The Ashbury (Wreck)

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The Ashbury had condenser trouble, to put it mildly. That and the ferocity of the storm of 8 January 1945 drove her on to the reef called Dubh Sgeir Mhor, which translates from the Gaelic as Big Black Rock. It lies at the mouth of Talmine Bay, almost as far north as you can go in the north-west of Scotland.

When this tramp steamer went down all 42 on board were drowned, making this one of the worst WW2 shipping losses not caused by enemy action.

She was launched at West Hartlepool in 1924 as the Nitedal. A year later she was the Cairnhill. In 1935 she was bought by "the flying bug line", the Alexander Shipping Line, which used a busy bee on its blue house flag. It renamed the vessel Ashbury.

By the end of 1943 she was still untouched, but in late '44 she was in the Med when her condenser started playing up. In Spain 240 of its 992 tubes were plugged, but it wasn't a cure, and her engineers had to use sawdust to stop the leaks.

Back in Workington, the condenser was still giving trouble, but as the next port of call was the Tyne, it was decided to do the repairs there. The fact that this meant taking a ship with a dodgy condenser round Scotland through the wild seas of January doesn't seem to have worried anybody.

The Ashbury sailed in ballast with 345 extra tons of stone rubbish. This kept her propeller boss under water but left the blades breaking the surface. She still reached her convoy rendezvous in Loch Ewe on time, but while waiting for sailing orders lost her starboard anchor when the cable snapped.

Neither cable nor anchor were replaced before she sailed with the convoy on 6 January 1945 - straight into a force nine gale with snow from the north. Captain David Morris soon dropped far behind. Lack of proper ballast made the ship unmanageable and he dropped her port bow anchor and radioed for help. By midnight Ashbury was adrift.

Ste Therese of the Canadian Navy fought for two hours to get a line aboard before losing contact. At first light 26 bodies were found washed ashore at Talmine and at Tongue, and from the shore two masts could be seen standing up amid huge seas.

Years later, members of Thurso BSAC were the first to see the wreck when they found a bronze prop and 4in gun on the shore side of the reef - giving some idea of how strong those winds had been.