I went to Holyhead the day after storm Emma hit Holyhead harbour, I know the area extremely well and knew exactly where to go to reach all of the wrecks that made it to the edges of the inside harbour. On the night of the storm the wind direction was the complete opposite of normal, usually, the wind blows in a Northerly direction but on this fateful night, there was an unusually high tide with the storm's high winds blowing in a South Westerly direction which dragged large waves straight across the Ferry Port and directly across the harbour. There were a great many concrete pontoons encased in Polystyrene to give them buoyancy, these pontoons had around 90 or so boats of varying sizes moored to them, the largest of which were some customs boats which were moored on the far side of the pontoons and these boats broke free of their moorings before being blown straight towards the other pontoons, which were already becoming detached by the waves. These large boats and the now free moving pontoons, smashed their way through the mass of smaller boats. The Customs boats were steel hulled vessels whereas most of the smaller ones were of fibre glass and a few older ones of wooden construction. The pontoons claimed most of the boats, punching holes in them and sinking them pretty much on the spot, some of the others drifted after being holed and sank in a scattered formation. Other boats broke free of their moorings and ended up being smashed onto rocks or ended up herded into a small secluded beach. The weird part is that all of the custom boats ended up floating one by one into a tiny narrow disused Victorian harbour within the confines of the main harbour itself. The polystyrene from the pontoons created a huge floating carpet that completely covered the areas that it made landfall. The entire harbour area from the point where the pontoons where originally sited to the inner edges of the harbour itself was heavily polluted by Diesel fuel which covered everything in that area. Within hours of the event hitting the news, a team of organised criminals arrived from Liverpool and began stealing valuable equipment from the boats that were accessible, they were apprehended by the Police. I spoke to one of the boat owners, he was with his boat 'Bad Boys III' which had a huge hole in her bow and side from landing on the rocks to the west of the disaster area, the thieves arrived by using the dark early hours of the morning before they pretty much walked through the hole and stole all of the fishing equipment on board. He lost FOUR boats that night, all of them charter fishing boats, one of which was only around 50 yards from where we were stood, marked by a floating lifebuoy that was tied to it, another two were around 150 yards out on the seabed, one of which had another larger boat sat on top of it. I made my way round to the secluded beach and helped for some time with an amateur clean up operation with volunteers trying in vain to try and make a dent in the vast amount of polystyrene all over the beach, there was a small house at the top of the beach, the owners kindly handed out bottles of beer to us for our efforts. I spoke to several boat owners who had lost boats there, one of which was living on his but now only had the clothes he was wearing, everything he owned was around 200 yards out on the seabed, another boat which only the wheelhouse is visible above the water in one of my videos, was bought just days before and was getting ready to be fitted out for charter fishing, he was one of the luckier ones, his boat had a steel hull and could be repaired. Around to the Northern part of the disaster area, the port authorities were trying to salvage any equipment found on the shoreline like un-inflated lifejackets, buoys etc etc and piling them up here and there for collection later on. To the North east of the disaster area, an old docking area was being re-pressed into temporary service by the port authority in order to begin the salvage operation, they had teams in inflatable ribs that were assessing some of the boats before towing them to the inside harbour ring to moor them whilst they worked out what they were actually going to do with them. Given the fact that most of the boats were fibre glass and thus beyond repair, the salvage operation quickly became a scrap operation and the operator of a large crane that was lifting the doomed boats up and into the now scrap area of the harbour, actually lifted his own smashed yacht out from the water, it was placed with all of the other wrecked boats he had already lifted out. floating booms were deployed to try and stop the sea of polystyrene from leaving the harbour but some of it did and actually ended up on the beaches of Ireland 50 miles away. To the furthest North East of the disaster area, a large steel hulled yacht was smashed up against the concrete harbour wall so even though ots hull was largely intact, the wooden upper structure was smashed beyond repair and the inner cabin walls had all collapsed and were buried at various angles among a big mass of polystyrene within but on the far side on the North West of the disaster area, an equally large wooden hulled yacht had perfectly moored herself up against an old wooden pier used in WWII, the salvage crews had simply used rope to make sure she stayed where she was, all around her was the wreckage of no less than four other boats including the aforementioned 'Bad Boys III'.