'The shipboard lights of the George Robb began to dim as she became engulfed in the towering seas'
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Kevin Green recalls the stormy December night in 1959 when the ill-fated trawler George Robb went down off Duncansby Head
On stormy nights when the Atlantic westerlies crashed against our back wall and rattled the roof slates, Grandad would sometimes be inspired to tell a story.
The wrecking of the trawler George Robb was a favourite, and often asked for.
Many trawlers passed by our shores at John O'Groats from the ports of Hull, Grimsby, Fleetwood, Aberdeen and other places. But one trawler in particular filled my dreams, the ill-fated George Robb.
Sometimes, when the mist rolled off the sea and the big red fog horn at the lighthouse started its sonorous wail, I'd lie awake in my bed and dream of the doomed trawler that smashed into the rocks below the high sandstone cliffs only a mile from where I lay curled up snugly.
I recalled the fateful Sunday night in December as the winter gale roared outside. It had been four days of the worst storms in living memory and mountainous seas raged through the Pentland Firth. At the harbour, white spume ran off their crashing crests to blow over the fishing boats hauled up high above the tidemark.
Lying on the couch in our living room at Heatherbell Cottages I listened to the rain and wind rattling the windows as the old pendulum clock chimed midnight. Then the phone rang in the corridor.
It was Uncle Wullie on the line saying he’d picked something up on his radiogram, when tuned to the trawler waveband. The former merchant sailor enjoyed listening to the shipping frequencies and the trawler band was often lively with banter.
At Wullie's farmhouse he and I regularly listened to the trawlermen cursing about the weather, yarning over catches, where they were heading. Usually, there was plenty of humour and wisecracks to make it entertaining during a dark winter night when little else of interest was happening in the cold wastes of the Pentland Firth.
I’d sometimes lie on the rug beside the big stone fireplace as a puckle of peats blazed in the hearth and listen to the harsh accents of southern Scots rattling through the wireless static. Reception was not good that particular fateful evening due to the heavy clouds and shower conditions. As he tuned in, he heard the name ‘George Robb’ but was unable to make out the message. But this message had an ominous tone.
“MAY...DAY, MAY...DAY.”
The garbled and static filled message was faint and hard to hear as the wind battered the stone farmhouse. Perched on the very edge of the Pentland Firth the storm shrieked and pulled at its stone walls and shrieked round its gable ends as Wullie crouched closer to the radio set.
Out at sea the trawler’s wireless operator was frantically trying to send a distress call. The George Robb had been heading north from her home port of Aberdeen to the Faroese and Iceland fishing grounds. The crew would have been very aware of the dangers, the firth being notorious among trawlermen, so should have kept well clear of this dangerous lee shore as the easterly storm swept across the North Sea.
“MAYDAY, MAYDAY... this is the trawler George Robb... MAYDAY, MAYDAY.”
Spinning the big tuning knob of the radio gave some clarity to the signal allowing the words "Duncansby Head" to be heard, Wullie told Grandad over the phone, before jumping into the Vauxhall Viva car with Aunt Betty for the seven-mile coastal drive to John O'Groats to pick up Grandad.
When word reached the town of Wick, maroon rockets lit up the sky above the fishing harbour, fired from the Coastguard building to call out the Life Saving Company.
“Those poor men will never survive a night like this,” wailed Granny as Wullie arrived at our house.
“Where’s my oilskin coat... and find my boots woman!” demanded Grandad as Granny busied herself to prepare his gear. He donned his old lighthouse garb of vulcanised overcoat, sou'wester and heavy wellingtons.
Along with neighbour Ally Sinclair they drove up the winding hill road through the east end of the village then in lowest gear crawled up the steep incline of bends towards the lighthouse at the windswept Duncansby Head. An ink black night showed only the white froth of the towering seas 200-feet below as they stumbled over the heather-covered braeside, holding on to the fence line as the wind knocked them back.
The gale was so ferocious that the rescuers had to crawl to the cliff edge in order to peer over. Grandad later told the newspaperman from The Bulletin that he suddenly saw the trawler at the foot of Queenicliff, being pounded by the heavy seas.
"A hurricane was raging and giant seas were pouring over her, but we could not see any of the crew," he said. "As I flashed my torch towards the trawler, it answered with four blasts on its siren. It was impossible to get down the cliff face. It was as much as I could do to stand against the fury of the storm."
The local rescue team was later joined by the unit from the nearby town of Wick. Fatally, for the trawler crew, she was aground on a rock some way offshore; rocks I’d clamber out to at low tide to gather limpets on calm days.
The wind threw back the rescuers' rocket-launched lines as if they were toys. Many attempts were made to get a line out for the breaches-buoy but the wind repelled every attempt, so the lines fell well short.
The onlookers became anxious about their inability to make the rescue. They could see lights and movements aboard the vessel. The crew were huddled in the wheelhouse and the waves were breaking over the top of the vessel. Gradually, she was beginning to break up under the pressure of massive waves and the jagged rocks that held her firmly.
The anxiety of the moment proved too much for the senior Wick coastguard officer Eric Campbell who collapsed with a fatal heart attack at the cliff top. Then someone saw something at the bottom of the cliff and Uncle Johnny climbed down to investigate.
As he approached the spot he realised that it was one of the crew and he appeared to be kneeling forward, as if praying. Johnny rushed towards the man but to his horror he was dead. He was a Polish war-veteran named Bruno Saborowski, who had courageously made it to the shore only to die from exhaustion and exposure.
In the meantime, the shipboard lights of the George Robb began to dim as she became engulfed in the towering seas that were breaking all around her. None of the 12 crew survived, including 31-year-old skipper Marshall Ryles. He had only recently taken over command after the 118-foot, 91-ton trawler was converted from steam to diesel. Married with four children, he told his wife in a radio-telephone call a few hours before disaster overtook the ship that the weather was very bad and that he was "in for a rough time".
A day later, nothing remained of the George Robb, and the scene at Queenicliff was as calm and serene as it had been before the storm. Young women in the port of Aberdeen awoke to find themselves widows and their 34 children fatherless.
I still wear the vulcanised rubber belt worn by Grandad that fateful night on my motorcycle jacket, though I shouldn’t, due to the sad memories it never fails to bring back.
The following year the village formed its own coastguard team. As a child, I often relived the drama of that wild night. It was years later that I realised that I wasn’t even born then. The George Robb ran aground in 1959, a couple of years before my birth. But because I’d heard the story so many times I thought I’d lived through that terrible night with Uncle Wullie and Grandad.
