Badsey Community Sports & Social Club
Badsey Society member, Galen Bartholomew, will give a talk about how he SS Suevic ran aground in a storm off the Lizard Point in Cornwall in March 1907. The RNLI rescued 456 people in appalling weather conditions. This is still the largest number of people rescued by the RNLI in a single operation. Another ship, the SS Jebba, ran aground off the South Devon coast the same night and the RNLI saved a further 155 lives. Not a single life was lost in either rescue. In those days, lifeboats were open rowing boats and the crews were untrained local volunteers!
This illustrated talk describes how Galen pieced together an extraordinary story: how the Suevic ran aground; how she was salvaged and rebuilt; her service in two wars; and her final years as a whaling factory ship in the Antarctic, before being scuttled off the coast of Sweden to avoid capture by German warships. As well as the number of people rescued, both the salvage and rebuilding of the Suevic set records in 1907. A focus throughout is on the brave crews of the RNLI, which celebrated its bi-centenary in March 2024.
Galen Bartholomew has been a keen family historian for 50 years. When he discovered that his great-grandmother and great-aunt were amongst those rescued from the Suevic, he was keen to find out more about this. Little did he imagine that his relatives had been involved in one of the most famous of RNLI rescues! The traumatic events explain why Galen’s family had virtually ‘forgotten’ that terrible night – 1907 was well before people were encouraged to talk about difficult experiences! This is a remarkable account of shipwreck and survival.
