Holiday With History: The Naval Gun At The Golden Lion
If you’ve ever sat and enjoyed a drink in the sun overlooking Port Isaac Harbour from the Golden Lions’ “Bloody Bones Yard” terrace, or looked up towards the pub from the beach, then you can’t fail to have noticed the enormous old artillery gun, that looks like a giant canon, that sits there pointing across towards Lobber.
You may have presumed that it was part of some sort of WWII coastal defences protecting the harbour at Port Isaac – after all, there were anti-tank traps on the beach at Port Gaverne through WWII! But there’s a better story behind this enormous gun barrel, which involves First World War submarines, shipwreck, and a group of scuba divers from East London.
In the early afternoon of September 6th, 1918, just two months before World War One came to an end, U-Boat UB-87 of the Imperial German Navy struck the British Merchant Vessel SS Milly with a torpedo two and a half miles west of Tintagel Head in Port Isaac Bay. She sank in five minutes, claiming the lives of two of her crew.
The SS Milly was a steel screw steamer, originally named Ludwig Groedel, built in Hartlepool in 1904 by William. Gray and Co. for the Groedel Bros. Steamship Company, of London and Budapest. Before the outbreak of war and through its initial years she carried commercial cargoes of timber and grain. In August of 1916 the Groedel Brothers Steamship Company was ordered to be wound up by The Board of Trade under the "Trading With the Enemy " Act, because although it was an English company the majority of the shareholders were Hungarians who lived in Budapest – Austria-Hungary being one of the Central Powers in World War One, along with the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire. That October the Ludwig Groedel was renamed Milly and auctioned off, alongside three other steamships owned by Groedel Brothers Steamship Company. She was purchased by Glaswegian shipowner Alexander Mair.
TRIAL TRIP. LUDWIG GROEDEL—On April 28 the handsome steel screw steamer Ludwig Groedel, built by Messrs. Wm. Gray and Co. (Limited), of West Hartlepool, for the Groedel Bros. Steamship Company (Limited), of London and Budapest, had her trial trip. The vessel is 336 feet long. 47 feet broad, and 24 feet 10 inches deep, and she has been built to Lloyd's highest class.
As WWI progressed and blockades and merchant shipping losses as a result of enemy action increased, the British government developed a programme of defensively arming merchant ships (DAMS) and began to fit guns, when available, to the sterns of merchant ships to aid in defense and escape. U-Boats could carry more ammunition for their deck guns and so initially preferred to attack from the surface, with warning, in line with maritime law that required the naval vessel to make adequate provisions for the safety of the merchant crew and passengers before sinking their ship. However in February of 1915 Germany declared a war zone surrounding Great Britain and Ireland authorizing their U Boats to attack merchant vessels without warning or regard for the safety of their crew.
SS Milly was a victim of one such attack. En-route from Brest to Barry, South Wales, in ballast and sailing alone, she was proceeding in a zigzag pattern up the North Cornish coast when a torpedo was sighted 100 yards off her port side. UB 87 never surfaced. She sank in minutes, but two lifeboats were launched and 31 crew survived. Two crew, 17 year old William Eaton of Cardiff and 18 year old Robert Hocking from Plymouth drowned.
SS Milly now rests on the seabed just over two miles west of Tintagel Head, in between 38-46 meters of water, although she is sinking into the sand.
Between the mid 1960s and the 1990s members of the Loughton Divers, a BSAC scuba club in East London, regularly visited Port Isaac to dive. Seven of them ended up as permanent residents of the village and members of the community!
In 1989 members of the club found the wreck of the Milly, and in 1991 after an initial underwater photographic survey by Bob Bulgin (who later became the chairman of Port Isaac RNLI) and Dave Hurley , they acquired it for the sum of £450 from the Department of Transport and the insurers, the Mutual War Risks Association. BSAC Loughton Divers Salvage Group members Nick Stahles, Roy Speakman, Mick Jefford and Phil Halstead started unbolting the gun (which appears to be a QF 4.7-inch Mk V naval gun) and its mount, but had to resort to using explosives to finish the job and free it from the stern of the ship. They then used heavy-duty inflatable lifting bags to raise the gun and gun mount to the surface. Disaster struck when a strap broke and the gun and mount sank back to the seabed, breaking apart in the process. They retrieved and raised the barrel and its base in two separate pieces, and it was all towed back to Port Isaac, depositing it at high tide below the balcony of The Golden Lion where the landlord, RNLI helmsman Neville Andrews, arranged for it to be craned into the Bloody Bones Yard. In September of 2018 a memorial plaque was unveiled at the Golden Lion to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Milly and to remember the two men who died when she was sunk.
That gun still stands there pointed out across the harbour towards Lobber, the gun’s sight on display inside the pub, just one of the interesting items of marine salvage that the Loughton Divers brought back to the harbour over the years that also includes the anchor of the Fredricson on The Platt and the heavy duty chains on the beach that are used for ground tackle moorings.
The gun serves as a reminder, when you’re sat outside on a sunny summer afternoon enjoying a drink overlooking Port Isaac harbour, of the dangers endured and sacrifices made by the merchant seamen of our island nation through two world wars.