenger, to tow them to safety. But it was too late. Local newspapers reported that the Ocean Beauty was now in such ‘a perilous position’ she had ‘became so unmanageable that all efforts were of no avail’. The tug’s tow rope slipped and the barque grounded off Briton Ferry. Not for long - the rising tide took her off and drove her ashore at Aberavon. On that side of Swansea Bay the winds were gusting to hurricane-force and the deck of the Ocean Beauty was continually swept by huge waves. The crew scrambled up the rigging to which they clung for several hours, freezing cold and soaking wet, lashed by the winds. Below them their vessel began to break up.
‘A tremendous struggle’: The weather was so bad that no one either side of Swansea Bay was sure where the Ocean Beauty was. At Southend the call went up for the lifeboat to be launched. Coxswain Jenkin Jenkins, 12 crew and 12 helpers had ‘a tremendous struggle’ to launch the lifeboat Wolverhampton into rough seas and gale-force winds, eventually getting her off at 1.30 pm. Local newspapers reported that: ‘so terrific was the sea that nothing could be done’ and after four hours of searching the exhausted lifeboat crew returned to Mumbles having failed to find the barque.
‘The roughest sea in memory’: As darkness fell, the storm, instead of blowing itself out, ‘increased in fury’. There being no sign of Ocean Beauty’s crew having got ashore, the barque’s owners requested the lifeboat launch again. Some lifeboat men were reportedly reluctant to venture out a second time, but, after a short delay, Coxswain Jenkins did muster a full crew, no doubt helped by the promise of a tug to tow the Wolverhampton across the bay. An eye-witness described how the lifeboat and her towing-tug Digby Grand: ‘ran before the wind like racehorses’. Sometimes submerged, sometimes lifted almost onto the tug’s deck, the gallant lifeboat crew ‘experienced the roughest seas in memory’ before turning back – their dangerous mission again unsuccessful. Even if Ocean Beauty had been found help would have been impossible in the shallow seas off Aberavon.
‘A providential rescue’: Towards midnight the tide dropped, the storm eased and the crew of Ocean Beauty were able to come down from the rigging. One man found an empty oil can, corked it tightly, fastened it to a line and let it drift. Miraculously it reached the shore, was picked up by those waiting there and made fast. One by one the crew, holding tightly to the line, waded 100 yards through rough sea to safety. By the early hours of Saturday morning they were in Port Talbot, but not the pilot – he had been swept away at the height of the storm.
Aftermath: The Ocean Beauty was a total wreck and soon filled with sand. She had not been insured and her loss was a heavy one for Jeremiah and George Richardson. Captain Davies, the ship’s master, had managed to get ashore, but he died two weeks later. On 12 November five men and one woman from Port Talbot were found guilty of ‘pillaging’ items washed ashore from the wrecked vessel. These included a sextant box, a chronometer, clothes boxes, two lamps, buckets and a rope mat. Each was fined 7s 9d plus costs of 12s 3d, or 14 days hard labour if they failed to pay.
‘Overtaken by the tide’: The body of Master Mariner Daniel Wilson, aged 44, Swansea Harbour Trust pilot on board Ocean Beauty, was formally identified by his brother Nathaniel. At the inquest at Aberavon police station the jury returned a verdict of accidental drowning ‘by being washed into the sea’.
The body of William Walkey, aged 50, assistant lighthouse keeper at Mumbles was ‘cast up by the sea’ on 15 November and found on the beach at Caswell Bay by William Gammon of Newton. The inquest was held at the Caswell Bay Hotel before Mr Edward Strick, Coroner. The deceased was formally identified by his younger brother, Henry, by means of his hair and his clothes, and in particular his waistcoat with Swansea Harbour Trust buttons.
Evidence was given by Abraham Ace who said the wind was blowing like a hurricane that afternoon. He had been watching from the lighthouse island when William Walkey made his way across the sound. He said there had been ‘no chance of the deceased being saved after he was first taken away’. The inquest jury decided that the assistant lighthouse keeper had accidentally stumbled and fallen,’ in consequence of which he been overtaken by the tide and almost immediately drowned and carried out to sea’. He was buried in Oystermouth Cemetery. [There is no headstone]
William Walkey was a Cornishman who settled in Swansea. In the town’s 1861 census he gave his occupation as cooper. When his daughter was baptised at St Mary’s Swansea in June 1870 he was entered in the parish register as a mariner. In 1871 and 1881 censuses he described himself as a dockman and dock labourer (this might have involved cooperage). Employment with Swansea Harbour Trust as assistant lighthouse keeper with accommodation for himself and his family on the island was around 1883. The Western Mail reported he was a relation of the Ace family. [So far this has not been confirmed.]
William Walkey was survived by his widow, Olivia, and five of their six grown-up children. Daniel Wilson left a widow, Jane, and four young children. The dangers faced by men working on, or by, the sea is highlighted in the early Victorian census returns for coastal communities by the numbers of widows they left behind – many more than the average number of widows in inland areas.
Postscript: After her husband’s death Olivia Walkey returned to Swansea to live with one of her sons. She died (of heart disease) just over a year later, in November 1887 and was buried with William in Oystermouth Cemetery.
Kate Jones, September 2019
Illustrations: photographs of Mumbles Lighthouse Island and Caswell Bay, c. 1885, by Harvey Barton, OHA Archive; drawing of Coxswain Jenkin Jenkins, 1890, from a photograph by Henry Chapman; extract from the Western Mail, 16 October 1886.
Sources: Ancestry.co.uk; .Western Mail, South Wales Daily Post, Cardiff Times and Cambrian newspapers; Coroner’s Report into the death of William Walkey, 16 November 1886, West Glamorgan Archive; Lifeboat Log Book, 1886, RNLI; The Butcher, the Baker and the Candlestick Maker: The story of Britain through its census since 1801 by Roger Hutchinson.
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