The only hope in death’s dark vale
February 2009
Lifeboat in mountainous seas off Thurso. Photograph courtesy of the R.N.L.I.(Royal National Lifeboat Institution)
by Ronald Neil
The Pentland Firth is one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world. Powerful currents and tidal races compete with each other and when whipped up by a driving gale the seas can be awesome.
And on the winter’s night of March 18 1969 the eight-mile wide strait separating the Orkney islands from the Scottish mainland was at her most treacherous. A Force 9 south-east gale had been blowing for three days. It was snowing. Visibility was virtually zero, and the tidal races were running at 10 knots against the wind.
It was into this fearsome mountain of sea that coxswain Dan Kirkpatrick launched the Longhope lifeboat TGB in a bid to rescue the crew of a stricken tanker, Irene.
The situation was a deadly one. An immense flood tide running like a millrace south-east out of the firth and meeting the seas pouring down the east side of South Ronaldsay … both of them opposed by the south-east gale.
One Orcadian commented afterwards: “It was the way into Death’s dark vale if ever there was one.”
In trying to convey to viewers in the comfort of their own homes some sense of the scale of the storm that night, I said in a report for BBC News that the waves the Longhope crew faced were the height of four double-decker buses, stacked one on top of the other… upwards of 60 feet.
In fact the freak wave that took her was said to be all of 100 feet high. It is reckoned that the lifeboat climbed this mountainous lump of sea, and then toppled over backwards.
Wick radio reports only silence
By 10 o’clock that night Wick radio could get no reply from the TGB … there was only silence.
When I arrived on the Orkney island of Hoy with a news camera team the next day, the community was already fearing the worst.
The RNLI honorary secretary on the island, Jackie Groat, agreed to an interview. His comment at that time was remarkable. If the lifeboat was lost then they must have a new one, for it had been their task down the generations to police the seas of the Pentland Firth.
We flew back with the film to Aberdeen for insert into the national news. As the plane bucked and slewed a few hundred feet above the Pentland Firth we spotted below us the most awful sight of all… the TGB floating upside down, being tossed and thrown by the unforgiving seas.
That was the image that 10 million BBC viewers saw on their teatime news that night.
Behind us we had left an island community devastated by the disaster. All but one of the lifeboat crew were found in the upturned hull. Coxswain Dan Kirkpatrick was still at the helm. Not one had survived.
The community was to learn that the crew of the Irene had not required the lifeboat after all. They had all been safely taken ashore by breeches buoy.
Amazingly, when the RNLI inspector called at each home to break the terrible news, one of the first questions he was asked by every one of the Longhope widows was about the crew of the Irene. Without exception they all said their husbands would have been so pleased to have known they were safe.
That tells you so much about lifeboat families.
Magnificent memorial to lifeboatmen
The men of Longhope were laid to rest side by side in Kirkhope Cemetery at South Walls overlooking the Pentland Firth and the very seas where they had given their lives.
A year later Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother flew in by helicopter from her home at Castle of Mey to unveil a magnificent bronze memorial of a lifeboatman. Lifeboats from all around the islands came and dropped anchor in the bay as a silent tribute,
As we stood in the driving rain singing the lifeboat hymn For Those in Peril on The Sea, the lifeboats received an SOS call. Someone else was in trouble in these waters. By the time we had finished singing the boats had gone.
Few could hold back their tears.
Ever since that first RNLI lifeboat station was established at Fraserburgh 150 years ago the North-East of Scotland has been no stranger to lifeboat disasters. Fraserburgh itself has suffered three capsize tragedies down the years with the loss of 13 lives. Further south, the Arbroath boat capsized in 1953 with the loss of six lives. The eight-man crew of the Broughty Ferry lifeboat Mona died when she capsized on a December night in 1959.
The North-East has learned from history how unforgiving the seas around its coast can be.
Today, 40 years on from the Longhope disaster, the RNLI is flourishing in Scotland. There are now 53 lifeboats stationed round our coast. Last year our volunteer crews answered the call more than 1000 times, rescuing close to 900 people.
In some ways our crews are very different today. Nine out of 10 are non-seagoing folk; the postman, the builder, the plumber and the nurse. Many are women. Indeed a woman doctor, Christine Bradshaw, now a member of the Longhope Lifeboat crew, has in recent years won a bronze medal for her gallantry.
Because so many of our crews are non-mariners, thorough training is crucial. To ensure that, the RNLI has built a residential training college and survival centre at its headquarters in Poole. You cannot ask volunteers from the land to go to sea in treacherous conditions without the very best of training and preparation.
The most sophisticated lifeboat in the world
Nor can you ask men and women to venture into the storm with anything less than the finest of boats. In recent years the RNLI has designed and built a fleet of powerful and hugely strong new boats. The latest and most sophisticated lifeboat in the world is the ‘Tamar’ class, costing almost £3million to build and fit-out.
A North-East company plays a key role in maintaining and refitting many of the lifeboats from around the shores of Britain and Ireland. Almost 75% of the specialist work done at the Buckie Boatyard is keeping our all-weather boats in tip top condition, ready for that crucial moment when they are needed to answer the call.
Running an emergency service like this is not cheap… it costs a staggering £340,000 a day. Yet 185 years after the founding of the institution, the RNLI in Scotland is still funded entirely from voluntary contributions. That model collecting boat on the butcher’s counter, the summer lifeboat days around our harbours, the coffee mornings with tea and home-made scones, the good folk who remember us in their wills… they all add up to the income that fuels this extraordinary service.
When a lifeboat next launches from a harbour in the North, not a penny of government money will have made that possible. Without our wonderful army of fundraising volunteers there would be no RNLI, and no world-leading lifeboats to protect our crews and rescue those in peril.
A good example of our costs are the seats our crews use on the newest and most modern of our boats, the Tamars. Because the boats have to drive through the seas at high speed, even in the worst of weather, the banging as it flies off the top of waves and lands back on the water is damaging and can inflict long-term injury. So the RNLI has designed a special chair to absorb the ferocious pummelling a crewman would otherwise have to suffer. Each seat costs £10,000.
That’s a lot of scones!
The unassuming Kevin Kirkpatrick at the helm
Today two of the Tamars are on station in the North. One is at Peterhead, the other at Longhope, where the coxswain of the Helen Comrie is one Kevin Kirkpatrick.
Yes, you do recognise the name. On the night of the Longhope disaster Kevin lost to the sea his father, his grandfather and his uncle. And that same night Kevin’s wife Karen lost her father, her grandfather and her uncle.
Can anything illustrate more poignantly the scale of the calamity that hit the folk of Hoy that March night 40 years ago?
To see the unassuming Kevin Kirkpatrick at the helm of the Longhope Tamar today reminds us that the lifeboat service round our northern shores continues to be a family affair… often handed down from generation to generation.
Proof that in the RNLI, courage is timeless.
Ronald Neil was a reporter for the Scottish Daily Express in Aberdeen before becoming the BBC’s television news correspondent in the North. He went to London in 1970 where he produced Nationwide, was editor of That’s Life and Breakfast Television. He was director of News & Current Affairs for the BBC, and chief executive of all network programme production. Chairman of the fundraising committee of the RNLI and a deputy chairman of the institution, he lives in Richmond, Surrey, with his wife, Isobel.
This is an article from the February 2009 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.