Welsh UFO sightings from 1743. For sightings from other years please click HERE.
1743
Peibio, near Holyhead
Mr. Morris, an eminent antiquarian, received a report from Anglesey:
William John Lewis had a steading near Peibio. One cloudy day he was out ploughing the fields with his servant boy when they saw a ship in the sky. Coming from the mountains of Snowdon, moving about a quarter of a mile from the ground, was a ship of 90 tons, rigged like a ketch, with its fore-tack at the cat-head and its pennant and ancient flying.
Lewis called his wife who came running from the farmhouse just in time to see the ship retreating, its pennant lowered to the deck and all sails furled. It was steering stern foremost, returning to the mountains of Snowdonia.
On receiving the report, Mr. Morris went to interview the witnesses. He spoke to Lewis and his wife separately; the wife was at home and, although not familiar with sea terms, she was certain of what she had seen. Her only concern was what their neighbours would think if the story was published. Morris found Lewis himself at an inn, visiting Holyhead on farm business. In Morris' opinion Lewis was sober and sincere, with no trace of the 'melancholic' disposition that might have led him to exaggerate or imagine.
The ship - he claimed - had been plain to see, exact in every detail. The keel could be observed from below; the sails were distended with the wind; when the foresail was lowered it hung in a natural way over bow. In the end a cloud hid the vessel from sight, but not before the farmer, his wife, and his boy had had their observation supported by a flock of birds that assembled to examine the phenomenon and flew round it from all directions. When the vessel began its backward journey, the birds with one accord flew from it northwards in the opposite direction.
What finally persuaded Mr. Morris was the way in which the farmer – William John Lewis – assured him that he had seen another such ship exactly ten years earlier in much the same place, and that, ten years before then again, he had seen just such another. The ships were in each case very like the old packet-boats that plied between Holyhead and Ireland; the very ropes of the rigging could be counted one by one.
He concluded: "Since the hill at Holyhead is the only height in Anglesey to face the distant loftiness of Snowdon, some trick of refraction may have been responsible for picking up vessels plying the Menai Straits and setting them, pennant and antient and all, to steer the skies above Peibio.”
Such events, though rare, are not unheard of. Even within Wales there are a few reports - for example, the 30th March 1897 edition of the Western Mail carried a letter from T.C. Thomas of Llandaff, written the day before:
A MIRAGE. To the Editor of the "Western Mail." Sir, - On my way to Penarth this evening I witnessed a marvellous mirage in the north-western sky. The whole of Penarth, the Holmes, Sully, Barry shipping in the Channel, and the coast for many miles around were caught up, under unusual atmospheric conditions, to heaven, and therein were so gloriously mirrored that no pen of mine can possibly portray the beauty of the scenery. If, sir, you saw it not, permit me to say that probably the loss was irreparable.
In 1904 the Weekly Mail of June 4th reported on various mirages in South Wales:
MOCK SUN AND MIRAGE. The intense heat of Sunday last seems (Mr. Arthur Mee writes) to have caused some curious atmospheric effects. For example, a mirage was seen at Langland Bay, Gower, a panorama of the Gower coast being reflected on a mist bank in the channel. It appears the sight was a beautiful one. I recollect myself, many years ago, seeing a similar phenomenon near Saundersfoot, a species of spectral image of Tenby being mirrored in the haze on the Langharne side of Carmarthen Bay.
Tenby itself was not visible from where I stood, being hidden by Monkstone Point. That was before the days of snapshots, but I hope a photograph of the Gower mirage has been secured. A small drawing of a mirage appears in an old guide to Tenby, where some ships are shown upside down. No doubt, correspondents in that part of the world could give other instances.
Mr J. F. Young, Llanelly, informs me that on Sunday he saw a mock sun at seven a.m., and at four p.m. a fine mirage set in, which lasted about an hour. Mr. John Innes, Llanelly, saw a similar phenomenon on July 11 of last year, and so did Mr. Young, who also noted the peculiar form of image known as looming three times in the same month, as recorded in the "Cambrian Natural Observer."
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