Chucked It
Doug
was sitting on the wall of the harbour in the sunshine watching the
fishing boats coming in when someone spoke to him as they joined him.
“It
sure is a quaint little place here. Are you a visitor or do you live
here?” Doug turned and saw a loudly dressed man sitting there.
“I
live here, but you must be on holiday.”
“Yes.
My wife and I are over from the states. She had relatives who came
from this part of the country and we thought it would be nice to pay
it a visit. It looks a quiet sort of place, but I gather there must
have been some sort of tragedy here some years back as we saw a
memorial garden and hall. Do you know anything about it?”
“Oh
yes, I’ll never forget it. I was only twelve at the time. It was
back in 1952. It rained almost continuously for twenty-four hours.
It simply chucked it down and over the night of the 15th
and 16th
August the water surged down from the moor and the two rivers
converged in the valley and brought boulders and trees through the
town destroying everything in it’s path. They reckon that 9” of
rain fell in that period. The following morning my dad and I came
down to see what had happened, as the noise during the night was
terrible. I remember he had tears in his eyes as he gazed in despair
at the sight before us. I could not believe what I was seeing. It
was a total and utter disaster. Whole houses had been swept away and
in one place where a row of houses once stood, there was just rubble.
Nothing remained. More than one hundred buildings were destroyed
or seriously damaged, including the chapel that was washed away.
This harbour is the replacement for the one that was here then, as
that went with all the fishing boats that were in it at the time.
There were thirty odd cars washed about a quarter of a mile out to
sea, so strong was the surge. It was horrendous. I will never
forget the devastation we witnessed in the morning and I can’t
describe the feeling of seeing the place I lived in lying in ruins.
I think the hardest part was not knowing what had happened to the
people living in those houses. We later learnt that thirty-four
people lost their lives; most of them were our friends and
neighbours. We joined the other men and boys and attempted to start
the clear up, then heard that the army were being brought in to
coordinate it, so later joined most of the men from the area helping
them. It was hard and heartbreaking. I never thought I would ever
see this place look like this again. For many years after I had
panic attacks every time there was a big storm”. He looked around
as he paused and took in the sight before him and sighed. “The
memorial garden was built where the row of houses had been and the
hall on the site of the old lifeboat station that was washed away.
In 2002 on the 50th
anniversary of the flood, a memorial service was held and a wooden
cross was erected in memory of the victims. It had been made by one
of the survivors who was a boy at my school at the time and made from
English oak from a local estate.”
The
visitor was silent for a moment, then putting his hand over Doug’s
said, “Thank you for telling me your story. I feel very humbled
that you shared it with me. This place will be somewhere special in
my memory now.”
This
place is Lynmouth in Devon. I visited it with my parents the year
after the disaster and although a lot of the damage had been repaired
there were still scars to be seen, but it was hard to imagine how the
East and West Lyn rivers gently running through the beautiful valley
could have caused so much utter devastation.
Speculation
has raged ever since that this tragedy was caused by secret
experiments to artificially create rain. The Ministry of Defence
denied this, but RAF servicemen have said they took part in
experiments in the years leading up to the Lynmouth floods and there
was a report uncovered about “cloud seeding” where salt was
sprayed into the atmosphere. Again this was denied. So who knows,
maybe in years to come something else will be uncovered and the truth
will finally be out.
