Will Cassell

We recorded our interview with Will Cassell in his Brighstone bungalow one summer’s evening in 1983. Born in 1906, Will had pin-sharp memories of growing up in Hulverstone over a hundred years ago and he was only too happy to have the chance to put an account of his early years on the record. Like many villages of those times Hulverstone was self contained, possessing its own school, shop, church and pub. As a young man, Will spent 20 years in the Navy but returned to spend the rest of his life at Hulverstone. Towards the end of the edited recording Will is talking about the wreck of the ‘War Knight’ a ship loaded with food, which sank in Freshwater Bay in 1918 after a collision with another ship off St Catherine’s Point.



Brook Bay in approx. 1920.
Hulverstone village in Edwardian times, complete with un-metalled road and ivy-covered Sun Inn.

The Vectis Bus Company began life in 1921 and overnight the service transformed Island life. Will : ”When the Vectis buses started that was a big event in our lives that was! That changed the whole life completely! We had three buses a day and we thought that was wonderful! Three to Newport and three back. An hour each way.”
On the 24th March 1918 the S.S. War Knight collided with a ship off St. Catherines Point and then hit a mine. It was beached in Freshwater Bay where its cargo of bacon, oil and rubber washed ashore, to be spirited away by delighted locals, 38 of whom were later charged with theft. The train which took them to Newport was nicknamed the ‘Bacon And Lard Special’.