Lifeboats - Mumbles Lifeboat

Mumbles Lifeboat

Last Updated (Monday, 02 January 2012 19:12) Tuesday, 23 September 2008 18:59

Though the first moves to open a lifeboat station at Mumbles were made in 1832 it would be another thirty years before the station was established and operating effectively.

 

This advert, from The Cambrian  newspaper, details the meeting held at The Mermaid,  Mumbles in 1832. The committee included naval officers, merchant seamen and notables from the area. John H. Vivian was the copper works owner of Singleton and would become Swansea's M.P., Rev Samuel Davies (Vicar of Oystermouth - the parish in which Mumbles is situated), William Hammerton (non conformist minister), Colonel Dive (not Dives as shown - had been a Sea Fencibles officer and lived at Shortlands which still stands opposite the bowling green), Henry Bath (prominent ship owner), Silvanus Padley (had led five pilots in a rescue at Swansea earlier that year), Thomas Prance the chairman (a customs officer who many years earlier had lost both his arms when a French privateer attacked his ship), John Stephens (landlord of The Mermaid). J. Knight (oyster merchant) and George Phillips (owner of a number of oyster skiffs and landlord of the Ship and Castle public house - where the Conservative Club now stands).

 

Swansea Harbour Trust too had begun to think of obtaining a lifeboat and in the autumn of 1835 John H. Vivian asked the Lifeboat Institution to consider providing one. The Institution moved rapidly and a boat arrived in December 1835. Having a lifeboat was the first stage but appointing a crew and coxswain and setting up a shore organisation was quite another and the Harbour Trust had no experience. As a result the boat seems to have been unused in the five years it was at Mumbles. In 1841 it was moved to Swansea harbour but seems not to have been launched on service there either.

 

A new lifeboat was obtained in 1856 and kept in Mount Street, Swansea, next door to the offices of the Harbour Trust. The Lifeboat (journal of the RNLI) of July 1856 provides a description:    

 "Swansea, South Wales. -   A new life-boat on Mr Peake's design, 30 feet long, and rowing 10 oars, has been placed at Swansea by the Harbour Commissioners of that Port. She was built by Messrs. Forrestt, of Limehouse, under the superintendence of this Institution, and was sent to her station in March last. She combines all the latest improvements that have been made in the boats of the Institution. She will row fast in a sea-way; if filled by a sea, will clear herself of water in 20 seconds; she has great stability, requiring the weight of 24 men on one gunwhale, without any counteracting weight on the other side, to immerse it; and she would instantly self-right if upset. She is diagonally built, of well seasoned pine, which is the construction now adopted by the Insitiution.

A carriage on the suspension principle, after the design of the Inspector to the Institution, has been built for this boat by Messrs Ransomes and Sims, of Ipswich, at a cost of about £90; and a suitabe boathouse has been furnished by the Commissioners, who must, we presume, have expended not less that £350 in providing this perfect life-boat establishment."

 

In September 1859 this boat was moved to the newly opened South Dock but the following month failed to launch when a number of vessels were wrecked in the bay during a week of gales. The Harbour Trust decided to consult the RNLI. On 25 May 1860 the lifeboat made its only known service when it launched to the brig Success, of Sourth Shields, wrecked on Neath bar in a westerly gale. Her crew of eight were rescued and landed at Swansea.

 

The RNLI took over in March 1863 and decided to move the station back to Mumbles. A boathouse was built but a new problem then arose - the horse-drawn railway had been extended from Oystermouth to the Mumbles Head and the rails ran right in front of the boathouse doors. As a result no slipway could be built. The lifeboat Martha & Anne, provided by the RNLI, had to remain in Swansea and performed its first service from there on 3 December 1863 when the eighteen crew and passengers were rescued from the barque Duke of Northumberland which had driven ashore on a slag bank to the east of the fairway when inbound from Cuba with a cargo of copper ore.

 

The lifeboat was still in Swansea a year later. A heavy SW gale struck on 15 January 1865 driving vessels ashore near the Mile End Inn on Crumlin Burrows and at Aberavon. The lifeboat was got ready but not launched. The crews of the stranded vessels survived but the newspaper received many letters of protest at the inaction. One wrote: "In consequence of her being so much used of late her carriage wheels broke down outside the shed where she stuck; but of course it will be put in order by the time she is wanted to parade the town in summer, or for a quiet afternoon's fishing at Mumbles".

 

Then on 22 November 1865 another SW gale struck. Four large vessels parted their cables and went ashore -  two at Aberavon, one in the Neath estuary and the other at Singleton. The lifeboat was launched and towed out by the tug Tweed  but failed to make contact with any of the vessels. Fortunately no lives were lost, but the crew and committee were subject to a hail of criticism. One wag started the story that a large glass case was to be built in front of the townhall in which to stow away the lifeboat. The Cambrian commented "Not Swansea but the Mumbles should be the lifeboat's station, and not the pilots, but the coastguard or the hardy fishermen of that village should be her crew".