Welsh Journals

smuggling still went on. Billy Hopkins, ah was trawlin' outside and see'd the preventive boat come up, ah cut his trawl, ah knewed the boat had come in on the tide, and into the bay as quick as he could and hollered to 'em, and they buoyed a keg of brandy and dropped 'n in the sea for he and up sail and tacked to get out. The preventive fired a shot but she'd got up racin' sail and across channel and away The O YSTER FISHERS used to go down to the shore each morning and discuss the weather, if safe to go out, or a storm coming. Making calendars they called it. And in my day they could forecast the weather. John Grove said to me Don't ye tramp far, come two o'clock 'tis rain it will So I tramped far, to Llangennith, and come two it pelted and I had to come back by road as the fields were too wet. The oyster fishery went on until the beds were destroyed by foreign trawlers with steam, who only cared for what they could get and used to foul the sailing boat trawls simply to oust them. John Bevan of Horton, who was a mate on a Cape Horner when he married a girl a good bit younger than himself, put all his savings into a yawl and fished and trawled in season. One day a foreigner cut into his boat and sank it and didn't even stop to pick up the men in her. Bevan was ruined, lost everything and had to take work wherever he could find it, to live. One day, walking along tide he picked up a big yellow lump, and (as his wife told me) ah didn't think naught on it and dropped it, and a bit farther on ah smelt summat, and smelt his hand and ah went back, 'twas a huge lump o beeswax. An ah threwed his coat over it and carted it home, 28 pound it was, and they melted it at night by the firelight-fear of the neighbours--and moulded it to quarter pounds, and when 'twas done, I put he on my head in a basket, and with the baby in me arms, walked to Swansea and sold he from door to door, and that was how us was got over the woist. Lot of money there was in bees-wax, four shilling a pound "An eye-witness account of shipwrecks on the Gower coast". In this privately published booklet, John Beynon of Rhosili, recalls about twenty wrecks attended by the Rhosili rocket crew, or Life-saving Apparatus Company, as it is now called. It is full of interest, atmosphere and authentic first-hand detail. A few copies may be still available from Mr. Beynon himself at Meadow- side, Rhosili, at 6/- each (postage extra).