Qualla: Moelfre, Anglesey

Moelfre, Anglesey: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The wind in the second great Moelfre storm came from almost exactly the same compass point as the wind in the first - both autumn easterlies, both at hurricane force, both driving ships onto the same rocky headland north of the village. In 1859 the steam clipper Royal Charter was wrecked here near the end of her voyage from Australia, and more than four hundred and fifty people died within sight of the shore. A hundred years later, in October 1959, the coaster Hindlea was driven across the same waters under bare poles. This time the Moelfre lifeboat, commanded by Coxswain Richard Evans, reached her in time. Evans took the lifeboat alongside the rolling, lurching Hindlea ten separate times in a force-twelve gale, taking off her eight crewmen one or two at a time. Every man was saved. Evans won the RNLI Gold Medal for the rescue. He had already won one for an earlier night's work, and he would serve as Moelfre coxswain for nineteen years inside a fifty-year career on the lifeboats.

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Moelfre, Anglesey: The Royal Charter

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike White, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 25 October 1859, the iron-hulled steam clipper Royal Charter was within twelve hours of arriving in Liverpool when the gale that would later be called the Royal Charter Storm caught her off Anglesey. She was driven onto the rocks below the headland north of Moelfre. More than ...

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Image: Mike White | CC BY-SA 2.0

Moelfre, Anglesey: Coxswain Evans and the Hindlea

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. Richard Evans (1905-2001) lived in Moelfre and served on the lifeboat for fifty years. Forty-eight of those years he was on the active crew; nineteen he was coxswain. The Hindlea rescue on 27 October 1959 became the textbook example of small-boat seamanship in extreme conditions....

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Moelfre, Anglesey: The Confederate and the Painter

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. Not every famous ship in Moelfre's history wrecked here. On 30 July 1862 the screw sloop Enrica - newly built in Liverpool and about to be commissioned as the Confederate States warship CSS Alabama - sheltered in Moelfre Bay while evading both British customs authorities and the ...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Moelfre, Anglesey: The Village Today

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RobinLeicester, CC BY-SA 3.0. Moelfre wraps around a small harbour sheltered by a headland and the rocky islet of Ynys Moelfre, where seals haul out and porpoises pass by in the kelp. The 2011 census measured 710 people in the village itself, 1,064 across the wider community that takes in Marian-glas, Llanall...

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Image: RobinLeicester | CC BY-SA 3.0