After the centenary of the 1916
New Year’s Day tragedy, when the Port Eynon lifeboat Janet capsized with the loss of three of her crew, later this month
a blue plaque at Mumbles pier will recall an earlier lifeboat tragedy. It will salute the courage of the two Ace
sisters, after the Mumbles lifeboat Wolverhampton had capsized. The action of the sisters has been
immortalised in the famous, though inaccurate, poem “The Women of Mumbles
Head”.
Dreadful storms battered the
coast on Saturday 27 January 1883, causing the shipwreck of the Agnes Jack at Port Eynon – which led to
the lifeboat station being established there the following year. On Mumbles Head the barque Admiral Prinz Adalbert of Danzig was
dragged ashore by the gales, causing the Mumbles lifeboat Wolverhampton
to be launched. But her anchor cable
parted and she capsized, before righting herself and capsizing again, throwing
all the crew overboard. Two of the crew,
John Thomas and William Rosser, clung to the lifeboat’s lifelines.
Miss Jessie Ace and Mrs Margaret
Wright were the daughters of Mumbles lighthouse keeper Abraham Ace, the third
generation so named. At that time the
lighthouse keeper, along with his deputy and their families, lived on the
lighthouse island, so being close at hand when needed. Seeing the plight of the lifeboatmen, the
young women went into the raging sea and dragged out William Rosser, assisted
by Gunner Hutchings from the lighthouse battery. That fortified position for heavy guns – one
of ‘Palmerston’s follies’ - had been erected in 1860 to combat a French
invasion, and was usually maintained by a sergeant and two Royal Artillery
gunners.
But four crewmen perished, of
whom three were related to coxswain Jenkin Jenkins – sons John and William, and
a son-in-law William McNamara: their gravestones stand by the west wall of All
Saints Church, Oystermouth. The body of
the fourth crewman William Rogers was never recovered. Inside the church a stained glass window and
a memorial tablet commemorate the disaster.
One surviving crewman, David John Morgan, was later to perish in the
1903 James Stevens disaster.
Clement Scott was a clerk in the
War office and a prolific writer of verses, many on the theme of
lifeboats. After reading accounts of the
1883 disaster he wrote the poem “The Women of Mumbles Head”, which became a
popular item to be memorised by schoolchildren for recitation. Unfortunately it suggests that by contrast
with the heroism of the sisters, soldiers at the battery on the lighthouse
island were less than brave in assisting men to safety.
Clement Scott’s information came
from newspaper accounts following an interview with Coxswain Jenkins the day
after the disaster, where he was reported as saying that the soldiers seemed
stupefied and afraid. The front page of
the illustrated weekly newspaper ‘The Graphic’ on 24 February contained a sensational
imagined depiction of the event. This
snowballed into the belief that the sisters acted heroically while the soldiers
were slow to assist.
But when Coxswain Jenkins was
interviewed it was soon after his own ordeal in surviving a tragedy that ended
the lives of three members of his family: whatever he may have said was uttered
before he had time to come to terms with what had occurred. After two bodies were recovered, lighthouse
keeper Abraham Ace told the inquest at the Mermaid Hotel that there was no
foundation for the report that suggested the soldiers behaved other than
bravely.
Though the action of the two women was not recognised
by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, both received gold brooches from
the Empress of Germany for looking after the crew of
the Admiral Prinz Adalbert, all of
whom had been able to clamber to safety onto the island. Jessie’s brooch is now the treasured
possession of her great-great-granddaughter in 
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