Lifeboat Heroes: Outstanding RNLI Rescues from Three Centuries

by Edward Wake-Walker

  All seemed under control as the tugboat, Hugh Bourne, held in readiness in the channel, moved towards the fishing boat to pass a line and tow her to safety. Just at that moment, a succession of thunderous breakers swept across the entrance and carried the yawl helplessly up the back of the South Breakwater and onto the same outcrop of rocks on which the Henry and Elizabeth had foundered three months earlier.

  Almost immediately, loud explosions rang out over the town. The signals to summon both the lifesaving appliance company and the lifeboat crew had been fired but their effect had also been to alert what seemed to be the entire population of Fraserburgh which now, disregarding the ferocious wind, swarmed towards the harbour for a view of any drama that might be about to unfold.

  Chief Officer Glanton of the lifesaving company had soon organised his men on the South Breakwater and with a whoosh and a billow of smoke, a rocket with line attached was unleashed. It caught in the foremast of the fishing boat whose crew quickly grabbed the line and began to haul in the heavier line and block which would allow the breeches buoy apparatus to be rigged.

  Just as the youngest member of the seven-man crew had clambered into the breeches buoy, ready to be hauled up onto the breakwater, the lifeboat appeared, her 12 oarsmen straining every muscle as she rounded the southern pier head. Seeing the lifeboat now surfing towards him, the skipper of the stricken Zodiac, Peter Coull, changed his mind and ordered the boy out of the breeches buoy; he preferred to put his faith in a boat-to-boat transfer rather than one where his crew would be suspended over the rocks and breakers underneath the pier.

  Andrew Noble, at the helm of the lifeboat, using his considerable skill and the experience gained during his June rescue, steered the lifeboat alongside the yawl and held her there long enough for all seven fishermen to clamber aboard the Anna Maria Lee. As the lifeboat turned for home, the coxswain and his crew soon realised that they had a near impossible struggle on their hands. The tide was low and in the shallow, broken water they were making practically no progress into the wind. The thousands of people now lining the pier watched as waves broke continually over the lifeboat, drenching her occupants and sapping their strength. If anything, she was getting nearer the rocks and many feared they were about to witness a disaster.

  Then there seemed to come a pause as if the sea needed to regain its strength. The lifeboat crew understood that this was their chance for one last desperate heave on the oars to pull themselves into more open water. Everyone on board, survivors and crewmen alike, bent to the task and gradually they drew clear of the shallows where the sea was less troubled and an anchor could be put over the side.

  There was hope now that the tug, Hugh Bourne, which had been dodging about near the harbour entrance, could get to them. As she left the shelter of the piers, huge seas swept over her and quantities of steam could be seen pouring from every aperture. It was soon obvious that her engine rooms had been filled with water and her fires were all but out. With what little power she had left, she turned back and made it safely into the harbour.

  The lifeboat, still at anchor about half a mile out in the bay, often disappeared from view in a deep trough before re-emerging teetering on the white crest of a wave. The coxswain soon realised that he would have to get home without the help of a tug and so ordered the sail to be hoisted. He then headed out to the east with a view to running down with the wind to the harbour mouth. As he looked back towards the town, he was astonished to see the unmistakeable shape of a steam drifter, its long, thin funnel wafting white smoke like incense as it swung wildly with the vessel’s uneasy progress towards him. She was the Lively of Buckie and her skipper, Alexander Thomson, had been getting up steam inside Fraserburgh Harbour just in case other help for the lifeboat failed.

  He had made it safely through the harbour entrance and before long he was alongside the lifeboat and had passed a towline into the grateful hands of an exhausted crew. The crowd on the harbour walls gave a heartfelt cheer as the two vessels reached safety. Not only had they witnessed the rescue of a sailing fishing crew by Andrew Noble and his men, but they had also seen the compliment courageously returned by the skilful and unsolicited assistance given by a powered steam drifter to the pulling lifeboat.

  Although all human life was safe, the crew of the Zodiac remembered, too late, that, in their haste to board the lifeboat, they had forgotten about the little dog they always took to sea with them. A young man spotted it from the pier as it leapt from the swamped vessel and swam towards the rocks. The young man, risking being swept away by the backwash, plunged through the surf and brought the bedraggled animal safely ashore.

  Although there is no obvious record of any official recognition for this canine rescue, the deeds of Captain Alexander Thomson of the Lively and of Coxswain Noble were justly rewarded. The very next day the Harbour Commissioners made a public presentation of £25 to the drifter skipper and the RNLI later presented their official Thanks inscribed on vellum to him and awarded a Silver Second Service Clasp to Andrew Noble.

  Nearly ten years later and Andrew Noble was still coxswain of the lifeboat, having held the position for 32 years. On 28 April 1919 he set out with his 12-man crew in a severe north-north-easterly gale aboard the station’s new motor powered lifeboat, Lady Rothes. The Admiralty drifter, Eminent, was floundering with a failed engine, not far from the harbour entrance. Close to the casualty, the lifeboat was hit by two huge waves and capsized. Only three men found themselves still aboard when the lifeboat righted herself. A few managed to regain the boat but the others were swept with the powerless lifeboat towards the nearby beach. Coxswain Noble, one of those in the water, shouted to those aboard the boat, ‘Let go the anchor!’

  When rescuers reached the beach they found the lifeboat washed up and 11 men alive. There were also two lifeless corpses. One was Acting Second Coxswain Andrew Farquhar and the other, Coxswain Andrew Noble.

  The crew of the Eminent survived thanks to the rocket apparatus team after the drifter also ran aground on the beach.

  8. Ballycotton, 11 February 1936

  Coxswain Patrick Sliney is awarded the RNLI Gold Medal after ‘one of the most exhausting and courageous rescues in the history of the lifeboat service’. He and his crew spend 49 hours at sea in a gale and bitter cold to save the crew of the Daunt Rock lightship close to the rocks at the entrance to Cork Harbour.

  Until its decommissioning in 1974, the Daunt Rock lightship, marking a lethal hazard near the mouth of Cork Harbour, was a familiar and often reassuring sight to Atlantic seafarers returning to the Irish mainland. For the tens of thousands of emigrants sailing out of Cobh, (or Queenstown as it was previously known), the red-painted vessel was one of the last symbols they would glimpse of their old country, their old life, before surrendering themselves to the turmoil of an ocean crossing and the uncertainty of a new continent.

  With modern aids such as radar and satellite navigation, only a buoy is required today to mark the same hazard but for 100 years men were paid to keep the light ablaze in all weathers, 365 days a year. Lightships have no means of propulsion, so their only safeguard in times of high winds and heavy seas is their anchor and cable. Both are substantial; the mushroom-shaped anchors commonly used weigh some 6,000 pounds (2,722kg) and each link of the 450ft chain weighs 14 pounds. With the Daunt Rock lightship’s position only two-and-a-half miles from a rocky shore, her crew were doubtless often grateful for every ounce of strength in that cable.

  In October 1896 the entire eight-man crew of the Daunt Rock lightship, Puffin, was lost when the vessel disappeared in a gale. Whether she was blown onto rocks or overwhelmed by the sea was never certain but a study of her wreckage, recovered from the sea bed, suggested that the mast carrying the light had been torn down and the iron and wood composite vessel was filled with water through the gaping hole left in her deck.

  Puffin

  Built 1886/87 by Schlesinger Davis & Co, Wallsend; length 91ft, breadth 21ft, depth 11 ¼ft; construction composite; cost £6
,000; sank during storm on Daunt, 8 October 1896, crew of eight lost. Salvaged by Ensor & Sons. Beached at Rushbrooke, sold 27 October 1897 to Ensor and scrapped on beach.

  Comet

  Built 1904 by J. Reid, Glasgow; length 96ft, breadth 23ft, depth 12 ¼ft; construction iron shell and floors, steel framing; five watertight bulkheads; steel mast and fixed lantern; mizzen mast carrying day mark; cost £6,740; sold in 1965 to Turner & Hickman, Glasgow (Shipbrokers), and subsequently used as a broadcasting station by Radio Scotland.

  Forty years on and the Puffin’s sturdier, iron and steel replacement, Comet, was feeling the effects of a February cyclone which had wound itself up in the Atlantic and which, by Monday 10 February, 1936, was unleashing a hurricane force onslaught from the south east, straight at the Cork coast. Memories of the disaster to the Puffin were still vivid in the minds of many in the port of Cobh and when news reached them that distress rockets had been seen coming from the lightship early on the Tuesday morning and that she was no longer on her station, a rumour swept through the town that yet another crew had been lost with all hands. Two of the men were from Cobh and their families must have felt immense relief to hear a little later that she had not yet gone ashore but had drifted for about half a mile from her station. She was, however, now perilously close to the rocks off Robert’s Cove. One of her crew later described their predicament:

  You cannot imagine, unless you went through the same experience yourselves, the awful effect these rocks had upon us since we dragged our anchor and we had drifted to within half a mile of their reach. They seemed to be continually grinning, defying our efforts to thwart the relentless fury of the sea.

  On Monday night the wind went mad in its fury, the seas continually pounded us and, indeed, it looked as if we were lost. At one o’clock on Tuesday morning our cable — of which we had about 190 fathoms — parted and we were being blown towards those hated rocks of Robert’s Cove. We worked like demons to run out our second cable. Our first attempt was a failure, for it fouled; but we had enough compressed air to bring it inboard and free it for the second attempt. Those 20 minutes taken to perform this operation seemed like an eternity. We made another attempt and you can guess the joy we experienced as we felt the anchor grip the bottom and check our progress to destruction.

  Then one of the crew tapped out the SOS and this was picked up by the German tug, Seefalke, as she battled onwards through the seas 37 miles away to render assistance to the crippled British freighter, Baron Graham, also in danger of being dashed ashore to her doom on the Waterford coast. The tug communicated our danger to the pilot cutter on duty in Cork Harbour, an act for which we all would like to express our grateful appreciation.

  You can imagine with what relief we watched the Cork — Fishguard passenger steamer, Innisfallen, approach us at 8.30am that morning and also at the arrival of the British destroyer, Tenedos, from Cobh.

  That SOS message from the lightship was to set in motion one of the most epic services ever performed by an RNLI lifeboat crew, one that not only proved the all-weather capabilities of the latest type of motor lifeboat, but the astonishing endurance of the men of a small southern Irish fishing village.

  The effects of the hurricane on the fishing harbour at Ballycotton, which lies ten miles to the east of the entrance to Cork Harbour, were unprecedented. In the early hours of the Monday morning, gigantic waves were exploding against the harbour wall with such force that hefty stone blocks were being torn from their seating and tossed about on the quay. Patrick Sliney, a seasoned figurehead of the local fishing community and coxswain of the lifeboat said later that he and other men had spent ‘a night of terror’ trying to save the boats from destruction inside the harbour. Little did he know that his nightmare had only just begun.

  His story and that of his crew which included his brothers, Tom and John, and his son, William, was graphically recounted by the Ballycotton lifeboat honorary secretary of the day, Robert Mahony who sent his report to RNLI headquarters in London a few days later:

  During the Sunday and early on Monday the coxswain ran ropes from the lifeboat, the Mary Stanford, a 51 feet Barnett cabin motor lifeboat, to prevent her from striking the breakwater. At midnight on the Monday, when the gale had risen to a hurricane, the coxswain’s own motorboat was seen to have parted her moorings, and was in danger of being carried out to sea. The coxswain and several other men attempted to launch a boat to her, but were nearly swamped. Stones, a ton in weight, were being torn from the quay and flung about like sugar lumps. I spent most of the night near the lifeboat house, watching the terrible destruction that the wind and waves were doing. Twice I was spun round and nearly flung on my face. At three on the Tuesday morning I went to bed, but not to sleep. I was out again shortly after seven, and found that the coxswain and the other men had been up all night trying to secure his motorboat. They had succeeded in launching a boat, got a rope to the motorboat and secured her. It was at that moment, after this long night of anxiety, that the call for the lifeboat came.

  With the telephone lines torn down by the gale, a messenger had carried the news in person from Cobh to Ballycotton that eight men were adrift aboard the Daunt Rock lightship, 12 miles to the west. It was soon after eight o’clock in the morning when the honorary secretary passed the news to his coxswain who had just got home. Patrick Sliney made no reply. Both men had seen the seas breaking over the lifeboat house where the boarding boat was kept and Robert Mahony was convinced there was no way of getting aboard the lifeboat at her mooring, let alone leaving the harbour. He could not order a launch in such weather.

  Sliney, ignoring his exhaustion from the night’s battle with the moorings, nevertheless decided to go back to the harbour to see if anything could be done. His honorary secretary followed him a few minutes later and was astonished to see the lifeboat already at the harbour mouth and dashing out between the piers. As he later recounted:

  The coxswain had not waited for orders. His crew were already at the harbour. He had not fired the maroons, for he did not want to alarm the village. Without a word they had slipped away. As I watched the lifeboat I thought every minute she must turn back. At one moment a sea crashed on her; at the next she was standing on her heel. But she went on. People watching her left the quay to go to the church to pray.

  Two small islands lie off Ballycotton, the further of which, a mile off the coast, supports a lighthouse. The lifeboat had reached the outer island and was now meeting seas of such enormity that their spray was flying clean over the 196ft lantern of the lighthouse. The lifeboat seemed to hesitate and then turned round. Was she coming back? No; her coxswain had decided rather to take her through the sound between the two islands. This was far more risky than the open sea route, but he would save half a mile and perhaps reach the lightship before it was too late.

  The seas in the sound were terrifying for the crew. Every one of them was in the after cockpit and each time a wave swept through it, Patrick Sliney counted his men. At one point the lifeboat toppled from the crest of a massive sea and fell with such a thud into the trough beyond that all on board were convinced that the engines had gone through the bottom of the boat. All waited anxiously while the motor mechanic, Thomas Sliney, went to check on the damage. ‘All’s well,’ he was able to report to his brother, the coxswain. ‘After that, she’ll go through anything.’

  Safely through the sound and now about six miles from Ballycotton, Coxswain Sliney found the following seas were worse still. During the process of putting out a drogue, waves continually swept over the lifeboat, half-stunning the coxswain as they crashed over his head. The largest wave filled the cockpit and knocked every crewman off his feet.

  Visibility was appalling in the spray and sleet. The lightship could not be found and finally the coxswain decided to run for Cobh for information.

  The pilots at Cobh were able to give an exact position; the lifeboat set out again and soon after midday found the lightship a quarter of a mile south-west of the Daunt Rock
and only half a mile from the shore. Her crew would not leave her, knowing the danger an abandoned lightvessel out of position would present to shipping. They feared their anchor would not hold, however, and asked the lifeboat to stand by.

  Also standing by was the Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Tenedos, and from about 3.30pm, when the gale had eased a little, until darkness two hours later, attempts were made to establish a tow between the lightship and the destroyer. Even when the lifeboat was twice able to pass the line aboard the casualty, the line parted. All the time the three vessels were being swept by heavy seas.

  Towing attempts became impossible once darkness had fallen and, with HMS Tenedos prepared to stand by all night, Coxswain Sliney decided to make for Cobh. He needed more rope and, more importantly, his wet and exhausted crew needed food. Harbour was reached at 9.30pm.

  Robert Mahony, the honorary secretary, had been spending the time his lifeboat was away desperately trying to keep track of her progress. Fallen trees across roads and telephone lines down made his task virtually impossible. Finally, at 11pm on the Tuesday night he made contact with Cobh by telephone:

  I spoke to the coxswain. He told me the position, and I went back at once to Ballycotton and set out for Queenstown (Cobh) with a spare drogue, tripping line and veering lines, and changes of underclothing for the crew. It was 23 miles to Queenstown, and again a very difficult journey by night, dodging fallen trees. I arrived at Queenstown at three in the morning of Wednesday 12th, handed over the stores and returned to Ballycotton.