‘A disgraceful orgy of robbery’: when the Ettrick got stuck in the Avon

In 1924, a steamship ran aground near Sea Mills. When its cargo of cigarettes, chocolate and other desirable goods was thrown overboard, who could blame local people for helping themselves to the booty?

People's History 12th September, 2024

David Hewitt

In autumn of 1924, a dramatic incident on the River Avon left part of Bristol looking like something from an absurd comedy.

The incident began just after midnight on 6 September when SS Ettrick, a steamship bound for Belfast, left the docks on the early tide. The fog was “thick as a hedge” that Saturday morning, with neither bank of the river visible from the middle.

At 1.15am, as the Ettrick neared the famous Horseshoe Bend, she ran aground on the Gloucestershire bank, not far from Sea Mills railway station, and quickly became stuck in the mud.

She was quite a sight. Around 73m long, and more than 9m at her widest point, she had a black hull with brown cabins on top, and a black funnel sporting a single white band. Thirty years old, she belonged to Messrs William Sloan & Co, a long-established Glasgow shipping line. 

The Ettrick’s master, Captain White, was an experienced mariner, and the 25-man crew under his command were joined on this trip by eight passengers, including three women and two children. She also had a cargo weighing close to 300,000kg, which included large consignments of cloth, flour, alcohol and metal goods.

Once the cases had been smashed open, their contents – cigarettes and chocolate mainly – were whisked away, sold off at knock-down prices

It wasn’t long before the tide changed, and when it did, the Ettrick swung round, eventually coming to rest across the river, in a position that would prevent all but the smallest vessels from getting into Bristol. She started taking on water, began to list, and was soon waterlogged. By 3.30am it was obvious the passengers would have to be evacuated. 

Under Captain White’s watchful eye, they were inched down the side of the ship, now teetering at an angle of almost 45 degrees, and into the sailboat that would carry them to shore, and to the fleet of taxis waiting to take them home. The crew too would soon be removed, and taken to Broad Quay, where, at the impressive new quarters of the British and Foreign Sailors’ Society, they would be met with coffee and sandwiches, and given warm baths.

‘Turning turtle’

As the morning wore on, three old steam tugs – the Merrimae, the Westwinch and the Bristolian – were sent to help the Ettrick, but try as they might, they could not get her refloated on the midday tide. A decision was therefore taken to make her lighter by jettisoning her cargo, and at teatime, the hatches were opened and dozens of packing cases were thrown overboard. Some of those cases were carried out into the Bristol Channel, never to be seen again, but many made it no further than the river bank.

News of what had happened spread quickly and people soon began descending on the area. They came from Sea Mills, and also Shirehampton. Some of them came from the old Army Remount depot, where 300,000 horses had been prepared for service in the Great War, and where, six years afterwards, huts and stables were still being used as homes for families. People also came from Westbury-on-Trym and Clifton, and from even more distant places, such as Cotham, St Augustine’s and Bedminster.

Within an hour, as the late summer afternoon waned and the light disappeared, a huge crowd had gathered on the Avon’s eastern bank and the scene had become chaotic. People – women and children as well as men – were scrambling around, shouting, arguing, and slipping and sliding in the mud. And the cases from the Ettrick were being seized as soon as they came ashore.

Once the cases had been smashed open, their contents – cigarettes and chocolate mainly – were whisked away, sold off at knock-down prices, or simply left scattered on the ground. It would later be said that as many as two hundred people shared in this haul.

The Ettrick, meanwhile, went on suffering in the middle of the Avon. The next high tide saw her almost completely submerged. And then she ‘turned turtle’, finally coming to rest with her black hull upwards and her funnel thrust down into the riverbed.

This further affected traffic on the river. The larger steamboats, unable to reach Bristol, were forced to use Avonmouth instead. And for the best part of a week, pleasure craft were prevented from making their scheduled trips to Cardiff, Minehead, Ilfracombe and Lundy.

Stolen, or salvaged?

It was the following Monday, at the police court on Bridewell Street in Bristol, that the matter reached its conclusion. The chairman of the bench was Stanley – later to become Sir Stanley – Badock, the owner of the Capper Pass tin smelting works in Bedminster. 

A former sheriff of the city, and currently treasurer of Bristol University, Mr Badock lived at Holmwood House in Westbury-on-Trym, which was only a short stroll from the scene of the events he was about to hear about. 

Twenty men climbed into the dock that day, charged with stealing or receiving 38 boxes of cigarettes, countless blocks of chocolate, and a few pairs of shoes and socks. The value of what they had taken was said to be £20 (around £1,000 in today’s money).

The men were mostly in their thirties or forties, although several were younger, and one, William Grainger of Quarry Steps in Clifton, was only 16. They had been apprehended at various places in Bristol – on Shirehampton golf course, at Clifton Down Station, or even in the middle of the Downs near Stoke Bishop. 

They were said to have taken part in what the prosecutor called “a disgraceful orgy of robbery.” But the men themselves claimed they thought the goods were simply being thrown away or sold as salvage by the people who owned them.

“I saw some cigarettes lying on the bank and picked them up,” Victor Williamson of Broad Quay told the magistrates, while 24-year-old Wilfred Pullin of Hotwells said “I had mine given to me.” Trevor Langmin of Sea Mills claimed to have paid good money for the items found with him, and George Rush of Halsbury Road in Redland said his haul had come from a young lad. “There were hundreds of people taking cigarettes away quite openly,” he told the court.

Many of the men had been arrested by Sergeant Ball, but when he was cross-examined, he conceded that they had been carrying their booty quite openly and had made no attempt to run off when they saw him coming.

Hearing all this, Mr Badock announced that he was satisfied the men hadn’t realised they were committing a criminal offence and had simply assumed that the cigarettes and chocolate were being thrown away. He ‘bound them over’ to keep the peace for twelve months. 

New shoes for all

Another man who climbed into the dock – 68-year-old Richard William Bridgwater of South Green Street in Hotwells – had been arrested in his own boat near Cumberland Basin. There was a case of chocolate beside him in the boat, together with seven sacks of flour, a wicker chair, and a dozen pairs of boots. But he claimed to have found those items floating in the river, and to have been waiting for a customs officer to arrive so that he could simply hand them in.

A river policeman gave evidence that Mr Bridgwater was well known to the authorities as a ‘hobbler’ on the Avon, who regularly turned up with flotsam or jetsam in the hope of being given a reward, and the charges against him were dismissed.

At the end of the hearings, Mr Badock said that the people of Bristol could now be in no doubt that the cargo of the Ettrick didn’t belong to them. And if they still had some of it in their possession, he went on, they should return it to its rightful owner straight away.

The ship itself would eventually be towed back into Bristol docks to be broken up, although the operation wouldn’t be helped by the tragic death of the man responsible for it, who collapsed when going on board, and died later in Bristol Royal Infirmary.

The remaining contents of the Ettrick – cocoa, bottled cider, more flour, calf leather, blue serge cloth, toys and horse nails – were sold off by Messrs Cunningham & Gibaud at their auction room in Redcliffe Street. 

But downriver, around the Horseshoe Bend, the children of the village of Pill were all said to be wearing new shoes. And when a tally was taken of the cargo still missing, 50 cases of whisky were at the top of the list.