National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales preserves and celebrates the sound and moving image heritage of Wales, making it accessible to a wide range of users for enjoyment and learning. Its film collection reflects every aspect of the nation’s social, cultural and working life across the 20th century, giving a fascinating insight into Welsh filmmaking, both amateur and professional.
This film is part of Free
S.S.Pusey Jones No.2 Ashore at Rhyl
Rhyl’s beached ship isn’t going anywhere, as the forces of nature trap the S.S. Pusey Jones No.2 on the sands
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Overview
There is something ghostly about the stillness of this stranded three-masted schooner, beached at Rhyl with the wind whipping sand about its immobile bulk. Its scale is emphasised by the two stick-like distant figures striding away from her, buffeted by the gusts.
The Pusey and Jones Corporation was a major US shipbuilding company which built vessels from 1853 until the end of World War I. It seems that the company built four schooners named Pusey Jones (or ‘Puseyjones’), and that this particular vessel - the Pusey Jones No.2 - is the one recorded in the list of ships built at its Wilmington shipyard in Delaware as weighing 397 tons, and later renamed ‘Maria’, then ‘Santa Maria’, before being bombed and lost in 1942.