The Lizard RNLI lifeboat station has played a key role in an extraordinary gathering of families who lost relatives in a shipping disaster in December 1962. Around a hundred people came together for the first time since the Ardgarry capsized off The Lizard in a ferocious gale with the loss of the whole crew. Following a service in the local parish church just a few hundred yards from the lifeboat station, they unveiled a memorial stone at Kilcobben Cove in memory of both the Ardgarry crew, and the members of the 1962 Lizard/Cadgwith lifeboat, Duke of Cornwall, who spent 14 hours at sea searching for the Ardgarry.

 

A moving poem about the ship’s loss written by Patrick Sullivan was read, then family members went down to the boathouse to cast flowers into the sea from the current Lizard lifeboat David Robinson.

 

It was at 8.14pm on the 29 December 1962 when the coastguard told the local RNLI that the motor vessel Hollandia had reported a ship in distress three miles southwest of The Lizard. The wind was east north easterly, force 9 to 11 with a very rough sea. Later reports said the 600-ton ship had appeared to have capsized.

 

The ship was the Ardgarry, a coaster carrying a cargo of coal that had left Swansea and was making its way to Rouen in France.  All twelve men lost their lives and were never found. The ship lay hidden until two years ago when divers discovered the vessel and her bell.

 

The Lizard/Cadgwith lifeboat as it was known then, launched at 8.50pm into the jaws of the gale. Philip Burgess, RNLI Coxswain at The Lizard today, says the launch itself was dramatic and dangerous:

 

‘It was so rough when the lifeboat went down the slipway that the shore helpers were convinced she would wash straight back into the boathouse. The first wave lifted her bow right up into the air and for a moment it was thought she would be capsized, but somehow she rode the wave and then disappeared into the huge seas. The volunteer crew onboard were out in that storm for fourteen hours and it was so rough that throughout the search they had to stream a drogue, which is a conical shaped piece of equipment deployed astern of the lifeboat via a length of rope. The drogue acts like a break, stopping the lifeboat from surfing down the sea, broaching side on to the wave and capsizing.’

 

‘In those conditions and with that lifeboat I reckon the crew had only a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. It takes some courage to put to sea knowing there’s a fifty per-cent chance you won’t come back and I admire their bravery. During the time they were at sea their radio set broke down and for several hours no one could make contact with the lifeboat. Many thought she’d been lost and that’s how bad the conditions were.’ 

 

The lifeboat crew found nothing and because the conditions were too bad to re-house the Duke of Cornwall at The Lizard station, she and her crew headed to Falmouth.

 

Belfast brothers, now living in Canada, Patrick (55) and Jim (58) Slattery lost their father in the incident and have devoted the past two years tracing the other relatives of shipmates who perished with their father.

 

Before the ceremony on August 10^th, they said: “It’s the first time the families will be together, with people coming from as far away as Canada and Poland. This gathering will be the culmination of many years of research for my brother and I and will be very hard for those of us whose lives were so dramatically changed by the loss of the Ardgarry. But it will also be an opportunity to thank the RNLI for their efforts at the time, we will be forever grateful.’