There is a line of treacherous rocks in the shallow waters alongside The Needles lighthouse off the Isle of Wight known to mariners as ‘the Needles Bridge.’
Just before 7am on a Sunday morning in January 1947, a Greek cargo steamer, the Varvassi, struck the Bridge, becoming firmly fixed in an upright position.
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Oddly, despite warnings that she was on a wrong course, she ignored the advice and headed straight for the rocks.
The weather at the time was fine and clear, leading the County Press to describe the incident as ‘one of the most inexplicable accidents in the history of wrecks.’
Onboard the Varvassi was a cargo of 300 tons of tangerines, 400 tons of wine, iron ore and a crew of 34 under Captain Coulopandelis.
Soon after she struck the rocks, the Yarmouth lifeboat arrived but was told no assistance was required.
At 6am the next morning, the crew decided they did need assistance after all and they were picked up by lifeboat and taken to Yarmouth to be given dry clothes and accommodation at the King's Head pub.
One of the lifeboat crew was Nelson Simmonds, part-owner of a salvage company that was later hired to save what they could from the wreck.
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Nearly 40 years later Nelson was interviewed about events that morning. He was interviewed by Henry Hislop of Cowes, now in his 96th year, who was a presenter on St Mary’s Hospital Radio in the mid-1980s.
Henry had the presence of mind not only to interview locals but to keep the recordings, which he has kindly made available to me.
WATCH: See how close the Varvassi wreck is to the surface!
Nelson tells Henry there may have been something fishy about the grounding. “Well, we got out there, it was quite calm and all the crew were ready to come ashore. They had their baggage packed and we took them to Yarmouth and the skipper stayed in the King’s Head for about a fortnight; nice chap he was, spoke very good English.
"He told us he thought it was a bit of a ‘put up job’. He said the crew had put the ship ashore purposely because they hadn’t been home for a long time and they knew they’d be off again after this trip and they thought: ‘Well, we’re not having any more of this.’ They reckoned they done that.”
Nelson’s salvage work began but stormy weather held it up, the County Press reporting on February 15: ‘Sea conditions have made it impossible for H. Simmonds and Sons to carry out further salvage since they brought over 600 crates of tangerines ashore last week. They have now saved over 8,000 crates, and the fruit was in perfect condition.’
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Nelson’s interview confirms this: “We salvaged about 5,000 or 6,000 cases of tangerines and because it was very cold in February they kept about three months in the holds. We used to land them at Yarmouth Quay in 18lb baskets and Fred Trim, the fruit merchant, used to take them all off us and I think we got about half a crown a basket for them. They all had to be lowered over the side by rope, all by hand, there was nothing working on the ship, you see.”
Next out of the hold was what everyone had been waiting for. “Then we started to get the wine up on deck and we broached the first barrel up. We broached that and had a drink off it (laughs). They were 200 gallon barrels; they stood nearly five feet high, great big things.
“There was 200 barrels, and we knew that because the skipper told us, but he didn’t seem to think it was a lot of value, this wine, and nor did Lloyds, the shipping agents; they told us not to bother with it. Anyhow, a Yarmouth bloke, Cole, came out and he took a lot of this wine off with his barge. Mew Langtons, the brewers bought it, and they were selling this wine at nine bob a bottle.”
Six weeks later, the County Press reported: ‘Rough seas tore a hole in the side of the Varvassi this weekend and the beaches were littered with tangerines and about 50 huge barrels of wine. A Customs official stated that the wine was unfit for human consumption, but it did not stop a number of people from raising a toast, including some German POWs who broke open a cask on the shore near Colwell.’
Nelson: “When the ship broke open, what was left aboard there, about a 100 barrels I expect, washed ashore all along the beaches, and at Colwell there were a lot of German prisoners up in Brambles Camp and ‘course, they got down on the beach and they very soon got to work on that!
“They were all drinking and drunk down there. Oh yes. I think everybody had a share of that. You’d come down to the beach with a bucket, fill it up and away you went (laughs).”
During the summer more barrels of wine were removed until on January 3, 1948 — nearly a year to the day since she foundered — the County Press reported: ‘The Varvassi broke in half during a storm, the ship disappearing completely on Saturday. The beaches were littered with debris from her. West Wight residents, using prams, home-made trollies, and bicycles, reaped a rich harvest of driftwood from the beaches.’
Cheers!
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