Everyone has heard of Lassie the super-intelligent ‘doggy’ film star. Few realise that the part was originally based on a rough-haired collie owned by the landlord of the Pilot Boat Inn, Lyme Regis. That Lassie has always been credited with saving a sailor’s life. An enduring Hollywood serial has indeed a Dorset ring to it.
It was the first day of January 1915, in the early hours. The battleship HMS Formidable had been training and exercising in Lyme Bay with other ships when she was struck with two torpedoes. The magazines blew up.
Two hours after the first strike her crew of 780 was ordered to abandon ship. Only 233 were to survive the savage, ice-cold water. It was a major disaster not long after the opening of the First World War. A lifeboat capsized in the swell, but other ships in the squadron took off 114 men. Then the big ship went down, deep by the bows.
An empty boat was found at Abbotsbury and another came ashore at Lyme Regis with some sailors dead from exposure. One other man was to have his life saved by the dog Lassie. He had been taken into the Pilot Boat Inn, apparently dead, but Lassie kept licking his face for half an hour and he revived. The dog was awarded two animal medals. Forty-eight survivors reached Lyme Regis in all.
Hollywood got on to the story of Lassie and as a result of that her name will live forever…. But a second dog figures in the tale, for at Abbotsbury Gardens a headstone marks the grave of the captain’s dog Bruce, whose body was washed up on the nearby beach a day after the disaster.
Many sailors are buried in Lyme Regis churchyard and two at Burton Bradstock cemetery.
There are about 30 identified wrecks in Lyme Bay, most of which can be reached by divers, and some have been.
There was an intensification of U-boat activity after the sinking of the Formidable, and many thousands of tonnes of British shipping were lost off the coast of Dorset; however, six U-boats were sunk. Towards the end of the war two merchant ships were attacked in September 1918. The Gibel Hamam was torpedoed off Abbotsbury and 21 of her crew were lost. Another ship, the S.S.Ethel, was attacked and sank while being towed to Portland.