Ship Wrecks and Pirate Gold

Throughout the centuries sailors, smugglers and pirates have had to negotiate the
treacherous waters that lead into the River Loughor. The river’s current, changing
tides and the shifting concealed sandbars all conspire to draw the travellers onto
hidden rocks to be dashed to pieces by the power of the waves. 

Over the years these conditions have caught out many ships, and many of them
are still beneath the sea waiting to be found, as may be the cargo they carried.

On the 26^th of December 1557 a French vessel which was stranded on Oxwich.
She was to a northern French port but driven too far north by vicious south-westerly
winds and entered the Bristol Channel. These winds and a lack of knowledge of the
dangerous tides in the estuary drove her ashore. Her cargo of figs, raisins, almonds
and wool was seized by the people of Oxwich under the guidance of  a priest and the
Mansels of Oxwich castle who were lords of the manor. A vessel was wrecked on
Rhossili beach sometime in the 1600s from which silver coins were recovered as late
1834. It has been known ever since as the Dollar Wreck as some of the coins were
dollars of Phillip IV of Spain minted at Potosi, Peru. However such coins were in
general circulation in Britain at the time so it may not have been a Spanish ship. 

The remarkable discovery of golden coins was made in 1770 probably has something to
do with the above wreck. John Richards and his wife Honora had been fishing when they
saw something gold amongst the rocks near to Blue Pool. They found a large number of
coins and over the years more have been discovered, by divers, walkers and even by people
using dynamite to excavate the cliffs. On 15 February 1730 the Shepton Mallet, of Bristol,
homeward bound from Barbados with a cargo of sugar, cotton and elephant tusks was
wrecked at the foot of Pilton cliffs near Worms Head. Her master and five crew survived.
That she carried cargo from America and Africa indicates that she was involved in the
"Triangular Trade" - trade goods to West Africa, slaves to the Americas and sugar and
cotton to Britain.

The worst ship wreck along this coast was in 1868 when 19 vessels left Llanelli harbour.
There was very little wind, and along with the help of the ebbing tide tugboats pulled the larger
ships through the upper estuary. But they took too long. The wind died completely, and the
tied turned, the waves grew extraordinarily quickly. The ships that had not travelled past the
headland, only three had, were trapped. Some tried to drop anchor, but the anchors were torn
loose by the waves. The ships drifted uncontrollably, smashing into each other, sandbars and
rocks. Some ships sank in the middle of the estuary; some were dashed against the beach at
Whitford Sands and Broughton Bay.

The disaster happened late on a Sunday evening, the beaches were empty and most of the
local visitors in church and no one was aware of the terrible wrecks occurring until a boy at the
church screamed in terror and pointed at a church window. When asked what he had seen he
described a ghost of a drowned man, 'without a hat’, hearing the description the church-goers
went outside from where they could see the entire stretch of coastline littered with ‘seamen’s
clothes, torn sails, shattered hulls, ropes, broken spars, carpenter’s tools and vast quantities
of coal’. The bodies of the sailors, over 30 died that day, were interred at Llanmadoc Church.

There are many caves amongst this stretch of beach, and some are known to have been used
by smugglers. During the 1800s the usual cargo to smuggle was brandy. The reason for this
was the tax that the exporters had to pay to bring cargo into Britain, if they could get the brandy
into the country without having to pay the dues at the harbour then they could avoid paying tax
on their goods. 

''Few places on the British coast did not claim to be the haunts of wreckers or mooncussers.
The thievery was boasted about and romanticized until it seemed a kind of heroism. It did not
have any taint of criminality and the whole of the south coast had pockets vying with one another
over whose smugglers were the darkest or most daring.’'

The Gower peninsula is conveniently close to the huge market place of Swansea, yet is amply
supplied with secluded bays and sandy inlets where it was a simple matter to bring contraband
ashore unobserved. Swansea coal ships found it convenient in the late 18th century to be
'blown off course' to Ireland, where they could load up with salt and soap. On the return trip,
Gower made a handy stopping-off point. Those that exported coal to the continent did not return
empty, either. 

The chief preventive station was Swansea, but the authorities were hampered by lack of facilities
and money (as elsewhere in the country) and there is the usual run of letters to the board of
customs in the vein of 'If only we had a boat/a new boat/another boat/a bigger boat/ we could do
more. In this instance, the grievance is probably legitimate, and the ill-equipped preventives were
no match for the local free-traders, as this complaint in 1730 illustrates: 

'The smugglers are grown very insolent and obstruct our officers in the execution of their duty...
the master and mariners of the ship Galloway ...came up on deck with pistols and drawn
cutlasses and refused them to rummage'. 

Most of the smuggling on Gower took place along the south coast, but there is an occasional
reminder in the north. Brandy Cottage overlooking the west end of Landimore Marsh was built
at the end of the 18th century specifically for smuggling purpose. The cottage is still there today,
although it has been renovated and much rebuilt. However, the entrance to the huge cellars
rumoured to be underneath the cottage must have been well-hidden, for its location is now lost.