Lifeboat Heroes: Outstanding RNLI Rescues from Three Centuries Read online

  An offer Dick Evans found he could not refuse, however reluctant he was to forfeit his life at sea, presented itself when his uncle, John Matthews, took up the job of full-time coxswain at Moelfre and asked Dick to run the family butchery business in his stead. It meant, at least, that he could spend more time on lifeboat duty and he progressed over the next 26 years from bowman to second coxswain and eventually to coxswain when his uncle retired in 1954.

  Twelve years later, on 2 December 1966 and Dick Evans is still coxswain of the lifeboat. It has been a morning at sea that none of his crew will forget in a hurry, not even Second Coxswain Murley Francis, Mechanic Evan Owens, Bowman Hugh Owen or Crew Member Hugh Jones, who were with him on the day in 1959 when he won the Gold Medal rescuing the crew of the Hindlea in 40ft waves and 90mph winds. Dick is 61 years old now and the strain of being at the helm of the RNLB Watkin Williams for six hours in a hurricane is understandably making itself felt. It had seemed that all hell had broken loose that morning as a cyclone unleashed a vicious assault on the shipping off the busy north coast of Wales. Mechanic Evan Owens recalls how it all started:

  The early hours of December 2 were wild and stormy. The wind from the North was gusting to hurricane force, with huge seas roaring in the Swnt at Moelfre, sending spray and foam up into the village. It was a night when lifeboatmen are uneasy, thinking of the storm and of the many things that can cause a distress call. As I listened to the roof slates rattling in the gale at Lifeboat house, the howling kept me awake thinking of those men out at sea. I had been one myself for many years.

  At 6am Dick Evans the coxswain rang. He had received a message from Holyhead that the motor vessel, Vinland, had engine failure 20 miles north of Point Lynas and required assistance, a tug if possible, so would we stand by to launch if a call should come? I opened my back door and closed it quickly as the cast iron gutters came crashing down. The village was lit up by flashes, as the overhead electricity cables shorted. Everything movable was blowing around wildly and chimney pots and slates crashed down. Every experienced lifeboatman knows the feeling; one just knows it is going to happen.

  At 7.30 the call came. The maroons exploded in a shower of green and white sparks, adding to the eerie scene. The men rushing to the lifeboat had to crawl along the wire fence, such was the force of the wind. They pulled on oilskins and lifejackets, the engines roared into life, the doors of the boathouse rolled open, the securing hooks were knocked open and with propellers spinning the Watkin Williams slid down the slipway, slamming in to the sea at nearly 30 miles an hour and causing a huge bow wave to cascade along the deck. The mast-exhaust was raised, the radio aerial raised and then at full speed the lifeboat faced the huge seas coming roaring through the Swnt and past Moelfre Island, rising and falling as she mounted each crest of breaking foam, then sliding down in to the uncanny calm in the trough between walls.

  Coxswain Dick Evans at the helm of Moelfre lifeboat, Watkins Williams.

  It had taken them two-and-a-half hours to steam seven miles into the north-westerly Force 10 towards the Vinland’s position. Then they had altered course towards another motor vessel, the Grit, in even greater danger with broken steering gear and only three-and-a-half miles from a lee shore. That was another three hours steaming. Richard Evans stood by her while feverish efforts were made to rig a temporary repair. The ship radioed eventually that she was once again under control. Meanwhile, the coxswain learned that another ship, Pacific North, was standing by the Vinland and a tug was on the way to her. He was able to turn for home.

  Now the crew is thankfully back at the station. The lifeboat is halfway up the slip and the crew are just beginning to realise how much they need warmth and dry clothing and, above all, food after their gruelling morning at the mercy of the elements. They are vaguely aware of a telephone ringing in the boathouse above them. The winchman hurries down the slipway and says something to the coxswain. The phone call is for him; it’s the Coastguard at Holyhead. When he gets back to the boat with the news that they are wanted at sea again, this time round by the Skerries at the north west tip of Anglesey, there is utter disbelief among the crew.

  David Evans, the coxswain’s son and a regular crewmember, recently remembered that moment: ‘Holyhead? We could not believe they wanted us to go all the way to Holyhead after it had just taken us three hours to cover just three-and-a-half miles.’ But nobody argues. The boat is refuelled and soon after 2pm, she buries her bow once more into the turbulent grey and white water at the foot of the slipway.

  The 28-year-old skipper of the Nafsiporos, Angelo Katsovufis, had been faced with a difficult decision, barely a month into his first command. He was on passage to Belfast, having offloaded his cargo in Liverpool when the weather worsened and his ship, with little ballast in her hold, began to pitch and roll to an alarming degree. Should he turn back and lose valuable passage time, continue on his voyage or seek the nearest shelter and ride out the storm at anchor?

  The Isle of Man lay ahead of him so, choosing the last of these options, he ordered course to be set for Ramsey. With considerable difficulty the ship was guided through the worsening storm towards the comparative shelter of the Manx coast. The Nafsiporos was so light that every time her bow plunged into a trough, her propellers and rudder rose clean out of the water and the helmsman lost all control.

  For a night the Greek ship lay at anchor but her crew were far too anxious to sleep. Their vessel was behaving like a wild steer, tethered against its will, bucking and twisting with increasing vigour until at daybreak on 2 December it was clear that the anchor was dragging and that the ship was being swept by the north-westerly storm out into the Irish Sea. Her engines, in use in an attempt to hold her position, screamed ineffectually every time the propellers lifted from the sea. This caused them to overheat and before long they ceased to work.

  Even before the power went, the Nafsiporos radio operator had signalled the first mayday. By 8.20 am, Douglas lifeboat, R.A. Colby Cubbin No. 1 had launched from her slipway and was making her way across a moving mountain range of sea towards a position the Greek ship had given as 12 miles south of Douglas Bay. After nearly three hours of steaming the lifeboat received news that an R.A.F. Shackleton plane had the Nafsiporos in view 25 miles from Douglas Head. Not long afterwards the coxswain, Robert Lee, caught sight of the aircraft and altered course towards it. However, he never saw the Shackleton again and, search as they would for several hours more, they never found the Nafsiporos. Eventually news came over the radio that Holyhead lifeboat was in contact with the freighter and Coxswain Lee knew he was no longer required.

  There were nine men on board the 52ft Barnett class lifeboat, RNLB St Cybi (Civil Service No. 9) when she hurtled down the Holyhead slipway at 10.30 that morning. It is difficult to know quite how her coxswain, Tom Alcock, felt as he steered for the harbour entrance towards the jagged white-flecked horizon of a boiling Irish Sea. He had only recently taken up his position as full-time coxswain at the station. Although a Welshman, he was from Rhyl, thus by no means a local, and had been promoted to coxswain by the RNLI after serving as bowman, first in his home town, then with the only full-time crew in the country at the Humber. Here was a shout that could make or break his reputation with the crew. As if further scrutiny were needed, by pure accident, he also had on board the lifeboat inspector, the man responsible for his appointment, who had arrived at the boathouse minutes before the launch. What could he say but ‘yes’ when he asked if he could come too?

  And although he had the highly experienced Mechanic Eric Jones and Second Coxswain Will Jones aboard it hadn’t been possible to summon all the regular crew. The storm had brought down all the telephone lines and the maroons had been inaudible to most above the wind. One of the oilskin-clad figures beside him was an 18-year-old boy, Graham Drinkwater,[2] who had never been out on the lifeboat before.

  It took the Holyhead crew three hours in appalling conditions to locate the Nafsiporos. Eventually the lifeboat was spotted by a Shackleto
n which was able to guide her in the direction of the casualty. The sheer height of the waves, estimated at 35ft between crest and trough would have made the chances of finding the ship without the help of the aircraft very remote. For the first hour or so of her attendance, the lifeboat crew were witness to a daring attempt by a Russian timber ship, the Kungurles, to tow the Nafsiporos to safety. At considerable risk to the crews of both ships a line was attached when they were about a mile north of the Ethel Rock buoy but in the struggle to bring the Greek ship’s head to sea, a wave struck her and the heavy wire towing cable parted.

  Now the two ships were too close to land to try to reconnect the tow. Nafsiporos let go her port anchor but it failed to hold. She continued to drag until she fetched up less than a quarter of a mile to the west of West Mouse Rock in six fathoms of water with the Anglesey coast barely half a mile to leeward. At this point an RAF helicopter from Valley had made it to the scene and was attempting to hover over the ship. But with the vessel rolling 35 degrees either side of the vertical and the wind unabated at 100, gusting to 120mph, a winchman would not have had a chance of getting safely down to her deck.

  As far as Coxswain Alcock could see, it was a lifeboat or nothing which would save the freighter’s men. It was at about 4pm, with the light failing fast that he made his first approach. He steered around the ship’s stern in an attempt to come in along the starboard side where a ladder had been placed. Unfortunately, only a few feet forward of the ladder, the ship’s lifeboat, which had earlier been turned out on her davit, was now hanging vertically, held only by the stern fall and swinging wildly as if to ward off any approach. Will Jones, the second coxswain, positioned in the bow described his experience:

  For a moment I thought we’d had it. I thought the Nafsiporos was going to roll over us. The sea had lifted her high in the air and her screw was churning round above our heads. I really thought she was going to crash down on us. It was frightening. A wave slammed us against the steel plates of the Nafsiporos and we had to sheer away. As we circled, all of us were looking for a safe approach but that ship’s lifeboat was always in the way. We shouted through the loud-hailer for the crew to cut it away, but either they couldn’t hear or couldn’t understand our Welsh accents.

  Watching this first approach with keen interest was the crew of the Moelfre lifeboat. It had been just before sunset in a fleeting moment of sunlight that Dick Evans and his exhausted men had first glimpsed the Nafsiporos after a murderous passage at full speed from their station. Dick Evans later gave a memorable account of that voyage:

  I knew the rocks, the set and drift of tides, the currents. But that day the sea was like a foreign country. With the leaping and plunging of the lifeboat, the compass was swinging wildly. I could see nothing. The sea was being blown into clouds of spray and visibility was nil. We had to run on dead reckoning.

  The waves were like nothing I’d ever been told about. We climbed perpendicularly and we went down the same way. I was afraid every wave was going to send us somersaulting on our back. There would have been no hope for any of us then, we would have disappeared forever.

  As the lifeboat ploughed on, Dick attempted to give some warmth and encouragement to his crew by ordering the lifeboat’s rum supply to be cracked open and passed around. Sadly, neither bottle made it to any of the men’s lips. Both were smashed as the second coxswain was thrown around the cabin while he attempted to bring them up on deck. The smell of spilt rum which permeated the boat only added to the nausea which nagged away at each man’s empty stomach.

  Far more serious damage occurred eight miles west of Point Lynas. The coxswain realised that the lifeboat had begun to bury her bow far deeper into the waves than was normal. Then he saw what looked like two gaping holes in the foredeck. Immediately he reduced speed and asked his second coxswain, Murley Francis and his son to go forward to inspect the damage:

  It was dangerous; they could easily have been swept overboard. But, if I sent anybody, I had to send my own son. If I had sent someone else and they would have been washed overboard I’d have to live with the reputation of saving my own son at the expense of my crew. It had to be David. Murley I could not have kept back anyway. I watched with my heart in my mouth while they crawled forward and I don’t think I breathed again until they were back.

  Their news was that the force of the sea had ripped away the two deck ventilators and the bow of the lifeboat was full of water. They had managed to plug the holes with spare sou’westers and the mechanic’s oilskin trousers. It was not much later when the Nafsiporos hove into view.

  One of the two lifeboats on the scene had damaged her radio, so Dick Evans did not know whether the attempt they had just witnessed by the Holyhead crew to take men off had been successful or not. He decided, however, that it was now his turn to make an approach. His son, David, remembers to this day the extraordinary view right along the underside of the Nafsiporos’s keel as her stern was thrown high above the lifeboat. Only recently has he confessed to pleading with his father, albeit under his breath, not to attempt an approach in such conditions.

  With a five-knot ebb tide running east to west, the anchored ship would not keep head to sea and exceptional seamanship was needed to keep engines and rudder in the right position to prevent the current from pushing the lifeboat away from the vessel’s side. Ignoring his son’s misgivings, Dick Evans drove the lifeboat on, the first time making contact with the vessel but needing to sheer away quickly to avoid the swinging ship’s lifeboat. He came round again and once more manoeuvred alongside but the terrified Greek crew, mesmerised by the lifeboat, which was one moment lifting high above the deck and the next plunging into a 20ft abyss below, would come nowhere near the ladder. Dick Evans eventually pulled away from the ship’s side to avoid unnecessary damage.

  Back aboard Holyhead lifeboat, after his first jarring attempt to get alongside, Coxswain Tom Alcock had made an unusual choice. He had handed the helm to the lifeboat inspector beside him in the wheelhouse. Second Coxswain Will Jones, up in the bow ready to grab survivors, would probably have looked surprised to see his coxswain making his way forward to join him, while through the windshield he could see the shape of Harold Harvey standing at the helm. Alcock perhaps believed, with his regular bowman off sick, that his own experience as bowman from his previous job with the RNLI was what was wanted now.

  At about 4.45pm, more than half an hour after the first attempt by Holyhead lifeboat to get alongside, Harold Harvey, constantly adjusting engines and rudder, coaxed the lifeboat towards the jumping ladder. It looked as if the Nafsiporos crew had finally realised that they had only one likely means of survival; a man could be seen outboard, clinging nervously to the top of the ladder. With crucial timing, the two men in the bow of the lifeboat grabbed hold of him and, using all of their combined strength, they just succeeded in dislodging him from the ladder as he clung like a limpet to his perch.

  In spite of the wild movement of the two vessels, four more men were dragged aboard the lifeboat in similar fashion as Harold Harvey fought to hold his position. It was impossible to prevent the lifeboat’s bow from occasionally striking the dangling ship’s boat and suddenly, just as the fifth man had been brought aboard, the inspector saw the rope from which the boat was hanging give way. As he put the engines hard astern, he yelled a warning to the men on deck. They threw themselves aft as the boat came crashing down on the forward end of the lifeboat. It landed upside-down, spilling all its gear, including the oars which protruded through the open wheelhouse windows. The lifeboat’s mast carrying the exhaust was destroyed along with the forward stanchions of the guard chains.

  Miraculously, not one of the 14 crew and survivors aboard the lifeboat were seriously injured. As the lifeboat backed away from the freighter’s side, her crew watched incredulously as the additional cargo of an upturned boat teetered over their port side. To everyone’s relief, the momentum of the lifeboat and the intervention of a wave breaking over the bow helped to dump the boat ove
r the side.

  There was now a considerable amount of debris in the water beside the Nafsiporos but that did not deter Dick Evans from taking his turn at getting alongside. Most of his crew were now lining the port rail, ready to grab survivors as they clambered onto the ladder. The Moelfre crew seemed to ignore the huge risk they faced of being crushed as the two vessels came forcefully together time and again. Dick Evans later described the experience as being ‘like a ball thrown against the gable end of a house’. Somehow he held the lifeboat there long enough for ten men to come aboard.

  The last four were not going to leave, however; Dick recalls: ‘I was shouting my head off, probably in Welsh, for them to come to the lifeboat, and they were shouting back, in Greek, that they were not leaving the ship.’

  The two lifeboats now set a course for Holyhead to land the men they had managed to take off the Nafsiporos. By the time they set an unsteady foot ashore, the Moelfre crew had not eaten for 23 hours. Dick Evans had been at the helm for an uninterrupted 12-and-a-half hours. The Holyhead crew gave themselves time only for a cup of tea before they set out again to stand by the Nafsiporos which was still in grave danger. When the Dutch tug, Utrecht, arrived on scene that night the lifeboat, with the help of the RAF, was able to guide her in to the confined waters and recommend an approach for attaching a tow line. Thus the vessel and the four men aboard her were eventually saved.

  As well as the two Gold Medals awarded to Dick Evans and Harold Harvey, the RNLI saw fit to present Silver Medals to Coxswain Thomas Alcock, Mechanics Eric Jones of Holyhead and Evan Owens of Moelfre and Bronze Medals to every other lifeboat crewmember who had taken part in the momentous rescue.