Welsh Journals

NATURE IN WALES VOL. 2, No. 2. SUMMER 1956 THE OUTERMOST ROCKS OF WALES R. M. LOCKLEY Honorary Warden, the West Wales Field Society An account of the expedition made by Members of the West Wales Field Society to the Smalls, the Hats and the Barrels Reefs in St. George's Channel. During the unusually fine, calm, warm July of 1955, members of the Society carried out a long-cherished plan to visit the remote Smalls, Hats and Barrels rocks rising from the submarine reef which runs almost due west from Skomer Island far out into St. George's Channel. This is the most westward visible land of Wales. The Smalls lies about longitude 5°4o' west of Greenwich, farther west in fact than the most easterly coast of Northern Ireland (near Strangford Lough). The latitude is 5i°43' north, that of Belle Isle Strait, Newfoundland, or Queen Charlotte Sound, British Columbia, or the Aleutian Islands, North Pacific. And like all weather in this latitude it is seldom calm enough to land on unprotected rocks lying in the open sea. The Society's diesel-engined vessel Mayflower, a highly manoeuvreable craft, was employed, and made two successful visits-during the spring tides of July 7th and 24th, 1955. The personnel included Mr. and Mrs. Peter Davis (Skokholm Bird Observatory)-July 24th, Michael Odium (St. Michael's College, Llandaff), and Mr. and Mrs. R. M. Lockley-July 7th and 24th. The main object was to survey the rocks of the little known Hats and Barrels reefs, a few only of which are visible at low spring tides but how many show then we did not know. As far as we could ascertain no landing had ever been made on the Hats or Barrels. HISTORY The Smalls, Hats and Barrels have no doubt been known to west coast mariners for many centuries, for they appear as a dan- gerous reef in the early charts. They were however seldom remarked in early accounts of Pembrokeshire and Wales before the project for the building of the lighthouse in 1765 called public attention to their dangers. Leland (1506-52) in his Itinerary in Wales, describing the Pembrokeshire islands and rocks, noted that