On 1 October 1912, the Norwegian vessel Princess Wilhelmina was caught in a storm and shipwrecked in St Andrews. The ship’s crew was rescued by the St Andrews Lifeboat team, who managed to reach the ship before it beached on West Sands. Whether it was due to the success of the rescue or the recollection of a more tragic 1881 local shipwreck, this event, “watched by thousands”, was widely-discussed and photographed in town [Dundee Evening Telegraph, 1 October 1912, 1]. In some photographs, we notice the crowd gathered on the rocks where today’s aquarium stands, watching the wreck and rescue as they unfold [“Princess Wilhelmina”]. Given that so many photographs were taken that day, might there also be film footage of the event?
This was evidently a question that local residents were also asking. The only St Andrews cinema in 1912, La Scala, felt compelled to “apologize in advance” to its patrons in the week after the shipwreck as it did not have any films of the disaster or the ship [St Andrews Citizen, 12 October 1912, 1]. This public notice highlights both the demand for such films and the local interest in the event. Put into context, this interest in shipwrecks is unsurprising: the Titanic sank in April of that year, generating a heady mix of public concern and morbid fascination. In St Andrews, La Scala kept locals up to date by screening the only existing footage of the Titanic (captured by Gaumont) barely two weeks after its sinking [St Andrews Citizen, 27 April 1912, 1; 4 May 1912, 4]. It continued this story by later showing more Gaumont Titanic-related footage, which now included scenes of survivors in New York and the Carpathia [St Andrews Citizen, 11 May 1912, 1]. These films were also screened at the Cupar Market in August [St Andrews Citizen, 10 August 1912, 3.]. The story continued to capture the public imagination and more than a year after the disaster, Perils of the Atlantic, a Gaumont fiction film inspired by the catastrophe, reached St Andrews and was screened in La Scala [St Andrews Citizen, May 17, 1913, 1; 24 May 1913, 4].
While La Scala initially claimed that there were no films of the Princess Wilhelmina, an article in the St Andrews Citizen at the end of October 1912 confirmed the “cinematographing of the recent wreck” [St Andrews Citizen, 26 October 1912, 4]. A film company went to West Sands to reenact the sinking and while the company remains unknown, they were presumably local as they were able to wait until there was for suitably stormy weather for filming to enable a more realistic recreation.
On Tuesday 22 October filming began. The actors, seven men in total, were brought out by a lifeboat on the actual wreck using a line: “It must have required considerable courage on the part of the men to leap from the ship into the stormy water and practically entrust their lives to what appeared a frail line […] The experience was worse than when the actual wreck took place, as on that occasion the men were taken direct off the ship into the boat” [St Andrews Citizen, 26 October 1912, 4]. According to a St Andrews resident whose father played a member of the Princess Wilhelmina crew in the film, the actors were paid £5 for their performance [St Andrews in Focus, May-June 2005, 22-23].
The Princess Wilhelmina film shot in St Andrews was released three months later, playing in La Scala for a week in January 1913. The screenings supposedly “attracted large audiences,” although as this account in the newspaper was likely part of the cinema’s promotional materials, it may not be entirely accurate [St Andrews Citizen, 25 January 1913, p.4]. There is no evidence of the film playing elsewhere.
While its appearance in town was short-lived, and it is now presumed lost like so many shipwrecks of the period, the film has left a larger mark on the town as it predates the earliest surviving films of St Andrews. What’s more, unlike the surviving 1916 St Andrews films, the Princess Wilhelmina film is not documentary footage but a carefully staged reconstruction of an event, purely intended for dramatic purposes.
The relationship between shipwrecks and the St Andrews cinema does not end there. Following the disaster of October 1912, and the awful year that 1912 was for ships and boats both in Scotland and around the world, the cinema started fundraising for Lifeboat Crew of St Andrews and the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society [St Andrews Citizen, 9 November 1912, 1]. In the days and weeks following the wreck of Princess Wilhelmina, charity screenings at La Scala were organised to support the Lifeboat crew [St Andrews Citizen, 5 October 1912, 1; 12 October 1912, 1]. Other towns in Fife followed: the Kirkcaldy Theater hosted a spectacle called “The Loss of the Titanic” to fundraise for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution [Fife Free Press, 28 June 1913, 1]. These charity screenings reveal a tension in the workings and aims of the cinema, as it became an ever more popular, established – and regulated – venue. By showing shipwreck films, such as those depicting or inspired by the Titanic or Princess Wilhelmina, the cinema capitalized on real-life tragedies to attract crowds and generate profit. However, by hosting fundraising events, the cinema moved beyond profit-driven motives. It began to position itself as a “morally good” force in town, presenting itself not merely as a business, but as a venue that could contribute to local causes and support the well-being of St Andreans in the wake of tragedy.
Manon Caillard (2024)
Works cited:
Dr. John H Wilson, “Princess Wilhelmina,” Wilson’s Lantern Slides Collection, Special Collections – Photographic Collections, University of St Andrews Library, October 1 1912.
“Watched by Thousands,” Dundee Evening Telegraph, 1 October 1912, 1.
“King’s Theatre, Kirkcaldy,” Fife Free Press, June 28, 1913, 1.
“Cinematograph Picture Theatre,” St Andrews Citizen, 27 April 1912, 1.
“Picture Theatre”, St Andrews Citizen, 4 May 1912, 4; 11 May 1912, 1; 5 October, 1; 12 October 1912, 1; 9 November 1912, 1; 25 January 1913, 4; 17 May 1913, 1; 24 May 1913, 4.
“Within the fluthers,” St Andrews Citizen, 10 August 1912, 3.
“Cinematographing the recent wreck,” St Andrews Citizen, 26 October 1912, 4.
Leslie-Anne Lettice, “Ask the Curator,” St Andrews in Focus, May-June 2005, 22-23,https://issuu.com/mikecollins9119/docs/issue10mayjun2005
