John Gethin was born at the Brick House in Kingsland in 1866 and schooled at St Peter’s in Hereford. He trained as an architect and set up practice in Cardiff, where he met Emily Thompson, the daughter of Mr T. R . Thompson, one of the directors of the Barry Railway Company. The couple were married in 1890. After the arrival of Lorna, in 1892, and John, in 1894, Mrs Gethin was in fragile health and the family took an extended break in South Africa for the climate. With them went their friend, Jemima Peace, and the children’s nurse, Eliza Preston. All travelled as first class passengers.
The family returned on the Castle Mail Packet Company’s (forerunner of the famous Union Castle Line) steamship Drummond Castle, whose Master, Captain Walter E. Pierce, had risen through the company from apprentice in 1868 to Master Mariner and was in command of his third ship. Drummond Castle had been built in 1881 by John Eider & Co. of Glasgow. She had an overall length of 365ft, with 43.5ft beam and 31.3ft draft. Her triple-expansion steam engines gave a nominal 600 horsepower and a speed of 12.5 knots. She was rated as A1 by Lloyds of London underwriters.
With the Gethin family on board, the Drummond Castle departed Cape Town on 28 May 1896 bound for London. She called at Las Palmas in the Canary Island to take on mail and coal, and to embark more passengers, before beginning the final stage of her journey to London.
Late on the evening of 16 June 1896, Drummond Castle was approaching Ushant (Ouessant), an island off the Brittany coast off the promontory to the north of the Bay of Biscay. The sea was calm, with a light southerly breeze, but visibility was poor due to mist and drizzle. Nevertheless, she made a good 12 knots and the passengers were enjoying their last night of onboard entertainment, celebrating the anticipated arrival the next day. At about 10:30pm, Captain Pierce left the passengers to retire to their cabins and went to the bridge where, despite worsening visibility, there were no adverse reports from the lookouts on duty. He gave orders to continue at her current speed and heading in the expectation that conditions would improve towards dawn.
At the same time, the cargo ship Werfa was sailing in the opposite direction, outward bound from Brest to Penarth. The chief officer, Mr Chappell of Llanelli, spotted the Drummond Castle’s lights and estimated that she was about half a mile inshore, too close to the coast and steering ENE, directly for the shore, a course that would soon run her into trouble. These observations were subsequently confirmed by the Werfa’s Master, Captain Beer.
The coast of Ushant is noted for its rocky islets and outcrops, made more perilous by the strong cross-currents. At about 11pm, the ship struck a reef of rocks, the Pierres Vertes, at the entrance to the Fromvert Sound between the islands of Ushant (Ouessant) and Molène.
Many crew and passengers were thrown into the sea by the violence of the collision, which brought the Drummond Castle to a sudden stop, ripping her hull open on the razor sharp granite rocks. Most passengers died in their cabins, with no time to launch the lifeboats, although efforts were made. The sole surviving passenger, Charles Marquardt, who had boarded First class with the Gethins at Cape Town, was hauled from the sea by Breton fishermen, Francois & Mathieu Masson and Joseph Berthelé, who had launched a rescue as soon as the alarm was raised. He cabled Castle Line from Ushant stating: “Drummond Castle total loss off Ushant. Am probably sole survivor”, although quartermaster Charles Wood and seaman William Godbolt were also picked up in the water some hours later. These three were the only survivors of 246 passengers and crew.
The Admiralty received a cable later that night from the Apollo-class cruiser HMS Sybille, reporting that she had raced to the scene and lowered boats but the Drummond Castle had sunk too quickly to take off survivors. The cruiser HMS Melampus, torpedo-boat HMS Spanker and its accompanying tug, HMS Traveller, were ordered to assist as was the French Admiralty tug, Le Laborieux, but no further survivors were found.
Over the next few days, a large number of bodies were washed up on the shores of Molène and Ushant, men woman and children, many naked or clad only in night clothes. The local islanders dressed them in their own ceremonial costumes kept for solemn rituals and many hundreds attended the funerals on the island. Breton artist, Charles Cottet’s painting Gens d’Ouessant pleurant un enfant mort, now in the Petit Palais, Paris, depicts Breton women mourning the body of a dead child. The French government sent the famous detective Alphonse Bertillon, inventor of the use of biometric and “mugshots” to identify suspects by distinguishing marks, to establish identity of the bodies. Of 53 washed ashore, he was successful with all but two.
In 1897, M. Bertillon and the Breton fishermen involved in the rescue operation were awarded “Drummond Castle medals”, 282 of which were struck by the British government in appreciation of their efforts. The British public and the Castle line also raised money to provide a clock for the church at Molène and to construct a reservoir (“the English cisterne”) for the island’s water supply, which is still in use today. The Archbishop of Canterbury presented a chalice and paten to the church of St Ronan.
In the House of Commons, Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies confirmed that a Board of Trade inquiry would be set up into the causes of the tragedy. The Board of Inquiry found that Captain Pearce was much to blame for the navigational error and failure to take soundings which has resulted in the ship being so far off-course; his speed in the circumstances was also found to be excessive. As he was lost in the disaster, Captain Pearce was not able to answer for himself and the finding were most likely based on the observations from the Werfa and the Breton fishermen.
In the 1930s, the wreck of the Drummond Castle was located by an Italian salvage company. She was dived by a local Breton diver in 1979 and found to be under more than 200ft of water near the Pierres Vertes rocks. She had split in two but much of her structure was still intact. A few artifacts, such as plates, were removed and are on display in the museum at Molène, but she will be left alone as a grave to those who were not recovered. Attempts by the Mayor of Ushant to organise a commemoration in 1996 was supported by Union-Castle Travel ltd, the most recent incarnation of the Castle Line, and was attended by two great-grandsons of survivor, William Godbolt.
The bodies of John and Emily Gethin, their children Lydia and John, the children’s nurse, Eliza Preston, and family friend, Jemima Peace were never recovered. The brass plaque in St Michael’s church, Kingsland is their only memorial.
