"Just round the corner from the Gwelfor Centre there's a beach called Penrhos Beach. In the middle there are some big rocks, which are marked as the Nimrod rocks on every map.

The Nimrod was a French privateer which anchored in the mouth of the harbour and sent a party to shore, who threatened to blow the church and the town to bits unless the townspeople paid a ransom.

In the meantime, a gale blew up and this ship was blown onto the rocks - the Nimrod rocks.

When they built the inner harbour here, the divers went and salvaged the guns from this ship, which had gone down in about 1702.

A hundred years later, in 1821, George IV was coming to Holyhead to open the new harbour extensions, on his way to Ireland. The townspeople wanted to make a bit of a show, so they cleaned up the guns and they were used to fire a salute for the king.

After all the fun was over, the guns were presented to Captain Huw Evans, the harbourmaster who lived in Bryn Golau on Newry Beach - it's an old people's home now. These guns were in front of Bryn Golau for years.

Incidentally, this captain was the same man who suggested to the Government that they build a lighthouse at South Stack, for which he was presented with a brass telescope as he'd saved so many lives with this suggestion.

Anyway, after Huw Evans died, the guns were taken over by the council and they were on top of the market steps for years. I remember climbing over them as a small boy - I was fascinated by them.

Then World War II came and there was a big drive to salvage scrap metal - that's when they took all the railings from in front of chapels and people's gardens and these canons were being taken away when a local councillor spotted them and was able to buy them back for scrap value. So the council were supposed to keep them safe, but they dumped them in the town park.

I used to take the Cubs to the park to play and noticed the guns just dumped there. So being a member of the antiquarian society, I wrote on their behalf and asked that the council put these canons somewhere safe. They took them to the depot on Kings Road.

Fifteen years later there were articles in the Daily Post about some mysterious canons which had come to light in council depot, so I wrote to them to ask that they be put on the promenade, as the following year was maritime year. They never did.

These canons are now lying on the ground outside the Maritime Museum on Newry Beach, although they could be displayed a bit better."