Bronze Age Gold from Wales

Gwalia docked at Barry with Devonia alongside, 1905

P.S. GWALIA. Built in 1905 by John Brown at Clydebank, for the Barry Railway Company. Engines : Compound diagonal. Dimensions : 245 ft x 29 ft. 519 Gross Registered Tonnes. Sold to the Furness Railway Company in 1910 and renamed PS Lady Moyra. Used as a minesweeper in First World War. Sold after the war to the Tucker "Yellow Funnel Fleet", returning to the Bristol Channel. Sailed for three seasons for the Tucker operation before its financial failure. Purchased by P and A Campbell at auction in July 1922. Ran for the White Funnel fleet from 1923, being stationed on the South Coast from 1933, renamed PS Brighton Queen Sank at Dunkirk in 1940 on her second trip to evacuate troops back to the UK.

The P.S. DEVONIA was launched on 22 March 1905 by John Brown at Clydebank. Engines - Compound diagonal 34.5 and 71 in x 60 in. Dimensions : 245 ft x 29 ft. Gross Registered Tonnes 641. She was built for the Barry Railway Co. Ltd. She was bought by P. & A. Campbell in 1911, after they had succeeded in forcing the rival Barry company out of business. During the First World War she became H.M.S. DEVONIA and served as a minesweeper on the East Coast. She was assigned to the South Coast when Campbells returned to that station in 1923, remaining there until 1932. She then served on the Bristol Channel until being laid up in 1939, when she was reconditioned for use as a minesweeper and sent to eastern Scotland. Attended the Dunkirk evacuation, but was abandoned on the French coast on 31 May 1940 under heavy fire from enemy aircraft, though unfounded rumours persisted for many years that she had been salvaged and put into service on the River Elbe.