The Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s highest award for gallantry is its Gold Medal, only 150 of which have been awarded since 1824. Richard Evans (1905-2001), Coxswain of the Moelfre Lifeboat, Anglesey, remarkably was presented with two RNLI Gold Medals for heroic rescues at sea.

Richard Evans won his first Gold Medal on 27 October 1959 when in hurricane force winds the M.V. Hindlea, a small cargo ship, was dragging its anchor in Moelfre Bay and being driven onto the rocky coast. The captain of the Hindlea gave the order to abandon ship when only 200 yards from the rocky shore and coxswain Evans took the Moelfre reserve lifeboat Edmund and Mary Robinson, with an incomplete crew, close to the ship ten times, enabling the eight man crew to one by one jump onto the lifeboat. During the rescue the lifeboat was once washed onto the deck of the ship and back off, and the coxswain had to manoeuvre perilously close to the ship’s propellers which were churning at full speed, at times out of the water and above the lifeboat. At one point the lifeboat heeled over until its mast was under water before righting itself. Thirty five minutes after the last of the crew were saved, the Hindlea struck the rocks and was lost.  

R.N.L.B. Watkin Williams, the Moelfre lifeboat from 1957 to 1977, on which Richard Evans won his second R.N.L.I. Gold Medal in 1966. The lifeboat was donated to Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales in 1983 and displayed until 1998; it is currently in store but can be viewed by appointment.

On 2 December 1966 coxswain Evans won his second Gold Medal. The Moelfre lifeboat Watkin William had been at sea since early morning having been called out to two vessels in trouble. They were then told that the Greek cargo vessel M.V. Nafsiporos was being driven out of control by 100 mile an hour winds towards Point Lynas, five miles north of Moelfre, and the Holyhead and Moelfre lifeboats went to her assistance. The Holyhead lifeboat rescued five of the crew and sustained damage. The Moelfre lifeboat rescued ten more crew but the captain and three crew of the Nafsiporos remained on board. After landing the rescued crew members at Moelfre, coxswain Evans took the lifeboat back to the Nafsiporos and stood by all night until a tug from Liverpool arrived and managed to take the cargo vessel in tow. The lifeboat returned to Moefre after 24 hours at sea; coxswain Evans, then aged 61, had been at the wheel the entire time.

Over his 50 years as a lifeboatman Richard Evans was involved in 179 launches which rescued 281 lives. In addition to his two RNLI Gold Medals, for other rescues he was awarded the Thanks of the RNLI on Vellum and the RNLI Bronze Medal, for the 1959 rescue was awarded the Queen’s Silver Medal for gallantry at sea, and in 1969 was awarded the British Empire Medal. In 1978 he was made an Honorary Bard at the National Eisteddfod.

Most gardeners regard horsetails or scouring rushes (Equisetum) as one of their worst enemies – once this invasive weed is in your garden or allotment, it will spread everywhere and is almost impossible to get rid of (Fig. 1). But of course from the plant’s perspective this is a success story – they are doing what is best for them, not for us!

Today, this genus of highly invasive plants consists of only 15 species (Fig. 2), but they are found throughout the world except in Antarctica. They also have an immensely long evolutionary history spanning over 350 million years.

Fossils of horsetails are commonly found in the Carboniferous age coalfields such as in South Wales. The star-shaped leaf whorls (Annularia) are among the iconic fossils found in these rocks. We now know they were parts of tree-sized plants up to 10 metres or more tall – I have often wondered what today’s gardeners would think if they encountered a living one of these giants!

Fig. 3. Fossil horsetail (Annularia paisii) from the uppermost Carboniferous of Portugal, showing insect gall. Insert shows close-up of gall. Specimen in the Museum of Natural History and Science, Porto (UP-MHNFCP-155167).

A couple of years ago, my colleague Pedro Correia sent me a photograph of a fossil Annularia that he had found in Portugal (Fig. 3). In itself, this wouldn’t have been too unusual, but this one had a strange structure attached among the leaves. It almost looked as though it was a seed but of course that was impossible – horsetails do not have seeds, but reproduce by spores, in the same way as ferns. We shared this photograph with other European colleagues and a debate ensued as to what on Earth this could be. For a time it remained a puzzle. But then we showed it to another colleague, Conrad Labandeira from the Smithsonian Institution (Washington DC), who is one of the world’s leading palaeontological experts on insect – plant interactions. He suggested that this was probably a structure known as a gall.  Most galls today are produced when an insect injects chemicals into the plant to produce a swelling, in which it lays an egg. The resulting larva then develops within the gall.

There is evidence of Annularia leaves having been eaten by insects, such a chew-marks around the leaf edge. Conrad had also published evidence some years ago of an insect gall in a Carboniferous tree fern stem. But a gall on a Carboniferous horsetail is most unusual.  For a time we thought this example might be unique. But we then found a paper published back in 1931 by the American palaeobotanist Maxim Elias, who claimed to have found a seed attached to an Annularia. But it is now clear that Elias hadn’t in fact discovered a seed-bearing Annularia, as he had thought, but an insect gall similar to ours.

Fossil galls of this age are extremely rare. What insect produced this one is unknown. The organism was not preserved and most of today’s gall-producing insect groups do not have a fossil record extending this far back in time. All that we can say is that it was probably caused by a member of a now-extinct insect group that presumably produced larvae as part of its life cycle (Fig. 4).

Most horsetails have thick, almost leathery stems and I still find it rather strange that insects produce galls on them. But they do today on at least some horsetails, and it has clearly been of benefit to insects for millions of years. We haven’t yet found one in the Welsh coalfields but, now we know what to look out for, we will be keeping our eyes open!

Correia, P., Bashforth, A.R., Šimůnek, Z., Cleal, C.J., Sá, A.A. & Labandeira, C.C. 2020. The history of herbivory on sphenophytes: a new calamitalean with an insect gall from the Upper Pennsylvanian of Portugal and a review of arthropod herbivory on an ancient lineage. International Journal of Plant Sciences, 181(4).

VE Day Celebrations in London, 8 May 1945

8th May 2020 marks the 75th Anniversary of VE Day. Victory in Europe Day in 1945 celebrated the end of World War Two when fighting against Nazi Germany came to an end in Europe. Celebrations erupted throughout the western world, especially in the UK and North America, with more than one million people taking to the streets, village greens and town centres to celebrate across Britain.

The National Wool Museum had a VE Tea Party planned to mark this day, but as we’re all staying safe at home, our team would like to share some of their delicious VE Tea recipes with you in the hope that you can create your own celebration to mark this important occasion.

 

LEMON SPONGE

Lemmon Cake

8oz. margarine

8oz. castor sugar

4 eggs, lightly beaten

9oz. self - raising flour

1 dessert spoon lemon juice

 

TOPPING

2 Tablespoons caster sugar

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

 

​Preheat oven at 180°C  350° F  Gas mark 4

Grease and line 11" x 7" tin.  Cream butter and sugar until pale and creamy, then beat in the eggs.  Add a tablespoon of flour with the last amount of egg to prevent curdling.  Add the lemon juice.  Fold in the rest of the flour with a metal spoon.

Place in tin and bake for about 45 mins​.

Meanwhile make topping by mixing lemon juice and castor sugar.

Remove from oven, prick all over with a skewer and spoon topping over the hot cake.  Leave to cool in tin until topping is absorbed.

 

SCONES

Scones

1 lb. self- raising flour

1 teaspoon salt

4 oz. butter

2 oz. castor sugar

½ pint milk

beaten egg to glaze

For the filling:

strawberry or raspberry jam

quarter pint double cream, whipped

 

Preheat oven 230° C  450° F  Gas mark 8

Sift flour and salt into a bowl.  Rub in butter until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.  Add castor sugar and mix to a soft dough with the milk.

Turn onto a lightly floured table, knead quickly, then roll out to ¼ inch thickness. Cut into 20 rounds with a 2½  inch cutter. Place scones on greased baking trays and brush tops with beaten egg or milk. Bake in oven for 8 - 10 minutes.  Cool on a wire tray.

When cold, split and serve with jam and whipped cream.

 

On a Monday morning in January 2016 I received a phone call from the Museum’s archaeology department in Cardiff. It turned out that the storm a few days earlier had shifted the sand in Oxwich Bay on the Gower. Apparently a wreck had been uncovered and some old wooden casks were visible!

Because National Waterfront Museum in Swansea is the home of our Maritime Collection, I was asked to take a look and grab a few images before the sand covered it up again. As curator I’m part of the National Museum’s History & Archaeology Department, and I studied archaeology at Trinity College Carmarthen so I was well up to the task. Now, as much as I love a field trip, it was January and a cold wind was blowing from the Atlantic, but the weather in two days’ time was supposed to be fine. I hunted for my wellies (found in the boot of the car eventually) and charged my camera batteries.

So Wednesday morning bright and early found me in the car park for Oxwich Bay. Time was on my side, as at nine o’clock the tide was out as far as it would go that day. I had vague directions to follow as to where on the beach the barrels had been found – a very crude ‘X marks the spot’ hand drawn map. There was no scale on the map so I started at the western end of the beach and worked my way across it, zig-zagging to check out every little bump in the sand.

There were a lot of bumps too! Many pieces of metal, plainly from ships that had ended up there. Bits of steel rope, hull plating and rusty conglomerates. It was a lovely day for the search even though a keen wind was

Barrel exposed on the beach

blowing from the north now making the tops of the breakers misty. Then in the distance I spotted a larger disturbance in the sand and I could make out barrel shapes. There appeared to be six barrels and pieces of broken barrels, none of them were intact. They were lovely wooden casks and we had all hoped that they might be at least a few hundred years old. Alas, their proximity to a piece of steel hull spoke of a more recent wreck. Throughout the Twentieth Century, during WW2 and just after, a number of ships ended up on Oxwich Beach. Some were re-floated but others were broken up for scrap.

With such scant evidence it was impossible to tell which our ship was. The barrels contained a hard concrete-like substance, which later proved to be lime - originally a powder, it hard set hard in the sea water. Lime is used for a number of things such as making cement or lime mortar; as a soil improver just spread on the land, and for marking white lines on football pitches!

Wooden barrel containing hardened lime revealed by winter storms at Oxwich Bay

I took plenty of images and luckily had remembered to take a 30cm ruler with me to give a scale to the casks. As I worked I noticed the tide had turned and was getting closer and closer soon to cover the scene. It was time to leave and make my way back to the Waterfront Museum.

Are the barrels still visible? I don’t know. The power of the sea shifts the sand about after every storm revealing and then hiding historic treasures away maybe for another seventy years, maybe never to be seen again….

In my previous blog I explained what rafting bivalve shells are and how Caribbean bivalves are ending up on British and Irish shores attached to plastics. There are numerous records of non-native bivalves on plastics in the southwest of Ireland and England but nothing has yet been reported in Wales, which is something that I’m trying to rectify. To encourage recording I’m enlisting citizen scientists – volunteers from the general public – who can help to spot and identify these rafting species in Wales. But first of all, I want to check to see if there are rafting species turning up on our shores so I began talking to groups who already go out on the shores to survey, beach clean or educate.

Presenting the rafting project at the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society Conference at SAMS (Scottish Association for Marine Science).

In December 2019 I met with a fantastic group of people at PLANED in Narbeth. PLANED have excellent coastal community links and everyone I spoke to was enthusiastic and willing to incorporate the rafting bivalves project into their usual activities of beach cleans, foraging, outdoor activities or education.  They were keen to help record any rafting species that they discover and we talked about how to identify any bivalves found. Since then I have been working on an identification guide that I plan to develop with the help of these community groups.

Pembrokeshire National Parks staff and volunteers looking for plastics at Freshwater West beach

Pembrokeshire National Parks staff and volunteers looking for plastics at Freshwater West beach

Pembrokeshire National Parks staff and volunteers looking for plastics at Freshwater West beach

In early March two colleagues and I attended the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society’s

Presenting the rafting project at the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society Conference at SAMS (Scottish Association for Marine Science).

Presenting the rafting project at the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society Conference at SAMS (Scottish Association for Marine Science).

Presenting the rafting project at the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society Conference at SAMS (Scottish Association for Marine Science).

If you would like to help record non-native bivalves on plastics on Welsh beaches then do contact me at Anna.Holmes@museumwales.ac.uk