On This Day in Wembury – 15 November 1895
The Norwegian barque August Smith came to grief on the Church Ledge rocks in Wembury Bay during a violent south-west gale. In the thick weather her crew had mistaken the outline of the Mewstone for the distant Eddystone Lighthouse, a navigational error that proved fatal.
By mid-afternoon on Friday the vessel was seen drifting helplessly toward the shore in driving rain and heavy seas. Signals were sent from the Wembury coastguard, and the Plymouth lifeboat was taken under tow by the Government tug Ætna. In the darkness outside the breakwater, however, the lifeboat’s towing bollard gave way and the line parted. The two vessels lost sight of each other and returned separately, leaving the barque on her own.
From Plymouth, Staff-Captain Tomlin (the harbour-master) set out again in the Ætna with a picked crew, while Commander Gray rode on horseback through the storm to Wembury. At the same time a telegram was sent to Mount Batten ordering the rocket life-saving apparatus to be rushed by road to the scene. Early telegraph reports circulated nationwide that “a barque of unknown name” had struck at the west end of Wembury Bay and that her crew were “feared lost.”
In fact the outcome was far less grim. The eleven-man crew of the August Smith, having cut away the foremast to ease the strain and abandoned attempts to save their vessel, were able to climb down and walk ashore once the tide ebbed. Exhausted but alive, they were welcomed by the people of Wembury. The vicar, Rev. Burgess, and villagers gave them food and shelter in the Reading Room, where they spent the night before being taken onward.
The wreck itself lay in about six feet of water, pinned hard on the rocks, her timbers strained and her cargo lost to the sea. Salvage parties from Newton Ferrers and Noss Mayo arrived on the Saturday to recover what they could, but the August Smith was effectively a total loss.
The episode became part of Wembury’s long record of shipwrecks. It was remembered not just for the drama of the storm, but for the contrast between early national reports of disaster and the local reality — that all hands had survived thanks to the chance of the falling tide and the hospitality of the parish.
Sources: Western Daily Mercury, 18 Nov 1895; Fraserburgh Advertiser, 22 Nov 1895.
