The Royal Charter - 1859

Australia - back across the sea
The Royal Charter brought the people home
To Liverpool where they will always be
Remembered well although they didn’t come

One autumn night in 1859
A storm blew up - the worst that century
The Royal Charter wrecked just off the coast
Near Dulas Bay and close to Red Wharf Bay

Joe Rodgers swam to bring a line ashore
He fought the waves and rocks that dreadful day
The Royal Charter wrecked just off the coast
Near Dulas Bay and close to Red Wharf Bay

A bosun’s chair was rigged to save the lives
A human chain was paid out in the sea
The Royal Charter wrecked just off the coast
Near Dulas Bay and close to Red Wharf Bay

Just forty-one were rescued from the ship
Four hundred - near five hundred - died that day
The Royal Charter wrecked just off the coast
Near Dulas Bay and close to Red Wharf Bay

The Moelfre twenty-eight men were so brave
The Rector Steven Roose Hughes broke his heart
Recording all the ones they could not save
For relatives who waited at the port

The Royal Charter - full of lives and gold
In sight of land was wrecked by raging wave
The bodies washed ashore were dead and cold
Along the coast - with no more left to save (rpt)

Moral
Returning home from Goldfields in the south
Don’t sew the weight of gold in hem or seam
Shipwrecked you’ll drown as water fills your mouth
Your ‘rich return’ a thwarted distant dream

C 2002 Charlotte Peters Rock

2009 is the 150th Anniversary of the Royal Charter Storm, when numerous boats and ships were sunk on the night of 26th/26th October 1859. The Royal Charter ran aground on the rocks at Moelfre, on the north coast of Anglesey in North Wales. It was returning to Liverpool from the Goldfields of Australia. The Royal Charter was one of he most modern ships in the world when it was built on Deeside in 1854.
see:
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Cranage Airmen - Defenders of Peace

They flew over Liverpool
In clouds of smoke
And flowers of flame
They flew over Liverpool
To keep us safe
They played the game

But it was no game at all
Their lives floating high
Dying to save us all
They fell from the sky
ch
They came from across the earth
To win the world war
Showing what they were worth
Returning no more
ch
In Liverpool people saw
In gratitude there
Those men in their ariel war
To lift their despair
ch
But sixty years on who knows
Remembers their game
Their airfield is gone - who goes
To think of their name
ch
Those boys are all dead or old
Defences are down
Yet still all their gift was gold
Their bravery shown
ch
From Byley remember still
Young men in their prime
Winning by force of will
Remember their time

They flew over Liverpool
In clouds of smoke
And flowers of flame
They flew over Liverpool
To keep us safe
They played the game

2002 © Charlotte Peters Rock

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