Herzogin Cecile grounds on Ham Stone Rock (1935)
With Sven Erikson as her captain and Elis Karlsson her first mate, the ship left Port Lincoln in South Australia on 21 January 1935, with a cargo of wheat, and after taking a more southerly route than usual, reached Falmouth for orders on 18 May, making her passage of 86 days the second fastest ever. Herzogin Cecile was making for Ipswich in dense fog, when, on 25 April 1936, she grounded on Ham Stone Rock and drifted onto the cliffs of Bolt Head on the south Devon coast. After parts of the cargo were unloaded, she was floated again, only to be towed in June 1936 to Starhole (Starehole) Bay at the mouth of the nearby Kingsbridge Estuary near Salcombe, and beached there. On 18 January 1939, the ship capsized and sank. The remains of the ship sit at a depth of 7 meters at 50°12.82′N 3°47.02′W. Read the complete article on Wikipedia. Here is a related article from Devon Live. From The Mudcat Café: “Ken Stephens wrote this song not knowing that the Herzogin Cecile (Duchess Cecile was one of the Kaiser’s nieces) was a four-masted bark. He wrote the chorus ‘She’s the mighty full rigged ship – the Herzogin Cecile‘. Stan Hugill interrupted Geoff Kaufman onstage with, ‘That were no full rigged ship. That were a four-masted bark!’” There is a running conversation about the thing upon which the ship ran upon. From the Mudcat Café we read “She’s run upon the Bobtail.” William Pint and Felicia Dale sing, “She’s run upon the Bolt Head.” Tom Lewis advised, “it is the ‘Boat Tail’.” deal: n., a plank of softwood (fir or pine board)
23 Sept 1991 Peter Bellamy Dies
Peter Franklyn Bellamy (8 September 1944 – 24 September 1991) was an English folk singer. He was a founding member of The Young Tradition and also had a long solo career, recording numerous albums and touring folk clubs and concert halls. He is noted for his ballad-opera The Transports, and has been acknowledged as a major influence by performers of later generations including Damien Barber, Oli Steadman, and Jon Boden. Bellamy died by suicide on 24 September 1991 in Keighley, an event that baffled many in the folk music community. At the time, he was working with Fellside Records on a project to record major British unaccompanied singing talents. However, according to a thread called ‘Boring, Bleating Old Traddy’ on the online Mudcat Café folk music forum, several of his friends had found him depressed at the way his folk club bookings had unaccountably fallen away after the respect with which The Transports had been received. Read the complete Wikipedia biography here.