The loss of the Wilhelmina J
Thirty years ago, on 9 April 1991, the trawler Wilhelmina J set out from Old Portsmouth to trawl for scallops in the English Channel. Shortly before 2am on 10 April, in thick fog off the Sussex coast, the boat was struck by the Zulfikar, a Cypriot cargo vessel. She went down with the loss of six lives, all men in their 20s and 30s: Jeff Alan Venters, Michael James Bell, Mark Warwick Fitz, Christopher Clifford Thomas, cGuy Ransom Davies and Matthew James Hodge.
The Wilhelmina J, owned by Johnson’s Sea Enterprises, had been based in the Camber Dock, within sight of the cathedral, and the loss was felt acutely by the cathedral as well as by the tightly-knit commercial fishing community. Candles were lit at the cathedral for the fishermen; the Provost at the time, David Stancliffe, said: ‘People who work on the sea realise they are always at hazard. We are very conscious of it here, and we pray daily in this cathedral for those who sail from the port.’
In the cathedral a memorial stone in the floor and a stained glass window commemorate the tragedy; the stained glass window is by Jon Callan, an independent glass artist based in Dorchester. The memorial stone, carved by John Shaw of Saxby, Lincolnshire, carries lines from the Bible’s Song of Solomon: ‘Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.’ There is also a reminder of the connection between St Thomas’s, the Cathedral of the Sea, and the Portsmouth fishing fleet on the Didier Grassin organ case: the Patrick Caulfield design on the right hand door depicts ‘Day’, and shows the hull of a Portsmouth fishing vessel, carrying the identification letter ‘P’ for Portsmouth. There is also a memorial at the corner of the Camber, one in the Bridge Tavern, and a plaque to Guy Ransom Davies behind the pavilion of the Pembroke Gardens Bowling Club.
The image of the boat (in the Camber in May 1989) is used by kind permission of shipphotos.co.uk; the other images are of the window, the organ door panel & the stone in the Cathedral, & the memorial at the Camber.