Shipwreck accounts (and a random train travel detail)

[burntcopper]

Setting : mid 1920s, Cornwall (specifically the south coast around Falmouth, but only because I know the geography of the coast and the rocks and where the lifeboat station is), ship going down in a storm and the lifeboat coming out to rescue the crew

Comments

[jayb111]

Have you got, or seen, Richard Larn's books on Cornish shipwrecks?

Thomas Stanley Treanor's Heroes of the Goodwin Sands is available on Gutenberg. It was first published in 1892. The author was the local secretary of the RNLI at the time and knew the lifeboatmen personally. Wrong period I know, but it might give you some ideas.

Re: the valet, I should think he'd be travelling third, or perhaps second, class. He probably wouldn't be required to attend on the gentleman during the journey, as it's not overnight.

[indian_skimmer]

http://www.islandrace.com/waffle/newbook.htm has some good accounts of Scilly shipwrecks, including this one about a wreck in 1927. Or you could try contacting the Cornish shipwreck Museum http://www.shipwreckcharlestown.com/ I had to call them once for a project and they were helpful above and beyond in the way that only tiny museums who are wildly excited about being asked to do research because they never get asked things like that can be.

I would think a servant would travel in third class (second class was obsolete by the 1920s). First class would be in small compartments and I can't imagine a valet would sit in a compartment with a married couple. Unless they were really posh and had one of these

[okaasan59]

I know that in the early 20th century on trains in the U.S., the trains had employees called "Coleman porters" who would attend to the needs of passengers traveling overnight in first class. So if the trains were like those in the U.S., the valet could travel in third class.

[ink_in_hand]

Michigan has the Shipwreck Museum, dedicated to those sunk in the Great Lakes. They have a few personal accounts of those who've survived shipwrecks, and I'm sure contacting the museum for more information would at least point you in the right direction.

One in 1975 is particularly famous. "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is a song on the ship and is the wreck to know for the Lakes. Though I honestly have no idea how accurate the song is in terms of the people on board, since all hands were lost, it is good at giving an idea on the lore at the time.

Not British, or even European, but I hope this helps anyway.

[eleanorb]

Try googling info about the Padstow lifeboat James Stevens - a very famous case. And add lifeboat history or simply history to your search - it brings up loads of accounts. This is a field which is particularly well documented. I'd also try family history sites, local lifeboat sites and local history sites for towns with old lifeboat stations - they usually have accounts preserved.

e.g. http://www.angell-family.co.uk/mhistory/lifeboat.php