Seventy years ago, on 27 October 1927, the SS Isabo struck Scilly Rock on a foggy night at 5 pm. She promptly split in two just forward of the funnel.....
When they heard a ship's siren on Bryher that foggy afternoon they knew that she was lost. She sounded close and that meant she was already amongst the most dangerous rocks in the world, and there could only be one conclusion....
So they opened the gig shed doors, and readied the 'Czar' for sea. Seven oarsmen and a coxswain. Norman Jenkins was in his 20s at the time, and half a century later he taped his memories for posterity.
"We went out in the Czar from Great Porth and when we got inside Scilly (Rock) we came on the wreckage with the men scattered through it amongst all this timber. The ship had broken in two as she struck....... The timber was 27 ft by 8 by 5 which was used for keeping her cargo of grain from shifting. There must have been an acre - or an acre and a half - of this timber, tanks also, and casks".
"A TERRIBLE SCENE....."
Amongst the gig crew that dreadful evening was a temporary resident - Baptist Minister the Rev E R Pearce. He remembered:
"A terrible scene confronted us.... huge iron tanks, broken boats, hatches, planks, spars etc. drifted on the surface, while scattered here and there among the ruins could be seen the head and shoulders of men clinging to the broken pieces of timber for support.
"The cries of the men in the water were pitiful to hear.... they were so poorly clad that we had little to assist them by".
Meanwhile, the Coastguard on Bryher had alerted the St Mary's lifeboat, although the instructions - "at the back of Bryher" - were time-consumingly vague in the enveloping conditions.
The 'Czar' doggedly continued in her task of saving lives in the fog, assisted by two motor boats from Bryher - the 'Ivy' and 'Sunbeam' - which arrived after making their way round from the other side of the island via Shipman's Head and through Hell Bay.
Norman Jenkins never forgot the scene:
"We took 14 men from the water, and the last one off the ship. When we had 11 on the 'Czar' we didn't know how many more we would get, so we freed the gig for more by putting them on board of the 'Ivy' and went back and got four more aboard.
"There were some men on the 'Isabo's' cross-tree. It wasn't possible to get to them or to the mate who had swum to Scilly Rock.
"The worst of it was that some of them had nothing on but a vest or a shirt. You didn't know how to grip them. But we managed.
"There was one funny thing. We put one of them in the bottom of the gig and he put this bucket on his head. It seemed awfully funny to see him sitting there with a bucket on his head!"
THE MOTOR BOATS HIT TROUBLE....
Both the two motor boats, the 'Ivy' and 'Sunbeam', started encountering real problems. The spilled grain clogged their circulating pipes and the engines became red-hot.
The 'Sunbeam' then launched a small 8 ft dinghy which was responsible for bringing in 12 men. At one stage, a rope thrown to the wreck had five desperate seamen clinging to it. That night there was hardly a Bryher islander - or a Jenkins or Pender - that was not afloat.
The St Mary's lifeboat - the 'Elsie', with Matt Lethbridge at the helm - was faced with a terrible dilemma when it eventually reached the scene....
Men were known to be in the fore rigging of the 'Isabo' but conditions had become appaling - darkness, heavy seas, floating wreckage.... and then the lifeboat's propellers became fouled by a floating mattress.
The coxswain, reluctantly but with sound judgement, decided to wait until daylight.
DESPERATE STRAITS....
Dr Addison was retired and suffered badly with rheumatoid arthritis. Nonetheless, he joined the island medical officer - Dr Ivers - aboard the lifeboat. He recalled:
"When day broke, three men were seen clinging to the rigging, and one man in the crow's nest who seemed to be dead. The lifeboat was taken close to the wreck and three lines were fired over the foremast.
"The first broke, the second fell short, the third was successful but the ship-wrecked men seemed unable to make use of it, and successively fell or were washed off into the sea to be picked up by the lifeboat which made three trips amongst the broken water and rocks for that purpose.
"A man was then seen on Scilly Rock itself, a line was fired over him but he was washed off in trying to get hold of it so the lifeboat was taken in again and he was rescued".
Two of the four men rescued were almost lifeless, but the doctors revived them as the lifeboat sped back to St Mary's. It then returned for a further - but fruitless - search.
SCREAMS IN THE WATER HEARD ON BRYHER....
Of the 'Isabo's' crew of 38 who had set out from Lussinpiccolo in Italy, 28 men were rescued by the Bryher boats and 4 by the lifeboat. Of the six who were lost, one died in the rigging - but what exactly became of the others was never known.
One of the men rescued from the rigging by the lifeboat owed his life to Mrs Janey Slaughter who revived him with mouth to mouth resuscitation when he collapsed on St Mary's.
She then looked after him for three weeks. After spending that long awful night in the rigging, he was completely black and blue from exposure and bruising. Mrs Slaughter said that when he was brought ashore she believed him to be an African.
Forty years later, Signor Rolli from Venice - by then in his sixties and a sea Captain - returned to thank Mrs Slaughter again for his life.
The memory of the night that the 'Isabo' foundered stayed with Norman Jenkin's wife:
"I could hear from Bryher the men screaming in the water. When they were brought ashore we gave up our beds to them. We couldn't understand them and they couldn't understand us. But we managed to feed them They were Italians mostly, but there were some Estonians".
The roll call of Bryher men - all who were heroes that night - makes interesting reading:
The Czar Crew
W E Jenkins, S Pender, W T Pender, F Jenkins, AT Jenkins, Rev E R Pearce, N Jenkins and J J Jenkins.
The Sunbeam Crew
C Jenkins, E R Jenkins, S T Jenkins, J Jenkins, J E Pender and S G Jenkins.
The Ivy Crew
E Jenkins, S Jenkins and J S Jenkins.
There were also Italian heroes that night. The young 29 year-old captain of the 'Isabo' - gave a graphic description:
"Within 10 minutes of striking the rocks in the fog she started to break up. The men and I ripped off the hatches and threw them into the sea to act as rafts.
"I went to the bridge, but the heavy seas drove me to the upper bridge, and eventually swept me off. Many of us were swimming or clinging to wreckage and were rescued by the Bryher men".
Two men who never made it were the engineers who stayed at their post in the bowels of the ship to try and keep power going, and then drowned as the ship broke up.
The 24 year-old mate was also swept into the sea:
"I floated on an oar until I got to a rock. I swam around to find the lowest place to land and came to a place where the sea left the rock 15 ft exposed.
"I waited for a big sea to lift me over, then I struck in with it and came on top of the rock - still with my oar. As the sea went back I got a strong grip and crawled quickly up.
"I was naked; I walked round to find shelter and eventually found a little cave, and I spent the night massaging my body for warmth and sometimes going round the rock to try and find other floating men. I found none, and did not know all night of the other men being rescued nearby in the fog".
A SAD FAREWELL TO SCILLY, AND THANKS FROM ITALY....
Before leaving Scilly, the men stood bared-headed on the Quay with arms extended in the Fascist salute, as the young captain blessed their dead comrades left behind, and thanked the locals for their hospitality and heroism.
Count Leon, a local Italian resident, echoed these sentiments and urged the men to be as good during their lives as they had been during and since the tragedy.
The Italians then filed aboard the 'Riduna' for the trip to the mainland, shaking the hands of the islanders who crowded round to wish them farewell then gave them three cheers.
An avalanche of letters, cash awards and expressions of gratitude descended on Scilly from the Italian Government, the ship's owners and friends and relatives of the rescued.
The Italian Government struck 38 silver and bronze medals and issued vellum scrolls of thanks - signed by the up-and-coming Marine Minister... Benito Mussolini. RNLI medals and vellum thanks went to the St Mary's lifeboat crew, Dr Ivers, the 'Czar' crew, the 'Sunbeam' crew and the 'Ivy. crew.
AN APPEAL TO KEEP THE GIGS....
The awards were distributed at a Town Hall ceremony by Major A A Dorrien Smith who made an impassioned appeal for the resurrection of the traditional Scillonian gigs.
"I earnestly appeal that gig crews be organised and the gigs be put in repair. They may not be as fast as motor boats but they are more reliable and they still have a part to play in the saving of life".
The 'Czar's' heroic efforts deeply affected the Church of England Minister Rev Cyril Lancelot Thorrell-Barclay and he resolved on practical action. He appealed to the Regatta Committee on St Mary's for a special gig race.
To this day, the island men race their gigs every Friday night in the summer - including the 'Czar'.
AN UNEXPECTED RETURN TO SCILLY....
Major Dorrien Smith's appeal was prescient. Twenty-eight years after the 'Isabo' wreck, the gigs 'Sussex' and 'Czar' attended the wreck of the 'Mando' in 1955 after she ran onto Golden Ball Ledge.
For one of the seamen rescued from the 'Mando' by the St Mary's lifeboat it must have seemed all too familiar.
He was the pantry boy on the 'Isabo' in 1927, and had been one of those saved from the rigging by the same lifeboat under the same coxswain - Matt Lethbridge. Matt's son was second coxswain at the time.
"THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING SO CLOSE TO MEN IN GRAVE DANGER, YET BEING UNABLE TO RESCUE THEM IS A TERRIBLE ONE...."
The wreck of the 'Isabo' is just one of hundreds that dot the chart of Scilly. It lives on in faded scrolls, in carefully preserved medals, in the memory of a few elderly islanders - and in the grand old gig the 'Czar'.
It was a night when two Bryher families sent out all their menfolk to rescue those unknown souls drowning on the Scilly Rock. It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last.
A haunting impression of that night came from the Baptist Minister Rev Pearce who rowed in the 'Czar' with the Jenkins and Penders:
"The experience of being so close to men in grave danger yet unable to rescue them is a terrible one".
For him, and for others on Scilly, the satisfaction of saving 32 sailors could never compensate for the sadness of losing 6 others to the sea.
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| The wreck of the 'Isabo' was painted by the son of the Lifeboat coxwain
Although the Isles of Scilly has a library of wreck photographs (mostly taken by the Gibson family) which is unrivalled in the world, no photograph exists of the wreck of the 'Isabo'. She sank too quickly.
However, this painting shows the scene in correct detail. It is painted by Mr Matt Lethbridge who is now in his seventies. It was his father - also Matt Lethbridge - who was the Lifeboat coxswain who attended the wreck and rescued 4 of the Italian crewmen.
These things often run in families on Scilly. Mr Lethbridge in due course became coxswain in succession to his father, and is one of the country's most renowned and heroic Lifeboatmen. Readers may remember him as the subject of an outstanding "This is Your Life". We are most grateful to be allowed to reproduce his painting to illustrate this story.
All Lifeboat men are, of course, volunteers who put their lives in danger to help those who get into difficulties on the sea. Remember that The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) relies entirely on our voluntary contributions.
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