As we were visiting the cemetery on Walton Lane in Nelson where Anne’s brother is buried I had a look around at some of the older gravestones and noticed a large monument for 5 young ladies who all died on the same day in 1898.
Derwentwater Tragedy
I did a bit of research and discovered the monument, which is 19 feet high and made of Scottish granite, was erected after the five died on Derwentwater Lake on Friday 12th 1898.
The five were Nancy Pickles (20 years), Helena Clegg (21 years), Frances Crossley (21 years), Alice Reed (21 years) and Mary Jane Smith (21 years).
The girls came from the Lomeshaye part of Nelson and were all best friends who worked as cotton weavers. They were also Sunday School teachers at the Carr Road Wesleyan Church.
On Saturday 6th August 1898 they all took their annual holidays at The Towers in Portinscale in Keswick in the Lake Districts.
On the Friday before their return the girls decided to hire a skiff to take them to Borrowdale where they intended visiting the picturesque hamlet of Watendlath.
The boat was 20 feet long, 4 feet wide but only 17 inches deep in the middle. It was only supposed to hold 6 passengers but the boatman said it could safely accommodate 8.
At 9 am they set off with two young men on the oars, one girl on the rudder and an older man in the bow.
At first the weather was fine with the sun shining and the water calm but then gale force winds suddenly blew up from Borrowdale and the lake became very choppy.
After one of the girls dropped her lunch satchel in the water one of the oarsmen tried to turn the boat around the retrieve it.
It was then that the older man in the bow noticed that the bow was becoming filled with water so he moved to the middle of the boat. This caused the stern to be pushed lower in the lake and the water on the bow swished to the stern. As the boat took on more water it began to sink, then it was hit from the stern by a giant wave.
The five girls in their heavy clothing floundered about helplessly as the men tried to rescue them. In addition to the heavy clothing the girls were wearing stiff corsets and knee length bloomers, further restricting their movements and pulling them under.
All five girls were tragically drowned and their bodies were found hours later all within a 50 yard radius or each other.
Word of the tragedy spread like wildfire across the shocked East Lancashire mill town and for days there was talk of little else in the churches, pubs, shops and on street corners.
The girls bodies arrived back in Nelson after being collected by the grieving relatives by train on Saturday August 13th at 11.15 pm as the church bells of all denominations tolled with vast orderly and tearful crowds lining the railway station and streets as the girls bodies were returned.
In the following Tuesday flags flew at half mast, blinds were drawn and businesses closed down throughout the town as a mark of respect.
An estimated crowd of 30,000 silent mourners from all over Lancashire gathered in the swelling heat to pay their respects surrounding the Walton Lane cemetery railings on three sides. Only the Mayor, the Mayoress, the Town Clerk and the grieving families and close friends were initially allowed inside the graveyard.
The funeral cortege was over half a mile long and contained, in addition to the five horse drawn hearses, 30 carriages to transport the 300 relatives and close friends to the cemetery a mile from the town center near the boundary with Colne.
A commemorative booklet was produced which the Nelson Reference Library has a copy of.
The monument reminds all who see it of Nelson’s greatest ever disaster.