Lost Lives

Start Point Lighthouse

Start Point has been a constant hazard to ships, with its imposing presence jutting out to sea. Initial suggestions for a lighthouse here were made as early as 1542 but ruled out at the time due to fear it may help enemy ships navigate.

Despite these earlier dalliances the lighthouse was eventually built in 1836. It took 40 men over two years to build and is one of 29 built by James Walker. The lighthouse itself is of a specific style distinguished by its gothic style crenelated tower.

Originally, with use of an oil lamp the lighthouse could be seen up to 21 miles out to sea. Despite this considerable distance it was found to be inadequate in fog and an automated bell was installed in 1862. The bell was later replaced by a fog siren, housed in a circular building to the south of the lighthouse, however, the siren succumbed to coastal erosion and took a plunge down the cliff in 1989 when it was replaced by an electric signal.

The lighthouse was electrified in 1959, automated in 1992/3 and converted to an LED in 2018.

It is open to the public in the summer months where people can view the old lens. The original bell is now housed on the Plymouth Breakwater.

Shipwrecks

 Image 

If you look out past the lighthouse at the tip of Start Point, you should be able to see the churning waters of the tidal race caused by the sweeping tide out of Start Bay being squeezed between the Skerries bank and the Coastline. The rugged Devon coastline has been the end of many ships. In this area the most notable loss of life was on March 9th 1891, when a blizzard caused multiple ships to wreck resulting in 52 lives being lost.

On this day, the Steamer Marana Ran aground at full speed. 28 crew took to the lifeboats but only 5 made it ashore with a further 2 dying later of exposure. 12 hours afterwards a sailing ship the Dryad is pushed on to the shore with the loss of all crew, two other Schooners are also reported to have been lost in this same gale.

There is also a notable amount of war time losses in this area. The most relevant to our narrative is the Steamship Newholm which Struck a German mine on the 8th September 1917 around a mile off start point.

Ella Trout, a resident of Hallsands at the time, along with another fellow fisherman William Stone were able to save nine men from the vessel.

Cherry Trees

You may think these trees make a beautiful natural addition to the area.

However, like so much of the UK things you think of as natural are often part of the manufactured landscape. This cherry tree copse is believed to have been planted by the fisherman of the lost village of Hallsands as a source of firewood to smoke fish. The trees were first identified by a surveyor from the farm environmental plan in 2011. 

 CITiZAN Record 

Hallsands

The Village claimed by the sea!

Hallsands is a village that was lost to the sea in 1917. It now stands as testament to what happens when humans misunderstand and interfere with natural systems.

Start bay is a closed system. This means that natural sediment transportation in the bay is almost self-contained with sediment scoured from one area being accreted in another area of the bay. In practice this means if you remove a large amount of material, it has an automatic knock on effect particularly if you are removing the material during a natural scouring phase.

The prosperous fishing village of Hallsands was well established by 1891 with a population of 159 living in 37 houses and regularly frequenting the single pub “ The London Inn”. Like most of the villages dotted along this stretch of coast the main industries were fishing and crabbing. To fish, the village utilized a technique known as seine fishing where small boats carrying a net would be taken around a shoal or fish and then back to beach where the whole village would then help to draw the net in to the shore.

In 1842 a lucrative fishing haul of around 800,000 pilchards was reported by the Leicester Chronicle. At this time there was a beach at Hallsands with the highwater mark around 25-30m away from the ruins you can now see.

So how do you lose a beach?

In 1895 the Admiralty decided to dredge gravel from just off Hallsands to provide for the naval dockyard at Keyham near Plymouth. By 1897 the locals had already started to notice changes and voiced their protests. However, dredging continued with a £125 a year gratuity paid to the village. By November 1900 on a spring high tide, it was noted that the sea came to within 1m of the houses. In response, the dredging company commissioned the construction of a concrete footing to the sea wall and slipways to mitigate for the dramatic loss of beach, however the new walls continued to be undermined and it is believed the highwater mark had moved 30m inland.

Finally, by 1902 the dredging stoped, however, the damage has already been done. In 1903 following storms several houses and the London Inn Pub suffered damage and as a response further sea defences were installed in 1906.

 A modest estimate is that 300,000 m3 of material was dredged between 1897 and 1902, a more extreme estimate is 1.8million m3. This mass extraction of material coupled with  natural processes that were unknown at the time, resulted in the disappearance of the beach that had stretched out from the village and which had shifted  the high-water mark in land.

The End of Hallsands

In January 1917 huge storms were expected and the children of the village evacuated, the boats were battened down into the high street. The Residents prepared for some long nights…

27th January 1917

·        8pm spring tides brought huge waves which crashed into the houses at roof height and destroyed the buildings behind the sea walls.

·        By midnight, four houses were demolished, and none survived intact.

·        All 79 Villagers survived and managed to scramble to safety at the low tide during a lull in the storm.

28th January 1917

·        Villagers scrabble to salvage what they can

·        On this high tide, the rest of the village is destroyed

·        Only one house remained somewhat habitable which was owned by the Petty John family

This is sadly not the end of the story and a fight for compensation was long only to be partially resolved in 1920. The viewing platform was placed here in 2012 and as you can see the site continues to deteriorate with each tide. 

Ella Trout Hotel

The Trout’s Hotel, currently used as holiday lets is one of the legacies of the destruction of Hallsands and also linked to the wreck of the SS Newholm.

The Trout Sisters: Patience, Clara, Edith, and Ella (who helped save the crew of the Newholm) built this hotel on the cliff above the deserted ruins, using compensation from the destruction of their cottage at Hallsands combined with their own earnings. The hotel ran successfully until 1959. 

Hallsands Church

Little is known of the early history of Hallsands. The village formed around a cave known as Poke hole.

The chapel ruins you see here was one of the highest buildings in Hallsands. The village of Hallsands is thought to have developed around the 1600- 1700’s . Prior to the 1600’s Devon communities tended to build settlements away from the coast, so they weren’t visible to passing pirates & slavers. The earliest reference appears to be in 1611, where a tenement is referred to as ‘the great Sellar, Hallsande Chappell’.

The Barbary pirates also referred to as the Ottoman corsairs were a mixture of north African, English and Dutch privateers who raided and pillaged goods and people from the coastal towns of Devon, Dorset and Cornwall working largely out of the ports of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. They raided intensively from the mid-15th to the late 18th centuries capturing people from coastal villages and selling them into the Arab slave markets in North Africa.

Largely active within the Mediterranean the corsairs also raided all along the South Coasts of England and Ireland and even as far as Iceland. (Johnson, n.d.)

In Devon this leads to an interesting correlation were many of the coastal towns visible from the sea growing after this threat has passed in the early 17th century.

A shipwreck located by the South West Maritime archaeology group located nearby may be linked to this fascinating period in history although work is still ongoing. 

Hallsands Submerged Forest

Coastal erosion is often thought of as completely negative, however sometimes losses such as the village at Hallsands result in intriguing knock on discoveries like this submerged forest. The forest can be clearly seen as a layer of peat with larges amount if intertwined branches, roots and trees.

It has been observed in 1974, 1982, 1995 and by  CITiZAN  in 2019 and 2020 after severe storms had removed the shingle. It is believed that the forest is 3000 – 12000 years old. 

Beesands & Cricketers Inn

I mage 

The name Beesands is believed to derive from bay sands, it is a fishing village steeped in tradition.

The village’s biggest stage of expansion was between 1805 – 1841 when the village grows from 6 to 17 houses. Similarly, to Hallsands the main source of employment was fishing and crabbing all the way up to the 1970s when it succumbed to pressure form large fishing trawlers.

The villagers utilized a technique known as Seine Fishing where small boats carrying a net would be taken around a shoal or fish and then back to beach where the whole village would then help to draw the net in to the shore catching the fish.

Some of the original fishing families still live in the area and now operate out from Dartmouth, some of that catch ends up in the Cricketers Inn. The Cricketers Inn is a historic pub that opened its doors in 1867 and one of its claims to fame is that it was the site of the first public performance of Keith Richards and Mick jagger. The Richards family regularly spent their holidays in Beesands in the 1950’s.

Pilchard Sheds

In the Early 19th Century shoals of pilchards were a regular site off this stretch of coast. Fishing villages within this area utilized a technique known as Seine Fishing. Before all this however you first have to spot the Shoal enter the heur on the Hill !

This tradition is believed to date back to the 13th Century. Up on the cliff top high above the village would be the ‘Hill man’ or ‘Huer’ who when spotting a shoal would alert the village and a boat be launched with the ‘Seine Net’ aboard one edge of which would be attached to the shore and boat would trail the net around the fish shoal before coming back to shore for the net to be hauled in.

But once you have the catch you need to cure the catch, the building remains you can see are potentially the remains of pilchard curing sheds which were used to cure the catch. The process reportedly has an intense smell which make explain its location away from the main village.

 ( SDAonb ) 

Coastal Defences

Pillboxes or British hardened field defences of World War II (to give them there technical term) are believed to take their colloquial name ‘pillbox’ from the Pillar Box - red post boxes dotted around the UK.

The Defence of Britain Project estimated that some 28,000 pillboxes and other hardened field fortifications were constructed in the United Kingdom. It is believed that around 6,500 still survive.

The establishment of these defence was all part of the anti-invasion preparation in a military and civilian mobilisation to fortify the coast lines from 1940- 1941.

You may think that one pillbox is identical to another however, there are numerous types many of which have regional differences.

In May 1940, the directorate of Fortifications and Works (FW3) was set up at the War Office under the direction of Major-General G. B. O. Taylor. Its purpose was to provide a number of basic but effective pillbox designs that could be constructed by soldiers and local labour at appropriate defensive locations. In the following June and July, FW3 issued six basic designs for rifle and light machine gun, designated Type 22 to Type 27. A type 28 Was later added.

These local labours and soldiers put their own spin on the pillbox with many like this one being dressed in local stone to blend into its environment.

In this little cliff at the south end of Slapton beach, there are six sites which rise one above another and are connected via a now destroyed path that you can still see the trace of. Once over on the other side you will be able to look back and see another set of defences cut in the cliff face. 

Operation Tiger

In November 1943, the homes in the area were requisitioned and the local s given 6 weeks to back up and get out. Slapton sands was to be created into a training ground to be used by Force “U”, the American Soldiers tasked with the taking Utah Beach on D-Day.

In preparation for this daunting task, large-scale live fire rehearsals were planned to train troops prior to D-Day. One of these large-scale rehearsals was Operation Tiger which took place here from the 22nd April – 30th April 1944 and culminated with a simulated invasion of Slapton Sands.

Operation Tiger did not go to plan and it is reported that more troops were lost during these training exercises than were lost when taking Utah Beach on D-Day. Over 700 troops died during the training exercise largely as a result of a breakdown in communication following the battle of Lyme Bay and throughout the exercises and a friendly fire accident on the simulated invasion on Slapton beach itself.

The live fire rehearsals involved 30,000 troops that where to be carried around Lyme Bay via 9 American Landing ship tanks to simulate the channel crossing to arrive on the beaches at first light at 7:30 am. To harden troops to the sights and sounds of the invasion a naval bombardment was arranged to occur 50 minutes prior to the landings and over the heads of the troops during the exercise.

The training exercise was to be protected by;

·        2 Royal Navy Destroyers

·        3 motor torpedo boats

·        2 motor Gun boats

From the 22nd- 25th April 1944 the troops were marshalled and took part in embarkation drills.

On the 26th April the first wave of troops disembarked for the simulated crossing with an estimated arrival on the beaches at Slapton at 7:30am.

Several of the landing ships for that morning were delayed, and the officer in charge, American Admiral  Don P. Moon , decided to delay arrival for 60 minutes, until 08:30. Several of the Landing Craft did not receive word of the change and commenced their attack on the beach at the original 0730 time where they were faced with friendly fire form the planned naval bombardment. It was rumoured in the fleet that around 450 troops died in the incident.

On the 2nd Day of the practice assaults on the 28th April the convoy of 8 landing ship tanks were attacked by 9 German E-boats. German E- boats are fast moving torpedo armed boats capable of reaching up to 40 knots. The German E boats that left on patrol from Cherbourg spotted the convoy after slipping the allied patrol lines and attacked to devastating effect.

 LST-531  was the first to be attacked and sank within six minutes of being torpedoed with the loss of 424 Army and Navy personnel. LST_507 was next to be torpedoed with a loss of 202 US Army/US Navy personnel

Operating on different frequencies there was confusion during the attacks between the Royal Navy and the relatively new American crews of the Landing Ship Tanks. A further problem was that the troops embarked on the vessels had not been properly drilled on their standard issue life belts designed to keep you afloat while you awaited recovery but were found to instead flip you over in the water if worn around the waist.

Many servicemen drowned or died of  hypothermia  in the cold sea while waiting to be rescued the 248 bodies recovered 248 bodies that were recovered were sent to  Brookwood Cemetery  in Surrey.

As a result of official embarrassment and concerns over potential leaks just prior to the real invasion, all survivors were sworn to secrecy by their superiors. Many changes were made as a result of this tragic loss of life which ensured that the lessons were learnt for the successful landings on D-Day.