COALS FROM THE SEA

It would seem that the intrepid divers who in 1966 visited the wreck of the S.S. Bretagne also known as the Teignmouth Coal Boat were not the first to take an interest in her. On the 11th June 1921 this all too brief paragraph, under the headings: LYMPSTONE / COAL FROM THE SEA, appeared in the Exmouth Journal:

A few of the fishermen have had some remarkably good luck in ‘discovering’ or rather removing coal from the sea. A good many people will remember a vessel being mined off Teignmouth during the war. The cargo consisted of a large quantity of coal and other things. By inventions of their own some of the men have been able to recover a good quantity which they have generously shared with others not so fortunate.

This report raises many questions. It would seem clear that the Lympstone men were removing coal from the Bretagne. There was, as far as I know no other coal boat sunk off Teignmouth between 1914 and 1918. If so they had been plundering a wreck six miles offshore but how did they do it? At high water her deck is some eighteen metres below the surface and the cargo is even now said to be shut up in the holds of the vessel. What were the ‘inventions of their own’? Were they the only fishermen taking coal from the Bretagne? Was 1921 the only year coal was taken from her?

I have no answers. It is fun though to think of those little Lympstone fishing boats, laden with Welsh coal, chugging or sailing back into the Estuary. 1921 was a bad year in the village. The mussel industry had come to a standstill. The free fuel must have been very welcome. There was clearly enough of it to fill the fishermen’s own coal holes and those of their neighbours. I like to think that during the winter of 1921/1922 there were many fireside grins at the thought of the coal plundered from the sea.

THE TEIGNMOUTH COAL BOAT

It was the tenth of August 1918 and the sea was calm but the fog was pea soup. The S.S. Bretagne was creeping along past Hopes Nose. She was bound for Rouen carrying 2000 tons of Welsh coal. Suddenly from out of the fog came the bow of a French steamer which cut into the Bretagne and very soon she was foundering and the water was lapping over her deck. The noise of the collision had been heard by the crew of the Torbay Boom Defence Vessel which found the Bretagne and took off all hands except the Skipper, the First Mate and Dick Pym. Dick Pym from Torquay was a Navy gunner who was attached to the Bretagne. He, in 1972, was to be reunited with his twelve pounder gun after it was raised by the Bristol Aerospace Sub-Aqua Club who towed it to the door of his house. After fifty four years he is quoted as saying: "I never thought I'd see that bugger again."

The First Mate, Mr Watterson, was below when a wave slammed the door shut behind him. He was trapped and he sank with the ship. He was the only one to die. The Skipper and Dick Pym stepped onto a lifeboat just as the ship went down.

Very soon the name of the vessel was forgotten and the wreck was known locally as the Teignmouth Coal Boat. It was believed, there had after all been a war on, that she had met with a mine. The Navy removed the superstructure so that she would not be a hazard to shipping and for fifty odd years she was left in peace.

But not altogether! See this blog next Wednesday.