Their origins were in the coastal town of St Ives, in Cornwall; in 1879, William Rouse and his wife, Mary Johanna, relocated to Angle in Pembrokeshire. There they established a maritime trading and haulage business that eventually expanded to include salvage from the many wrecks that lay in the shallow and treacherous waters around the Pembrokeshire coast. Their six sons helped the business to grow; in 1911 they crossed the Haven and set up homes in Hazelbeach.
Professor Howell Harris, of Durham University, is one of William and Mary's great-grandchildren; he spent his early years in Hazelbeach, and here he gives us a history and his personal recollections of a remarkable family.
William Rouse & Sons
Mariners, Fishermen, Marine Salvors, Towage Contractors, & Lighthouse Reliefs, c. 1890 - 1945
By Professor Howell Harris
The only photo we have of them together, apart from sitting in the stern of their boat. Mary Johanna & William Rouse in the conservatory at 'Melville', shortly before her death in 1932. Mary Johanna Thomas was born in 1845, daughter of a St. Ives ship owner and master, and helped her widowed mother run the family grocer’s and draper’s shop. William Rouse was born in 1856, son of a St. Ives fisherman and shipmaster, also called William, as was his grandfather. He died in 1944. They lived in the same street and married in 1877, shortly after William gained his majority and could marry without his parents’ permission.
Their oldest son, another William, was born in St. Ives in 1878. They moved to Angle in 1879, together with William’s brother Frank (Jennie Darnley’s great-grandfather), taking their father’s ship the Herald, a 58-ton schooner almost 50 years old, with them. They plied their trade (mostly carrying coal) around the Bristol Channel, and at some point Frank moved to Liverpool.
William went to Angle School like his brothers, until he was expelled in 1893 for refusing to obey the rules, and started working with his father full time. He became a skilled boatbuilder, coastal sailor, and in due course salvage diver. This photo was taken at Kilpaison where he lived, c. 1908-1910.
Allan McRonald Rouse was born in Angle in 1880. Like his brothers he went to Angle School, leaving in 1895 to join his father in the family business, which by then included fishing as well as coastal trading in small sailing vessels, and a grocer’s/chandlers that his mother ran when her husband was at sea. Allan loved machines, getting one of the first driving licences in Pembrokeshire and becoming a marine engineer. This photo is also his 1918 Merchant Navy ID.
My grandfather Ernest was the third son, born in 1882 and joining the family business on leaving school in 1897. He did not specialise like his older brothers, but became an able seaman and eventually mate on the family’s ships and even master of one. This photograph is from the mid-1900s, on his bike outside their rented house, Ridge Cottage, on The Ridge at Angle.
Born in Angle in 1885, leaving school to join the crew in 1900. Known in the family as Frank Andrew to distinguish him from his Uncle Frank, his father’s brother, who was known to my mother and her siblings as GUF (Great Uncle Frank) to distinguish him from FA.
There are very few surviving photos of Uncle Frank, because he didn’t want any. This one was taken by Allan, probably in 1966, and includes me. We were trying to repair the Greyboat under the crane outside the Tin Shed. He was a keen swimmer, gardener, and fisherman until his death.
Uncle Frank was SO hostile to having his photo taken that he had scratched off the face in this picture of him as a young man. The face is just AI guesswork -- without one, the picture would be unusable. You can see Granny Rouse’s grocery shop in the two front rooms at The Ridge.
Uncle Bertram was born in 1887, so would have been ready to join the family business in about 1902-3. By the time of the 1921 Census he was describing himself as a Marine Engineer, but he was also an enthusiastic amateur, but not untrained, artist. He always dressed in plus-fours tailored for him by his wife & had other eccentricities. This late photo is of him & Auntie Hilda in their retirement bungalow in Freshwater East.
Stanley, born in 1889, was the youngest of the six Rouse brothers, and, though he died in 1957 when I was 6, I have no recollection of him. Like Bertram he described himself as a motor engineer, but also as a seaman. He was a dedicated & increasingly expert amateur photographer from his early teens; this self-portrait, c. 1910, is colourised.
This picture is the only other one of him that I have -- with his older brother Allan and a couple of ladies on an outing, round about 1930.
Four of the brothers eventually married, and three of them had eight surviving children between them. William was the first to marry and leave home, finding his wife back in St. Ives, I’m not sure how, but the family maintained close connections there. He moved out of Ridge Cottage and rented a semi-derelict old farm, Kilpaison, at the east end of Angle Bay.
From 1879 until some time in the mid-1900s the family all lived at Ridge Cottage in Angle, on the track to the Point House. By then it must have been very crowded, with 9 family members (including William’s widowed mother). But it was convenient for a seafaring family -- their vessels could be moored in the shelter of Angle Bay, or hauled up onto The Ridge itself.
The young couple at the front door of Ridge House are holding a baby, so this is probably after the Rouses had left. The Ridge was a place of work for a fishing and coastal trading family, with the grocery and chandler’s business occupying most of the downstairs.
Life at The Ridge in the 1900s
