Those who go down to the sea in ships
by Kate Jones
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The document. Amongst the holdings of the City and County of Swansea’s West Glamorgan Archives is a large document catalogued D/D PRO/BT 30. Dated 21 June 1911 and rolled up in protective paper are the plans and drawings for the ‘Proposed Mumbles Lifeboat Slipway and Approach Gangway’ drawn by ‘W.T. Douglass, Consulting Engineers, 15 Victoria Street, Westminster, London, S.W.’ The beautifully drawn plans are fascinating to look at. More importantly they are a crucial part of the history of The Mumbles Lifeboat.
The boathouses - of 1866 & 1884. On 20 March 1863 the Swansea Branch (it was renamed The Mumbles in 1904) of the RNLI was formed. At first a lifeboat was kept in Swansea’s South Dock whilst its boathouse was being built at Mumbles. Land below the cliffs at Southend was leased from the Duke of Beaufort and a tender of £174.10s.0d for the job was accepted from Benjamin Kendall of Kidwelly.
Construction was not without its problems. Kendall found he had to remove part of the cliff in order to build and charged the RNLI an additional £95. Work was completed by March 1865, but occupation was delayed by an unforeseen extension to the Mumbles Railway in front of the boathouse doors and construction of a slipway over the beach. The railway works were abandoned (although Mr Kendall charged for the delays they had caused him) and in September 1866 the brand new lifeboat Wolverhampton could use both boathouse and slipway.
In January 1883 the Wolverhampton was badly damaged whilst rescuing the crew of a German barque Admiral Prinz Adalbert wrecked on the rocks of the Mumbles Lighthouse Island. When a replacement lifeboat (also named Wolverhampton) arrived she was too long for the boathouse. So Mr Kendall’s building was demolished and a larger boathouse erected on the site in 1883-4. [See photo]
The difficulties - launching at low tide. Although the slipway across the beach was lengthened in 1888, lifeboat launching at very low tide could be very difficult. The beach was muddy and littered with rocks and boulders, some of them a residue from the village limestone quarrying industry. Late one Saturday afternoon in January 1890 a barque Ashlowe lost her anchors and made frantic distress signals as she was blown across Swansea Bay in gale-force winds. The lifeboat was launched immediately, Coxswain Jenkins anxious to reach the stricken vessel before dark. But it was low tide and the lifeboat’s carriage became completely wedged in rocks and could not be moved. It was only with a lot of additional help from watchers on the shore and an incoming tide that the Wolverhampton was freed. The lifeboat crew were able to reach the Ashlowe just before she ran aground east of Swansea Pier and save the lives of 11 men. Others were not as fortunate. On 3 October 1895 a delay in launching caused in part by the lifeboat’s carriage wheels getting stuck on the beach meant that by the time the Wolverhampton rounded Mumbles Head the schooner Zoë of Waterford had gone down with all hands. The subsequent resignation of Coxswain John Williams was accepted.
Low tide launches could be costly in other ways as the RNLI found in July 1896 when they had to pay £3 compensation to William Burt and Thomas Hewitt for damage to their oyster perches at Southend.
After the Ashlowe incident, the Mumbles Observer called for the construction of a more sensible slipway: ‘so that the lifeboat might glide easily into the waters at any state of the tide.’ Something certainly needed to be done and the situation worsened in 1903 when once again the boathouse was found to be too small for the lifeboat.
The needs - for a First Class Station. In February 1903 the lifeboat James Stevens 12 capsized at the entrance to Port Talbot harbour, with the loss of six of her crew. The replacement lifeboat was too large for the boathouse and had to be kept afloat where she was reached by the crew via a boarding boat. An ex-lifeboat, Richard, was converted for this purpose and kept on the carriage in the boathouse. This increased launch times; the need for more efficient arrangements became pressing.
The boarding boat, Richard, in 1907 [Photo: M.A. Clare]
The local Lifeboat committee urged the RNLI to make Mumbles a ‘First Class Station’. The Mumbles was, they felt: ‘essentially one which should be First Class having regard to the services which the boat may be called upon to perform over a very extended coast, and the steady and continuous increase in the number of vessels trading to and from this and neighbouring ports.’ Such maritime traffic would certainly increase with the opening of the proposed Kings Dock in Swansea. It was imperative that The Mumbles be given facilities that enabled the lifeboat to launch quickly at all states of the tide.
Too big for the boathouse: A brand new lifeboat, Charlie Medland, arrived in the summer of 1905. She too had to be kept afloat and was frequently run into at her moorings near the pier by smaller craft. Coxswain William Davies reported to the lifeboat committee that launching the boarding boat to reach Charlie Medland could take at least one hour. He and the crew: ‘condemned the present arrangements’.
The suggestions: Years of frustrating discussion followed. Putting the lifeboat back in Swansea was emphatically dismissed by The Mumbles lifeboat committee! They and the coxswain also discounted a suggestion for a new concrete slipway further along the beach as being of no value. A proposal for a slipway to be attached to the south side of Mumbles Pier was eventually vetoed on safety grounds by both the RNLI and the Mumbles Railway and Pier Company. In 1909 everyone was infuriated when Oystermouth Council laid a sewage pipe across Southend beach – in the path of the boarding boat!
The solution: At last, in 1911, a satisfactory solution emerged. A new slipway would be built and attached by a 150 foot long gangway to the north side of Mumbles Pier. There would be enough depth to launch in all tides, and the gangway would be 6 feet above the highest spring tides so ensuring safe pedestrian access.
The new lifeboat slipway and pedestrian gangway, 1916 [Photo: RNLI]
‘The magnificent structure’: The massive sub-structure, boat platform, slipway and supports were an early example of using reinforced concrete in maritime structures. Work on the project commenced in 1912 with the pre-cast concrete supports made at a temporary casting yard built out over the sea wall so the finished product could be easily moved by sea to its destination. Despite delays caused, inevitably, by bad weather and heavy seas (a pile barge sank and a pontoon cast adrift) work was well under way by the spring of 1913. There were difficulties in finding good and solid foundations for the 4½ ton, 53-foot high gangway piles, but now several of these were in place and the slipway was under construction. Further delays arose with the outbreak of war in August 1914; labour and materials were in short supply. But the end was in sight.
‘A sight never to be forgotten’. On the morning of 7 January 1916, Charlie Medland was taken from her moorings and hauled up the new slipway by the winch. That afternoon an excited crowd watched the lifeboat crew cross the gangway from the pier to board the lifeboat. Ropes were loosened and the 13-ton Charlie Medland glided down the 1-in-5 gradient in 6 seconds - plunging into the sea with a massive wave and a cloud of spray. The lifeboat righted herself and those on shore could see Coxswain Davies and his crew waving, signalling that the trial launch was a perfect success! The reporter for the Herald of Wales described the launch: ‘It was a sight never to be forgotten,’ adding that ‘the slip is a magnificent structure.’
The Charlie Medland on the new slipway, 1916 [Photo: RNLI]
Until the boathouse was added in 1922 a rail was erected around the platform and the lifeboat kept beneath a tarpaulin. The new slipway saved at least half an hour in launch time. On 4 October 1916 the Charlie Medland made her first service launch down the magnificent structure answering a distress signal from a schooner dragging her anchors near Scarweather Sands in the Bristol Channel.
The engineer: William Tregarthen Douglass was born in Solva, Pembrokeshire in 1857. Educated at Dulwich College and Kings College, London, William was articled to his father, James Douglass, who was for many years Engineer-in-Chief to Trinity House. In his 20s he worked on the rebuilding of Eddystone Lighthouse and strengthening the Bishop Rock lighthouse, Scilly Isles (where he was resident engineer). His obituaries describe a life of ‘devoted attention’ to lighthouses (he was responsible for the construction of thirty-eight), marine illumination and sea-defence works. He was consulting engineer to the governments of Western Australia, New South Wales and Victoria and also to the RNLI - hence his plans for The Mumbles Lifeboat slipway and gangway.
The legacy. Tragically, William Tregarthen Douglass never saw our completed slipway. On 10 August 1913, as the 53-foot piles were being positioned off Southend, the boat he was sailing in with his son capsized off Start Point near Dartmouth and he was drowned. He was only 56, but his legacy to The Mumbles Lifeboat was to remain in use for nearly 100 years.
© Kate Jones, 2019
Sources: The Mumbles Lifeboat Committee Minutes (West Glamorgan Archives); Grace’s Guide, British Industrial History (accessed 3 April 2019); The Herald of Wales, 1916; The Mumbles Observer, 1890; RNLI Log Books for The Mumbles Lifeboat. Photographs courtesy of RNLI, family of M.A. Clare and the author.
Very high tide, 3 October 2015 [Photo: Kate Jones]
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