The Thomas Vaughan (Wreck)

Everyone knew everything about the Holme Line steamer Thomas Vaughan except what had happened to her. Sometime in January,1882, she just disappeared. The last time she was noted was off the Pembrokeshire coast and then she was seen no more, writes Kendall McDonald.
Thomas Vaughan was a small iron steamer of just 645 tons, built by Backhouse & Dixon of Middlesbrough in 1871. She was 190ft long with a beam of 26 and drew 14ft. She was driven by a single screw from a two-cylinder compound engine of 80hp with one boiler. Her machinery was made by well-known engineering firm Black, Hawthorn & Co of Gateshead. She was classed A1.
Despite this, Captain Jack Braithwaite and all the crew had simply vanished. No wreckage or bodies were washed ashore during the following weeks. Thomas Vaughan had disappeared without trace. The lack of wreckage was particularly puzzling, for a series of onshore gales and storms had swept the area during the time that the ship went missing, but nothing washed up on the beaches could possibly be connected with the steamer.
However, the mystery was finally solved months later by fishermen working in Jack Sound, where the tides run between Skomer Island and the Marloes peninsula at 5 or 6 knots and even faster on springs. Wind on this tide race brings vast swells with cross-currents running over them to churn up mountains of solid sea and spray. Jack Sound had, and still has, an evil reputation for wrecking ships.
The fishermen from nearby Marloes found their gear hooked into a wreck where they knew there had been no wreck before.
It turned out to be the Thomas Vaughan, which, it was now clear, had foundered in Jack Sound at the very start of the New Year of 1882.

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