Helvetia Ship Wreck - Rhossili Bay Silhouette @ Sunset
The Wreck of the Helvetia at Rhossili
Location: Rhossili Bay, The Gower Peninsula, Glamorgan, Wales, UK
Date of Photograph: pm 16 May 2012
On 1st November 1887, after a month of storms that occasioned many losses, the Norwegian oak-built barque “Helvetia” grounded upon the Helwick Bank near Mumbles off the coast of South Wales.
Registered at Horten, it was inbound to Swansea with five hundred tons of timber from Campbelton, New Brunswick.
The ship struggled free of the sandbank, only to round Worms Head and become embayed. The master dropped anchor and was taken ashore by the Coastguard. The crew stayed aboard to deter looters. Unfortunately, the wind changed direction dislodging the anchor and the ship drifted shoreward. The captain appeared and ordered the crew to abandon ship. The “Helvetia” drove ashore with no casualties.
The Helvetia’s cargo scattered across the sands of Rhossili Bay but much was recovered and auctioned, and some found its way into the floors and structures of Rhossili houses, where it remains to this day.
A local man purchased the hulk intending to recover its valuable copper sheathing that protected the hull from attack by shipworm, the Toredo mollusk. Misfortune again intervened, however, when the wreck settled into the sand so quickly that he was unable to salvage the metal.
A tragic sequel to the wrecking of the Helvetia was occasioned by attempts to salvage the anchor of its salvage vessel. On Sunday 18th March 1888 Captain John Hopkins of the Llanelli screw steamer “Cambria” was completing the timber salvage. Previously, his own vessel had been driven ashore beside the Helvetia, and one of the Cambria’s anchors was lost in shallow water during the Cambria’s refloating. Hopkins commissioned five stevedores to retrieve it by boat, and bring it to Kitchen Corner ( SS401876 ) where it would be buoyed, and finally recovered, with its chain, when conditions permitted.
The six men dragged the anchor and chain to Kitchen Corner and adjourned to “The Ship Inn” at the village above. Later that Sabbath, they rowed back to the buoy and hauled the chain into a coil in the bottom of the boat. The weight brought the boat so low that the sea was almost spilling over its gunwales. The men began to recover the actual anchor but Hopkins realised too late that the sudden Archimedean weight-gain as the mass of iron emerged would be enough to overset and sink their small vessel; chain, anchor and all. Hopkins ordered the anchor to be released. The anchor was now effectively weightless, and the sudden recoil of their boat was enough to swamp and sink it. All six men drowned.
