On the way to the cemetery

When I was a boy, just the other day, life in the Canary Islands was still comparatively primitive.

While Puerto de la Cruz, on the island of Tenerife, was beginning to take shape as a package holiday resort at the end of the 1950s, there were still two main classes of inhabitant, the rich and the poor, the landowner and the peasant. In between, there were the sharecroppers and the fishermen.

 

The banana plantations between the old Martiánez Hotel and the beach had been cleared 

There was vast private wealth in land, and in many rural areas inhabitants lived a very simple kind of life, serving the sometimes feudal landowner and sharing the crops the land produced. They were the poor. This was until General Franco’s regime began implementing the Limited Rent Housing Law of 1954 and the Urban Leases Law of 1964, a social housing plan which saw the building of over four million affordable houses for the poorer classes throughout Spain, including the Canary Islands. Most owners managed to pay them off within ten years. As a result, many of the peasants’ traditional stone cottages dotted around the landscape were abandoned for the comfortable state-built housing estates. It also saw many peasants abandon thousands of agricultural terraces for more prosperous wages in town.

 

Some of those abandoned terraces, like these in the El Río gorge, are being recovered

I grew up in the 1960s and my father once owned a finca in the hills above Tacoronte. I still have vivid memories of half-naked children hanging onto the skirts of bare-footed mothers who peeped out of the wooden doorways of stone cottages beside the lanes that led to the farm. They would stare and wave at us as my father drove the Land Rover up the muddy tracks to our farm. The kids learnt to beg for half a peseta, or to barter in exchange for a handful of plums, chestnuts or blackberries. 

My father employed mostly women on the farm, and it was always a joy to hear their singing and laughter as they worked. He built the farm manager a proper house, while he prefered us to sleep in a rather dodgy wooden hut which was erected on a concrete base under the pines and above the plum orchard.

 

Grandmothers often came to give good advice or to keep an eye on the children

Country folk rarely travelled far, and many were born and died without ever visiting the nearest town, like one or two centenarians I have met in remoter hamlets of the Anaga mountains. They were and remain extremely generous and helpful to each other as communities. The farming chores, like gathering in the wheat and threshing it on the eras, filling the sacks with grain and carrying them on their backs or on mule to the Tacoronte market, were happily shared. 

This very old era, or threshing ground, can be found near Teno Alto

When somebody died, however, the world came to a halt. Neighbours would gather outside the family cottage to pay their respects, and to accompany them during the ritual wake. They would often take food for the grieving family because a cooking fire was not lit for a day or two in respect for the departed. Then, when the priest sent a signal, men would sway in solemn procession down the lanes to the nearest church or cemetery. By law, the dead would need to be buried within forty eight hours after death.

In Lanzarote there is a little village called Soo. It nestles between the Colorado Peak, the highest point of one particular volcanic cone, and what was often referred to as the Soo desert, a grain of sand compared to the neighbouring Sahara.

 

The pretty village of Soo, as it is today

Not so long ago, when a member of the family passed away, grieving women in Soo would lock themselves into the dead person’s home for eight days. The custom, which only disappeared in the middle of the 20^th century, was so that the neighbours could care for and feed the grieving family during those days of mourning. The men, I understand, were excused. They would be required to attend to the animals and the crops. Many years ago, it used to be the custom in all the islands that women never went to funerals. They would only be expected to attend a memorial mass on the third day after a death.

Unlike today, when visiting doctors are often seen in remote villages checking up on the elderly, there were still no doctors or caretakers to cater for peasants well into the 20^th century. Country folk either never became ill or, if they did, cared for each other with ancient herbal remedies. If sickness or old age ended in death, men carried their own dead on their shoulders to the cemetery. They would not be taken in a coffin but laid on a simple stretcher made with sticks. It actually made sense because it was a much lighter mode of transportation, and they would often be required to walk considerable distances to a final resting place in holy ground.

 

A doctor visits elderly people in their Chinamada cave dwellings once a week

More than one story has been handed down from generation to generation telling of porters suddenly being given the fright of their lives on their way down from the hills to the cemetery. Pancho, who owned a pottery kiln above Arico, a village on the south eastern slopes of Tenerife, was a recognised tile maker. He died just before the Spanish Civil War, after apparently collapsing during an argument at the village inn.

His body was lovingly bathed and proudly dressed in his best clothes. But, on the way to the cemetery, transported by men in solemn procession, his rigid body suddenly sat bolt upright on the stretcher and it shouted out, “Hey, what the Devil is going on?”

The stretcher bearers immediately dropped their dead baggage with a hard bump on the ground. They, and the body's relatives and neighbours, scattered, terrified in all directions. Well, with no proper doctor at hand to certify a death, a corpse might at times only have given the impression of being a corpse. Pancho survived to have another argument at the village inn.

 

A street in the old town centre of Arico

They were definitely more civilized on the island of Lanzarote. They often used camels to rock the dead to the cemetery. Nevertheless, the road to the burial site could be long and hot, with hardly a drop of water to be found. So, if the procession happened to pass close to a village where there was a fiesta going on, the mourners wouldn't hesitate. They would simply join in the festivities, refresh themselves with some good wine to accompany a bowl of goat meat stew and then continue solemnly to the cemetery.

In the village of Teno, situated in the mountain range to the extreme west of Tenerife, the small number of inhabitants who dedicated their lives to sheep, goat and arable farming, were believed to use a specially prepared stretcher for carrying their dead. In fact, unlike the disposable stretchers made with sticks, it was a long box, like the crude wooden ones seen in cowboy films. It had wooden poles attached to each end and was designed to be transported by just two men. The narrow, rocky path down the mountainside was too narrow and dangerous for more than a single file of men to walk down. Then, when the procession reached the Bujame or Negro gorges, the dead person would be transferred into a proper coffin for the rest of the journey to the cemetery which was situated at the coastal town of Buenavista. This mode of transport was still in use as recently as the 1970s because, until then, there was no road to Teno. Like the village of Masca, the hamlet was pretty well isolated from the rest of the world.

 

Negotiating the mountain tracks into the Bujame gorge could be tricky

As at almost every funeral, processions on the way to the cemetery attracted quite a crowd. Every adult male member of a village would take part. Milking the goats, preparing the terraces or digging the potatoes could wait until tomorrow. The respect paid to the dead and to the grieving family was sacred. It was, and still is, in the nature of these wonderful islanders, and one can still feel the strength of unity today in those rural communities.   

By John Reid Young

Author of:

The Skipping Verger and other Tales (a collection of short stories)

A Shark in the Bath and other Stories (a collection of short stories)

The Journalist (a novel)

For more information, or if you would like to read any of my books, please click on the images to the right of this page.

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When Tourists saddled up to the call of a volcano in Tenerife.

    In recent weeks, since the eruption from the La Cumbre Vieja mountain range began on 19th September, on Spain's Canary Island of La Palma, scientists have been learning and exchanging more information about Strombolian eruptions than ever before. However, even they understand that against the forces of nature, especially those deep in the Earth's bowels, mankind has not got a chance.

A beautiful sunset, with Mt Teide above the clouds. To the right, a dramatic plume speaks of La Palma's eruption. 

(Photo taken during a picnic on 21.09.2021). 

     What began as a sparkling and exciting event, with magma and gases creeping through volcanic tubes and pushing their way to the surface, like a kettle coming to the boil, soon turned into a nightmare, and devastation for inhabitants of La Palma. 

     Hundreds of homes have been buried under rivers of lava, swallowing up the memories of generations and turning some of the finest banana plantations into petrified, fuming rock, whilst treasured black-sand beaches have been smothered by smoldering lava. Inhabitants are also suffering the consequences of the fallout, in the form of ash particles weighing down roofs and blanketing everything with something resembling powdered, black snow. Sulphur dioxide has poluted the air they breathe. COVID pandemic rules imply the compulsory wearing of masks. Now people wear masks to protect their health, not from a man-spread virus, but from the dangerous levels of volcanic debris and chemicals in the air. 

Like a snake, a river of magma finds its way in La Palma

     The island of La Palma, la isla bonita, is over 50 miles away but we, on the island of Tenerife, have memories of our own volcanoes, of course. One only has to visit the great Las Cañadas caldera to realise that Mount Teide Volcano is just a small hillock compared to what may have been there long before. We also have written memories of the last eruption on the island, a little over 100 years ago. Not only memories, but a feeling, not so deep down, that anything might happen one day. After all, as La Palma has come to remind us, the Canary Islands are still volcanically active.

     On rare occasions we have felt the minor Earth tremors that have been keeping people awake on La Palma. Some of us remember, only a few years ago, before the under-sea eruption off the island of El Hierro in 2011, that there were whispers about an imminent eruption on Tenerife. A series of earth tremors, centred between the towns of  Santiago del Teide and Icod, got people all het up. Even a few English newspapers told their readers that Teide was about to blow its top! A maximum register of 3.2 on the Richter Scale was not much to worry about, but the coincidence of a number of similar shakes over a period of weeks persuaded the authorities and scientists to come clean about the fact that something might have been about to happen. 

     Although nothing actually did occur at the time, local gossip also led to similar conclusions. Tomás, the lovely old gentleman from La Guancha who used to come with his lorry on Saturdays to sell us home-grown fruit and vegetables, told us there was a cave to the south of Icod from which nasty smelling gases had begun to appear. Mind you he was also convinced that the unusually hot weather we had been having at the time was also due to volcanic activity!

     The authorities tried to persuade public opinion that if anything did happen, it would not be on a catastrophic scale. Indeed they believed, if it happened at all, that it would be “a gentle, Strombolian eruption” which might perhaps start a few forest fires and burn a house or two, but no more. Scientists supported that belief. However, as La Palma has evidenced now, nobody can predict nor control the damage an eruption might cause, or where exactly a volcano might decide to appear in its explosive beginnings. Having said that, scientists, using modern equipment and satellite images, were almost exact in pinpointing where the Earth would give this time.

The "gentle eruption" of Chinyero (Tenerife, 1909)

     Perhaps memories of the last eruption on the island of Tenerife, in 1909, had persuaded people that any eruption would be "gentle", until this new La Palma volcano. 

     Nevertheless, when Chinyero erupted, the municipality of the Valley of Santiago was practically cut off from the rest of the world. Messenger pigeons became the essential means of communication during the eruption. The information carried by the birds took no more than 5 minutes to reach Garachico from Santiago del Teide. From there, the news was then urgently transmitted to the authorities by telegram.

     The eruption of Chinyero, however minor, produced a whole range of reactions. Fearful inhabitants took their religious images up to the lava flows and legend suggests the lava came to a halt where they stood. Victorian tourism found ways to take advantage of the situation and a number of excursions were organised to visit the volcano. Moreover, the Chinyero is famous for having been the first volcano to have been mentioned in the press, and to have been filmed and photographed. It is also the first to have been studied by contemporary scientists and about which extensive, scientific reports were made.

     Chinyero began to erupt just after two o'clock in the afternoon of 18th November, 1909. Its activity lasted for 10 days, unlike the new La Palma eruption which, as I write, is two months old and still going strong. The eruption was preceded by a series of earth tremors and underground noises which alerted the inhabitants in Santiago del Teide and neighbouring regions. The eruptive process began when a 600 metre long crevice opened up and this was accompanied by loud explosions, heard as far away as La Laguna and Santa Cruz. The eruptive column towered sky high. As one local resident described,

“It gave a great thundering sound and the plants and trees flew into the air with the smoke and earth. The shrubs went up, turning over and over and were covered in black and red earth. Huge stones were also flung out, everything spreading out when it reached high up, and bits of gravel came down on us, so hot that we could not hold them in our hands.”

      There are also memorable tales about folk in the Orotava Valley. Some were brave enough to take a close look at the eruption. I remember being told by Noel Reid that he witnessed the eruption at close range. He was a lad of seventeen at the time and remembered that there had been a series of earth tremors for a couple of months before the eruption. 

     The first sign that the earth was attempting to breathe was when news arrived that gases had appeared from a cavity on the side of Mount Teide. Everyone thought the peak itself would erupt and foreign residents hastily began to pack their bags. Many British residents took boxes and cases for safe-keeping at Casa Reid in Puerto de la Cruz or at El Nido, the Vice Consul, Tom Reid’s home, itself built in 1894 on the top of a volcanic rock. Some residents were invited to stay, resting wherever they could find space, indoors or on the verandas. 

El Nido, the British Vice-Consul's house in the Orotava Valley.

     From other parts of the island, the noise of the explosions from the eruption could be heard like distant thunder, and the amazing red glow of lava shooting into the sky were very spectacular. Local people were frightened. The Bishop of La Laguna ordered everyone to pray. But the rumblings and the glow seemed to go on for days without apparently causing great harm. 

Tourists from around the island got a close look at the volcanic eruption (1909)

     Therefore, like a number of others, Noel Reid and a group of mostly Spanish friends, including Anita Perez, a beautiful local girl who lived at a house called Los Frailes, could no longer resist the temptation. They decided to get a closer look and rode their horses as far as Icod de los Vinos, and up into the hills along the old carriage track.

They rode into the hills from Icod de los Vinos

     They left their horses at a certain distance, for fear the animals would become nervous as they neared the constant explosions, and walked higher into the hills where they set up camp close to the inhospitable black, old lava flow produced by another volcano, the Trevejos, which destroyed part of the original trading port of Garachico in 1706. 

The Trevejos Volcano erupting and destroying part of Garachico, as depicted by artist Ubaldo Bordanova

     The following day, the intrepid group of adventures then proceeded on foot to within half a mile of Chinyero, to see the earth flinging rocks high in the air and spewing lava. Noel Reid, who just seven years later was much closer to hell, earning the DSO for bravery at Ypres in the First World War, and his party of youngsters, were not the only ones to get a close look at Chinyero. 

Captain Noel Spence Reid DSO, MC (born in Tenerife in 1892)

     Another member of the distinguished British community, Austin Baillon, often recalled his own father, Alex Baillon’s memories. According to him, the thunderous explosions could be heard from as far as the island of Gran Canaria. People in nearby villages, like Guía de Isora, spent the best part of a week in the streets. Seven craters opened up on a plain. Liquid stone was blasted 600 feet into the sky and glowing lava gushed into the night in four huge, slow-moving rivers, like immense burning snakes. Alex Baillon said it was a splendid sight to see the frightful force of nature. 

     There is a tale about the priest of Tamaimo holding continuous prayers in the little chapel, begging for the lava not to reach them. It stopped just before the village. 

     Until the current eruption of La Palma, it was hoped, and almost believed, that any future eruption would be as safe and as obedient to Christian prayer as Chinyero, or perhaps no worse than Chahorra, the fissure eruption that appeared on the side of Pico Viejo, alongside Mount Teide in 1798. 

     One can only pray, in fact, judging by what we have witnessed these days on La Palma. Prayer, even for the non-believer, is all we have when nature decides the pressure has become too much. 

BY JOHN REID YOUNG

Author of books:

THE SKIPPING VERGER AND OTHER TALES, 

A SHARK IN THE BATH AND OTHER STORIES, 

EL HOMBRE DE LA GUANCHA Y OTRAS HISTORIAS, 

collections of short stories set in the Canary Islands,

THE JOURNALIST, a novel. 

(For more information, please click on the images to the right of this page).

Owner of TENERIFE PRIVATE TOURS http://tenerifeprivatetours.com/

If you would like to receive news about my next publications please sign up for my newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/249fadd56fdd/author-john-reid-young

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A Very British Kind of Place on the Canary Island of Tenerife

          They were very different times. The number of inhabitants in Puerto de la Cruz on the island of Tenerife may not have been much more than five thousand. A fair number of those were British and Irish. Early forms of tourism were just beginning and town houses were being converted into pensions and boarding houses to cater for the growing number of travellers, scientists and artists. So quaint, if we compare it to the five star luxury hotels in today's modern resorts, the beautiful old Martianez Hotel offered improved sanitary arrangements installed by an English plumber. One could stay at the Marquesa for seven pesetas a day. There were no roads but dusty tracks and caminos reales, stone highways connecting the old port with the towns of La Orotava, Los Realejos and beyond. A carriage from the port to La Orotava cost as much as ten pesetas. Visitors could hire a landau for 600 pesetas a month or a donkey for two and a half pesetas for a morning. There was the beginnings of an electricity supply, generated by water flowing from a water gallery at a point near Aguamansa and supplied to only a few wealthy properties. There was no television. There was no rush.

The Martianez Hotel in Puerto de la Cruz

          The small and distinguished community from the British Isles and the growing number of winter visitors were regarded with respect and affection and went about their business with gentility. Nevertheless, although they were a very cultured lot and therefore needed little in the way of entertainment, because they made their own, they lacked a very important ingredient. There was nowhere, outside the privacy of their own home or boarding house, at which to enjoy a decent game of one kind or another.

          So one should not surprised to hear that in 1896 a small group of those intrepid pioneers hired rooms above a chemist owned by a gentleman by the name of Ramón Gómez, in Calle Santo Domingo, a street just above the fishing harbour. It was there that they founded a games club called The Guanche English Club. They had a billiards table and a cardroom, and drinks were served. To them it might have seemed like the beginnings of their very own version of the Travellers or Caledonian clubs in London, to which gentlemen could slip away to escape a female plot. But that wasn't the case at all. Ladies, as in so many British colonies, were very much a part of the act and the club was a regular host to the Orotava English Musical and Dramatic Society, an early equivalent to today's English Speaking Theatrical Association in Tenerife, better known as E.S.T.A.

Puerto de la Cruz with ships at anchor

          What they really yearned for was some outdoor activity, a bit of sport, old bean! Therefore, in October 1902, at about the same time Kitchener was putting an end to the Boer War, the beginnings of an outdoor games club began to blossom in the Orotava Valley, although there had already been attempts to get a golf links going outside the valley, at La Quinta in Santa Úrsula. 

          Captain Hamilton Boyle, Reverend Humphreys, Doctor Lisham and Messrs Woolley and Osbert Ward, author of The Vale of Orotava, a guide-book published in 1903, decided it was time. They met for an afternoon of outdoor activities at San Antonio, where Walter Long Boreham, one of the main benefactors of All Saints church had lived, because there was what they called a cement lawn-tennis court as well as a small croquet lawn. 

          The same group agreed to meet again, this time with Vice-Consul Tom Reid and Mr Gregory at El Robado, Colonel Owen Peel Wethered’s magnificent mansion at the heart of what today we know as San Fernando. El Robado's gardens, which were described as spacious and where croquet and the ancient game of bowls could be carried on in a most scientific manner during picnics and tea parties, would be an ideal venue.

A tea party at El Robado

          Four years later the popularity of these games parties at private houses, and the growing number of visitors to Puerto de la Cruz persuaded these fun-loving British residents to rent the grounds adjacent to San Antonio from doña Celia Zamora in order to establish a permanent club. A huge sum of seven hundred and fifty pesetas a year was the agreed rent. 

          

          The new club, the Orotava Bowling and Recreation Club was declared open on 15^th November, 1906. Subscriptions were set at thirty pesetas a year, twelve and a half for three months and five pesetas for just one week. Steamers, like the Avocet or the Ardeola which belonged to the Yeoward Brother’s Line and could be seen at anchor off Puerto de la Cruz while they loaded bananas, were bringing a constant flow of winter visitors to the club. It was becoming a tremendous success and in 1908 the club was registered for the first time under Spanish law as an association. 

The original bowling green at the club

          Those who preferred bowls were indignant in 1907 when upstarts asked if they might play tennis on their tender bowling green. The request concentrated minds on the fact that proper tennis courts would have to be on the agenda. Alas, they would have to wait because war got in the way. Indeed, suddenly, it all changed. The rumblings of the Great War began to affect the arrival of merchant and passenger shipping to the Canary Islands as German U-Boats took their toll. Few new visitors made the journey and younger club members volunteered to fight for King and country. Life and membership at the games club was badly affected. 

          It wasn't until 1924 that new tennis courts were laid just where they are today, albeit overgrown with weeds since the British Club was asked to leave the premises. Tennis almost became the main event and matches began to be organised against rival clubs such as the Hesperides Club of La Laguna and The British Club of Santa Cruz. Faces grew younger in between the wars and as the 1920s swung in so did the demand for a bit of harmless fun, and dances and other activities were organised in style.

The tennis courts at the British Club (note the long whites)

          The club also survived the Spanish Civil War and, immediately afterwards, WW2. It kept going thanks to that old, solid British spirit, keep calm and and carry on. It was also thanks to its Spanish members like the Marquesa de Villafuerte, the Llarenas and the Salazars that the club actually carried on playing games.

The Club rules were even translated into Spanish

          Indeed, the club bonded great and lasting friendships between families like the Machados and British residents. How they loved their croquet, especially when the game was played on the large green beside the clubhouse. Bowls always seemed just a bit too English for them, with all that bending down on one's knee and those memories of Sir Francis Drake and the Armada. 

Tom Reid (British Vice-Consul) and Noel Reid (First Junior Member, aged 16) pictured on the croquet lawn in 1908

How they loved their croquet!

          Especially after WW2, the club boasted some of the best young tennis players in Tenerife, like Alfonso and Antonio Cologan, of Irish ancestry, and their brother Leopoldo, Marqués de la Candia. They were good years when members like Felipe Machado, who purchased Risco de Oro from George Marriott, was Vice-President and Leopoldo Cólogan were on the committee under Noel Reid who had carried on with the work of his brother Rio.

          In between and after the wars the club had prospered. It became an open and friendly place, and consequently more and more cosmopolitan, with a number of very distinguished and able European members and quite a few American and Canadian representatives always willing to lend a hand. Nevertheless it retained a very British feel about it. Her Majesty´s birthday was celebrated as loyally as in old British dominions and colonies. Officers from visiting Royal Navy ships were graciously entertained by the club for many years and their ship's crests were proudly on display around the bar. A smoky, ruthless game of bridge could be fought in a quiet corner of what was the Dick Peto room, named after a member who donated a thousand pounds, a huge sum in those days, after WW2.

Some club members celebrating Armistice Day in 1929

Antonio, the gardener, is on the left

If anyone would like to know who the others were, I'd be happy to tell you.

          A splendid, strategic and sometimes uproarious bowls competition would entertain a critical audience, before and after a gin and tonic. A serious game of tennis could be had any day, provided one fetched one's own stray ball from the banana plantation. In the latter years of the 20th century bandits fought against angels in thrilling and hilarious Sunday tournaments. A gentle tea and biscuits, served by Rosa and duty lady members, were available to ease one out of an afternoon siesta. Charitable dinners, competitions and seasonal dances were arranged and held in grand and traditional style. The bar was a regular meeting place for many a resident who simply wanted to relax, chat and enjoy a drink at a very reasonable price and in very pleasant surroundings.

The original entrance to the British Games Club.

          It would need a book to fully account for the history and traditions of what is still today known as the British Games Club. Even though the club was forced to move, and did so in style and with that same keep calm and carry on attitude, to Club de Tenis Puerto de la Cruz, sometimes better know as Alvaro's Club, a careful study of many of its members, past and present, would certainly reveal a wealth of talent, culture and experience. The club, just as the other pillars of the British community, the English Library and All Saints Church, reflect a unique British volunteering spirit. Silently, behind the scenes, there will always be those prepared to work tirelessly in the interests of their British community.

Alvaro's Club

          When the current crisis is over, the COVID-19 storm, anyone joining the club will realise at once that present members maintain the old club’s high standards. Newcomers will soon feel glad to be a part of its delightful character, especially with all its lively activities. There have been changes, of course. Apparently, in 1955, when new, young and radical members suggested that cold drinks, including beer, might be served after games, many of the senior members got into a flap. Hip flasks would be permitted, of course, what, what!

By John Reid Young


(This is an adaptation of a previous article of mine, published fifteen years ago in island newspapers, and certain images may have been reproduced from internet with no personal financial gain intended.)

Author of books "A SHARK IN THE BATH AND OTHER STORIES" and "THE SKIPPING VERGER AND OTHER TALES", collections of short stories set in Tenerife and the Canary Islands". (For more information click on the images to the right of this page).

Owner of Tenerife Private Tours....http://tenerifeprivatetours.com/

If you would like to receive news about my next publications please sign up for my newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/249fadd56fdd/author-john-reid-young

      

A British Submariner took the helm in Tenerife

Ever since 1892, when the Reverend Thomas Gifford Nash took the first service at the newly built All Saints Church in Puerto de la Cruz, on the island of Tenerife, it has been a source of comfort and strength to thousands of residents and visitors. The beautiful church is one of the pillars of the British community in the Canary Islands and has been proudly served by a flock of faithful members of the congregation, always willing to give of themselves to maintain a strong sense of community.

All Saints Church, Tenerife (courtesy All Saints Church, Puerto de la Cruz)

But All Saints, to survive all these years in a foreign land, through crisis, two world wars, a civil war, and dwindling worshipers in modern times has also required the patient leadership of a good many dedicated chaplains, some of whom have stood the test better than others. Almost every one of them made a valuable contribution to the spiritual life of the British community. Nevertheless, as in the case of so many quiet-living British residents who have come and gone, some of them also had untold, brilliant and sometimes remarkable careers before arriving on the island.

Canon George Seaver, for example, who was chaplain at All Saints for a short time in the 1960s, was an Irish bachelor who had served for many years in the Colonial Office. During his posting to Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, as District Commissioner he became interested in missionary work and began to investigate the life of Dr David Livingstone. In fact he wrote a remarkable biography of the Scottish missionary. Whilst serving at All Saints in Puerto de la Cruz he was amazed to come across descendants of Livingstone’s great friend and his family's benefactor, James Young of Durris, Scotland.

James Young (from "Parrafin Young and Friends", by Mary Muir Leitch)

As a personal anecdote, George Seaver came to see me in 1968 when I was a schoolboy in England and presented me with a book “The Adventures of Bam” which he had written for his niece, Rosemary. It is about a little African boy in what is now Zambia. In an envelope tucked inside the book was an accompanying letter in which he told me to let my mother read the book once I returned home to Tenerife. You see, he knew that my mother had grown up in Rhodesia and that she would probably appreciate it more than I.

The Adventures of Bam (from my private collection)

Another example was the Reverend Canon Rupert Philip Lonsdale. He was born in Dublin in 1905 and educated at St. Cyprian’s School, Eastbourne. He joined the Royal Navy straight from Royal Naval College, Osborne on the Isle of Wight in 1919. His career was meteoric, from entering the submarine branch of the RN in 1927 to being promoted Lt. Commander in 1936.  

Lt. Commander Rupert Philip Lonsdale (photograph courtesy of the Daily Telegraph)

After gaining valuable experience as a submarine captain in three different and ageing vessels, Lt. Commander Lonsdale was given command of a new mine-laying submarine, HMS Seal. It was a Porpoise Class submarine, built at the Chatham Dockyards and launched in 1938. The submarine was commissioned in January 1939 and in August Lonsdale received orders to sail to the China Sea. He was to join the 4th Submarine Flotilla which was based there. On the way, whilst taking on supplies at Aden, war against Germany was declared. Two days later, on 5th September, HMS Seal began her first series of wartime patrols off the southern entrance to the Red Sea. 

In Will Not We Fear, Warren and Benson refer to Seal’s company as “one of the biggest collection of scallywags that the Submarine Service could put together” and that Lonsdale was considered “too much of a gentleman to be a good submarine captain”. Nevertheless, it soon became very clear that, in his quiet and fair manner, he had turned the crew into a very gallant and professional team and that every man held their commanding officer in very high esteem.

HMS Seal (courtesy - Royal Navy Photos)

Lonsdale was ordered to take Seal back to Portsmouth at the end of September. Just four days after docking he received orders to begin the first of many successful patrols carried out during the following six months, in the North Sea and in the Atlantic escorting convoys. On 30th April, 1940 he set sail from Immingham in the Humber estuary where he had been equipped with a complete outfit of mines. It was to be Seal's 11th war mission and Lonsdale's new orders were to begin laying a mine barrier south of the Swedish island of Vinga in the Skagettak channel. The plan was to disrupt German iron ore ships on their transport route to Norway. 

In spite of HMS Seal being too large to operate in such waters, and continuously needing to dodge German anti-submarine trawlers and machine-gunning spotter-planes, Lonsdale persisted until the early hours of 4^th May, 1940 when his submarine was attacked by a German HE 115 aircraft from Aalborg.

Damage was only slight and Lonsdale completed laying his last 50 mines in the required location. But the incident with the aircraft marked the beginning of the end for the submarine because the aircraft had alerted German surface ships and the hunt was on. Evasive action forced Rupert Lonsdale to take Seal into an uncharted minefield and that same afternoon the submarine’s hydroplanes caught on a German mine-mooring wire. The subsequent explosion sent the Seal to the seabed with damage to the stern and severe flooding. There was no option. They would have to lay low on the seabed and try to carry out urgent damage control until it was after dark before attempting to surface.

Unfortunately the submarine appeared to have also become entangled in nets and cables. Three attempts to release his ship failed and the situation became desperate. The lights began to dim as a result of failing batteries, electrical short-circuits were fouling the little air available and the carbon dioxide was slowing everyone down. Even so, Lonsdale continued ordering that various emergency measures be taken. Although these had no effect, the crew were highly impressed by their Captain’s quiet resolution and faith. In fact, it may have been his deep faith that saved his crew from certain death. 

Lt. Commander Lonsdale summoned as many members of the crew who could climb the steeply sloping submarine to prayers in the control room. In a firm and steady voice he recited the Lord’s Prayer and a prayer of his own whilst one last attempt was made to move the stranded submarine by blowing tanks and using the motors again. Whether it was Lonsdale’s prayers, the weight of most of the crew in the control room shifting the balance, the final technical attempts or a combination of all, HMS Seal suddenly became un-stuck and began to rise to the surface. 

Once on the surface it was clear the steering gear was damaged. Even so, Lonsdale attempted to take the submarine into Swedish waters by putting the engines in reverse. It was impossibly slow progress and an hour after surfacing HMS Seal was spotted by a German AR 196 seaplane. Oberleutnant Mehrens, the pilot, attacked HMS Seal with two bombs and machine gun fire. A few minutes later a second seaplane flown by Oberleutnant Schmidt joined in and several of Seal’s crew members were injured. The British submarine put up a good fight with its Lewis gun until this jammed. Lt. Commander Rupert Lonsdale made various attempts to scuttle his submarine and he assumed it would end up sinking, but she remained afloat, albeit listing heavily. In the end he placed the survival of his crew first, waved a white wardroom table cloth in capitulation and swam across to one of the seaplanes, surrendering HMS Seal to Oberleutnant Schmidt.  Indeed it was the two seaplane pilots that actually carried out the formalities of capturing the British submarine before German surface craft arrived on the scene and towed the submarine to the German base at Keel.

The stricken and surrendered HMS Seal being towed towards Keel 

(Note what may have been the wardroom tablecloth on the number one periscope)

HMS Seal was the only British ship to have surrendered during the war and Rupert Lonsdale is thought to have never forgiven himself although he and his crew had managed to destroy most of any sensitive documents. The Germans made a great deal of propaganda over the capture, of course. They repaired the submarine and used her for training exercises. They also used the Seal’s torpedo technology to improve their own design.

Lonsdale and his crew spent the rest of the war as prisoners of war, during which time he found increasing comfort in Christianity. Upon release in 1945 he was mentioned in dispatches for his services as a POW and promoted to Commander. But he also faced a court martial, the usual consequence for losing a ship. The Court, having heard all the evidence and how the crew supported their captain, acquitted Lonsdale with honour after just half an hour and he was greeted by cheering fellow officers and crew members outside.

Lonsdale commanded a minesweeper until he retired in 1947 to join the church. He became vicar of Morden and Almer in Dorset in 1951 but then decided to take on the chaplaincy of the Oasin Gishu district of Kenya from 1952 until 1958. After a short spell as rector of Bentworth and Shalden in the Winchester diocese he returned to Kenya and became Canon of Maseno in 1964. He was vicar of Thomham with Titchwell in Norfolk from 1965 until his retirement in 1970. It was then that he spent three very happy years as chaplain at All Saints in Puerto de la Cruz.

By John Reid Young

(Certain images have been reproduced from internet with no personal financial gain intended.)


Author of books "A SHARK IN THE BATH AND OTHER STORIES" and "THE SKIPPING VERGER AND OTHER TALES", collections of short stories set in Tenerife and the Canary Islands". (For more information click on the images to the right of this page).

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