December 19, 2024 • 47 mins
This is a different episode for us, but it's one we felt compelled to make.On 19th December 1981 a dramatic rescue played out on the English coast, involving a stricken cargo ship being driven towards a rocky shore by a storm. It's an important story of courage, skill, sacrifice and decisions that ultimately led to tragedy.Tonight is the anniversary of that incident, and in this episode we pull together the original radio transmissions to tell the story of the crews of the Union Star and the Solomon Browne.
Links
Links
- BBC documentary on YouTube
- BBC Sounds documentary
- Penlee: The Loss of a Lifeboat - by Michael Sagar-Fenton
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Nineteenth of December nineteen eighty one, four minutes past six
in the evening, somewhere off the coast of Land's End,
right at the tip of Cornwall.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Then then God, God Lord Land in coast God Union Star,
Union Star, going Land.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Millions.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
That's way off apportunately now eight miles east of Rock.
Engines have stop and we are able to get started
at the moment. Could you please have a helicopter standing
by Ford please, yes, that is correct, that is correct,
(00:47):
and play all night pavor worries.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
We are a poster at the moment we are to
get the mioing story. But whatever everybody else.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
The voice you heard there was thirty two year old
Captain Henry Morton. Here's the master of a coaster, in fact,
a brand new one on its maiden voyage. This type
of ship would carry bulk cargo between mainland Europe and
the United Kingdom and out to Ireland and up to Scandinavia.
It could go out into the Irish Sea and the
(01:30):
North Sea and the English Channel, but it was designed
for traveling in coastal waters. It had been heading out
from the Netherlands out round the bottom of England around
the south coast out up to Ireland. It was taking
bulk fertilizer and it was a couple of days into
what should be a routine voyage. But in those couple
(01:51):
of days it had headed out into a huge storm
rolling in off the Atlantic, coming in from the south southwest,
and in the height of that storm, the engines had failed.
So it's now sat there with the engines off, no lights,
no power, a drift in monstrous seas, huge crashing waves.
(02:16):
But he sounds calm, he's dealing with a problem, and
the coast Guard aren't alarmed. Engines fail all the time,
ships lose power. They fix things, but it's just it's
a big, modern ship, a brand new one, out in
the ocean. It's a problem, but it's not yet a disaster.
(02:39):
So what the coast Guard do is they arrange a
conversation between the Union Star and a tug, an ocean
going tug, the Nord Holland that tug is at anchor
out in Mount's Bay, so it's inland from where the
Union Star is, but it's sat at anchor. The next
day it was planning to go around to Falmouth to
(03:00):
go and pick up a contract there, but for now
it's just riding out the storm in the shelter of
Mount Bay. The problem comes in that radio call between
Morton and the Union Star and Captain Guy Berman on
the nord Holland, because the tug is not there for rescue,
it's there for salvage. And if the tug comes along
(03:25):
and hooks onto the Union Star and toes them back
into port or back into a place of safety, there's
a cost implication. And because they can't get hold of
the owners of the Union Star or the owners of
the cargo, the only thing open to them is something
called the Lloyd's open form, which means that well, once
the Union Star accepts a toe from the nord Holland
(03:48):
from the tug, the cargo and the ship effectively become
temporary property of the owners of that tug. So Morton
falls out with this skipper of the tug because he
doesn't want to give that over straight away. He thinks
he can fix it. He thinks what is god is
a temporary problem. But he is playing it safe. He
(04:12):
wants to have a helicopter on standby and is looking
for the tug to just come along and sit there
just in case. The tug captain quite reasonably says no,
I'm not going to do that unless we have a
contract on how to proceed. So Morton gets back in
touch with the coast guard.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
Yeah, either woman, hold the money at the moment, but
quit at this moment we're holding to know where we are.
We don't see him be good in his name, we quit.
We have one woman, two children, and the group a helicopter, say.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Any the mom alice woman.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So this changes things entirely for the coastguard because now
this situation isn't just merchant marine sailors who know how
to handle engine failure and know how to behave in
a storm, know what life at sea is like. This
is a mother and her children, and that mother is
Henry Morton's wife, and the kids are two daughters from
(05:49):
a previous marriage of hers. They're not meant to be
there because they're they're not stowaways. But Morton had decided
to take them along on the trip. He had actually
diverted the ship to go and pick them up from
England on the way, without telling the owners of the cargo,
without telling the Union shipping company. He was something of
(06:11):
a rising star in this business, in this shipping company.
He was a very young captain in charge of a
brand new, state of the art vessel. He was confident
that it was an easy trip. He was confident that
he had time to go and pick them up, and
that they could spend Christmas together at sea on this trip.
(06:31):
Why not. It would make a nice family memory. It
would be a way of bonding this new family together.
But now they were adrift in a storm in huge waves,
waves higher than a house crashing over the side of
the ship. So you can understand why he wants to
try and get them out of this situation, at least
(06:53):
return it just to professional mariners on the ship and
from the coast guard side. While this is a more
serious situation. The lifeboat, they say, is anticipatory, which means
they're just aware of the situation. He's also saying that
the Sea King is being made ready. In actual fact,
(07:13):
what it means is that the crew of the Sea
King have been made aware of the situation and been
told to come from their homes to base. They're not
turning up the engines, spooling up the aircraft ready. They're
just making their way to a point where they can
get ready. So despite the confidence on both the Coastguard
(07:33):
side and the skipper's side on Henry Morton's side. There
this is a really serious situation that's developing that the
steps to deal with it aren't really there yet. Something
that's not in that radio call is that the skipper
(07:53):
of the tug, Captain Guy Burman, he's decided that as
he's got to go to Falmouth tomorrow anyway, he's going
to raise the anchor and head out towards the rough
position of the Union Star, because if he's got to
head out soon anyway, you may as well head out
in a direction where maybe he can be useful to
the situation. At around seven pm, the Coast Guard get
(08:17):
back in touch with Henry Morton to see if there's
any improvement to the situation with the engines.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
With one of the Well Star, and we're hoping that
one is okay.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Could you do?
Speaker 1 (08:37):
All through that afternoon, the Union Star had been heading
into this storm with waves crashing over her port side.
On that port side you have the filling valves for
the main fuel tanks. It's not known exactly what the
(09:00):
problem was. It's either going to be that one of
the covers for the fuel tanks wasn't put on properly
or had just come off in the storm, or that
the breather pipe for the fuel tank that equalizes pressure
the valve on that that stopped seawater getting in had
failed either way. For several hours, seawater had been pouring
(09:21):
in by the gallon into one of the fuel tanks.
Later on in that afternoon, as we standard procedure, the
engineer had moved fuel from one of the main tanks
into the tank that were running the engine from and
at that time had pulled seawater through into the fuel tank,
which had then made its way into the engine, and
the engine stalled. It can't run on seawater. The generator
(09:44):
that powers the electrical gear that can't run on seawater,
so everything stops. But you've got to think about this
scene below, decks in complete darkness, with everything rolling, tipping
right over onto its side and then back up right
and then back the other way, working by torch, working
(10:04):
by feel in really tight spaces, breaking apart every single
fuel pipe, every single joint, trying to find out, okay,
there's fuel coming to here, there's fuel getting to hear,
why won't the engine start? And they've tried starting the engines.
The engines are restarted using compressed air, compressed air held
in huge tanks that then they run through into the
(10:26):
engine to turn the pistons over to then draw more
fuel in and start the engine. They can only do
that so many times with the air they have in
those tanks, and by this point they've depleted it. They've
tried so many times that all the air's gone, and
they have no way of refilling those tanks because they
need the generator to do that, so they're stuck. They
(10:49):
can open all these brand new pipes, all this brand
new engine gear, but they are trying to work out
why they've got fuel it's getting into the engine, why
won't it work until they actually dip the tank and
discover that it's half full of seawater, So they have
other fuel on board. But that means they've got to
redivert everything, refill everything, which will take time. Even in
(11:11):
calm water a harbor with an experienced crew and good lighting,
that's going to take several hours. But they haven't got
several hours because well, they're not where they think they are.
They thought they were miles out to sea, which sounds drastic,
but really in a storm if you're a big ship,
(11:32):
a drift being miles out to sea isn't a huge
problem because you can't crash into anything if you're miles
out to see if you're in out in empty space.
The problem comes when you get close to shore. And
the Union Star was coming close to shore. It was
drifting inward mile by mile. It was a hell of
a lot closer than Morton thought. And the way that
(11:55):
was confirmed was with radar. The coast Guard fired up
the radar, they picked up the signal of where the
Union Star was. It was miles and miles closer than
it should have been. It was only a few miles
offshore rather than the ten plus miles he thought he had.
So this situation is degrading the whole time. It's descending
(12:16):
into more more, not chaos, but the stakes are getting
higher and the options are getting less. So the Coastguard
and Morton, between them, they come up with a wording
for something called a pan call. So this is a
bit like a may day, except it's maybe one grade down.
(12:37):
A may day means all hope is lost, we can't
do anything. We need as much help as you can
send now. A pan call means it's a bad situation.
We need help, but we have some element of control
left in this, but we still need help. So a
pan pan call goes out sometime just after seven pm
(13:00):
at this time. Also they contact the lifeboat at Penley,
or rather the village of Mausel, just around the corner
from Newlyn. And this is a tiny fishing community and
the lifeboat, like pretty much every lifeboat at the time
around the UK, was staffed by volunteers, volunteers drawn from
(13:21):
the local fishing community, experienced people and in this case
all men who were experiencing the sea, experience in the
local waters and experienced in rescue. But they were volunteers
who volunteered to go out in all weathers to rescue people,
to come to the aid of others. They were the
(13:41):
nearest boat to this problem, so they started to make ready.
But people have to come from the homes, they have
to get to the lifeboat station, they have to make
it ready to launch. This doesn't happen instantly. So while
that's happening, Rescue eighty a seeking helicopter from Roll Naval
Air Station called DROs Over on the Lizard so Over
(14:04):
on another peninsula that sticks out into the English Channel,
only about twenty or so miles away, is making ready
to take off. The pilot of that is Russell Smith.
He's he's not a brit He's an American over on
an exchange visit from I think the US Navy, and
he is the pilot of this aircraft that can deal
(14:28):
with bad weather, but it's operating just at the edge
of what it can deal with when it heads out
into this storm at about nineteen thirty seven. The aircraft
is airborne, and it's five minutes away from the position
of the Union Star.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Pioneer like you, oh yesterday, okay, thank you very much,
the handler anybody will how many people do you plan
on trampering? One woman and children mother san one woman
(15:12):
and children mother by Sagan, one woman and two children
with throw a reminder order until yes, that's right.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
So they're five minutes out. They've got to locate this
completely darkened ship out in the chaos of this rolling sea.
And you can hear in the pilot's voice there in
Russell Smith's voice, he didn't know that he was heading
out to a small family out on this coaster. He
(15:47):
thought he was heading out to a commercial ship in distress.
But it's it's not that situation. It's now a much
more dire situation. So this changes everything for them in
terms of the rescue, but they can't get there any faster.
They can't do something different just because there's a woman
(16:08):
and two children there. They still have to do their job.
They still have to do a very technical, very dangerous
job right at the edge of what they can deal
with operationally. So around this time, the Coast Guard has
calculated that they've got about an hour, hour and a
quarter before the Union Star hits the shore and hits
(16:31):
the rocks, and at this point they request the immediate
launch of the Penley lifeboat. They were already getting ready,
but then they have to get out now and have
to get out into the water, and they issue a
second pan notice with an updated location for the Union Star.
Speaker 6 (17:00):
Mid the Onion.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Point, nine a mile from I've gone with Echo novem.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Alma Elma.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
It's difficult to imagine now what that scene out at
the sea would look like. Helicopters are big, particularly rescue helicopters.
I've been in a seeking It's like a block of
flats hovering on its side, huge rotor disc above. You've
got these big search lights that come down from it,
but even then they can only illuminate so much, so
(17:49):
they're pointing out into the darkness, and somewhere out there
in the darkness, you've got the sixty eight meter long
Union Star rolling around in the waves. So you've got
to get up to it, come in at a steady
rate so you can predict where it's going to be
and meet it whilst maneuvering in gale force winds. Gale
(18:12):
force ten at this point, so you've got to maneuver
an aircraft in basically hurricane force winds to a point
that you can barely see. But that ship isn't just
static on the ocean. It's drifting and it's riding up
and down on the waves. These waves are about nine
(18:33):
meters high, which means you can look down on the
ship hovering above it for thirty feet up and within
seconds the ship is almost at your rotor disc. The
Union Star has a large radio mass that sits above
the crew and an accommodation section of the ship where
(18:54):
everyone is. The antenna on top of this mass stick
right up, stick a long way up above the ship
when it goes into port, and it has to go
under bridges and things like that. It can be folded down,
but that's a process that takes time. Right now, it's
a massive obstacle that prevents the helicopter from getting too close.
They throw out the winchman on a cable out of
(19:16):
the side of the helicopter and try and dangle him
down towards the ship, but no way he can get
close enough without endangering the aircraft. And at several points,
as the ship rolls through on the waves, the antenna
on this mass come within meters of the rotor disc,
nearly bringing the helicopter down. So Russell Smith makes the
(19:38):
decision to pull back and they're going to attempt a
different technique. So this technique involves something called a high line,
which is basically a rope that goes between the aircraft
and a point on the sea or on the ground,
and in this case they're trying to get it onto
the rear deck of the Union Star where someone could
(19:59):
hold and then they can direct the wenchmen in effectively
diagonally from the side you would the helicopter hovers out
to one side away from the ship, so the ship
can move in the storm. And then the winchmen comes
down at an angle towards towards the Union Star, and
they attempt this again and again and again. But there
(20:20):
are two problems. There's one the high line they have
isn't long enough. They have a standard one in the
aircraft that is used for all rescue operations, but it's
not long enough. They can't get close enough to get
it onto the ship. And another problem, which seems bizarre,
but you can't look back in time and judge people's actions,
(20:44):
that the crew don't seem to know what to do
with it. They make no efforts to grab this thing.
This thing which is the only way they can get
a winchman aboard the ship or get casualties off the
ship into the helicopter. It goes within meters of them.
At one point one of them sort of just grabs
onto it gently, but then let's go again. Almost immediately
(21:05):
when a wave comes in. Whatever happens, however, that however,
that breaks down. They can't get the high line onto
the ship, and all the while they are drifting closer
and closer and closer to the coast. The crew of
Union Star are having some success, though they've been able
(21:26):
to redirect some clean fuel into the generator and they're
able to get some lights working. Eight minutes past eight.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Zero.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yes you told, yes, we're might you get a generator?
Started off with the lark on.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
Here I goes up.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
The addition of lighting and it's these are pretty big
floodlights all the way down the side of the ship.
That changes the situation, but it doesn't necessarily make it better.
One thing that it changes is that it means the
ship is now visible from the shore. But also everyone
on the ship can see the situation that they're in.
They can see these huge, monstrous waves crashing over the
(22:20):
side of the ship. They can see that it's not
going to be possible to get the helicopter any closer,
so they have to try again and again with a
high line. Now, Rescue eighty is not the only other
crew that started to arrive on the scene.
Speaker 6 (22:45):
They wait.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
So that's Cox and Trevalli and Richards.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
He is.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
An incredibly experienced man. He knows this coastline very very well.
He has spent his entire life working there, fishing there,
and he knows that being one mile from the coast
is not just a bad situation, it's the worst of situations.
(23:44):
He's got twenty minutes to get there, and he's having
to battle through these storms in his forty seven foot lifeboat.
And it's not the lifeboats that we see today it is.
It's just been refitted. It's as modern as it can
be for that time, but it's still a wooden lifeboat
that has to fight its way through these storms. He's
(24:06):
there with his crew, and you, in my experience with that,
the way he says he repeats the call, he's not
just saying it for the radio. He's saying it for
the benefit of the people that he's in that cabin with.
He's saying it for the benefit of his crew. He
sort of says it as a statement rather than repeating
(24:27):
what was said to him by Rescue EIGHTI. So the
fact that they have twenty minutes to get there, the
Union Star is only a mile from the shore, and
that they still haven't been able to get anyone off
this situation is it's about as bad as it can be.
The tug nord Holland also arrives around about this time,
(24:50):
but there's not much they can do either. Tugs can
do amazing things. They can do some amazing rescues and
hook on to anchor chains and hook on with ropes
and do some spectacular rescues in terrible seas, but they
need sea room, they need space to do that. You
can't maneuver delicately in a storm like this when you're
(25:13):
so close to the rocks. And tugs are big, much
bigger than the lifeboat. So if the lifeboat's nervous about
getting into this position, the tug has no chance. And
it's not just the tug that's starting to become concerned
about their proximity to the cliffs and the danger of
the situation. Rescue eighty also decides that they can't do
(25:36):
much else.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Now, running union start and looking too difficult for refueing neer.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
All Memoir and Safety in the nerd.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
We're getting very quiet near man that the man.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
We don't have a woman of highlight. Yeah, okay, well
very much as well as you have. You're going to.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Point anchor out.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
I'm you can hear the exhaustion in Morton's voice there
as well. He has to remain professional. He has to
do these radio calls. He has to communicate clearly, but
he has been battling for hours now, not just physically
and trying to keep his balance and trying to move
(26:16):
around the ship in these storms, but also to deal
with his stresses, to deal with the stress of Dawn
and the kids who aren't familiar with these situations, his
responsibility to them, his responsibility to the crew, his responsibility
to his unborn child. He has this huge weight on
him and the things he was hoping on. The tug
(26:39):
and the helicopter. Neither of them can help him. Whether
it was the delay, whether it was something he could
have changed early on. He has to be playing this
over and over again in his mind. He has to
be thinking back to that conversation with the Lord Holland
hours before about could they come out to them away? Well, no,
(27:01):
he hasn't. He won't give over the ship to the
Lloyd's open form. All of this has to be running
through his mind as they face these oncoming waves, and
they do turn to face them because they put an
anchor down and it breaks straight away. The anchor just
snaps up, or the chain does. So they put another
(27:23):
anchor down that holds, or rather it drags on the seabed.
So this turns the ship from being side onto the
waves to being bow onto the waves. It changes the
movement of the deck. It changes the movement of everything.
But now it means that every time the ship goes
(27:45):
down over a wave into the trough and faces the
next wave, that next wave crashes over the bow. Now
you can't go out onto the bow at all, but
you will be killed. You will be crushed by the
way to the water. They've got less of the deck,
they can move around on fewer places that they can
go out on to meet a lifeboat or to meet
(28:06):
the helicopter. So the situation continues to get worse. It
feels like it couldn't possibly get any worse, But there
it is. Behind them. They have the search lights from
another Coastguard team that has come out onto the top
of the cliffs. They've set up there with big search
lights to illuminate the scene. They can show them how
(28:27):
close they are getting to these rocks. I can't imagine
what it's like for Morton in those moments, running everything
through his head, seeing the reality of the situation. It's inescapable.
And then the radio breaks into life again with at
least one more hope.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yes, they think I've done a bit of difficulty getting there.
If you would pop out after the women.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
And well the woman off on me very much, pop
out and come and take the women and children off that.
You can still hear the exhaustion, but his note has changed.
Then there's there's something about the power of hope. There's
hopelessness is such an awful feeling, knowing that there's nothing
(29:39):
that can happen. But that's nothing that you can do
to improve this situation.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
But the.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Voice and a cornish accent of Trevelli and Richards and
his crew coming in there, and this tiny wooden lifeboat
they powering through the waves, have powered through this storm,
and now they've on scene right next to the Union Star.
So hope is there and this seems to sort of
(30:10):
give a resurgence of effort to everyone involved as well.
The tug is watching out from this about a mile away,
watching the lights of this rescue, watching everything silhouetted against
the cliff face Rescue EIGHTI there is hovering just out
to one side. It's spotlight shining down on the scene.
And that helicopter crew. They're all young, bold men. You
(30:33):
don't choose to work in search and rescue and particularly
anything on the Atlantic coast if you're timid. And they
try again. They've cobbled together and extra highline using literally
scraps of rope that they can pull from the existing
kit inside the helicopter. They've tied it all together with
a weight bag on the end. And then they try again,
(30:57):
and then the weight bag is ripped away by a wave.
That's it. They can't get the high line there at all.
There's no other option. They try again with the winchman
and he nearly gets smacked into by the mast. Again
nothing works. They're in danger now of hitting the cliff
face with their rotor disc. So the only thing that
(31:20):
can work now is the lifeboat. They come alongside, and
they're still communicating with the Union Star. This is happening
over just a few minutes, but you can hear the
increase in the urgency in the voices that transfer back
and forth between the radio calls. This radio call is
(31:43):
at twenty to fifty seven, and it's not Travalian Richards,
I don't think on the lifeboat, and the person on
the other end on the Union Star, I think is
one of the mates. It's not Henry Morton. But you
can hear you can hear the urgent seeing their voices.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
If that's going everybody, we're all going on.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Somewhere around this time, the anchor chain breaks, so now
the Union Star is fully adrift again, rolling side on
towards the cliff face. The helicopter is still there, hovering above,
but pretty much powerless to do anything other than provide
an overview and provide some extra lighting. And they're calling
(32:39):
out the distance to between the Union Star and the
cliff face, both for for everyone on the scene, for
the coast guard back at Falmouth, and really for the record,
like your.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Having trouble getting a long time family life or wherever
any that rapidly.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
All through this time, the Pendey lifeboat has been making
an attempt to get alongside the coaster and they've made it.
They've made it right up to the railing, and they've
thrown lines onto the deck and they've not quite moored themselves,
but they've held themselves up against the railing. But for
whatever reason, for the crew and the people aboard the
(33:33):
Union Star, that last gap between them and the lifeboat,
the Solomon Brown, it's just too much. They can't make
it out there. At one point, one of the Union
Star crew puts a rope ladder down on the side
but no one's suicidal enough to make that attempt to
get from their one side to the other. And the
(33:55):
Union Star is still moving towards the coast and pushing
the lifeboat with it, so the lifeboat keeps having to
circle around and try again in between the waves. Just
the skill of timing those waves. I've done a tiny
little bit with boats in rough seas and being able
to count between the waves and working out where you
(34:17):
need to be for when the wave pushes in and
pushes you along. It's tiring, it's really occupies all of
your brains. So to be able to do that in
the darkness below deck as well, because they're piloting this
boat from undercover, doing it through tiny windows looking out
onto this scene. But they know their boat, they know
(34:37):
these waters, and they know that they're the only chance
that they have for getting people off. Think of all
the people watching this scene as well. There's a journalist
and there's other people from the village overlooking from the
cliff top. You've got the Coastguard crew up there shining
the spotlights down. You've got the crew of the aircraft,
(34:58):
you've got the tug out at sea, all watching this
scene unfold. And at one point they watch a wave
lift the Solomon Brown, the lifeboat, up onto the deck
of the Union Star, so the entire lifeboat is out
of the water, just perched on top of the deck,
and then it slowly slides backwards back into the water
(35:18):
as the Union Star rolls again. And this seems to
be the moment that everyone kicks into life on the
Union Star. I think they realize that this is not
something that's just going to slowly evolve. They have to
do something now or they're all dead. So they just
all burst out onto the deck and make a run
(35:39):
for it. And people there described watching orange waterproof covered
people just throwing themselves onto the Solomon Brown, onto the lifeboat,
and the crew they're catching them as they hit, as
they hit the lifeboat and just pulling them in. It's
a scene that chaos, but people are trying to maintain
(36:02):
control and and Travellian Riches is there as the the
only hope of these people rescue. EIGHTI is still overhead,
illuminating the scene and giving commentary about what's unfolding beneath them,
(36:26):
and for them, this situation is basically done. The lifeboat
has done all that it can really it would be
too dangerous to do anything else.
Speaker 6 (36:36):
And they make that call close, we're dangerously clotes.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Would I play whether the coat or if I can't
do they.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
So that's it. The Union Star is about to hit
the cliffs. The helicopter can't be there any longer, and
they go. And all that's left now is the Solomon Brown,
which should just cut its losses, take the people that
it's saved, and just pull out to see move away
(37:17):
from the cliffs and do what's sensible. But I don't know.
There was just something that was driving them.
Speaker 6 (37:25):
Onwards plenty, Like I call it, form of contract.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
We got.
Speaker 5 (37:39):
We got four at the moment.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Whatever, and they lighted the light, and the light.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
In the hours that followed, desperate attempts were made to
try and reach the crew of the Solomon Brown over
the radio, and then the Coast Guard rescue team upon
the cliffs were able to lower somebody down in towards
the site of the of the wreckage, because by now
the Union Star had rolled over on the rocks and
(38:49):
was visible. It was tipped on its side, sat there
in the rocks amongst the breakers, and that Coast Guard
officer there was able to get down into a zorn
basically a big gully on the cliff face, and was
able to spot well a very very distinctive R and
L rayal National Lifeboat Institution life jacket, pretty distinctive. Is
(39:14):
seen enough of them by that point, and there shouldn't
be one. Just a drift out on the sea. And
in the hours that followed, with even more desperate searches
in the coves up and down the coast, bits of
wreckage started to wash ashore. And there's a very distinctive
livery on the side of a wooden lifeboat like that,
(39:35):
and once bits of it started to wash ashore there
was it became clear that that was the last radio
call of the Solomon Brown and the crew was lost.
No survivors were found. The bodies of the crew of
both the Solomon Brown and the Union Star were washed
up along the Cornish coast over the coming days, and
(39:58):
that was it. That was the loss of eight on
the Union Star and eight on the Penley lifeboat on
the Solomon Brown. This is a very short section to
the podcast because this is a very short telling of
(40:21):
a story. People have told this story much better than
I have. There are three places I urge you to
go to after listening to this one is to go
on to weirdly Enough YouTube where you can see a
copy of a BBC documentary called The Cruel Sea, which
(40:42):
really does tell this story, and it tells a lot
of the human story of the families involved, the relatives
as the surviving relatives, the build up to this story.
There's also the Solomon Brown. It's a radio it's not
quite a documentary, but it's a radio story. You can
(41:04):
get it on the BBC Sounds app and we'll put
a link in the show notes that tells even more
of the human story that's around this and it's where
we found some of these radio calls. Now these are
the original radio calls from that evening. They were recorded
by the Coast Guard, as they always are for rescue situations,
and the BBC had access to them and we were
(41:25):
able to get them via those shows. It's not a
story that it doesn't have a happy ending, and it's
an important story. It's an important story to well, the
people of Mousel, the people of Cornwall, the R and
l I, they raw a national lifeboat institution and weirdly enough,
(41:47):
for our family and my family has become something linked
with Christmas, because we are a Cornish family and this
for some people, the loss of the Solomon Brown was
the day that MOUs all changed and this tiny fishing
village changed, and one member of my family described it
(42:11):
as it's the death of the old Cornwall. And then
on into the eighties and the nineties and the culture
of Cornwall changed, and the people who lived and worked
there gradually moved out or moved to other places, and
their cottages down in the harbor and in the village
became holiday homes and second homes and owned by somebody
(42:33):
who visited maybe a couple of times a year, and
had a nice painted fishing boy hanging outside and newly
whitewashed windows, and had nothing of the people who had
lived and died there. This whole story does seem like
(42:54):
a bit of an odd fit for a podcast series
which is about outdoor safety and survival and decision making,
but well, really this is just.
Speaker 6 (43:06):
For me.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
It's a really good and personal story about decisions and
making decisions, decisions you made days ago, and how they
can come back to haunt you almost and also about
sometimes those decisions they're not yours, they're made by something
(43:27):
outside of you, a different force made by the sea,
made by some other thing, and that just that day
it decided this was going to be the outcome. The
main source we had for the content for this episode
(43:48):
was a book It's a Penley The Loss of a
Lifeboat by Michael Segar Fenton, and that has the whole
story in there. And if you are interested in learning
more about this, then that listen to that radio show,
listen to that, or watch that documentary, but go and
pick up a copy of the book. It will It
really lays out all aspects of this and it's it's
(44:12):
a fascinating story, but also it's a really it's a
really important story, I think as well. So I know
that's not particularly jolly Christmas tale, but for some people
that is Christmas. No matter what you're doing for Christmas
this year, think about the people you have around you,
(44:35):
think about the people you no longer have around you,
and focus on the things that you can make positive
changing and realize that there are some things that are
just outside of you, but there are some things that
you can do and you can make forward progress with,
even if it's something small. So Mary ch Smith Nadolac Loewen,
(45:04):
and we'll be back in the new year aboard the
Union Star that night. Master Henry Mick Morton, mate James Whittaker,
Engineer George Sedgwick, and the crew Agostino Verressimo and Manuel Lopez,
(45:32):
Dawn Morton, Sharon Brown, Dianne Brown, the crew of the
Solomon Brown Coxon, Trevalli and Richards second Cox Mechanic, Stephen Madron,
second mechanic, Nigel Brockman, and the crew John Blewett, Charles Greenow,
(45:59):
Kevin Smith, Barry Tory, Gary Wallace. And if during your
Christmas merriment you pass the donation box for a volunteer
search and rescue team, throw some money in because they
might be out tonight.
Nineteenth of December nineteen eighty one, four minutes past six
in the evening, somewhere off the coast of Land's End,
right at the tip of Cornwall.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Then then God, God Lord Land in coast God Union Star,
Union Star, going Land.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Millions.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
That's way off apportunately now eight miles east of Rock.
Engines have stop and we are able to get started
at the moment. Could you please have a helicopter standing
by Ford please, yes, that is correct, that is correct,
(00:47):
and play all night pavor worries.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
We are a poster at the moment we are to
get the mioing story. But whatever everybody else.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
The voice you heard there was thirty two year old
Captain Henry Morton. Here's the master of a coaster, in fact,
a brand new one on its maiden voyage. This type
of ship would carry bulk cargo between mainland Europe and
the United Kingdom and out to Ireland and up to Scandinavia.
It could go out into the Irish Sea and the
(01:30):
North Sea and the English Channel, but it was designed
for traveling in coastal waters. It had been heading out
from the Netherlands out round the bottom of England around
the south coast out up to Ireland. It was taking
bulk fertilizer and it was a couple of days into
what should be a routine voyage. But in those couple
(01:51):
of days it had headed out into a huge storm
rolling in off the Atlantic, coming in from the south southwest,
and in the height of that storm, the engines had failed.
So it's now sat there with the engines off, no lights,
no power, a drift in monstrous seas, huge crashing waves.
(02:16):
But he sounds calm, he's dealing with a problem, and
the coast Guard aren't alarmed. Engines fail all the time,
ships lose power. They fix things, but it's just it's
a big, modern ship, a brand new one, out in
the ocean. It's a problem, but it's not yet a disaster.
(02:39):
So what the coast Guard do is they arrange a
conversation between the Union Star and a tug, an ocean
going tug, the Nord Holland that tug is at anchor
out in Mount's Bay, so it's inland from where the
Union Star is, but it's sat at anchor. The next
day it was planning to go around to Falmouth to
(03:00):
go and pick up a contract there, but for now
it's just riding out the storm in the shelter of
Mount Bay. The problem comes in that radio call between
Morton and the Union Star and Captain Guy Berman on
the nord Holland, because the tug is not there for rescue,
it's there for salvage. And if the tug comes along
(03:25):
and hooks onto the Union Star and toes them back
into port or back into a place of safety, there's
a cost implication. And because they can't get hold of
the owners of the Union Star or the owners of
the cargo, the only thing open to them is something
called the Lloyd's open form, which means that well, once
the Union Star accepts a toe from the nord Holland
(03:48):
from the tug, the cargo and the ship effectively become
temporary property of the owners of that tug. So Morton
falls out with this skipper of the tug because he
doesn't want to give that over straight away. He thinks
he can fix it. He thinks what is god is
a temporary problem. But he is playing it safe. He
(04:12):
wants to have a helicopter on standby and is looking
for the tug to just come along and sit there
just in case. The tug captain quite reasonably says no,
I'm not going to do that unless we have a
contract on how to proceed. So Morton gets back in
touch with the coast guard.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
Yeah, either woman, hold the money at the moment, but
quit at this moment we're holding to know where we are.
We don't see him be good in his name, we quit.
We have one woman, two children, and the group a helicopter, say.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Any the mom alice woman.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So this changes things entirely for the coastguard because now
this situation isn't just merchant marine sailors who know how
to handle engine failure and know how to behave in
a storm, know what life at sea is like. This
is a mother and her children, and that mother is
Henry Morton's wife, and the kids are two daughters from
(05:49):
a previous marriage of hers. They're not meant to be
there because they're they're not stowaways. But Morton had decided
to take them along on the trip. He had actually
diverted the ship to go and pick them up from
England on the way, without telling the owners of the cargo,
without telling the Union shipping company. He was something of
(06:11):
a rising star in this business, in this shipping company.
He was a very young captain in charge of a
brand new, state of the art vessel. He was confident
that it was an easy trip. He was confident that
he had time to go and pick them up, and
that they could spend Christmas together at sea on this trip.
(06:31):
Why not. It would make a nice family memory. It
would be a way of bonding this new family together.
But now they were adrift in a storm in huge waves,
waves higher than a house crashing over the side of
the ship. So you can understand why he wants to
try and get them out of this situation, at least
(06:53):
return it just to professional mariners on the ship and
from the coast guard side. While this is a more
serious situation. The lifeboat, they say, is anticipatory, which means
they're just aware of the situation. He's also saying that
the Sea King is being made ready. In actual fact,
(07:13):
what it means is that the crew of the Sea
King have been made aware of the situation and been
told to come from their homes to base. They're not
turning up the engines, spooling up the aircraft ready. They're
just making their way to a point where they can
get ready. So despite the confidence on both the Coastguard
(07:33):
side and the skipper's side on Henry Morton's side. There
this is a really serious situation that's developing that the
steps to deal with it aren't really there yet. Something
that's not in that radio call is that the skipper
(07:53):
of the tug, Captain Guy Burman, he's decided that as
he's got to go to Falmouth tomorrow anyway, he's going
to raise the anchor and head out towards the rough
position of the Union Star, because if he's got to
head out soon anyway, you may as well head out
in a direction where maybe he can be useful to
the situation. At around seven pm, the Coast Guard get
(08:17):
back in touch with Henry Morton to see if there's
any improvement to the situation with the engines.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
With one of the Well Star, and we're hoping that
one is okay.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Could you do?
Speaker 1 (08:37):
All through that afternoon, the Union Star had been heading
into this storm with waves crashing over her port side.
On that port side you have the filling valves for
the main fuel tanks. It's not known exactly what the
(09:00):
problem was. It's either going to be that one of
the covers for the fuel tanks wasn't put on properly
or had just come off in the storm, or that
the breather pipe for the fuel tank that equalizes pressure
the valve on that that stopped seawater getting in had
failed either way. For several hours, seawater had been pouring
(09:21):
in by the gallon into one of the fuel tanks.
Later on in that afternoon, as we standard procedure, the
engineer had moved fuel from one of the main tanks
into the tank that were running the engine from and
at that time had pulled seawater through into the fuel tank,
which had then made its way into the engine, and
the engine stalled. It can't run on seawater. The generator
(09:44):
that powers the electrical gear that can't run on seawater,
so everything stops. But you've got to think about this
scene below, decks in complete darkness, with everything rolling, tipping
right over onto its side and then back up right
and then back the other way, working by torch, working
(10:04):
by feel in really tight spaces, breaking apart every single
fuel pipe, every single joint, trying to find out, okay,
there's fuel coming to here, there's fuel getting to hear,
why won't the engine start? And they've tried starting the engines.
The engines are restarted using compressed air, compressed air held
in huge tanks that then they run through into the
(10:26):
engine to turn the pistons over to then draw more
fuel in and start the engine. They can only do
that so many times with the air they have in
those tanks, and by this point they've depleted it. They've
tried so many times that all the air's gone, and
they have no way of refilling those tanks because they
need the generator to do that, so they're stuck. They
(10:49):
can open all these brand new pipes, all this brand
new engine gear, but they are trying to work out
why they've got fuel it's getting into the engine, why
won't it work until they actually dip the tank and
discover that it's half full of seawater, So they have
other fuel on board. But that means they've got to
redivert everything, refill everything, which will take time. Even in
(11:11):
calm water a harbor with an experienced crew and good lighting,
that's going to take several hours. But they haven't got
several hours because well, they're not where they think they are.
They thought they were miles out to sea, which sounds drastic,
but really in a storm if you're a big ship,
(11:32):
a drift being miles out to sea isn't a huge
problem because you can't crash into anything if you're miles
out to see if you're in out in empty space.
The problem comes when you get close to shore. And
the Union Star was coming close to shore. It was
drifting inward mile by mile. It was a hell of
a lot closer than Morton thought. And the way that
(11:55):
was confirmed was with radar. The coast Guard fired up
the radar, they picked up the signal of where the
Union Star was. It was miles and miles closer than
it should have been. It was only a few miles
offshore rather than the ten plus miles he thought he had.
So this situation is degrading the whole time. It's descending
(12:16):
into more more, not chaos, but the stakes are getting
higher and the options are getting less. So the Coastguard
and Morton, between them, they come up with a wording
for something called a pan call. So this is a
bit like a may day, except it's maybe one grade down.
(12:37):
A may day means all hope is lost, we can't
do anything. We need as much help as you can
send now. A pan call means it's a bad situation.
We need help, but we have some element of control
left in this, but we still need help. So a
pan pan call goes out sometime just after seven pm
(13:00):
at this time. Also they contact the lifeboat at Penley,
or rather the village of Mausel, just around the corner
from Newlyn. And this is a tiny fishing community and
the lifeboat, like pretty much every lifeboat at the time
around the UK, was staffed by volunteers, volunteers drawn from
(13:21):
the local fishing community, experienced people and in this case
all men who were experiencing the sea, experience in the
local waters and experienced in rescue. But they were volunteers
who volunteered to go out in all weathers to rescue people,
to come to the aid of others. They were the
(13:41):
nearest boat to this problem, so they started to make ready.
But people have to come from the homes, they have
to get to the lifeboat station, they have to make
it ready to launch. This doesn't happen instantly. So while
that's happening, Rescue eighty a seeking helicopter from Roll Naval
Air Station called DROs Over on the Lizard so Over
(14:04):
on another peninsula that sticks out into the English Channel,
only about twenty or so miles away, is making ready
to take off. The pilot of that is Russell Smith.
He's he's not a brit He's an American over on
an exchange visit from I think the US Navy, and
he is the pilot of this aircraft that can deal
(14:28):
with bad weather, but it's operating just at the edge
of what it can deal with when it heads out
into this storm at about nineteen thirty seven. The aircraft
is airborne, and it's five minutes away from the position
of the Union Star.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Pioneer like you, oh yesterday, okay, thank you very much,
the handler anybody will how many people do you plan
on trampering? One woman and children mother san one woman
(15:12):
and children mother by Sagan, one woman and two children
with throw a reminder order until yes, that's right.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
So they're five minutes out. They've got to locate this
completely darkened ship out in the chaos of this rolling sea.
And you can hear in the pilot's voice there in
Russell Smith's voice, he didn't know that he was heading
out to a small family out on this coaster. He
(15:47):
thought he was heading out to a commercial ship in distress.
But it's it's not that situation. It's now a much
more dire situation. So this changes everything for them in
terms of the rescue, but they can't get there any faster.
They can't do something different just because there's a woman
(16:08):
and two children there. They still have to do their job.
They still have to do a very technical, very dangerous
job right at the edge of what they can deal
with operationally. So around this time, the Coast Guard has
calculated that they've got about an hour, hour and a
quarter before the Union Star hits the shore and hits
(16:31):
the rocks, and at this point they request the immediate
launch of the Penley lifeboat. They were already getting ready,
but then they have to get out now and have
to get out into the water, and they issue a
second pan notice with an updated location for the Union Star.
Speaker 6 (17:00):
Mid the Onion.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Point, nine a mile from I've gone with Echo novem.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Alma Elma.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
It's difficult to imagine now what that scene out at
the sea would look like. Helicopters are big, particularly rescue helicopters.
I've been in a seeking It's like a block of
flats hovering on its side, huge rotor disc above. You've
got these big search lights that come down from it,
but even then they can only illuminate so much, so
(17:49):
they're pointing out into the darkness, and somewhere out there
in the darkness, you've got the sixty eight meter long
Union Star rolling around in the waves. So you've got
to get up to it, come in at a steady
rate so you can predict where it's going to be
and meet it whilst maneuvering in gale force winds. Gale
(18:12):
force ten at this point, so you've got to maneuver
an aircraft in basically hurricane force winds to a point
that you can barely see. But that ship isn't just
static on the ocean. It's drifting and it's riding up
and down on the waves. These waves are about nine
(18:33):
meters high, which means you can look down on the
ship hovering above it for thirty feet up and within
seconds the ship is almost at your rotor disc. The
Union Star has a large radio mass that sits above
the crew and an accommodation section of the ship where
(18:54):
everyone is. The antenna on top of this mass stick
right up, stick a long way up above the ship
when it goes into port, and it has to go
under bridges and things like that. It can be folded down,
but that's a process that takes time. Right now, it's
a massive obstacle that prevents the helicopter from getting too close.
They throw out the winchman on a cable out of
(19:16):
the side of the helicopter and try and dangle him
down towards the ship, but no way he can get
close enough without endangering the aircraft. And at several points,
as the ship rolls through on the waves, the antenna
on this mass come within meters of the rotor disc,
nearly bringing the helicopter down. So Russell Smith makes the
(19:38):
decision to pull back and they're going to attempt a
different technique. So this technique involves something called a high line,
which is basically a rope that goes between the aircraft
and a point on the sea or on the ground,
and in this case they're trying to get it onto
the rear deck of the Union Star where someone could
(19:59):
hold and then they can direct the wenchmen in effectively
diagonally from the side you would the helicopter hovers out
to one side away from the ship, so the ship
can move in the storm. And then the winchmen comes
down at an angle towards towards the Union Star, and
they attempt this again and again and again. But there
(20:20):
are two problems. There's one the high line they have
isn't long enough. They have a standard one in the
aircraft that is used for all rescue operations, but it's
not long enough. They can't get close enough to get
it onto the ship. And another problem, which seems bizarre,
but you can't look back in time and judge people's actions,
(20:44):
that the crew don't seem to know what to do
with it. They make no efforts to grab this thing.
This thing which is the only way they can get
a winchman aboard the ship or get casualties off the
ship into the helicopter. It goes within meters of them.
At one point one of them sort of just grabs
onto it gently, but then let's go again. Almost immediately
(21:05):
when a wave comes in. Whatever happens, however, that however,
that breaks down. They can't get the high line onto
the ship, and all the while they are drifting closer
and closer and closer to the coast. The crew of
Union Star are having some success, though they've been able
(21:26):
to redirect some clean fuel into the generator and they're
able to get some lights working. Eight minutes past eight.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Zero.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yes you told, yes, we're might you get a generator?
Started off with the lark on.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
Here I goes up.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
The addition of lighting and it's these are pretty big
floodlights all the way down the side of the ship.
That changes the situation, but it doesn't necessarily make it better.
One thing that it changes is that it means the
ship is now visible from the shore. But also everyone
on the ship can see the situation that they're in.
They can see these huge, monstrous waves crashing over the
(22:20):
side of the ship. They can see that it's not
going to be possible to get the helicopter any closer,
so they have to try again and again with a
high line. Now, Rescue eighty is not the only other
crew that started to arrive on the scene.
Speaker 6 (22:45):
They wait.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
So that's Cox and Trevalli and Richards.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
He is.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
An incredibly experienced man. He knows this coastline very very well.
He has spent his entire life working there, fishing there,
and he knows that being one mile from the coast
is not just a bad situation, it's the worst of situations.
(23:44):
He's got twenty minutes to get there, and he's having
to battle through these storms in his forty seven foot lifeboat.
And it's not the lifeboats that we see today it is.
It's just been refitted. It's as modern as it can
be for that time, but it's still a wooden lifeboat
that has to fight its way through these storms. He's
(24:06):
there with his crew, and you, in my experience with that,
the way he says he repeats the call, he's not
just saying it for the radio. He's saying it for
the benefit of the people that he's in that cabin with.
He's saying it for the benefit of his crew. He
sort of says it as a statement rather than repeating
(24:27):
what was said to him by Rescue EIGHTI. So the
fact that they have twenty minutes to get there, the
Union Star is only a mile from the shore, and
that they still haven't been able to get anyone off
this situation is it's about as bad as it can be.
The tug nord Holland also arrives around about this time,
(24:50):
but there's not much they can do either. Tugs can
do amazing things. They can do some amazing rescues and
hook on to anchor chains and hook on with ropes
and do some spectacular rescues in terrible seas, but they
need sea room, they need space to do that. You
can't maneuver delicately in a storm like this when you're
(25:13):
so close to the rocks. And tugs are big, much
bigger than the lifeboat. So if the lifeboat's nervous about
getting into this position, the tug has no chance. And
it's not just the tug that's starting to become concerned
about their proximity to the cliffs and the danger of
the situation. Rescue eighty also decides that they can't do
(25:36):
much else.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Now, running union start and looking too difficult for refueing neer.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
All Memoir and Safety in the nerd.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
We're getting very quiet near man that the man.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
We don't have a woman of highlight. Yeah, okay, well
very much as well as you have. You're going to.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Point anchor out.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
I'm you can hear the exhaustion in Morton's voice there
as well. He has to remain professional. He has to
do these radio calls. He has to communicate clearly, but
he has been battling for hours now, not just physically
and trying to keep his balance and trying to move
(26:16):
around the ship in these storms, but also to deal
with his stresses, to deal with the stress of Dawn
and the kids who aren't familiar with these situations, his
responsibility to them, his responsibility to the crew, his responsibility
to his unborn child. He has this huge weight on
him and the things he was hoping on. The tug
(26:39):
and the helicopter. Neither of them can help him. Whether
it was the delay, whether it was something he could
have changed early on. He has to be playing this
over and over again in his mind. He has to
be thinking back to that conversation with the Lord Holland
hours before about could they come out to them away? Well, no,
(27:01):
he hasn't. He won't give over the ship to the
Lloyd's open form. All of this has to be running
through his mind as they face these oncoming waves, and
they do turn to face them because they put an
anchor down and it breaks straight away. The anchor just
snaps up, or the chain does. So they put another
(27:23):
anchor down that holds, or rather it drags on the seabed.
So this turns the ship from being side onto the
waves to being bow onto the waves. It changes the
movement of the deck. It changes the movement of everything.
But now it means that every time the ship goes
(27:45):
down over a wave into the trough and faces the
next wave, that next wave crashes over the bow. Now
you can't go out onto the bow at all, but
you will be killed. You will be crushed by the
way to the water. They've got less of the deck,
they can move around on fewer places that they can
go out on to meet a lifeboat or to meet
(28:06):
the helicopter. So the situation continues to get worse. It
feels like it couldn't possibly get any worse, But there
it is. Behind them. They have the search lights from
another Coastguard team that has come out onto the top
of the cliffs. They've set up there with big search
lights to illuminate the scene. They can show them how
(28:27):
close they are getting to these rocks. I can't imagine
what it's like for Morton in those moments, running everything
through his head, seeing the reality of the situation. It's inescapable.
And then the radio breaks into life again with at
least one more hope.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yes, they think I've done a bit of difficulty getting there.
If you would pop out after the women.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
And well the woman off on me very much, pop
out and come and take the women and children off that.
You can still hear the exhaustion, but his note has changed.
Then there's there's something about the power of hope. There's
hopelessness is such an awful feeling, knowing that there's nothing
(29:39):
that can happen. But that's nothing that you can do
to improve this situation.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
But the.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Voice and a cornish accent of Trevelli and Richards and
his crew coming in there, and this tiny wooden lifeboat
they powering through the waves, have powered through this storm,
and now they've on scene right next to the Union Star.
So hope is there and this seems to sort of
(30:10):
give a resurgence of effort to everyone involved as well.
The tug is watching out from this about a mile away,
watching the lights of this rescue, watching everything silhouetted against
the cliff face Rescue EIGHTI there is hovering just out
to one side. It's spotlight shining down on the scene.
And that helicopter crew. They're all young, bold men. You
(30:33):
don't choose to work in search and rescue and particularly
anything on the Atlantic coast if you're timid. And they
try again. They've cobbled together and extra highline using literally
scraps of rope that they can pull from the existing
kit inside the helicopter. They've tied it all together with
a weight bag on the end. And then they try again,
(30:57):
and then the weight bag is ripped away by a wave.
That's it. They can't get the high line there at all.
There's no other option. They try again with the winchman
and he nearly gets smacked into by the mast. Again
nothing works. They're in danger now of hitting the cliff
face with their rotor disc. So the only thing that
(31:20):
can work now is the lifeboat. They come alongside, and
they're still communicating with the Union Star. This is happening
over just a few minutes, but you can hear the
increase in the urgency in the voices that transfer back
and forth between the radio calls. This radio call is
(31:43):
at twenty to fifty seven, and it's not Travalian Richards,
I don't think on the lifeboat, and the person on
the other end on the Union Star, I think is
one of the mates. It's not Henry Morton. But you
can hear you can hear the urgent seeing their voices.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
If that's going everybody, we're all going on.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Somewhere around this time, the anchor chain breaks, so now
the Union Star is fully adrift again, rolling side on
towards the cliff face. The helicopter is still there, hovering above,
but pretty much powerless to do anything other than provide
an overview and provide some extra lighting. And they're calling
(32:39):
out the distance to between the Union Star and the
cliff face, both for for everyone on the scene, for
the coast guard back at Falmouth, and really for the record,
like your.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Having trouble getting a long time family life or wherever
any that rapidly.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
All through this time, the Pendey lifeboat has been making
an attempt to get alongside the coaster and they've made it.
They've made it right up to the railing, and they've
thrown lines onto the deck and they've not quite moored themselves,
but they've held themselves up against the railing. But for
whatever reason, for the crew and the people aboard the
(33:33):
Union Star, that last gap between them and the lifeboat,
the Solomon Brown, it's just too much. They can't make
it out there. At one point, one of the Union
Star crew puts a rope ladder down on the side
but no one's suicidal enough to make that attempt to
get from their one side to the other. And the
(33:55):
Union Star is still moving towards the coast and pushing
the lifeboat with it, so the lifeboat keeps having to
circle around and try again in between the waves. Just
the skill of timing those waves. I've done a tiny
little bit with boats in rough seas and being able
to count between the waves and working out where you
(34:17):
need to be for when the wave pushes in and
pushes you along. It's tiring, it's really occupies all of
your brains. So to be able to do that in
the darkness below deck as well, because they're piloting this
boat from undercover, doing it through tiny windows looking out
onto this scene. But they know their boat, they know
(34:37):
these waters, and they know that they're the only chance
that they have for getting people off. Think of all
the people watching this scene as well. There's a journalist
and there's other people from the village overlooking from the
cliff top. You've got the Coastguard crew up there shining
the spotlights down. You've got the crew of the aircraft,
(34:58):
you've got the tug out at sea, all watching this
scene unfold. And at one point they watch a wave
lift the Solomon Brown, the lifeboat, up onto the deck
of the Union Star, so the entire lifeboat is out
of the water, just perched on top of the deck,
and then it slowly slides backwards back into the water
(35:18):
as the Union Star rolls again. And this seems to
be the moment that everyone kicks into life on the
Union Star. I think they realize that this is not
something that's just going to slowly evolve. They have to
do something now or they're all dead. So they just
all burst out onto the deck and make a run
(35:39):
for it. And people there described watching orange waterproof covered
people just throwing themselves onto the Solomon Brown, onto the lifeboat,
and the crew they're catching them as they hit, as
they hit the lifeboat and just pulling them in. It's
a scene that chaos, but people are trying to maintain
(36:02):
control and and Travellian Riches is there as the the
only hope of these people rescue. EIGHTI is still overhead,
illuminating the scene and giving commentary about what's unfolding beneath them,
(36:26):
and for them, this situation is basically done. The lifeboat
has done all that it can really it would be
too dangerous to do anything else.
Speaker 6 (36:36):
And they make that call close, we're dangerously clotes.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Would I play whether the coat or if I can't
do they.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
So that's it. The Union Star is about to hit
the cliffs. The helicopter can't be there any longer, and
they go. And all that's left now is the Solomon Brown,
which should just cut its losses, take the people that
it's saved, and just pull out to see move away
(37:17):
from the cliffs and do what's sensible. But I don't know.
There was just something that was driving them.
Speaker 6 (37:25):
Onwards plenty, Like I call it, form of contract.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
We got.
Speaker 5 (37:39):
We got four at the moment.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Whatever, and they lighted the light, and the light.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
In the hours that followed, desperate attempts were made to
try and reach the crew of the Solomon Brown over
the radio, and then the Coast Guard rescue team upon
the cliffs were able to lower somebody down in towards
the site of the of the wreckage, because by now
the Union Star had rolled over on the rocks and
(38:49):
was visible. It was tipped on its side, sat there
in the rocks amongst the breakers, and that Coast Guard
officer there was able to get down into a zorn
basically a big gully on the cliff face, and was
able to spot well a very very distinctive R and
L rayal National Lifeboat Institution life jacket, pretty distinctive. Is
(39:14):
seen enough of them by that point, and there shouldn't
be one. Just a drift out on the sea. And
in the hours that followed, with even more desperate searches
in the coves up and down the coast, bits of
wreckage started to wash ashore. And there's a very distinctive
livery on the side of a wooden lifeboat like that,
(39:35):
and once bits of it started to wash ashore there
was it became clear that that was the last radio
call of the Solomon Brown and the crew was lost.
No survivors were found. The bodies of the crew of
both the Solomon Brown and the Union Star were washed
up along the Cornish coast over the coming days, and
(39:58):
that was it. That was the loss of eight on
the Union Star and eight on the Penley lifeboat on
the Solomon Brown. This is a very short section to
the podcast because this is a very short telling of
(40:21):
a story. People have told this story much better than
I have. There are three places I urge you to
go to after listening to this one is to go
on to weirdly Enough YouTube where you can see a
copy of a BBC documentary called The Cruel Sea, which
(40:42):
really does tell this story, and it tells a lot
of the human story of the families involved, the relatives
as the surviving relatives, the build up to this story.
There's also the Solomon Brown. It's a radio it's not
quite a documentary, but it's a radio story. You can
(41:04):
get it on the BBC Sounds app and we'll put
a link in the show notes that tells even more
of the human story that's around this and it's where
we found some of these radio calls. Now these are
the original radio calls from that evening. They were recorded
by the Coast Guard, as they always are for rescue situations,
and the BBC had access to them and we were
(41:25):
able to get them via those shows. It's not a
story that it doesn't have a happy ending, and it's
an important story. It's an important story to well, the
people of Mousel, the people of Cornwall, the R and
l I, they raw a national lifeboat institution and weirdly enough,
(41:47):
for our family and my family has become something linked
with Christmas, because we are a Cornish family and this
for some people, the loss of the Solomon Brown was
the day that MOUs all changed and this tiny fishing
village changed, and one member of my family described it
(42:11):
as it's the death of the old Cornwall. And then
on into the eighties and the nineties and the culture
of Cornwall changed, and the people who lived and worked
there gradually moved out or moved to other places, and
their cottages down in the harbor and in the village
became holiday homes and second homes and owned by somebody
(42:33):
who visited maybe a couple of times a year, and
had a nice painted fishing boy hanging outside and newly
whitewashed windows, and had nothing of the people who had
lived and died there. This whole story does seem like
(42:54):
a bit of an odd fit for a podcast series
which is about outdoor safety and survival and decision making,
but well, really this is just.
Speaker 6 (43:06):
For me.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
It's a really good and personal story about decisions and
making decisions, decisions you made days ago, and how they
can come back to haunt you almost and also about
sometimes those decisions they're not yours, they're made by something
(43:27):
outside of you, a different force made by the sea,
made by some other thing, and that just that day
it decided this was going to be the outcome. The
main source we had for the content for this episode
(43:48):
was a book It's a Penley The Loss of a
Lifeboat by Michael Segar Fenton, and that has the whole
story in there. And if you are interested in learning
more about this, then that listen to that radio show,
listen to that, or watch that documentary, but go and
pick up a copy of the book. It will It
really lays out all aspects of this and it's it's
(44:12):
a fascinating story, but also it's a really it's a
really important story, I think as well. So I know
that's not particularly jolly Christmas tale, but for some people
that is Christmas. No matter what you're doing for Christmas
this year, think about the people you have around you,
(44:35):
think about the people you no longer have around you,
and focus on the things that you can make positive
changing and realize that there are some things that are
just outside of you, but there are some things that
you can do and you can make forward progress with,
even if it's something small. So Mary ch Smith Nadolac Loewen,
(45:04):
and we'll be back in the new year aboard the
Union Star that night. Master Henry Mick Morton, mate James Whittaker,
Engineer George Sedgwick, and the crew Agostino Verressimo and Manuel Lopez,
(45:32):
Dawn Morton, Sharon Brown, Dianne Brown, the crew of the
Solomon Brown Coxon, Trevalli and Richards second Cox Mechanic, Stephen Madron,
second mechanic, Nigel Brockman, and the crew John Blewett, Charles Greenow,
(45:59):
Kevin Smith, Barry Tory, Gary Wallace. And if during your
Christmas merriment you pass the donation box for a volunteer
search and rescue team, throw some money in because they
might be out tonight.
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com