Whitesands Bay (Porthmawr in Welsh) with its long sandy beach, rolling waves and stunning views, is a world-famous surfing destination, as well as a popular holiday beach. Two miles west of St David’s, it has a long history as a place of arrival and…

In the tiny churchyard of Granston, set back from the bay of Abermawr and its smaller neighbour Aberbach, two gravestones bear witness to anonymous victims of the waves. One marks the deaths of Captain Charles Bowlby and his crew of 28 on board the…

The first member of the Fenton family to arrive in Fishguard - in the late 18th century - was Lieutenant Samuel Fenton, a naval officer who transformed the fortunes of a fishing village so dependent on the local catch that its inhabitants were known…

The St. Patrick was the only ferry still sailing between Ireland and Wales during World War Two. The others, the St. David and the St. Andrew, had been requisitioned as hospital ships serving the European front. The St. Patrick made a regular daily…

A cold dark night in December 1920 saw the most celebrated of the Fishguard’s many lifeboat rescues. The boat in question was Charterhouse, funded by the school of that name and presented to the RNLI station in 1908. The boat was built for rough…

The cluster of rocks known as The Smalls, 20 miles off the coast of south west Wales, was a major shipping hazard, notorious for ferocious rip tides, until 1777 when an unorthodox timber lighthouse structure was erected consisting of nine stout oak…

The inhabitants of Abercastle, Pembrokeshire were much surprised on Saturday [10th August 1876] by the arrival on their coast of a seaman named Alfred Johnson in an open boat in which he left Gloucester Massachusetts on the 15th June. The boat is…

Between 25 and 26 October 1859, one of the strongest storms of the 19th century hit the Irish sea. Known as the ‘Royal Charter’ storm , the tempest was named after the ship Royal Charter which was caught on its way from Australia to Britain,…

In our world of instant communications it’s hard to imagine that it once took ten days to send a message from North America to Europe. That was the fastest a ship could go - if the weather was favourable. All this changed in 1858 when the first…

It is thought that Fishguard was named from the Old Norse Fiskigarðr,a ‘fish catching enclosure’. What remains here today is very unlikely to date back that far but we know the style of low-walled hook-shaped trap is an ancient one. Remains of…