Tragic deaths onboard Longhope lifeboat recalled by Groats yachtmaster
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
The Pentland Firth claimed many lives from our village and others around us but the worst was the loss of our local lifeboat, recalls KEVIN GREEN
'Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his fellow men'.
The Longhope lifeboat was a regular visitor to our harbour in John O'Groats and one special day in the summer of 1968 stands out for me. On that day I boarded her and was given the wheel, under the watchful eye of coxswain Dan Kirkpatrick who coaxed me in his lilting Orcadian accent: “Do ye want a hand there, peerie man?”
The harbour echoed to the engine roar as we jostled around, pushed by the powerful motor and spray flew on onlookers. Peering through the thickened wheelhouse glass I checked to see who was watching me. Diesel fumes and the smell of fresh paint filled the cabin. Everything gleamed and looked so sturdy. Pipes, levers, dials and hatches.
I noticed the plaque showing her build date as 1962, so I shouted to Grandad who was standing beside me that TGB was the same age as myself. What a heap of controls to choose from, as I leaned up to touch the radio. I jumped in fright as it squawked loudly with a Caithness voice. Wick coastguard was calling TGB – the boat’s name – for a chat. I asked Dan Kirkpatrick if I could call my granny on it.
Deadly weather
Months later, the year had turned to 1969 and a wild night in March, often the time of vicious storms. A big south easterly was howling off the North Sea on the 17th, screaming across the high cliffs near Heatherbell Cottages. Inside my east-facing bedroom, a crash of water startled me awake as the flooded roan pipe water crashed onto the flagstone sill. I went through the house to find Grandad gravely listening to the radiogram.
“Waves the size of the hotel,” he mumbles. “A south-east gale against a flood tide at the top of the stream, a living hell!”
He’d often witnessed it from the Wild Weather Watch Hut at Duncansby Head and of course had sailed through it on the big dreadnought battleships in the Royal Navy. A hellish place to be, off the Skerries, he said. Granny scolded him, telling him not to swear in front of the bairn.
“There’ll be bairns in Longhope hearing a lot worse, woman!” warned Grandad. “Hearing that their fathers will not be coming back!”
“Iosa Criosd!”(Jesus Christ), wails Granny in her native Gaelic.
TGB was missing and they were fearful. A Liberian cargo ship, the SS Irene put out a distress signal late in the evening as she was being driven ashore near Grimness in South Ronaldsay and TGB acknowledged the call, the news program said at 9.28pm, as she made her way east.
The last sighting of the lifeboat was by the lighthouse keepers on the Skerries who saw her stern light at about 9.35pm a mile east, battling mountainous seas. At the Wild Weather Hut, it had been neighbour George Manson who’d been on duty and said he could see nothing but a “white haze; no sea at all”.
The newspaper said the Kirkwall lifeboat, out in the same area, had reported waves over 60-feet. "How could the sea grow so big?" I pleadingly asked Grandad.
He said it's the meeting of the tides which combined to push the water up. I imagined two double-decker buses colliding and their combined mass filling the sky. I’d seen a double-decker bus only once, in Edinburgh. As we spoke, a search was ongoing. The drone of a Shackelton surveillance plane was occasionally heard and the whirr of a helicopter. Lifeboats from Kirkwall, Stronsay, Stromness and Thurso also searched.
Wreckage
Later that day the upturned TGB was found floating in the west end of the firth at Tor Ness by the Thurso lifeboat and towed into Scrabster, escorted by the Stromness lifeboat. Seven men had been trapped and drowned inside the 47-foot boat, but the body of the assistant mechanic James Swanson was gone. Coxswain Dan Kirkpatrick was still at the wheel.
I imaged the boat toppling off the mountainous wave precipice to crash down upturned, with water gushing into the smashed wheelhouse windows. She wasn’t self-righting, so once capsized there was no recovery, unlike the later designs.
The warm air the eight crew had breathed violently turning to cold dark water. The shock as lungs filled and the whites of men's eyes showing panic in death. Once fearless seamen screaming their last sounds. The lucky ones would have been knocked out first maybe, said Grandad. Then silence as the soul of the boat departed. The engines stilled as the sea spun her around, like a tin can rolling in the swells.
Watching the news of the tragedy on the television, Granny’s blue eyes fogged over and tears rolled down her pale cheeks. She cursed the sea... “Och! Ochan! Mise’n diugh!!” Gaelic curses that let the demons out of her. I recalled the stories of her folk, burnt of out Strathnaver, forced to the rocky coastline at Bettyhill during the Highland Clearances; so were reluctant shoreside dwellers.
Her reply to death was quick and bad tempered. The 17 crew of the SS Irene all survived after it was washed ashore south of Grim Ness Head and they were winched off from the braehead using breeches buoy.
Another lifeboat
Living overseas, decades would pass before I was on another Longhope lifeboat. Unlike the old Watson Class TGB with her long flowing lines and graceful profile, the 47-foot Tyne Class boat, named Lord Saltoun, was all angles.
She had a big orange alloy box-like wheelhouse for self-righting; and a square stern. On board that day in 1999 were several crew from the families of those who had died, so the names Kirkpatrick, McFadyen and Budge were familiar.
Yes, they’d take me over the firth to Longhope, said coxswain Ian McFadyen. My wife and I were bringing provisions to our brother-in-law on Hoy, so it would save us two ferry rides and a bus. Alongside me, son Donald was excited at the prospect of the lifeboat trip.
We delayed at the pierhead as drams and farewells were partaken in the hotel. Then a loud roar as the big twin V6 engines pushed a high bow wave against the seawall and we were off, spray flashing against the dark blue hull. Stroma was to port in minutes as we sped across the Pentland Firth at 18 knots.
Down below, a cigarette fuelled haze shrouded the passing beer cans as stories and jokes were swapped. But in my mind I was with another crew and another more graceful boat. Looking east to the Skerries, I saw them plunging into mountainous seas. I heard the scream of the propellers spooking the younger crew as it rent the air. The lifeboat nearly pitch-polling in a way that even the old hands had rarely seen. Then silence as my mind came back to the present, where I gradually became aware of young Donald pulling my sleeve asking, “Can I steer the lifeboat, dad?”
- A version of this story was initially written to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of the Longhope Lifeboat loss and was donated to the RNLI.
- Journalist Kevin Green is a yachtmaster with thousands of sea miles under his keel, including ocean crossings and major races such as the Rolex Sydney-Hobart.
