RODNEY BURGE recalls a lifeboat crew's heroic rescue operation, and the subsequent celebrations.
NO-ONE would ever have believed it: 6.30 on a Sunday morning and my wife out looking for me, wondering where I had got to. She found me steering a rather erratic path along the harbour road on my way home through the fog.
“You've been drinking,” just happened to come to her lips. “Where do you think you've been all night? You're supposed to have been on the lifeboat”. It must have been my vacant grin and blank staring eyes which brought her to that momentous conclusion, but she knew me well enough by then so it was an accurate observation.
How the complete lifeboat crew, together with the local coastguards and other members of the rescue services, managed to get themselves into such a condition deserves to be told.
I'll take you back 12 hours. It just happened to be my niece's wedding day and I intended to make the most of it and have a really good time. However, the best laid plans of mice and men seldom turn out the way they are intended.
The phone rang on my return from the reception: it was John Connell, the lifeboat coxswain. “I need you sober tonight, Rodney. There's a yacht ashore at Bondicar and we've to try and tow her off the rocks as soon as there's water enough.”
Carrying a crew of three men, the yacht had somehow sailed too close into the shore and stranded herself on the Bondicar rocks south of Amble, which had claimed many vessels over the centuries. The ebbing tide had ensured that she stayed where she was until the following high water.
I had arranged to attend the evening party at the local hall and it promised to be a real knees-up, but that telephone call put a wet blanket over any ideas I may have entertained about having a good drink that night.
Although the sea was mirror calm that night it was cloaked in dense fog, and we could hardly see past the stem of Harold Salvesen, the 'Rother' class lifeboat stationed at Amble. The fog coated everything: the wheelhouse windows had to be constantly wiped and, despite our oilskins, the dank clamminess soaked each of us to the skin.
Leaving our berth about midnight on the flowing tide, together with the inshore lifeboat, we felt a slow cautious track clear of the harbour to head south through the fairway between Coquet Island and the shore towards the casualty.
The inshore lifeboat had, by necessity, to keep close to our radar-equipped vessel, because if she had become separated we would never have found her again that night, as she had a very poor radar signature.
The yacht was stranded on high rocks two miles south of our harbour and, although the sea was quiet, the fog meant that we had to go in among them to get her to safety any way that we could. If any swell had been running that day, she would have been a total loss in a very short time indeed.
We had previously decided which would probably be the most effective way of approaching the yacht, so with myself on the radar and John steering, the two boats slowly manoeuvred around to the south side of the rocks.
Deciding to send the inshore boat into the very shallow water covering the rocks posed a slight problem. Even at short distances, we couldn't pick up this tiny rubber inflatable on the radar, so we improvised with a trick that we used when fishing. As seine-net fishermen we had discovered that if a black plastic fertiliser bag was secured to our dahn buoy it gave off an echo on the radar set, so we had brought one for that very purpose.
Tying the bag to one of the oars and fixing it upright, the inflatable went in towards the yacht with us keeping her right and advising over the radio what direction to steer towards the casualty.
The all-weather lifeboat slowly threaded her wary path in through the rock ledges after the small boat, and we soon made visual contact with both of them. Towing the casualty out again was conducted with real diligence as she drew much more water than us with her deep and heavy keel, but eventually she came into deeper water and the three of us headed for the harbour.
Until then, it had been a pretty routine type of operation with nothing to get excited about, as we had performed that task many times before.
It's up to the lifeboat crew or the coastguards on the scene to get details of the vessel and people aboard. We observed that she was a very old yacht and in her day she must have been a fine craft indeed. We also noted that the skipper seemed to be quite confused — in fact, he was in such a state that he appeared to have no lucid idea what actually had happened. It didn't take much deliberation to come to the inevitable conclusion that this chap was as drunk as the proverbial newt, a fact soon confirmed by the two other crewmen when they vehemently stated that they would go to hell rather than set foot aboard a boat with that man again.
The vessel was called Saunterer and we were informed that she had been built for Captain Oates, of “I may be gone some time” fame, who perished with Scott in the freezing Antarctic. She was also the oldest registered vessel A1 at Lloyds of London.
After all particulars had been taken of the parties involved, the lifeboat crew retired up to the boathouse for a hot brew, only to be followed by the skipper who wended his erratic way up the quayside with a huge armful of bottles. It appeared that the party wasn't quite finished yet and he wanted us to participate in his good fortune, having come out of the affair with his boat and body in one piece.
When he set the bottles out on the bench, it had to be noted that everything was of the finest quality. Glen Morangie vied with Dufftown and other select malt whiskies, all of them in litre bottles. The only containers available to drink from happened to be thick china mugs, but that didn't matter.
Everyone who had been involved in the rescue was there: coastguards, beach patrol and various lifeboat officials as well as us crew. Looking around as if daring one another to touch the first drop at this unearthly time of the day, we agreed that it wouldn't do us any great harm to take a wee drop in our tea: it would even help us sleep better as everyone had been out of their beds all night. Consequently a small drop found its way into each mug — though it must be admitted that some of the assembled company appeared to linger a little over the pouring in.
The recently-saved skipper insisted that we had a small drop more and, rather than insult his generosity, a second measure was reluctantly accepted into the cups. There were one or two dissenting voices but these were generally ignored: anyway, what harm was there in having a belated nightcap? We felt that a good job had been well executed and, after all, our Saturday night had been ruined by this fellow, so we deserved a small glass. “Everything in moderation,” we astutely said to each other, actually meaning it. “After this one I'm definitely going home to my bed.”
I'll say one thing for our yachting hero — he was tenacious in his efforts to demonstrate his appreciation and every time our attention was distracted, our vessels were replenished. Strangely enough, there weren't so many protests by this time, or at least if there were they weren't as loud as they had previously been.
If one man had tried Tomintoul, he would be persuaded to appraise the smoky delights of Laphroaig or some other superior brand. We began to fancy ourselves as connoisseurs, with much serious discussion and animated argument about the virtues of each brand. By then, of course, everyone had become more relaxed, and it proved to be a relatively simple task for the Saunterer's captain to keep our cups replenished.
As with most men who are away from the steadying influence of their nearest and dearest, they do foolish things — and lifeboatmen are just as vulnerable as the rest of humanity. Apart from that, no-one wanted to waste all that free drink: well, that was out of the question.
There didn't happen to be much mention of our beds by now as the party started to get into full swing. I'll say one thing for our supplier — he was unstinting in his generosity.
Other people seemed to have drifted into the boathouse as well, and were also taking liberal quantities of free beverages. I believe that even some police officers had found this to be a convenient location to take their rest period and, rather than giving us a caution, joined in with the fun.
Eventually though, like all good things it had to come to an end — not through lack of drink but through the fact that we had been up all night. Lack of sleep, combined with an excess of alcohol, forced us to curtail our activities and seek more civilised surroundings — namely our beds, where no doubt the womenfolk were sleeping, reassured by the noble deeds being conducted by their faithful, sober husbands.
That episode remains one of my abiding memories of many years' service with Amble lifeboat, and is oft recalled at the swinging of the lamp nights when we, as older members, bore the younger crew to death with our reminiscences.
I was giving a talk to local Rotarians recently when one man said that the yachtsman concerned had been a friend of his, and that the Saunterer had definitely been built for Captain Oates. The skipper had since passed on to the great distillery in the sky, accelerated by copious consumption of the very stuff presented to our crew that fun-filled morning. •