12 OCTOBER 1889, Page 2

The terrific gale which swept over the South and West

of England in the small hours of Monday morning has strewn the coasts with wreckage. An old gunboat which was being towed from Plymouth to Liverpool had to be abandoned off Anglesea, to go to pieces on the rocks at AberfEraw. While struggling across Carnarvon Bay, the -orew of the tug saw running before the gale a large solwoner, which

immediately afterwards disappeared. The vessel must have gone down with all on board. The Peel lifeboat, after a gallant struggle, managed to save the crew of a Norwegian vessel which, after her foremast and rigging had fallen, drifted exposed for twelve hours to the fury of the waves. At first the lifeboat could not get alongside, owing to the heavy sea. Ultimately, however, a hawser was got aboard, and the rescue effected. The captain's wife was in the ship with her baby of nine months old. First the woman was taken off, and then the carpenter, who carried the child sewn up in canvas and lashed to his shoulders. Last of all the captain was safely got into the lifeboat, whose return was hailed with tremendous cheers from the thousands of spec- tators assembled on shore. Within an hour of the rescue, the abandoned ship drifted a total wreck upon the rocks near Peel Castle. The damage done by the gale was not confined to the shipping. The great breakwater at Holyhead has a rent in it, seven feet wide by fifty long, which it will cost £15,000 to repair. So tremendous was the force of the waves, that the coping-stones, blocks weighing fifteen tons, were tossed about as if they had been pebbles.