Behind the door of every home lies a story. Guelph, like all communities, is a vibrant assemblage of biographies, anecdotes and memories; some familiar to everybody, others little-known outside of families, many still in the making. Any door on any street might open to the most surprising of tales.
When it comes to daring rescues from the perils of the sea, one doesn’t usually think of Guelph or Guelphites. The Royal City’s nearest large body of water is Lake Ontario – too far away to be seen even from the spires of the Basilica of Our Lady Immaculate. And yet, in 1933, when the Mercury launched a series of “special features regarding Guelph men who have lived lives of adventure amid unusual surroundings,” the first instalment was about “Thrilling Stories of Wrecks on Rockbound Coast of Cornwall.”
The story opened dramatically.
“Four o’clock on a wild March morning – the yellow flare of hissing rockets illuminating spray and crashing, white-capped breakers – a handful of men crouched on the fo’c’s’le of what once was a merchant steamer and watching death riding on huge rollers toward them!
“Then a hissing roar; strong deft hands handling a giant hawser, the breeches buoy, and safety! Thousands of lives have been saved every year on the rockbound Cornish coast by the rocket apparatus, that marvellous equipment which brings men from the jaws of eternity when the lifeboat is useless. For six years, a Guelph man was instrumental in saving many of those lives.”
That man was Cornwall native William Thomas “Bill” Chappell, who at the time of the Mercury article lived on Foster Avenue with his wife Adelia. He was employed as a clerk and shipper at the Tolton Manufacturing Company.
Born in 1892, Chappell came from tiny Sennen, the westernmost community of mainland England. The rocky Atlantic coast there, known as Land’s End, overlooks treacherous, storm-lashed seas, notorious for shipwrecks. It was a busy sea-lane, with a steady stream of vessels entering or leaving the English Channel.
Chappell, who stood just five-foot-six (1.68 m) tall, was the driver for the lead team of the rocket apparatus crew of the Sennen division. If a ship had crashed on the reefs, and there was no chance of the crew escaping in lifeboats, the nearest lighthouse keeper would fire a gun to notify the coast guard, who in turn fired two rockets to signal the rocket apparatus team. A unit of that team was made up of 16 volunteers; coastguard men, retired navy men and fishermen. All were hand-picked and trained in the use of the rocket apparatus. Ready to respond at any hour of the day or night, they would assemble at the rocket house. The team always included a physician in case one was needed.
They would hitch a team of horses to a wagon loaded with equipment and then dash off to the best point on the shore from which they could assist the endangered sailors. Often it was atop a cliff overlooking the stricken vessel.
The team would set up a gun supported by a tripod. They would then fire a rocket-propelled harpoon with a line attached. They couldn’t afford to be off-target, because every minute could mean the difference between success and tragedy.
The sailors would secure the line to the highest possible point on the ship, and the rescue team would use it to send a hawser, block and pulley. Once that was in place, they would send a breeches buoy (a floatation device with a harness) to the waiting sailors. Then, one-by-one, starting with the cabin boy, the crew would be transferred from ship to shore. The captain would be the last man off.
The operation was dangerous and very tricky. The rescue team had to make sure the line didn’t get tangled in rocks, and they had to keep it taut – very difficult to do if the surf pushed the ship closer to the shore. As Chappell could testify, not every rescue attempt was successful.
One night a Spanish ship was smashed on the rocks and went down with all hands before Chappell’s team could do anything to help. One woman was rescued.
The crew of a four-masted barque called the Khyber was more fortunate. That ship was broken completely in two, and all of her crew were crowded onto the fo’c’s’le deck. With that remnant of the shattered vessel about to be smashed to splinters at any moment, Chappell’s team took the men off two at a time; one man sitting in the breeches buoy and the other clinging to him. Every man was saved in an operation Chappell told the Mercury was “scarcely believable.”
Chappell immigrated to Canada in March of 1912. Three days before he was scheduled to board the ship that would take him to his new home, the captain of the rocket apparatus team asked him if they could call on him should there be a wreck while he was still in Sennen. Chappell said yes, and sure enough that night a freighter called the Trefolium was hurled onto the rocks in a storm.
“She came in like a greyhound,” Chappell said. A few of her crew were rescued, but most were lost.
During the First World War, Chappell volunteered for the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He was classified as medically unfit for overseas service, but was accepted for duty in Canada. According to his service record, he was put to work repairing railway cars.
In 1916 Chappell married Adelie (nee Webster), who was from Sherbrooke, Que. Their first home in Guelph was on Neeve Street, before they moved to a permanent residence on Foster Avenue. Chappell was honourably discharged from the army after the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918.
The Mercury article of 1933 said there was a “reminiscent gleam in his eye” as Chappell finished telling the story of his youthful days snatching sailors from the angry sea. After his war service he seems to have lived a quiet life as a respectable citizen of Guelph. He died in 1980 and was interred in Memory Gardens in Breslau, thousands of miles and a lifetime away from the stormy coast of Cornwall.
