This poem commemorates a disaster at sea 90 years ago today, in which 3 young men lost their lives. 2 of them were brothers, Freddy and Barney Stevens. My great-uncles.
It is Wednesday 12 September 1934, 3.19pm. The St Ives fishing boat Amelia SS93 has just cut one of her engines after entering a thick bank of fog. Her position is on the edge of the inshore limit at N50° 20’ latitude W5° 47’ longitude, about 9 miles north by northwest of Pendeen. The engine cuts and a dense silence envelops the boat. Then without warning the steel bows of a French coal ship come out of the fog and smash into the side of the small wooden fishing vessel.
The boat is immediately shattered and pushed under water. Freddy Stevens is trapped in the engine room. In the wheelhouse, his brother, skipper Bill Stevens is also trapped as the sliding door jams in the impact. While sinking deep under the water, he manages to break a small window and escape. As he desperately kicks his way upwards, he suddenly sees a line of rope in the water. He goes to grab it, but a voice tells him to leave it alone. A second later the heavy brass log towed behind the French ship comes spinning past. It is the narrowest of escapes.
He surfaces and finds that his younger brother, Barney Stevens (29), is already there along with crewman, John Tanner. Another crewman, James Penberthy, is missing. Barney is having trouble staying afloat. In terror he calls out and John tells him to call on the name of the Lord. He does and sinks for the last time.
John Tanner and Bill Stevens will be picked up by the ship that hit them, Mousse le Moyec, a 2000-ton collier from Brittany bound for Barry, South Wales. They were saved by clinging to a large piece of timber they had found floating at sea and picked up.
As well as the story of the men, women and families impacted by this event, it is also a story of 3 boats. Built within 3 years of each other, two were named after children who had died young, the third after a mother and a sister. Amelia.
The first boat to be built was Our Lizzie in Porthleven, Cornwall. Then, the Amelia was built by Tommy Thomas in St Ives Cornwall in 1920/21 in the boatshed where The Hub restaurant/bar is today. At 46 feet and with a tonnage of 47.9, she was the largest boat to be built in the town, but was tiny compared with the Mousse le Moyec, built in Brittany by Arsenal Lorient in 1922. At over 2000 tons and 267 feet in length the collier was capable of 11 knots empty, as she was when she turned east to head for Barry just inside British coastal waters. The Amelia would be blown apart when this steel-hulled ship hit her.
Our Lizzie was a fishing boat skippered by James Penberthy. His boat was named for an only child who had died. James sold Our Lizzie on 16 May 1934, and he went to work aboard the Amelia skippered by Bill Stevens. The Amelia was named after the three Stevens brothers’ mother and sister. This was the boat on which he was to drown four months later. Mousse Le Moyec was named after a 14-year-old Breton boy, Maurice Le Moyec, killed when his fishing boat was shelled by a German U-Boat on 29 March 1917. Mousse was a French nautical term for ‘ship’s boy’.
My part in this story is being told many times by my grandfather that he lost 2 of his brothers when ‘the Amelia was run down by a steamship in the fog. My brother Barney was younger than I and my brother Freddy was older than I’. Always the same phrasing. I was young and I didn’t really listen properly to what he was telling me. Recently, although my grandfather died many years ago, I have felt compelled to understand this terrible event .
This poem describes the collision at sea and tries to imagine it from the point of view of Barney, the young man who called on the name of the Lord.
The Name
He was for’ard when the steamer struck
midships aft of the capstan out of fog
so thick that when they cut the engine first
it closed them round about with peace so dense
the instant later blew apart and there
was nowhere he could go but overboard.
At once the heavy leather seaboots filled
the densely knitted stockings kept them on.
In shock he surfaced and cried out, cut off
from brother and the one who called to him
to call upon the name he sometimes took in vain.
He called and sank, did not come up again.
And there began the struggle with the deep
the taste of salt and water mixed with weeds
that wrapped about his head. He called again.
And then he saw it rising from below
in shape and form of timber he himself
had stowed so tight against the side
his hands still felt the knots that he had tied.
Yet there it was a spiral shining light
so certain in its flight towards two men
who kicked against the weight of water
in their clothes, and as it rose it passed so close
he could have just reached out and took it
like a hand and then returned aloft.
But he no longer had a need for things
like other men, no envy left for life.
Far above he saw a spinning log line
slacken, saw the whiteness of a turning wake
or thought he did, and in that instant knew
how often he’d been wrong. But that was long ago
and now the crew were waiting down below,
five fresh loaves of bread with mackerel boiling
on the stove, and some strange boy whose name
he could not quite pronounce with wounds now healed
was pouring tea. And that was all he knew
and all he needed then to know.