Mumbles Lifeboat

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Kate Jones, The Mumbles, 2017

In his address to this year’s service of commemoration on the 70^th anniversary of the disaster Lord Williams of Oystermouth (former Archbishop of Canterbury) spoke of the extraordinary feats of courage performed by ordinary men. Seventy years ago, on 4 May 1947, the over-flowing congregation at the lifeboat memorial service in All Saints’ Church heard Archdeacon Harold Williams praise the gallantry and bravery of the eight lifeboatmen who gave their lives attempting to rescue the 39 men on board the wrecked merchant vessel, SS Samtampa. He continued: ‘As long as there is a Mumbles there will be a Mumbles lifeboat and Mumbles men will man her.’

The work must go on.

Within a few weeks of the disaster 30 men had volunteered for the lifeboat crew and chosen a new coxswain - William Garner, an experienced fisherman and lifeboatman. Jack Gammon (a cousin of the late Coxswain William John Gammon) was appointed mechanic. The station reopened in June with a relief lifeboat, Hearts of Oak, although the weather in Mumbles on the day of her arrival was so poor she had to spend her first night moored in Swansea docks!

A few weeks later, on 28 July, the new and long-awaited (delayed by the Second World War) lifeboat arrived. She was a twin-engine, Watson class built at Cowes, at a cost of £17,000. Being the thirtieth boat provided by the Manchester Branch of the RNLI the new boat had been named Manchester and Salford XXX. However, as a mark of respect for the coxswain and lost crew of Edward, Prince of Wales, the lifeboat was renamed William Gammon. Her first task after the naming ceremony was to lay a wreath on the sea off the rocks of Sker Point.

With the war over, crews (and the village) were once more alerted by the firing of maroons. One reminder of wartime, a former landing craft (a DUKW) used as a pleasure boat, overturned in rough seas off Langland Bay in May 1948. The William Gammon was launched but the DUKW’s two crew had managed to get ashore. The DUKW remained floating upside-down, her four wheels just visible above the choppy waters!

As well as an increasing number of leisure craft there was still plenty of commercial sea traffic up and down The Bristol Channel and in and out of Swansea Bay. There were call-outs to oil tankers, trawlers and to pleasure boats in difficulties. The William Gammon and crew took food to a merchant ship short of provisions off Mumbles Head, stood-by a broken down tug towing a dock gate from Barrow to Cardiff and brought back a body from the Scarweather lightship. A fishing boat (with a fouled propeller) skippered by Coxswain Garner’s son had to be towed 10 miles home to Swansea.

The post-war increase in civil aviation meant more call-outs to search for aircraft reported missing. Sometimes it was case of search and not find. Shortly after 9am on 26 August 1949 a receptionist at the Osborne Hotel overlooking Rotherslade Bay reported what was thought to be an aircraft down in the sea. There was a huge response and coastguards, police, ambulance and fire services assembled at Langland Bay and the lifeboat William Gammon launched to patrol the area. However, the crew only found some logs floating off Snaple Point! The next day, following an apparent sighting from a ship entering Swansea Docks of an airman’s body near Scarweather, the lifeboat searched in vain as far as Nash Point. In October, following the report of a plane crashing into the Bristol Channel, the William Gammon took part in an air-sea search, only to be recalled when it was discovered the plane had merely flown into a rain squall!

Coxswain William Garner retired in May 1955. He had successfully steered the lifeboat and crew through the post-1947 years. Several vessels and 13 lives had been saved; a further 16 had been assisted or brought ashore. The work of The Mumbles Lifeboat Station had gone on. It continues today. Mumbles has grown and developed a great deal since 1947, and so have her lifeboats. But the courage, dedication and commitment of The Mumbles Lifeboat men and women are unchanged.

Kate Jones, The Mumbles, 2017