The Samtampa was a 7,219-ton steamship, originally built as a Liberty ship in South Portland, Maine, and launched in December 1943 as the SS Peleg Wadsworth. Transferred to Britain under Lend-Lease and managed by the Houlder Line, she was carrying a crew of 39 on a voyage from Middlesbrough to Newport when the weather turned savage in the Bristol Channel. The storm drove the ship toward the Glamorgan coast near Porthcawl. Her three anchor cables could not hold against the gale, and the Samtampa was driven onto the rocks at Sker Point, where the hull broke into three sections. Every one of her 39 crew members would perish.

At twelve minutes past six, the lifeboat RNLB Edward, Prince of Wales launched from the Mumbles station at the western end of Swansea Bay. Aboard were eight volunteers: Coxswain William John Gammon, Second Coxswain William Noel, mechanics William Gilbert Davies and Ernest Griffin, along with crew members William Richard Scourfield Thomas, William L. Howell, William Ronald Thomas, and Richard Smith. Davies himself held the RNLI's Bronze Medal for previous rescues. These were men who knew the sea's dangers intimately and went anyway. They headed east along the coast toward Sker Point, battling wind and waves that reduced visibility to almost nothing.

No one witnessed the final moments. The lifeboat was last seen fighting through the storm toward the wreck of the Samtampa. It is believed that a massive wave struck the vessel, capsizing her in the darkness. The following morning, the overturned wreckage of the Edward, Prince of Wales was found not far from where the Samtampa had broken apart. The bodies of all eight crew members were recovered, each with his lifejacket correctly fastened. They had followed every procedure, taken every precaution that training and experience demanded. The sea had simply been too much. Combined with the loss of all 39 aboard the Samtampa, the disaster claimed 47 lives in a single night.

On Sunday 4 May 1947, All Saints' Church in Mumbles overflowed as Archdeacon Harold Williams led a memorial service honouring the eight men who had given their lives. The tragedy reshaped the Mumbles lifeboat station. The replacement vessel -- funded at a cost of seventeen thousand pounds by the Manchester RNLI branch -- was named the William Gammon in tribute to the fallen coxswain. She served the station from 1947 to 1974, launching 134 times and saving 74 lives, a fitting continuation of the tradition Gammon and his crew had died upholding. On the 50th anniversary in 1997, the Duke of Kent attended a memorial service in Swansea. The disaster remains one of the most devastating losses in the RNLI's history, and in Mumbles, the names of the eight men have never been forgotten.