3 minute read
ABANDON SHIP
Fraserburgh lifeboat crew battle choppy seas to save the crew of a grounded fishing boat
Early in the morning of 24 October 2022, Fraserburgh lifeboat crew mustered at the station. They had planned to take their Trent class lifeboat Willie and May Gall to Macduff slipway for routine maintenance. Ethan Harris, regional resilience coxswain for the RNLI, was onboard. His role is to provide cover for coxswains across Scotland and he had arrived at Fraserburgh the day before. Ethan recalls: 'Just as we went out the door, the pagers went off.’
The fishing boat had run aground off Cairnbulg Point. There were enough RNLI crew for a routine trip to Macduff, but they needed two more crew members for an actual shout. Volunteer Mechanic Shane Richardson was soon on his way to the station along with another volunteer.
‘Cairnbulg is probably one of the worst areas in our patch,’ says Shane. ‘It’s a really nasty piece of ground right on the corner of the headland. Quite often boats lose sight of the beacon, and they cut too close to the shore.’
As they prepared to leave, more information came through from HM Coastguard. ‘The four people onboard the boat had abandoned ship, onto their liferaft,’ says Ethan. ‘It became clear it was a worsening situation.’
‘When we left the lifeboat’s berth, there was quite a significant swell rolling in,’ says Ethan. ‘We knew it wasn’t going to be nice where the fishing boat was.’
Also onboard was Crew Member Stephen Brown. ‘We started to pump up the XP boat. The way the weather was going, we knew we couldn’t get in close enough with the all-weather lifeboat.’ The XP boat is a small inflatable boat, often called a daughter boat, that’s carried aboard a Trent class lifeboat.
They arrived to find the fishing boat’s crew in a precarious situation. ‘We could see waves breaking over the side of the boat, and the liferaft was still attached,’ says Ethan. ‘We were weighing up our options on how we could get the casualties from the liferaft onto the lifeboat. We knew it was almost impossible to get the Trent right in close and the windy conditions meant a helicopter was also impossible.’
Despite the ferocity of the conditions, the imminent risk to life meant launching the XP boat was the only option. Shane and Stephen were ready to go. ‘If we didn’t do it, we didn’t know how long the casualties would be sitting there in the liferaft,’ says Stephen. ‘We just had to go for it.’
Ethan took up position on the flying bridge to get the best view possible of Stephen and Shane as they motored out on the XP boat to the casualties.
‘We were not even 10m away and we couldn’t see the beacon,’ says
Stephen. The casualties spotted the XP boat, cut the liferaft loose and drifted towards the lifeboat crew. When Stephen threw them a tow rope, they caught it first time.
'They had just left behind their boat, their livelihoods, jobs, everything,’ says Stephen. ‘The skipper’s son had his head in his hands. Obviously our priority was to get them out alive and well. The boat can be replaced.’
Stephen transferred the tow rope to the crew on the all-weather lifeboat and the fishing crew were brought aboard. ‘The casualties had been sleeping in their bunks, except for the person on watch, when the incident happened,’ says Ethan. ‘So some were just in their T-shirts and boxers.
They were very cold and shaken up.’
Back onboard the Trent, Shane administered casualty care. One of the casualties was classed as ‘big sick’ when assessed. ‘His breathing was a bit erratic, he was very cold and very drowsy,’ says Shane. Once the lifeboat reached home, they handed the man over to an ambulance crew.
‘In my time being a coxswain, it was my biggest shout,’ reflects Ethan. ‘I look back and I’m proud of the crew, who all worked together to do the job, supported me, and made that difference to those four people we rescued.’ ■
Words: James Dwyer Photos: RNLI/(George Burns, Fraserburgh, Billy Watson)
‘I’ve been involved with the RNLI since I was 17 and I was volunteering at Portree lifeboat when the role of regional resilience coxswain was created.
‘There are only four people in Scotland who do my role. I provide relief cover to coxswains around the Scottish coast. I’m cross-trained on multiple classes of all-weather lifeboats, so I can provide cover anywhere from 1 to 14 days.
‘When I first started, I wasn’t a passed out coxswain. I had to go through my whole coxswain plan in quite a short period of time, which was quite intensive. Once I passed out as coxswain, I then had to go through the individual lifeboat classes and learn them inside out. It took a lot of training and assessments to get where I am now.‘
