HC Deb 29 June 1860 vol 159 cc1216-7
MR. STANLEY

said, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty, if he is in possession of any Report or Documents regarding the effects of the severe gales of the 25th and 26th October last on the new Harbour, Piers, and Works at Holyhead: Also, as to the security of the Great Eastern and other vessels taking shelter there during that gale, and if any casualties occurred owing to any defect in the construction of the Harbour: And, if he can state the number of vessels taking shelter in the new Harbour during the last two years? The harbour at Holyhead had cost the country a million of money, and the Admiralty ought to state whether they were of opinion that the harbour was, as he believed it to be, a really useful work, or, as the public prints had lately described it, of no service whatever. A journal which they all admired—The Times—had on three or four occasions misled the public as to the state of the harbour. The special correspondent of this journal, who was on the spot at the time, and who had described the gale of October 25–26 in a letter of great ability, made this statement:— A large part of the breakwater works at Holyhead have been destroyed, and vessels anchored far inside and sheltered, compared to where the big ship lay, have either gone down bodily or been driven high and dry ashore. ….Within the very extremity of the breakwater, where one would have thought the Channel fleet might have ridden through any gale, much damage had been done. High and dry ashore under Holyhead mountain lay a fine barque, and around her, in the same predicament, were three smaller vessels. Out in the centre of the harbour the tops of two slender tapering masts showed where Captain Henry's beautiful schooner yacht, the Mariquita, had gone down bodily. Immediately behind this last was another and larger vessel, which had apparently only escaped the same fate by driving on the rocks. Again, in a leading article of The Times respecting harbours of refuge there was this passage:— The harbour at Holyhead has been altered half a dozen times, each time, it is said on a worse principle than before, and the final result is that last autumn the Royal Charter passed it, and was wrecked at night; the Great Eastern was all but lost in it; and small vessels were either thrown high and dry, or sent to the bottom. And, upon a more recent occasion, in the course of some remarks upon Trotman's anchor:— A very practical illustration of the advantages of the invention may be given merely by mentioning that in the terrible storm of last autumn the Great Eastern rode securely in Holyhead harbour, held in position by her anchors, and these were supplied by Mr. Trotman. Now, if that enormous surface of metal, acted upon by the furious gale, was held in its place by those anchors, it seems probable enough that under circumstances equally trying they might do the same good service for ships of war. In "another place" a noble Lord, whose mind had been prejudiced by these statements, had declared that Holyhead harbour was of hardly any use, and did not answer the purposes for which it was constructed. Now, he was an eye-witness of the gale described by the special correspondent of The Times, and if the Great Eastern ever was in danger it was not from any want of shelter, for she was not in the harbour. She was anchored outside, in the first instance, by a single anchor, and during the height of the gale she was hardly subjected to any sea. Towards morning the wind changed, and she was then swung round clear of all shelter from the unfinished breakwater. About nine or ten she got up her steam and weighed one of her anchors, with the view of shifting her position. She steamed ahead; her anchor, he believed, broke; and he should never forget the sight which presented itself as she appeared to be drifting towards the rocks. Of the vessels inside the harbour not one of the fifty-nine which took shelter there had suffered injury in the slightest degree from the construction of the harbour.