Shipwreck By Sunset

In September 1988 I went down to the Promenade at Anchorsholme and walked across the beach to the wreck of the Norwegian barque, The Abana.

The tide was just turning to come in but I had a good hour or so before I would have to move away from the incoming sea and during that hour the sun sank lower in the sky, creating one of those glorious Blackpool sunsets.

A barque was a three-masted sailing ship and the Abana had left Liverpool some three weeks earlier, sheltered from the weather in Ramsay Bay, Isle of Man and then resumed her voyage at Christmas 1894 after sailing from Liverpool. According to one newspaper report, she was bound for "Savello", but apart from a castle in central Italy - an unlikely destination for a ship - I'm not sure where that could be... Seville has been suggested and the Abana's Wikipedia entry lists the destination as Savannah, Georgia, USA.

In any event she was not destined to get there. The crew saw Blackpool Tower on the coast, but as this was then brand new and an unfamiliar sight, they mistook it for a lighthouse. Not that they could do much about it anyway for, with her sails torn to shreds, the Abana was tossed around the Irish sea until, after being spotted off the North Pier, she grounded off Anchorsholme. The alarm was raised by the landlord of the Cleveleys Hotel.

The weather was so bad that the lifeboat could not be launched at Blackpool, nor could horses pull it along the coastal road. They had to use the back streets which afforded some shelter and then launched the lifeboat, the Samuel Fletcher from Little Bispham. This then had to rowed out to the Abana by the 16-man crew, who rescued the entire 17 men onboard the barque and also the ship's dog.

They were all taken to Bispham's Red Lion Hotel to recover from the ordeal. The ship's bell was given to Robert Hindle, the landlord of the Cleveleys Hotel in gratitude for his having raised the alarm and the dog also stayed with that gentleman when the Captain of the Abana was recovered enough to go home.

The ship's bell was given to St Andrew's church in Cleveleys - where it can still be seen today.

Return to Blackpool Promenade and Beach Index Page

Leisure in Lanzarote

Thursday 10 April 2014. The last day of our cruise around the Canaries is a day on Lanzarote. We awake in the port of Arrecife and after breakfast we bounce down the gangway and onto a coach as we have an excursion booked.

This will be a morning tour and sets off with a trip to a shop... Just about every sort of souvenir you can think of and of course this includes fridge magnets. There's a free "glass of wine" that's a small plastic beaker with an eighth of an inch of liquid in it. At 9:30 in the morning it's still more wine than I want to drink...

The first real attraction is at the Mirador del Rio with a viewpoint that looks across the Straits of Rio to a small island, La Graciosa, on which an incident occurred that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's book Treasure Island.

The fall of the cliff face is spectacular, plunging down to the sea in a sweep of barren rock. The viewpoint itself is fairly spectacular as well, being burrowed into the cliff face.

Designed by the artist Cesar Manrique, it is a delight, with a whitewashed interior with almost no sharp edges anywhere and a feeling of light, space and peace about the place. No mean feat when several coach loads of eager tourists turn up at once...

Little artifact collections decorate the place. Stones, plants, earthenware pots. It's just a touch misty which makes the view across the straits a little subdued. Never mind, we're being herded back to the coach for the ride to our next stop.

This turns out to be an aloe vera plantation. That's not an aloe vera plant above, it's a cactus with a flower, the desert rose, about to blossom. This was one of those stops that seemed to be a half-desperate "please spend money here". There was an extremely boring talk about aloe vera. It may well be someone's idea of heaven to travel to far-flung places and learn about household products, but sadly it left me cold... Aloe vera is edible apparently and after using a huge knife to strip and divide small bars of the leaves for us to nibble on, the company owner and living partner of our coach guide passed them round. It was a bit like nibbling a small bar of hotel soap, though with a nastier aftertaste... and... spit!

Final stop is at Jameos del Agua, another natural feature enhanced by the skill and artistry of Cesar Manrique. In this case it's a tunnel formed by a lava flow that at this point blew out and formed a hole which we descend by way of steps.

We let the rest of the tour go ahead and stop for a drink in the bar. Before us is a short length of the lava tunnel which now holds a pond in which resides a species of small white blind crab, unique to this site. They like deeper water, so it's lucky the water in the pool is crystal clear. Even so, they are so far beneath the surface they could be white blobs of paint most of the time until all of a sudden you see through a relatively ripple-free bit of water and make out just for a second that they are actually crabs! Being blind, they don't wave back or react in anyway to the curious tourist. They just huddle together saying in crab talk, "I feel like I'm being watched..." "Watched? What's that?"

Drink finished, we make our way through the tunnel and come out to climb out the other side where we arrive in a landscaped garden complete with a blue pool. A choice of steps lead up from this second hole in the tunnel up to a terrace and shop.

Snatched from the coach window as we drove back into Arrecife, this is the wreck of the Telamon, which started life in the UK in 1954 as the Temple Hall and was wrecked here in 1981, proving to be beyond salvage.

Colourful Coasts Cruise Index

Old Blackpool Postcards

I was in town this morning as the ladies of the Little Egg Graft Company - Fran and daughter Gill - are doing a craft fair at the Winter Gardens.

I was drafted in to convey them and their goods to the Winter Gardens where they are sharing a stand with Jeannie who is selling her hand-made greetings cards. David and I went off to Quilligan's for some breakfast and then took back bacon and sausage barms for the ladies.

Then I mooched around the Dealers' Den stalls for a bit and found a few old postcards to share.

This one caught my eye first - Blackpool from an aeroplane. It shows the Tower with the Alhambra next door to the north and the Big Wheel at the Winter Gardens. The Big Wheel was demolished in 1928 but this is an earlier view - the card was posted in July 1922, postage costing one old penny.

The second shows the wrecked ship of the line HMS Foudroyant which was displayed off Blackpool's seafront as part of a fund-raising tour. Blackpool's weather did it no good at all. On 16 June 1897 a cable parted in hurricane strong winds and she dragged her remaining anchor, clipped the North Pier and beached herself to the north of the pier opposite Cocker Square.

She had acted as flagship to a number of admirals including Nelson, whose captain for a while was Thomas Hardy, destined to be Nelson's captain later on HMS Victory.

She remained on the beach for several months and was finally broken up at the end of 1897.

Regular readers will know I love these little fantasy "night" shots. Taken in broad daylight - as witness all the people on the beach - and darkened at the photographic printing stage with lights and windows painted in and a sky with a full moon - probably a coin placed on the photographic paper that became the master - added at the printing stage. For a while the Tower really did have a very strong searchlight which played over the sands and the Promenade, but the moon has never been seen so far north... Indeed the only message written on the postcard is "? moon in north"

The Ship Choppers

Remember the Riverdance ferry that was wrecked on Anchorsholme beach near Blackpool last January?

They were hoping for months to be able to refloat her whilst the residents of Blackpool shook their heads sadly and thought "No chance..." Well they have now come to the same conclusion and are in the process of cutting up the ship and taking it away bit by bit. We went down on Sunday morning to have a look and the stern of the ship has already disappeared. The first week of the operation saw the welding torches start a fire aboard the Riverdance - always a distinct risk of this type of operation.

So after six months it seems Anchorsholme is to lose the biggest tourist attraction since the Abana suffered the same fate in the late 19th century. At least there are a few spars of that wreck still left on the beach for people to see. Only a few hundred yards away in fact! Sad end to a ship.

Return to Blackpool Promenade and Beach Index Page

Today in Blackpool

"We're doing a charity walk", Fran said. "What???" "It's only a mile..." she added hastily. Ah, well that's not so bad perhaps!

Mind you, walking for a mile along the cliffs at Bispham, north Blackpool is akin to walking ten anywhere else. Utter the words, "We've had fifty miles per hour gales!" to anyone from Blackpool and they'll look at you in contempt and say "That's not a bloody gale!" So off we went to find all Fran's mates from work. They had either all sensibly stuck a wet finger in the air and decided to stay at home or Fran got the wrong message about meeting place, time or day.

"Let's just go for a walk on our own then," I suggested as the wind whipped tears out of my eyes to the extent they were dripping off my chin onto my coat. So we walked from Red Bank Road (where the illuminations finish at Bispham) down to the Gynn (the roundabout on the Promenade road) and back. This is about 2 and a half miles altogether perhaps, half of it done at the trot with the wind behind us and the return with us leaning forwards at an angle of 45 degrees, enjoying the sudden but thankfully brief downpour. All along the way there were little groups of men in high visibility jackets working on the tram tracks. Given that Easter is next weekend I can with confidence say there's no chance of seeing a tram in Blackpool unless you nip up to the tram shed. They do seem to be getting on with it though.

From the cliffs we also had a good view of the stricken ferry, Riverdance, that as every Blackpool resident predicted, has stubbornly refused every attempt to re-float her and has now rolled over to an angle of 110 degrees and is busily engaged in burying her head in the sand a few more inches every day. Several weeks of being battered by the hefty winter seas as the tide comes in twice a day have had their toll and the structure of the ship is starting to get damaged. So presumably now they will start to draw up plans for dismantling her and hope to keep any leakage of oils and fuels to a minimum. Not an easy task I should imagine. It will be easier though to keep contamination down whilst it is above the sand than it would be if it sank down much further! Every time the tide comes in it washes sand away from around the hull, letting the ship settle a bit more then filling the gaps back up with sand.

Talking of disasters... Down at Uncle Tom's Cabin the long disused boating pool which had had some recent use as a go-kart track now looks even more attractive. Yes, this'll bring the families back... You know, with all the hotels and the council bemoaning the fact that families don't come to Blackpool any more you only have to look around and wonder what they would find to do that doesn't cost money. Yes we have one of the best beaches in the country, but when I think of all the things I loved to do as a kid, once away from the beach, pushing my toy yacht around a boating pool came high on the list. All that new expanse of tarmac on the new Promenade - I'm sure they could have included a paddling pool and a model boating pond.

Return to Blackpool Promenade and Beach Index Page

A Good Night

Last night I was looking forward to an uncomplicated night and a meal of sausage egg and chips. I thought I might push the boat out and shake a dollop of brown fruity sauce onto the bangers but then when Fran got home from work she decided I was going to take her out for a meal instead.

"But there's nowhere I know of that does sausage egg and chips that'll be open at that time..." I said, plaintively.
"You'll have to take me for something else then, won't you?" was the response.

So we left the car wondering what it had done to offend us and walked - sorry let's give that some emphasis - walked to the local Beefeater which is called the Red Lion.

There is nothing remotely historic looking about the Red Lion, though regular readers may recall me mentioning it as being the place where the crew of the shipwrecked Abana were taken to after being rescued in 1894.

Anyway, these days they do less of the peering from the doorway with a burning lantern in case the lifeboat comes back their way and more of the relaxed dining with what we in Lancashire might call a gradely-slab-of-cow-on-a-plate.

We had fillet steak and a bottle of merlot to go with it. Then we happily set off to walk/sway home, whoops, it's over that-a-way, feeling full, a little tipsy, giddy and full of bonhomie! Grand as owt! The Red Lion is just past the Bispham roundabout on the road towards Cleveleys. I didn't take any photos so you get one of the aftermath...

What? A Week???

Ah yes... perhaps a little remiss of me, but it has been a busy week.

Since my last missive I've been to Glasgow, Lancaster, Newcastle and Edinburgh for work and there's not been a lot of time to devote to the blog! I've not taken the camera with me either on the trips I've been on.

Last weekend Fran and I drove up to Anchorsholme for a walk along the cliffs and a view of the Riverdance which is still there. As you can see from the photo it is now well and truly on its side and as fast as they empty the fuel out, it has to be filling up with seawater as the tide half submerges it twice a day. My guess is that if the March spring tides don't let the salvage people float her then she will end up being dismantled where she lies - or Cleveleys will have a new permanent tourist attraction.

The roads in and out of Cleveleys - which is the main Fleetwood peninsular road - has been horrendous at weekends with sightseers coming in to have a look.

In an non-customary fit of junk-throwing I unearthed a folder containing a load of old photography magazines from the early 1980s last weekend which have provided a few hours of fun reading through them again.

I used to buy Practical Photography every month, Amateur Photographer every week and Photography most months in the 70s and 80s. Practical Photography I see used to cost 80p in 1982... It brought a load of memories back, of sending off loads of photos and the joy of seeing one in print every now and then. Ex-PP editor Robert Scott also used a couple of photos in the Club Canon magazine and I came across a couple of photos of the gorgeous Collette Caton, a model who got noticed through Practical Photography's annual Photo Girl contest one year. I met her on the PP stand at a fair in Haydock and have a hideously underexposed slide somewhere that totally fails to do her justice!

Ah well, so now at least you know what I've been up to and now I've got to get ready for another trip. Shrewsbury, here I come!

The Two Shipwrecks of Anchorsholme

I've mentioned both of these before, but here's a photo of both of them! It's not one of mine this time, it was taken by my best mate, David Lancaster on Friday.

I've not found the time to get down again since the week after the Riverdance beached. The photo show the few remaining timbers of the Abana, wrecked in 1894 and just a little further north, the ferry, Riverdance, now listing heavily as work continues to empty out the fuel in the hopes of re-floating her later this week.

Return to Blackpool Promenade and Beach Index Page

Blackpool's Latest Wreck

Well, of course it's not the first. In fact I wrote of one not much more than half a mile away only a few days ago.

The Riverdance was hit by a freak wave in gales and was driven onto the shore off Anchorsholme during the night of 31 January 2008. Thousands of packets of McVitie's chocolate biscuits have washed ashore - presumably a little salty after floating ashore... I've not yet been able to ascertain what Burtons Biscuits factory in Blackpool have to say about that!

There's a fair bit of traffic around the area with people going to have a look. The ship is a ferry of the rear gate roll-on, roll-off type. The Promenade road is closed to traffic and pedestrians by the police at the moment. The road has been closed for a a bit as roadworks have been ongoing, but I think the police have closed it to pedestrians to try to prevent any repeat of the amateur salvage operations of the type seen in Cornwall a while ago. Certainly it's hard to understand what the risk might be that requires the area to be blocked off

Just how close to shore the ship is can be seen from this shot, taken from the garden in front of the flats along the seafront at that point. A good viewpoint is also to be gained from Anchorsholme Park. If anyone feels the urge to go for a shufty, I'd recommend parking a bit off and walking down either from Cleveleys main car parks or from the main road parking areas between the Esso garage and Cleveleys town centre. The roads between there and the seafront were choked when I went down and as the ship is likely to be there for a while you have plenty of time.

A high tide is going to be necessary to re-float her, even if they take off fuel to lighten her as I gather is the plan.

Return to Blackpool Promenade and Beach Index Page

The Christmas Wreck

It was Christmas 1894 that this tale has a beginning. One of the worst ever storms crossed the Irish Sea and a Norwegian barque got into trouble off North Wales, drifting with torn sails until it finally beached in the sand off Anchorsholme.

With huge waves crashing over, bringing down the main mast and with 17 men and a dog on board the ship sent up distress flares. Blackpool's lifeboat, Samuel Fletcher, was taken over land from the old lifeboat house on Lytham Road, behind the Manchester pub, to Little Bispham where it was launched with a crew of 16. Reaching the Abana was no easy business for a large boat under oars, trying to get close to a ship whose mast and rigging were hanging over the side. The lifeboat was large enough to take all of the Abana crew, who were taken to the Red Lion inn to dry out and recover following their ordeal.

The Abana's bell was salvaged and can still be seen in Cleveleys parish church. The original lifeboat house still exists on Lytham Road and even the Samuel Fletcher survived as a pleasure boat on Stanley Park lake. The ship's dog was given a home by a Cleveleys local when the ship's crew returned to Norway. The wreck of the Abana can still be seen off Anchorsholme and is easily reached at low tide.

Return to Blackpool Promenade and Beach Index Page