46. The near-disastrous holiday at Sunderland Point: 1862

 

Sunderland Point by Heather Bolton

The small village at Sunderland Point lies at the tip of a windswept peninsula where the River Lune comes out into the Irish Sea.  Here the Hopkinsons would find a wide horizon, a landscape of sea and river, salt marsh and mudflats, home to wading birds and wildfowl, with shingle beaches from which sandbanks could be reached farther out into the sea.  It had once been the port that gave Lancaster merchants access to the colonial trade – at the end of the 18th century, it had been the fourth largest port in England.  It had been a fashionable resort for sea bathing and had claimed to have the first bathing machine in North Lancashire.  By 1862 its glory days were over, but it was still popular for holidays.

One of its most notable things about Sunderland Point was – and is – that, though it is part of mainland Britain, it is reached by a causeway a mile and a quarter long across a tidal marsh and is cut off at high tides, when the causeway can be under several feet of water for up to four hours.  (My information comes from the excellent Sunderland Point website.  I recommend it strongly, it's full of information and beautiful, evocative photographs)

John with Gertrude and May in 1867 or 1868 

John noted in his logbook [1] that they left 12 York Place for their holiday lodgings in Sunderland Point on Monday 4 August 1862 in a large party of five adults and eight children.  

John was now 38 and Alice would be 38 in November.   Young John was just 13, Alfred 11, Ellen 8, Charles 6, Mary would soon be 5, Edward was 3, Lily nearly 2, and baby Gertrude was 3 months old.  Miss Maria Neild, the mother's help, came too, with 24 year old Annie Cookson the children's nurse and 25 year old Emma Wood.  While the family were by the sea, John would be at work and would come out to join them when he could.

Getting from Manchester to Sunderland Point was not straightforward – he would need to go by train and boat and then, if there was no conveyance for the last stretch, on foot.  He should have made a careful study of the tide tables.  

Somehow, he miscalculated.  

He set off from Manchester on the afternoon of Saturday 9 August 1862, arriving at the village of Overton on the Lune estuary quite late in the evening.  The family was expecting him, and his son Johnnie was out on the shore watching for his arrival.  John thought he had time to get to the house before the tide turned.

This is the record he made afterwards in his logbook, which Ellen Ewing abridged for the book [2]:

The Causeway by Andy Biggs

On Saturday Aug 9th I took train in afternoon to Lancaster and boat part way down the river, landed near Overton to walk to Sunderland – same road over the shore as our bus had taken on the Monday.  The tide was coming up … I walked as rapidly as I could towards Sunderland Point through the gradually rising water which covered all the road.  I saw a stake standing and, supposing that it might be to mark the road, made for it … 

I felt with my feet the ruts of the wheels and knew it must be on the road.  I called continuously:  "Boat ahoy.  Boat ahoy."   The water continued to rise above my hips so I unbuttoned my waistcoat and put the left flap over my shoulder to keep my watch dry and I felt the run of the tide past me and dare not leave the stake as I would have been carried off my feet … My voice failed with shouting but a handful of water restored it.   

And at last had the great relief of hearing the handling of the oars of a boat putting off.  I shouted to direct the boat where I was.  They rowed with a will, were soon alongside and seized hold to haul me in … The water was near my armpits and probably at the top of the tide … 

I learned that a woman, ironing her husband's shirt with the cottage window open, had heard my shouting and ran to tell the boatmen to get the boat out.  John was on the shore, knew my voice and that I was taking the shore-road from Lancaster, and knew that I must be in danger.  The boatmen were sure that the voice must come from the opposite shore.  My boy insisted on their going towards Lancaster.  And he was right as they soon found.  Each of the boatmen received a family Bible, inscribed: "To – in memory of [illeg] help in time of need" [3]

This is the 1840s Ordnance Survey map, with the route marked by Bill Morris.  The landing stage at Overton is marked in green and the causeway in red.

There is another version of the episode.  It appeared in the Lancaster Gazette on 16 August and was written by a 21 year old solicitor from Kendal called Joseph Swainson junior.  He was lodging with Richard and Jane Nicholson who ran the Maxwell Arms, the licensed hotel on Second Terrace, and farmed the 30 acres of  Point Farm.  This is young Joseph Swainson's dramatic letter, published under the heading 'Narrow Escape from Drowning'

Sir,

Perhaps you will allow me to trouble you with the following narrative of a very narrow escape from death by drowning which has just occurred here.

About ten o'clock on Saturday night last Mrs Nicholson, the wife of Mr Richard Nicholson, who farms this property, having occasion to go to a neighbour's house on the other Terrace, heard cries of distress which appeared to proceed from the direction of the road across the Sands to Overton.  She immediately gave the alarm to myself and her husband, and the nearest boatman having been at once roused, a boat was with all possible haste procured, and in the absence of a fourth experienced boatman, I most willingly accompanied them to pull the fourth oar.

The cries of distress which were borne along the water to us were truly pitiable, and such as to call forth the most strenuous efforts on the part of the men.  We proceeded as rapidly as possible in the direction from which the cries came, and when approaching the post which indicates the first small bridge on the road to Overton, we found a gentleman up to the chest in water clinging to the post in an all but exhausted state.

On our return, after drawing the gentleman in safety into the boat, we found that he was a Mr Hopkinson, from Manchester, whose wife and children, are staying down here for a few weeks, and who were all, with the exception of his eldest boy, in happy ignorance of the occurrence.

He was on his way from Lancaster, having arrived by the evening train, with the intention of spending Sunday at this place.  The tides at this time rise very rapidly, and the boatmen all say, that there cannot be the slightest doubt as to the fate of this gentleman had the boat been longer than five or ten minutes in reaching him, for, in addition to the great increase which that period would have made to the water (it still being an hour and a half from high water) it would have been impossible for Mr Hopkinson, judging from the weak state in which we found him, much longer to have retained his hold.

James Spencer

The rescue of this gentleman from a death gradually but certainly approaching, was no doubt due, under Providence, primarily to the mere accident of Mr and Mrs Nicholson's not having gone to bed at their usual early hour, and also to the strenuous efforts of Thomas Dickenson, James Spencer, and John Bagot, with whatever assistance I may have afforded.  The persons who live in the cottages which are nearest to the place where this occurrence happened, were not aware of it until next morning.

The road between this place and Overton, when the tide is out, is almost as safe and hard as any turnpike, but when covered with water it is of the most dangerous description, from the many and deep pools which abound near to it.

My reasons for troubling you with this narrative is that a warning may not be lost to strangers of the extreme imprudence of venturing across the sands without first ascertaining the state of the tide, especially at night time.  And, also, that I may redeem a promise made to the men that I would do my best that the great anxiety to do their utmost and the strenuous exertions they made should not be lost sight of.

I enclose my card, and I am,

Yours very obediently,

Jos Swainson, Jr.

Mr Nicholson's, Maxwell's Terrace, Sunderland Point, 12th August 1862

PS - The boatmen here have often before been instrumental in saving lives

John thought it was "probably at the top of the tide" when he had been rescued; young Swainson thought it was still 1½ hours to the full.  Who was right?  Unless Joseph Swainson misheard comments about the height of the tide, he was in a better position to know than John.

And there's another oddity.  Joseph Swainson describes John being rescued by three highly experienced fishermen who were probably also river pilots, plus himself.  Bill Morris, editor of the website of the Sunderland Point Community Association (and to whom I am deeply indebted), tells me that the fishermen of the time generally worked in pairs, one to use the oars and the other to work the net.  The boats could take two fishermen using two sets of oars.  Two men to row and another man to help John into the boat would be swift and efficient.  Bill's comment is that

Given the urgency, having four in the boat, with each taking a single oar and one being inexperienced, is highly unlikely

However, that is what Joseph Swainson wrote, so we leave it there for readers to make their own minds.   

The story doesn't end there.  Alice, whose first realisation of the near catastrophe must have been when John was brought in amid excited scenes, soaked, chilled and weary, wrote to him on the Monday when he had gone back to work

I feel intensely lonely today and such a weight of oppression, I suppose the reaction after the excitement.  The crowning mercy of Saturday night seemed to fill all my thoughts … When I think of what might have been!  But I must banish that thought; it quite overpowers me [4]

Joseph Swainson wrote to the Lancaster Gazette the next day, and it appeared in Saturday's paper.  Alice was very cross and wrote to John

It is just a worked up tale.  Had I seen that letter I should have kept at a more convenient distance from Mr Swanson and deemed him a young puppy who wished to appear in print … Do not forget the Bible for the boatmen; I fancy they look for some reward. [5]

Perhaps she felt rather more kindly towards Mr Swainson after the next development.  Somebody had told the other Lancaster newspaper that John had not given the boatmen any reward.  Mr Swainson wrote again to the Lancaster Gazette saying that they had in fact been rewarded most handsomely:

A paragraph in last Saturday's Lancaster Observer having been pointed out to me, stating that Mr Hopkinson had not thought fit to reward the men for their exertions, I venture to trouble you again to contradict a report that John Hopkinson had not rewarded the boatmen.

So far from being the case, Mr Hopkinson has rewarded each of the men most handsomely, in a much more suitable manner than by a pecuniary recompense, and, moreover, in a way which will afford a lasting memorial of his appreciation of their prompt and efficient exertions.

He means the inscribed Family Bible.  

The causeway was notoriously dangerous.  A man from Overton drowned in 1869; the innkeeper of Sunderland Point's Temperance Hotel drowned in 1877.  There were numerous rescues.  In 1870 fishermen rescued a farm boy from Sunderland Brows and went back into the water up to their necks to rescue his two horses.  In 1897 a char-à-banc from Morecambe carrying twenty people slipped off the road into a rapidly rising tide; all were rescued.  

We don't know if the boatmen felt a Family Bible was sufficient reward for their speed and expertise and chancing their own safety to save John; we can only hope that John thought to give these working men a cash reward as well.  

As far as I know, the family did not return to Sunderland Point.  If any readers would like to visit this uniquely beautiful place, make sure to check https://www.sunderlandpoint.net/ for the tides first.  

Rescue of Visitors by Alan Smith

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 35

[2] ibid.

[3] ibid., p. 35-6

[4] ibid., p. 36

[5] ibid., p. 36