History
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Like so many Gowerians, many of the Bevan men folk chose to go to sea rather than scratch a living from farming, but the risks were high. Silvanus’ brother Francis was lost at sea, drowned coming home from Cuba on July 12, 1851.
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“The schooner Emma of Plymouth going from Newport to the South of Cornwall with coal put in on Oxwich Sand today having carried away her main sail & other sails she would not steer. They expect to save the ship by discharging her so we are expecting coal cheap,” Sill continued in the same letter. Following the wreck of the Agnes Jack on January 27, 1883 and just ten days later the Surprise, lost with all hands under Overton cliffs, a lifeboat station at Port Eynon was opened in 1884. But the dangerous location of this station saw it closed in 1919 following the loss of the lifeboat Janet in 1916 when it went to the aid of the S.S. Dunvegan. Three members of the crew lost their lives that night. Coxswain Billy Gibbs, William Eynon second coxswain and lifeboatman George Harry are remembered on a memorial looking out to sea in the churchyard at St Cattwg’s, Port Eynon. Read more about casualties along the dangerous Gower coastline on: http://www.shipwrecks-wales.co.uk
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