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Heysham sinking – was it a plot?
IN November last year we witnessed the dramatic sight of the 160-tonne dredger, Abigail H sunk in Heysham Harbour after it started taking on water.
Firefighters, the Coastguard Agency and officers from the Environment Agency were all called to the scene and managed to prevent 3,500 litres of diesel and engine oil spilling into the bay.
But it seems there is a history of dramatic sinkings within the harbour.
In 1931 the Duke of Lancaster, one of the fleet of regular steam passenger vessels sailing the Heysham to Belfast route at that time, succumbed to an unusual fire.
On November 27, 1931 the Duke of Lancaster was lying at her berth in Heysham Harbour when a fire started in a cabin on C Deck, just before midnight, when she was almost ready to sail.
The harbour and local fire brigades attended, quickly supplemented by Morecambe Fire Brigade and the tug Wyvern. Within a short time the LMS fire train from Harwich also arrived. By 3am the next morning she had a pronounced list to port, and the fire was out of control. It was not till 10am on Saturday that it was extinguished.
Later that day the vessel began to list to starboard, became jammed against the quay, and was resting on the bottom of the harbour.
It took two weeks to extricate her from the quayside. She was towed to Dumbarton for repairs and refit. It was not until June 1932 that she returned to service at Heysham.
In E.H.Cookridge's book Gehlen, 'Spy of the Century' it is stated that the fire on the Duke of Lancaster was started deliberately as part of a Communist plot against international shipping.
There had been many similar attacks on ships across Europe, particularly in Germany, France and elsewhere in Britain.
It is claimed that debris of time bombs was found in the wreckage, and it was investigated by MI6.
A search of files at the National Archive has revealed that a very thorough investigation was carried out immediately after the fire by the Board of Trade Mercantile Marine Department (National Archive Document reference MT15/649) which concluded that the fire was started by a discarded cigarette in a cabin occupied by an engineer who was supervising the installation of mechanical stokers for the boilers.
According to MI6 there was no evidence of sabotage!
This interesting local story and many others relating to shipwrecks, accidents and drownings in Morecambe Bay were the focus of an exhibition at Lancaster Maritime Museum in 2007 entitled Worse Things Happen At Sea.
The museum received a grant last year from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council to transform much of the research undertaken for the exhibition by the Friends of Lancaster Maritime Museum into a digital database.
Visitors will soon be able to browse information and items from the museum collection that relate to key incidents in Morecambe Bay over the last 350 years – from rumours of a plague ship at Pilling in the 17th Century and countless shipwrecks in stormy seas in the 18th and 19th Centuries to more recent tragedies such as the Morecambe cockle picking disaster of 2004.
We expect to install this new touch screen interactive into the museum in April and hope to add more information to it in the future.
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Weather for Lancaster
Friday 10 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -0 C to 4 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: South east
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Cloudy
Temperature: 1 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: South east
