A big bite of history
May 10 2008 by Rhodri Clark, Western Mail
Shipwrecks around the coast of Wales have yielded all sorts of relics. But experts now believe that a glamorous ship owned by one of America’s most successful families in the early 19th century left a legacy that still survives on a windswept Cardigan Bay hillside today. Rhodri Clark reports
TWO centuries ago the people who lived along the coast north of Barmouth were used to searching the shore for booty from shipwrecks. A treacherous reef, known as St Patrick’s Causeway, stretches out to sea for about 14 miles.
Hundreds of ships were torn apart there over the centuries when the Irish Sea was a principal trade route between Britain, Ireland, France, Spain and further afield.
When an American ship called the Diamond crashed onto the rocks on January 2 1825, red apples were among the cargo washed ashore.
Enterprising locals spotted an opportunity to make this gift last longer than the short-lived gain depicted in Whisky Galore.
Local legend has it that seeds from the apples were planted and the trees nurtured to feed local communities. There may even have been orchards of these American trees in the area.
A tree which may be a descendant of the shipwrecked apples was recently tracked down – still bearing a good crop of apples each year. Experts say the tree’s fruit has no close relative in Britain but resembles an old US apple variety.
The Diamond was no ordinary ship. It was built in Manhattan for the Macy family, which subsequently achieved fame with its New York department store – said to be the biggest in the world. Other Macys had previously founded one of the world’s first oil companies, processing the carcasses brought ashore by whaling ships.
The entrepreneurial family had new ideas about trans-Atlantic passenger and cargo shipping, and the Diamond embodied new technology and practices to put the business plan into action. Instead of accepting the standard wooden hull of the age, the Macys paid to have it reinforced by the addition of metal.
Instead of taking a month or six weeks to cross the Atlantic, the Diamond could cross in just 21 days. The Macys ran their ships to schedules, breaking with the tradition of ships waiting in port until the holds and cabins were filled.
The Diamond had limited passenger accommodation, the rest of the ship being given over to precious cargo.
“The people who travelled on the Diamond were the people who today would fly first class in a jumbo jet, or on Concorde when it was operating,” says marine archaeologist Mike Bowyer, who has spent more than 30 years researching the wreck.
When the ship left New York on its last voyage on December 12 1824, the passenger list included cotton barons from Yorkshire and Lancashire returning from striking deals with American cotton growers to keep English textile mills in full flow. Others were travelling home after making a fortune in the US. In all 28 passengers were recorded as having embarked. Reports of the accident say that of the crew and passengers, nine survived and 10 drowned.
The loss of the Diamond was a personal tragedy as well as a financial setback for the Macys.
Mr Bowyer, who lives in Bangor, says the ship’s regular captain, Josiah Macy, was replaced for the voyage by his brother Henry, who drowned in the accident aged 33.
The story of the Diamond is also a story about food miles. Today sea and air transport are so safe our main concerns are over the greenhouse gases emitted in carrying fruit and other foods over hundreds of thousands of miles.
Back then the main problem was the loss of life, on countless ships.
The apples in the Diamond’s hold were a premium luxury food. Modern consumers are used to buying apples at any time of the year. In 1825 it was impossible to store fresh apples for long, and importing them was difficult because the fruits would rot.
By guaranteeing a faster crossing, the Diamond opened new trading possibilities for farmers in the US who could grow apples and other produce later than was possible in the UK.
In the event it wasn’t the English aristocracy that benefited from the fruits the Diamond carried over the Atlantic at such great cost, but people on the Meirionnydd coast.
The canniest among them planted the seeds. Local folklore tells of apples from the shipwreck being grown in orchards and sold at markets in the area. In the early Victorian era people on Wales’ western coasts bought local produce not to assuage their consciences over “food miles” but out of necessity. The bright red apples grown from the Diamond’s cargo would have made a refreshing change from the usual varieties grown locally.
Eventually the secluded way of life in Meirionnydd was overturned as railways crept deeper and deeper into Wales. The Cambrian Railway, brainchild of Welsh industrialist David Davies, laid a track along the coast, audaciously striding on a trestle bridge across the mouth of the Mawddach estuary to reach Barmouth and Harlech.
Mass tourism quickly transformed the area. The trains also heralded a trend towards greater centralisation and standardisation of production, a trend which continues today.
Apples have been subjected to that process as much as anything else. A handful of varieties has dominated supermarket shelves for the past decade or more. The fruit sections of garden centres have also focused on a few popular sellers, but with apples so plentiful and cheap in the shops many people have forgotten about growing their own. Many native Welsh apple varieties, resistant to the local climate and diseases, have probably been lost for ever.
Commercial apple growers have also been affected. Kent, perfect for apple cultivation, has lost 85% of its orchards in the past 50 years. Herefordshire has lost even more. When British apple trees groan under the weight of fruit in late summer, supermarkets stock imported apples.
One man determined to fight back is Bangor-based Ian Sturrock, who has brought several native Welsh fruit species back from the almost dead.
When the tale of the Diamond and its apple cargo reached his ears, he set off across Snowdonia on a detective’s mission. By then, however, supermarkets and food imports had taken their toll and there was no sign of unusual apples in the Barmouth area.
For three summers he searched the land and questioned people. Mike Bowyer joined the quest. A wreck which was thought to be that of the Diamond – and was even protected by Cadw – had turned out to be the remains of another ship.
The two men had almost given up hope when, one Sunday morning, they happened to look over somebody’s garden wall in Dyffryn Ardudwy.
That somebody was Guy Lloyd. “The house that I live in belonged to my grandmother and two maiden aunts previously,” he says.
“My elderly aunt, Marian Lloyd, had always talked about this tree as being descended from the Diamond. When she moved into this house in the early 1950s there must have been some story handed down then about the tree.
“It was always said that there were one or two trees in this immediate area, because the Diamond went down near here.
“It’s quite a hardy tree. It produces quite a heavy crop of fruit most years. The fruits are two or two-and-a-half inches across. They look very attractive.
“They’re quite nice eaten fresh from the tree, but I don’t care much for them a few days after they’ve been picked.”
That remark suggests that the apple would not have travelled well, especially on an ocean voyage lasting weeks. On the other hand, the climate on the windswept coastal foothills of Snowdonia is a long way from the American climate that ripened the apples placed in the Diamond’s hold.
Mr Sturrock was delighted to hear Mr Lloyd’s story, having realised that the fruit on the tree was out of character for Gwynedd. However, some form of proof was needed. He sent some of the bright red apples for analysis to the National Fruit Collection in Kent.
“None of the national experts has recognised it as being anything else,” says Mr Sturrock. “Its most likely relative is Baldwin.”
The first Baldwin tree is thought to have been identified in about 1740 in Massachusetts. It produced vivid red apples that were popular for eating and cider making for decades. Mr Sturrock believes apples of this type were exported from New York to Britain in the 19th Century.
The fact that the Dyffryn Ardudwy apples are unlike any native British species but closely related to an American one is perhaps the closest anyone will ever come to connecting the old tree with the shipwreck.
It was good enough for Ian Sturrock, who has started selling the tree’s young offspring – an apple variety newly named Diamond.
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