Never Turn Back: The RNLI Since the Second World War E-Book

Ray Kipling

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2006

Seitenzahl: 399

Beschreibung

The achievements of the RNLI, often romanticised, depend on ordinary people doing extraordinary things. This book tells the story of the last 50 years of the lifeboat service through the words and actions of the people involved. In the period since the Second World War, particularly from the mid-1960s, the RNLI has experienced the most rapid changes in its long history.The transition from conventional to fast lifeboats, the introduction of inshore boats and the expansion into beach rescue and sea safety have all dramatically changed the lifeboat service. Ray and Susannah's narrative draws on their personal and extensive inside knowledge plus first hand accounts of the rescues and the decisions that shaped the changing lifeboat service.

Leseprobe

NEVER

TURN

BACK

NEVER

TURN

BACK

THERNLI SINCE THE SECOND WORLD WAR

RAY AND SUSANNAH KIPLING

First published in 2006

In association with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution

The History PressThe Mill, Brimscombe PortStroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QGwww.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved© Ray and Susannah Kipling, 2006, 2013

The right of Ray and Susannah Kipling to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9596 5

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

Acknowledgements and Bibliography

Introduction

1.

The Lifeboat VC

2.

Reluctant Heroes

3.

Triumph and Disaster

4.

Designed for Danger

5.

All at Sea

6.

Pomp and Circumstance

7.

Finding the Funds

8.

Overseas Adventures

9.

Why Do They Do It?

10.

Diversification

Acknowledgements

We have met hundreds of lifeboat crew members, station officials, fund-raisers, supporters and staff over the last thirty years. It is a privilege to number them among our friends and there is a part of every one of them in this book.

In particular, we are grateful for contributions and advice from Bernd Anders, Richard Barclay, Keith and Ros Bower, Hewitt and Margaret Clark, Susan Fernley, David Hudson, Brian Miles, Andrew Papworth, John Petit, Alan Tate, Zip Wiebenga and Alan Williams. Special thanks go to Joan Davies. Under her editorship The Lifeboat magazine celebrated the exploits of lifeboat crews in their own words, from which we have drawn material.

Derek King of the RNLI’s image resource unit, gave enormous help with the photographs. We are grateful for the permission of the copyright holders who allow their images to be used for the benefit of the RNLI.

Bibliography

Bensley, Mick, The Rescues of Henry Blogg and the Cromer Lifeboat Crew, Bengunn, 2001

Kipling, R., Rescue by Sail and Oar, Sulhamstead, Tops’l Books, 1982

Kipling, R. and S., Strong to Save, Yeovil, Patrick Stephens, 1995

Skidmore, Ian, Lifeboat VC, London, Macmillan, 1980

Introduction

The achievements of the RNLI, often romanticised, depend on ordinary people doing extraordinary things. There is failure as well as success, pain as well as glory, humour as well as grim determination.

The period since the Second World War, particularly since the mid-1960s, has seen the most rapid change in the RNLI’s long history. The transition from conventional to fast lifeboats, the introduction of inshore lifeboats and the expansion into beach rescue and sea safety have all dramatically changed the lifeboat service. This book describes the human stories behind the last fifty years of the RNLI, using the personal accounts of the people involved.

In spite of all the changes, there remains at the core of the RNLI the magnificent diversity of crews, nearly all volunteers, drawn from communities around the coasts of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. It is because of the crews that the RNLI has been described as the best club in the country, for there is a welcome to lifeboat people at any station they visit. The strong camaraderie, and a rich sense of humour, helps lifeboat crews to carry on in the face of adversity.

Their doggedness and perseverance was exemplified by a disaster more than a century ago. In 1901, the Caister lifeboat capsized, killing nine of her crew. The retired second coxswain, James Haylett, aged seventy-eight, had two sons, a son-in-law and two grandsons in the boat. He dashed into the surf, regardless of the danger and, with great difficulty, managed to pull two lifeboatmen to safety. He was awarded a gold medal for his outstanding bravery and at the formal inquest, he was questioned about his actions. It was then suggested that the lifeboat might have been returning to the beach after abandoning the rescue mission. Haylett’s reply was bold and simple: ‘Caister men never turn back.’ It has been the unspoken motto of the lifeboat service ever since.

CHAPTER ONE

The Lifeboat VC

The gold medal is the highest bravery award of the RNLI. It is awarded for a rescue in which outstanding courage, skill and initiative have been shown. This medal has been awarded only nine times in the last half century, so it is hardly surprising that it is known as the lifeboatman’s Victoria Cross. No lifeboatman would set out to win a gold medal, for the dividing line between extreme gallantry and death is thin indeed. And the medal has never been awarded unless all criteria are met. With the medal comes a welter of publicity, yet it can also foster jealousy and envy. All gold medal rescues, by any measure, are outstanding.

If he grew a beard, Brian Bevan would fit the archetypal image of a lifeboat coxswain. Dark hair, twinkling eyes, two gold earrings and a cheeky half smile meant that 32-year-old Bevan was swamped by women of a certain age when he was in London to have three bravery medals – a gold, a silver and a bronze – pinned to his chest. Suddenly, and uniquely, a lifeboatman turned pop star. The women were looking for kisses and autographs, while Bevan, embarrassed, was looking for the exit. His story is worth telling not only for the rescues that propelled him to prominence, but also to count the price of fame.

Brian Bevan was a Yorkshire fisherman who went to school with Fred Walkington, who later became the Bridlington coxswain. As young men Bevan and Walkington crewed the local Bridlington lifeboat. Then the Humber coxswain had to stand down as he was diagnosed with diabetes, a condition that has caused heated debate within the RNLI on the level of risk it poses to crew who are sufferers. Bevan applied for the job of running the Humber lifeboat and being the appointed village chief of the tiny community of seven lifeboat families stranded on a 4-mile spit of land, washed on one side by the powerful North Sea and on the other by the siltladen River Humber.

Spurn Head, where the promontory widens slightly, has no other permanent residents, though Humber pilots work there and hundreds of seabirds visit. Ruins of Second World War fortifications remain, as do traces of the railway that took supplies along the point. Between the land and the end of the point, the spit narrows to a few yards, and is constantly battered by the sea in a cycle of erosion and deposition that is fully chronicled by academics at nearby Hull University. They contend that nature should be allowed to take her course and turn Spurn into an island; the families living on the end disagree. The existence at Humber lifeboat station is, then, only for the hardy. The men must stay on station, but women and children are free to come and go as they please, travelling for 6 miles to schools, shops and the nearest community. The current Superintendent Coxswain (there is only one holder of this grand title in the whole RNLI), Dave Steenvorden, says that for those who can stand the isolation, the place is idyllic – safe for children, good for families who don’t mind living in close proximity. ‘The day I stop enjoying it is the day I’ll hang up my lifejacket,’ he says.

The men are on a strict roster for five days a week. The pub, a tempting 4 miles away, can only be visited on a day off. Humber is a busy station, averaging fifty calls a year. Weeks can go by without a call out, but then there can be more than one at a time.

In the grim winter of 1978/9 that is exactly what happened. Over a period of seven weeks, the men of the Humber were tested time and time again in the most extreme conditions. They emerged covered in glory.

Many seafarers were pleased to see the back of 1978. The Fastnet Race in August that year had been overwhelmed by hurricane force winds, with a fleet of 306 yachts strung out across the 150-mile stretch between Land’s End and the Fastnet Rock. A massive rescue operation was mounted, involving ships at sea, coastguards, helicopters and thirteen lifeboats that spent a total of 170 hours at sea. Fifteen yachtsmen died, some needlessly abandoning their boats for life rafts that were overwhelmed, one tragically washed off a rescue ladder as he had forgotten to unclip his lifeline from the raft. It was a shocking loss of life.

NEW YEAR’S EVE RESCUE

Just as the year was drawing to a close, another gale whipped across the North Sea, which Rudyard Kipling called ‘the cold, grey widow maker’. The intensity of the storm was a major threat to shipping. First caught was the Dutch coaster, Diana V, which was shaken and rolled until her cargo of maize shifted in the hold, pushing the ship into a dangerous list. Although she was 74 miles from Spurn Head, she was in acute distress and needed help desperately.

Watch how the time unfolds with this story. Imagine this. Leave the comfort of reading this book and put yourself in the cold, wet, stomach-churning storm. In front of you, in serried ranks, an endless line of waves as high as houses, steep and powerful. You start at 2 p.m. and all afternoon, evening and night, you do battle with the elements whose power will sap your energy, chill your bones, throw you about, damage and, potentially, kill you. Why do it? Because the call to action comes. The call to help complete strangers. The call to save seafarers.

Imagine, then, pushing on relentlessly at full speed into snow showers that give you only 100yds visibility. After nearly two hours, you have made only 25 miles. Everything depends on your skill, endurance, and your boat. Suddenly, the boat speed drops. The storm is beginning to take charge. An oil pipe has cracked under the violent battering. You cannot safely go on.

That is what faced Brian Bevan on his way to Diana V in the Humber lifeboat City of Bradford IV, but the Dutch ship was no longer on her own. The naval vessel Lindisfarne was heading for her, and Cromer lifeboat had been launched too. Bevan had an agonising choice – turn back for repairs or go on, risking his boat, his crew and the rescue. He did what coxswains hate to do, he turned back – a decision that was vindicated as the rescue unfolded, for if he had gone on with only one engine there was every chance that he and his crew would have been killed. Mechanics Bill and Ron Sayers hunkered down in the cramped engine room and, as the lifeboat battered its way back to Grimsby, somehow managed to strip down the pump, ready for fitting a new pipe.

By 5 p.m. Lindisfarne was on the scene and Diana V was able to get under way at 9 knots towards the River Humber. Cromer lifeboat was released. The Norfolk men made for Great Yarmouth as it was impossible to rehouse at Cromer. They spent eight hours – the equivalent of a whole working day – in the storm.

Bevan reached Grimsby, stopped just long enough to pick up the spares, and the new pipe was fitted as the lifeboat ran down the river to refuel at Spurn. Shortly before 9 p.m. things took a turn for the worse. The storm was still raging and water was now seeping slowly and treacherously into Diana V. A helicopter reached the scene but had to turn back because of the weather. Lindisfarne was still there but she was much too big to get near enough to take people off Diana V. Humber lifeboat had to put out again, now with 28 miles to go to reach the crippled ship.

Once again, the City of Bradford IV took on the violence of the North Sea at full throttle. As she topped one wave, she would momentarily be airborne, crashing down into the hollow of the next. Then, still 8 miles from the casualty, she fell off a huge wave and the lights, wipers and fans failed. Lifeboatman Dennis Bailey Jnr (both father and son were on this mission) was thrown into a bulkhead, injuring his right eye, knee and elbow. Bevan reduced to half speed to allow the mechanics to fix the problem, but as soon as he did, the radio brought a terse message from Lindisfarne. The situation on Diana V was now critical. The four crew and two women had to be taken off – would Humber make best speed? Bevan put the throttles down again and briefed his crew. They would go alongside using their only illumination, two hand torches.

At 11.01 p.m., they reached the Dutch coaster. She was steering an erratic course of 5 knots, the maize and water making her list heavily to port. The wind was gusting to 56 knots, storm force 10 and the temperature was -4°C. Sea water was freezing on the lifeboat’s deck and rails, making every move perilous. But Bevan needed his crew on the bow, to put out fenders and to catch the survivors. They clipped on their lifelines as Bevan radioed Diana V’s captain. Lindisfarne trained her powerful searchlight onto the coaster. Bevan made his first run in. As he edged into the coaster’s stern, where the survivors were huddled, a wave broke over them, almost washing them away and smashing the two vessels into each other. The lifeboat was lifted 10ft above Diana V’s deck and crashed down, damaging her fendering. Throttles back, the lifeboat pulled away and tried again.

On the second run, the storm chose the lifeboat, a wave crashing her bow against the coaster, inflicting more damage. As he pulled back this time, Bevan’s head was 3ft away from the cold steel of the ship.

The third try was lucky. The lifeboat hit the casualty 5ft below where the desperate people were waiting. A twelve-year-old girl was dropped into the arms of the lifeboat crew. As a wave pushed the lifeboat up the coaster’s side, a woman and four men jumped to safety, the lifeboatmen breaking their fall. Cold, wet and severely shocked, but safe, the survivors were taken below. Now only the captain remained on Diana V. Twenty miles from the safety of the Humber, his ship being constantly washed by seas so that only the bridge could be seen, and with Lindisfarne and City of Bradford IV as close escorts, he managed to coax his ship to safety. Ambulances were waiting at Spurn, and, after landing the survivors and refuelling, the lifeboat was back on her moorings at 3.45 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, after 13¾ hours on service – and ready to go again.

TWELVE HOURS IN FORCE 12

The New Year started as the old had finished, and at sea the winter continued to be cruel. On 4 January the Greek freighter Cantonad, with a crew of sixteen, was listing heavily near the Channel Light Vessel. Guernsey lifeboat set out in a storm which reached hurricane force 12. Coxswain John Petit and his crew were at sea for twelve hours, like Bevan making full speed in the most punishing conditions. An hour and a half after setting out, they were told that Cantonad had disappeared from radar screens; almost certainly she had sunk. Petit recalled,

At full speed the lifeboat was falling off the top of waves and crashing into the hollow of the next wave following with juddering crashes. In the darkness over the Casquets Bank, the boat took off from one particular huge sea and fell down on her shoulder, causing four of us to be thrown into the corner of the wheelhouse. I fell on top of Chick Robilliard, knocking myself out on a fire extinguisher and activating its lever. Snowy Hamon fell on me and white foam discharged all over the wheelhouse and us. Eric Pattimore managed to pull the throttles back as he fell. The lifeboat straightened up and we dusted ourselves down and resumed course at full speed. I found out afterwards that by falling on him I had caused Chick Robilliard to sustain two cracked ribs. However, the fire extinguisher foam proved to be a fantastic cleanser for our clothes and for the wheelhouse carpet.

Helicopters from Culdrose beat the lifeboat to the position by about fifteen minutes and they started to drop flares. They managed to winch up one survivor who was in a life raft but the rest were in the sea. They sent a winchman down into breaking seas. By this time the ship had capsized.

I went to the upper steering position with a lookout. It takes your breath away when you go on deck, the cold. You couldn’t feel your hands after being up there five or ten minutes. When you get on top of a sea everything’s flying – wind, snow, spume – then you go down into a trough and it is quite quiet. It’s uncanny.

The helicopters dropped flares and they helped a lot. We saw the two bodies we picked up in the light of the flares. They seemed to throw an orange light down into the sea and you could see the bodies silhouetted in the water. We managed to pick up those two but only after a great deal of difficulty. It wasn’t easy, in those seas, trying to manoeuvre to keep alongside. The crew, one moment they were up forward then they had to come aft, then they were halfway along the deck. They had to keep moving the whole time in order to keep the casualties in sight.

While the helicopters were away refuelling we were searching downwind for five hours; the tide was ebbing down channel and the wind was north easterly behind us. I was up on the bridge, rotating the lookout, but you couldn’t see much. It was pitch black.

After a long search, the lifeboatmen eventually had to admit that there was no further hope. The sea had claimed fifteen more lives.

FIVE MINUTES FROM DEATH

January ran into February and the storms continued. In mid-February, the most remarkable series of rescues tested the North Sea crews to the very limits. So bad were the conditions that at one stage lifeboat inspector Tom Nutman held back the Humber lifeboat from going south on a rescue because he feared for the safety of the Bridlington lifeboat. If she capsized, Humber would have to go north to help.

The story unfolds far out in the North Sea on the night of 13/14 February. The 414-ton Panamanian ship Revi was sailing from France to Newcastle with a cargo of silver sand. The tough tarpaulins covering the hatches had been torn away by the storm and sea water was flooding into the hold. Revi was reported in distress 30 miles north-east of Spurn Light Vessel. At a quarter past midnight on St Valentine’s Day, all eight men of the Humber lifeboat set out in City of Bradford IV. It was like a replay of the Diana V rescue: storm force 10, intense cold, snow showers, huge seas. As the lifeboat fell off a wave, the lights and wipers failed as the circuit breakers kicked in. The waves, if anything, were even bigger than those they had faced six weeks before.

Like Diana V, Revi was not alone. A dredger, Deepstone, was standing by. And uncannily, just as with Diana V, when the Humber men were still 8 miles from the scene, the situation worsened and Revi reported that she was slowly sinking. Her captain decided to try and reach the Humber. Unlike the Diana V, Revi never made it.

When City of Bradford IV reached Revi, she was steering at 6 knots and being completely buried by heavy seas. Brian Bevan recalls: ‘The casualty was so low in the water, virtually covered by breaking seas, that we couldn’t see her at first. The Deepstone, though, was lit up like a small town. It was an unforgettable sight – there she was, lights blazing, rolling like a pig in very rough seas. She seemed so big, around 5,500 tons, yet at times the waves were breaking right over her. Then we saw Revi. She was very low in the water and taking a terrible hammering.’

The captain said he would slow down so that two of his crew could be taken off. Bevan judged it impossible and asked him to stop and assess the situation, for the seas sweeping across the deck would have carried the men away, so he asked Revi to steer south at slow speed.

The rescue of six weeks ago was repeating itself. The crew went forward, clipped on their lifelines and waited for Bevan to make his approach. The first run in came close to killing them, as Revi was swamped by a sea and pushed down towards the lifeboatmen. City of Bradford IV, engines full astern, clawed clear just in time, but nobody had been rescued. Again and again, twenty times, Bevan dodged in and out, pushing forward, pulling back as Revi rose up 20ft above his crew, threatening to obliterate them. This was why he had turned back on the Diana V rescue – without both powerful engines under immediate control he could never risk these daring dashes. Yet twice out of twenty runs, they managed to pluck a man to safety.

Within the next five minutes, the captain had to admit defeat. The cargo of sand was shifting, the ship heeling over 45 degrees. She could not be saved. To try to provide some shelter for the lifeboat’s approach, the captain turned Revi to the west, his low port side dipping into the sea. Bevan takes up the story: ‘It was soon plain that it didn’t make a ha’porth of difference. There just wasn’t any lee that night. Seas were coming at us from all sides without any rhyme or reason to them. Judging the right moment to go in was impossible – everything was too unpredictable. All I could do was aim for where the two officers were standing and hope that the right moment would come.’

Again, the first run in failed when a large wave broke right over both boats and forced the lifeboat away from the ship’s side. Bevan returned twelve times, trying to get to the heaving deck, each time being swept away. Then, momentarily, he got close enough. The mate jumped 5ft into the lifeboatmen’s arms. Only the captain was left. It was like the Diana V rescue all over again but worse, and now things turned critical. Revi’s bows were submerged, the no. 1 hatch was awash and the stern was clear of the water. She was sinking fast and the captain was still on board, hanging onto the outside of the stern rails, ready to jump. Try as he might, Bevan just couldn’t reach him, but he couldn’t leave him. Ten more times he drove the lifeboat in, the last time coming within a whisker of killing his crew. Revi’s stern rose 20ft in the air and began to crash down towards the lifeboat’s foredeck where the crew were lashed to the rails with no chance of escape. Bevan’s heart must have been in his mouth as he rammed the throttles full astern. City of Bradford IV scraped clear by inches.

The lifeboatmen barely had time to draw breath when they saw Revi completely swamped by three successive seas, condemning the brave captain to be tossed mercilessly into the waves for the chill water to freeze his body, fill his lungs and kill him. Yet as the water cleared away, they saw him there, bedraggled but still clinging like a limpet to the rails. His ship was going to roll over at any minute. Bevan had to get him.

In a trough between two waves, Bevan drove the lifeboat in under the port quarter with almost reckless abandon, hitting the ship’s stern. The captain had no choice – he jumped. Landing, he almost fell overboard, but the lifeboatmen grabbed him and hauled him onto the deck. It was 2.33 a.m. Five minutes later, Revi rolled over and sank.

NORTH SEA BLIZZARD

Twenty-seven hours after the Revi rescue, Humber lifeboat was out again. The storm was unabated and blizzards were sweeping up the east coast. Two more merchant ships, the German Sunnanhavan and Romanian Savinesti, were in trouble. Sunnanhavan had broken down 8 miles north-east of Flamborough Head and was drifting towards the headland at 1½ knots. Brian Bevan’s old school and fishing friend, Fred Walkington, was coxswain of the nearby Bridlington lifeboat, a 37ft Oakley class. The same type of boat was stationed 100 miles down the coast at Wells in Norfolk.

A safe, solid and slow boat, the Oakley afforded little protection or comfort for her crew. Although Flamborough was closer, the station only had a smaller, non self-righting Liverpool class boat with no radar, and they would have to risk launching directly into the storm. Lifeboat inspector Tom Nutman had some tough decisions to make. He instructed Flamborough not to launch, asked Wells coxswain David Cox to set out to Savinesti, Bridlington to Sunnanhavan and kept Humber in reserve, as either of the Oakleys could be overwhelmed. The official account says it all; no additions are needed.

In blizzard conditions with falling snow and ice reforming as quickly as it was cleared, Bridlington lifeboat was launched into heavy breaking seas with visibility only a few yards making it impossible to see the next breaker. A violent storm, force 10, was blowing from the north east. The temperature was minus four degrees centigrade. The sea was white over with drift and the lifeboat was heading into driving snow squalls during which the wind became even stronger and visibility was reduced. The main sea was easterly with a cross sea breaking from the north. The throttles had to be eased and the boat squared towards the frequent breaking waves. The boat was lifted and tossed round 40 degrees to starboard.

Down in Wells, things were just as grim. Again, the dry language of the official report needs no embellishment.

The lifeboat was confronted with heavy rolling seas and the full force of the wind. The lifeboat was being continually hit and filled by the sea and lost her radar, MF radio and echo sounder.

Fred Walkington in the Bridlington lifeboat also lost his radar as the huge sea lifted the boat and filled the cockpit. Both coxswains were now relying on their extensive skills in basic seamanship. A few minutes after losing his radar, Walkington was told by the coastguard that Sunnanhavan had regained full power and was heading for the River Humber. In huge seas and blizzards neither the Bridlington nor the Wells lifeboats could be seen on the radars of the big ships.

With no radar, visibility of 50yds and breaking seas of 30ft, Walkington now had to get his crew home safely: ‘We went for the high cliffs because you stood a better chance of seeing the cliffs than you would have done the low land to the south. The seas were breaking full on Smithic Sands and it was high water. You would have had a job to come across the sands alone, but if you got across them you would never have seen the shore before you were atop of it. This is why I went for the higher land.’

Using his drogue to steady the boat, with seas breaking over the stern, he drove on for 2½ hours when cliffs were seen half a mile ahead. Suddenly, lifeboatman Dennis Atkins shouted out in alarm. Filey Brigg, a notorious outcrop of rocks, was just 100yds ahead. Walkington spun the wheel hard over to port. As the boat came beam onto the sea, she was hit and knocked over to starboard. The engine cut-out, designed to stop the engines in a capsize, activated. In a flash, Walkington put his controls to neutral, ordered the switches to be reset and fired up his engines; they started first time. Bridlington lifeboat had nearly capsized, and she was so close to the shore she might never have righted. The crew confirmed they were all well, and course was set for Flamborough Head. The lifeboat made it safely into Bridlington Harbour, coastguards with life-saving gear manning both piers in case they capsized on the way in.

As the lifeboat was refuelled, the diesel froze in the funnel. To keep the lifeboat operational, as she would become stranded in the harbour at low water, the crew sailed around to the beach to haul their boat back onto its launching carriage, skidding across the icy slipway as they did so. Walkington said: ‘That is the thing, when you come back; the responsibility. With this February job there was no beach to re-carriage so we went into the harbour. I got the crew to go home and have a drink and change into warm clothing. I think everybody came back slightly refreshed before we went and re-carriaged. It was a difficult re-carriaging job but we couldn’t have left her in harbour, because, at low water, she would have been off service. She had to go back on station because the weather was so bad that the boat might have had to go again.’

The Bridlington lifeboat crew finally went home thirteen hours after they were first called out.

WAIST DEEP IN WATER

A capsize was precisely what Tom Nutman had feared and it was why he had kept the Humber lifeboat back. Bridlington had come within a whisker of turning over and now that she was safe, Humber could be released to go south and help Wells. David Cox and his crew were taking a terrible battering. From leaving Wells harbour to getting home, the crew were up to their waists in sea water for eleven hours. As they stood by the Savinesti for two hours in their open, exposed boat, the wind was force 11, later increasing to hurricane force 12, there was a very heavy swell with breaking waves of 40ft, and continuous heavy snow. The penetrating chill of the air was so extreme that Graham Walker, mechanic on that rescue, later said, ‘The sea water breaking over us was actually warmer than the air. We were so cold and the pain was so intense that I was thinking “I hope we capsize. That will stop the pain, the warm sea.”’

By the time Humber lifeboat was 7 miles away, Savinesti was flanked by two other ships – the coastal tanker Annuity and the North Sea ferry Norwave – and the tug Lady Moira was on her way. Wells lifeboat was released to try and get home in the remaining daylight. Like Fred Walkington in Bridlington, David Cox had to guess where the nearest landfall was. He was hampered by finding that the only course achievable without violent movement was south-west, and by snow blowing directly into the cockpit, requiring one crewman constantly to clear the compass screen. David Cox said:

I will say this for the Oakley; although she was filling with seas all the time, the water was clearing very quickly. She was filling and emptying, as quick as that.

For us, the visibility was just about nil. Snow storms – blizzards, if you like – are worse than fog in an open boat when you are heading into it all the while.

When we started back for home, at 1500hr, I knew we had the worst to come. I know what our place is like. There are no lights. You couldn’t see any landmarks at all. And I knew darkness was coming on. I was not very happy running in those seas. I wasn’t sure where I would end up but I knew it would be west of Wells harbour somewhere.

We had to come over the top of the Race Bank. I have never seen the sea so piled up in my life, running and breaking on the bank. I eased her up a bit and she took it all right. By the time we got in that day it was after dark, round about six or seven o’clock. That was my most critical time because we had been out about nine hours. We were just about all in, I would say. Yet we still had the worst conditions to deal with. You see, when darkness came on we weren’t quite sure, at times, whether we were running on to the main shore or whether we were still at sea. The first thing we spotted was a glimmer of light, and when we spotted it we were nearly in Brancaster Water – we were nearly on the shore.

At 6.15 p.m. lights were seen on the shore. David Cox thought it was Brancaster. He fired a parachute flare and the auxiliary coastguard confirmed the lifeboat was just north of Brancaster golf club. Only 7 miles to go, but they took an agonising two hours as the lifeboat was constantly knocked off course by the breaking seas.

At 9.10 p.m., the lifeboat went over Wells bar, swept by three huge seas, and entered the safety of the harbour. The crew, frozen to the core, had to be lifted ashore. Most were unable to walk. Some had frostbite in their fingers that lasted three weeks. Knowing how cold the crew would be, local fishermen had lined up bottles of rum on the quayside. Some of the younger ones went to the pub, but the rest went home. And Graham Walker, who spoke for the whole crew about the agony they endured, later said, ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.’

Meanwhile, the Humber lifeboat had taken a tremendous pasting to get to Savinesti. There was a 3in layer of ice across the whole boat. The radar, unable to penetrate the blizzard, could only just show Spurn Light Vessel a mere mile and a half away. The Decca Navigator was not working; checking the scanners, the crew found they were coated in thick ice, which they chipped away. At least the Humber men had the shelter of the Arun class lifeboat’s cabin.

Brian Bevan could hardly believe how harsh the conditions were.

The snow and the frost that morning were the killers. It was freezing hard. At ten o’clock in the morning, at the coastguard station, 8 degrees of frost was recorded. That was at mid morning. Four hours prior to that it was 14 to 16 degrees of frost. The handrails on the boarding boat were iced inches thick all along.

When we got started our problem was navigating because of the banks down in David’s area. The Decca was put out of action by the snow. We thought the radio was, too, at first. Then we found it was iced up. We chipped that off and the radar was all right. So we more or less went down on the radar.

Going to the job – I don’t think you will ever see conditions worse. I have worked down there quite a bit, fishing, and been caught out, but I don’t think I have ever seen such long broken seas for as long. As one petered out the next one was coming at you. You were even bringing the Arun round to meet them head to sea because you could see them coming at you like a house side. You were always frightened of the knock down. You were on course, then coming round to meet a sea, then back on your course even with the Arun.

I have spoken to the older fishermen and the older hands on the east coast and I don’t think you will ever see any worse anywhere than it was that day. There were ships and fishing boats that had rode it out still coming to the river three days after with their masts, rigging and even their bows, where you would have thought it would have been washed off, thick with ice and snow. More like pictures that you see of deep-sea trawlers in Iceland – not the sort of thing we were accustomed to in the North Sea.

Bevan and his crew pressed on, stopping every now and then to chip away at the ice and fix their position. Around the Savinesti was a maelstrom. Nearby sandbanks were making the rollers run for several hundred feet. In the thick blizzard, even the large merchant ships were obscured, with only the tips of the masts visible at times. Norwave fired rocket lines to try and establish a tow, but all lines parted. When the tug Lady Moira arrived it was too dangerous to put men out on deck. Savinesti still had power and managed to limp along at 4 knots.

After all this drama, the storm started to abate and Savinesti managed to limp towards the River Humber. The rescue report now reaches an anticlimax: ‘By 0035 on February 16, the snow had moderated to light showers and the wind to strong gale force 9. When in position 000 degrees Dowsing Light Vessel five miles, the casualty and her escorts turned before the sea on a course for the river. Savinesti entered the River Humber at 0303 escorted by Norwave and Lady Moira and was boarded by a pilot. Humber lifeboat returned to station and refuelled, reporting ready for service at 0425.’

TRYING TO UNWIND

Rescues in such extreme conditions do not simply finish when the men go home. Both Brian Bevan and David Cox were shattered but found it hard to unwind. Bevan said:

After jobs like that you can’t sit down to a dinner put in front of you. We find that you seem to be twelve or eighteen hours before you are back to normal. You can probably have a drink of tea or coffee. Everybody says you want a hot meal as soon as you get back but the blokes just can’t seem to sit down and face that meal.

You seem to come back off a job absolutely dog tired. All you want to do is drop into your bed, and within two minutes of being in bed you can’t sleep. Everything is sort of wound up inside you.

For my crew I think probably the job to Diana V was the worst in terms of endurance. We finished at breakfast time on New Year’s Eve. I think for twenty-four hours or so I was so mentally and physically wound up that I was miles away – even during the New Year celebrations. I am in a world of my own for twenty-four hours after jobs like that.

It was a similar story for David Cox:

A couple of young lads jumped aboard that morning, just kids. I just said ‘Out!’ because I knew the sort of day it was going to be. But I’ve got a young chap in my regular crew, he’s twenty-five or twenty-six. He was the fittest one of all when we got home. He just went straight off the quay into the pub and had two or three rums. I’m afraid all I wanted to do was get home for a hot bath. So age does come into it.

When I got home that night I just stripped off and got straight into a bath and even then it took me a long time to thaw out. When I got out of the bath, I stood there and my balance had gone. They all said the same thing the next morning. You are so tensed up through cold and concentration, you don’t really sleep when you get to bed. I couldn’t relax at all until the next day.

It was the worst trip I’ve ever had. If my chaps weren’t all fishermen, they might not have survived as well as they did. Even then, most of them were complaining about the weather – the intense cold and wet – by the time we got home.

The medal count that hard winter was spectacular. John Petit of Guernsey and Fred Walkington of Bridlington won bronze medals. David Cox of Wells won a silver medal. The crew of the Humber lifeboat, Dennis Bailey and his son Bill and Ron Sayers, Mike Storey, Pete Jordan and Sid Rollinson won bronze medals for the Revi rescue. Brian Bevan won, in the space of seven weeks, a gold (Revi), silver (Diana V) and bronze (Savinesti) medal. No man before or since has been presented with all three medals at once, as Bevan was the following May when the Duke of Kent pinned them to his chest to a standing ovation at the Royal Festival Hall.

BEING A HERO

The RNLI needs its heroes for publicity and fund-raising. No lifeboat crew member should seek a medal, and very few do. They do their job, and they do it superbly. Most join the crew, serve for years, then retire graciously and with little recognition. A tiny minority are thrust into the spotlight.

Shortly after Bevan won his medals, a north-east coxswain accused him of being a glory seeker. The coxswain had to be put right because Bevan was not seeking glory, but was simply saving lives. It was the RNLI which promoted his gallantry, thrust him in front of TV cameras on This is Your Life, and got him to open the London International Boat Show at Earls Court. Bevan kept his feet firmly on the ground. At the boat show his host was Lord Victor Matthews of Express Newspapers. A VIP lunch followed the opening ceremony and tour of the show. At the end of the lunch, a waiter appeared with a box of fine cigars, which he offered to his lordship.

‘Coxswain,’ Matthews asked, ‘a cigar?’

‘No, if you don’t mind I’ll have a roll up,’ said Bevan, pulling a battered tobacco tin from his jacket. There was a very slight pause as Lord Matthews studied the tin. ‘Would you mind rolling one for me?’ he said with absolutely no condescension. ‘I haven’t had one for years.’

Some months later, a worried Bevan rang the lifeboat office in London. ‘I think somebody’s taking the mickey, only I’ve had this call from an admiral at Buckingham Palace asking me to lunch with the Queen.’ Now if there is one thing the RNLI is good at, it is protocol. Dealings with royal households are handled centrally, but none of the departments could shed light on this invitation, so it was probably a hoax. As a last check, the London office decided to ring Buckingham Palace itself, easily done as it had a modest one-line entry in the London telephone directory. There was no problem in being put through to the admiral, who was rather frosty when asked whether he had been in touch with the lifeboat coxswain. ‘Her Majesty holds a number of luncheons for distinguished people and chooses her own guests,’ was his explanation, with a coded hint that RNLI officials might care to mind their own business.

Ann Bevan answered the phone when London rang back. ‘Can I come too?’ she asked. ‘We have got corgis, you know.’

But the invitation was just for Brian. He was picked up by the RNLI at King’s Cross station and driven past the palace to the lifeboat office for coffee. ‘She’s probably peeling the spuds,’ he said as they drove past the palace. The official escorting him had, as befits a charity worker, a modest car, a Nissan Sunny, which he later drove to the palace gates. Bevan refused to get out. ‘It says here you drive into the courtyard,’ he said. ‘Not in a battered Japanese car you don’t,’ answered the official. ‘Those guards have bullets in their guns.’ Bevan insisted, and the police waved them through and on into the inner courtyard. As the Nissan drove up under the glass canopy and Bevan saw the red carpet his nerve began to fail. ‘What shall I say if they offer me a drink – I can’t say a brown ale!’ he protested.

Later, he told of meeting the other guests – ‘Some bloke who owned a newspaper gave me a lift back to King’s Cross in his Roller’ – and how the Queen kept a couple of savoury biscuits to feed her corgis. Ever modest, he made the Rolls-Royce chauffeur stop at the street before King’s Cross, to avoid the chance that, however unlikely, someone he knew might see him stepping out of the car.

Brian and Ann Bevan stayed on at Spurn, Brian as the Humber coxswain, until he reached fifty-five, the RNLI’s retirement age for crew. Retirement is a controversial point with crews, many of whom are fit and keen to carry on in their mid-fifties, and Brian felt he was not properly treated when he stood down. He continues to work at Spurn on the pilot boats and lives in nearby Easington in a house called Arun. Sadly, after his remarkable life-saving achievements and tremendous work as an ambassador for the lifeboat service, he felt unable to accept the invitation to join the other three living gold medallists when the Queen opened the new lifeboat college in Poole in 2004. He was missed, but his record stands as the proud achievement of a brave but modest man.

TORBAY RESCUE

The Humber rescues relied on the speed and power of their Arun class lifeboat whose sister ship at Torbay had proved herself two years before. Keith Bower was well aware of the hazards he faced when he was called out to take command of the Torbay lifeboat in storm force winds on 6 December 1976. He had been around the world in the merchant navy and was (and still is) a fisheries officer, working for the Devon Sea Fisheries Committee. His day job was coxswain of the 58ft twin screw fisheries patrol vessel patrolling the Devon waters from Rame Head to Lyme Regis on a daily basis. He had an intimate knowledge of boats, tides and weather. That December night Torbay lifeboat coxswain George Dyer was out at sea in a fishing boat off Plymouth, so Keith, the second coxswain, had to take the boat. The 475-ton Greek-owned cargo ship Lyrma was out in the storm with no steering, no radar and with ten men on board.

There were three Bower brothers, Keith, Stephen and Colin, in the crew. Thirty-year-old Keith had to go, to take command, and so did Stephen, the mechanic. Captain Barry Anderson, the honorary secretary, put his foot down and banned Colin, the youngest, from the boat that night. Three family members in such a bad storm was too big a risk. Colin is now one of the longest-serving members of the crew, as Keith had to retire after a bone graft to his heel and Stephen tragically died from a brain tumour in 1995.

Keith describes his thoughts as he made his way to the lifeboat station: ‘It was like the old lottery advert when a hand reaches out from the sky and says, “It could be you,” only in my case the voice would be saying, “It’s down to you.” I had a great feeling of responsibility, but was confident I could handle it.’

Setting out from the harbour at full speed, the lifeboat Edward Bridges was sheltered from the worst of the winds. As soon as she rounded Berry Head and took the full force of the southerly storm, the crew knew they were in for a beating. A local trawler, making for port, saw the lifeboat disappear in a big sea and reported to the coastguard that he thought the boat was lost. The coastguard told the fishermen they were still talking to the lifeboat and Keith was unperturbed: