Wales and the sea

A fascinating new book reminds us how vital the sea has been to the history of Wales over the past 10,000 years. Dr Sian Rees, former Cadw Inspector of Ancient Monuments and one of the editors of the new volume, gives us a flavour of its contents…

A sailor sets off in 1485 from the great port of Chester and navigates his wooden cargo vessel around Wales’s coast to access markets in Chepstow. He is only too well aware that this 1,400-mile-long coastline, forming three-quarters of Wales’s border, holds great dangers for him.

The swift currents of the Menai Strait, the sand bars off the coast near Harlech, the narrow, rocky channels around the Pembrokeshire islands and the shallow estuaries of the south all require skilful navigation as well as some luck; the ferocious winds of a sudden storm could spell disaster. Regardless of this, the sea was our sailor’s favoured mode of transport. Until the arrival of the railway, travel in Wales was a tortuous affair, with terrible roads, unreliable ferries and expensive animal-drawn carts.

Much of the coastline he sails by would be familiar to us today. He would see the same mountains, river mouths, inlets and promontories. He would recognise some of the same buildings — the huge Edwardian castles of Caernarfon, Conwy and Harlech and the Norman fortress of Chepstow would be recognisable landmarks. He doubtless would use prominent coastal towers such as the church on Puffin Island, off Anglesey, as useful navigational aids.

In many ways, however, his coastline is very different from that which we understand and see today. He would not have known, for example, that the sea around north Wales would have been much further out in the early prehistoric period and that early Stone Age people lived on land now submerged beneath the waves.

We only know this through modern-day research — through the work of archaeologists and divers examining wrecked vessels and undertaking geophysical surveys of the seabed prior to off-shore development. This research has revealed the evolution of the shifting coast and its use through time by prehistoric farmers and fishermen, Roman invaders, Viking warriors and medieval incomers and these are the stories related in Wales and the Sea.

Our sailor would be amazed, if he returned now, at the way the coastline has been transformed by the building of our towns and cities, road and rail networks, defensive forts, offshore windfarms and huge dredgers for aggregates extraction.

He would be surprised at our maritime leisure industry with its marinas and seaside resorts and appreciative of, but incredulous at, the training schools, lifeboats, lighthouses and coastguard stations that assist seamen today.

A late-medieval misericord (a small carved shelf in a choir stall) from St Davids Cathedral shows seasick passengers and depicts the cramped and miserable conditions on board medieval ships. © Crown Copyright: RCAHMW

An artist’s impression of Harlech Castle, Gwynedd. The castle’s water gate provided access to the sea-going ships and their supplies (by Alan Sorrell, 1957).

A painting of South Stack Rock, Holyhead, by J. Carmichael (1836). It shows the lighthouse completed in 1809 and the suspension bridge built in 1827 linking the rock with Anglesey. © National Museum Wales

In the 1850s, the French invasion of Italy prompted the building of a chain of artillery forts blocking the entrance to Milford Haven, including mid-channel Stack Rock. © Crown Copyright: RCAHMW

Below: A lithograph of 1830 shows Caernarfon’s Slate Quay. The young boy in the well-known sea song, Llongau Caernarfon (‘Ships of Caernarfon’) would have been standing on the quayside watching the ships loading slate and being pulled by tug around the castle to the open sea. © National Library of Wales

On the other hand, he would have expected to see many boat-building yards and small harbours, now disappeared but until quite recently dotted all around the coast and so essential for supplying small coastal settlements with their foodstuffs, building materials and markets.

The sea affected the lives of all classes. Most Welsh people — farmers and fishermen, merchants and boat builders — lived by the sea and the majority of early settlements were coastal. Medieval magnates built their castles on the coast so that they could be provisioned by ship. Edward I was so determined that his castle at Rhuddlan would never be besieged that he canalised the river to ensure ocean-going vessels could reach it.

The way we use the sea has changed so much in the last 100 years that we risk forgetting the exciting stories of our seafaring past. Troops were carried by sea to fight naval battles, such as the ferocious Battle of Menai Strait in 1098, right down to the last century when the seas around Wales saw massive action, heroism and tragedy in the two world wars. The defence of the realm from the sixteenth century onwards was dependent upon the forts and gun emplacements constructed around the coast, especially at Milford Haven, so inviting an entry point for potential invasion.

The industry for which Wales is famed was also largely coastal. The country would never have played such a crucial part in the Industrial Revolution if there had been no ports in south Wales at Cardiff, Newport and Swansea to export coal and iron, or at Caernarfon to carry slate to roof the world.

The fishing industry was of paramount importance from earliest times and boat building, from the great naval vessels built at Pembroke Dock to small fishing boats built in local yards, played its part in the story of our past.

Wales and the Sea is written by some of Wales’s foremost historians and archaeologists. The development of coastal resorts is told through the eyes of early tourists such as Sarah Wilmot, whose diary entry of 1795 shows her outrage at sea bathing at Tenby, which she saw as ‘a disgrace to common decency’.

The volume also illustrates the changing ways in which the sea is portrayed in art, from Turner’s scene of sunlit peace at the sea around Flint Castle, to the stormy waves of the Welsh coast painted by Kyffin Williams, or the painting by Lionel Walden depicting Cardiff Docks as a busy place of commerce.

Many Welsh folk songs and poems were inspired by the sea, such as the haunting Galarnad Cwch Enlli (‘Bardsey Boat Lament’) that describes the tragic sinking of the local boat with the loss of six lives. Also, the well-known Llongau Caernarfon (‘Ships of Caernarfon’) about the little boy desperate to become a sailor and join the slate-bearing ships leaving the quay at Caernarfon to deliver their cargoes to far-flung markets around the world.

Wales and the Sea delves into the lives of the sea-faring heroes and villains of our Welsh heritage. Heroes like James White, coxswain of the Goodwick lifeboat, honoured three times for his multiple rescues in the storms of 1875 and 1877. Or villains such as William Owen, a notorious eighteenthcentury smuggler who operated from Haverfordwest and was eventually executed in Carmarthen; and the legendary pirate ‘Black Bart’, responsible for capturing 400 ships in the Caribbean before being shot by the Royal Navy in 1722.

We are in danger of losing sight of so much of this fascinating story, so Wales and the Sea helps re-engage us with our heritage and reminds us of the vital role that the sea has played in the creation of Wales’s distinctive maritime history.

Top: A photograph of a shipbuilding scene at Porthmadog, Gwynedd, one of many yards that would have been dotted around the coast. © Gwynedd Archive Service Middle: A photograph, taken in about 1910, shows a busy beach scene at Aberystwyth with the pier in the background. © Crown Copyright: RCAHMW Bottom: The heroic rescue of fishermen by the lifeboat Sunlight No. 1 at Llandudno as reported by The Illustrated London News, 19 October 1889. © Crown Copyright: RCAHMW

Safety at sea

Concern for safety at sea grew throughout the nineteenth century. By 1845, the Board of Trade had introduced voluntary examinations for officers on ships sailing in foreign waters.

The Mercantile Marine Acts of 1850 and 1854 made them compulsory — firstly for foreign-going seamen and then for those in home waters. Consequently, nautical academies began to appear all around the coast of Wales, mainly in major ports, but also in smaller coastal towns.

These academies were not infrequently run by women. This was not unexpected as coastal businesses were often family affairs and women would travel with their husbands on local cargo ships. Navigational skills were, therefore, a useful requisite for all family members.

Two well-known tutors were Ellen Edwards (1810–89) who ran the academy in Caernarfon, and Sarah Jane Rees (1839–1916), whose academy was located in Llangrannog. Sarah was a formidable character who studied navigation in London. She obtained her master’s certificate which qualified her to command a ship anywhere in the world.

As well as running her own navigation school, Sarah was also a poet and active campaigner for the Temperance Union, a social movement that opposed the consumption of alcohol.

Sarah Jane Rees (top) and Ellen Edwards (bottom) were among many women running the nautical academies that sprang up along the Welsh coast to teach the syllabus introduced by the Mercantile Marine Act of 1850. © National Library of Wales

© Gwynedd Archive Service

Wales and the Sea is published by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and is available to Cadw members at the special price of £22.50 (RRP £24.99) with free delivery.

To order, please tel. 01970 621200 or order online using the enquiry form, addressing it to ‘book sales’ — rcahmw.gov.uk/about-us/contact-us

Use the Cadw app to find out more about Wales’s deadliest storm — the Great Storm of 1859. A Victorian news anchor will introduce ‘live’ reports from 13 different locations around the Welsh coast, straight to your mobile phone or tablet.

How to get the Great Storm on your phone or mobile device:

• Search for Cadw in the App Store (android or apple) • Download the App • Download the Storm Trail in the ‘Find a Digital Trail’ section.