62 passagemaker.com July/August 2018
The phone rang.
“How soon can you be in the Shetland Isles?
“Probably by tomorrow. Why?”
“OK then, tomorrow you will be coxswain of the Shetland
lifeboat!”
That quick conversation took place in 1967. I was sitting at
an office desk at the headquarters of the Royal National Lifeboat
Institution (RNLI) in London. As “Inspector of Lifeboats,” I
was responsible for all the lifeboat stations along a considerable
stretch of the U.K. coastline. But I had been temporarily allocated
to the head office. Bored with office work and hankering to get
back to sea, I jumped at this chance to do “proper” work again.
That evening I was on a plane heading north.
The lifeboat I was joining was an experimental one, a large,
deep-water boat with a full-time crew that was designed to cruise
the challenging waters in the area north of Scotland. Following the
trend of the Dutch, German, and Scandinavian lifeboat organizations,
RNLI had purchased its first cruising lifeboat. My job was not only to
make the lifeboat available for rescue work in the far north but also to
assess the capabilities of this new design in rough seas.
Testing new lifeboat designs is an exciting job. You go out in
the worst conditions you can find, quite purposefully, and see
what happens. It requires a significant amount of experience,
and I had plenty from my time working on a lighthouse tender
around Great Britain. I had also done some wild passages of
my own, including taking a 48-footer down the Irish Sea in a
Force 11 storm and operating in the English Channel when the
weather was so severe that the big ferries had ceased operations.
Though I was excited to get out of the office and back on the
water—and anything was better than London in the winter—I was
apprehensive about operating in the challenging seas around these
northern remote islands. The Shetland Isles comprise the northern
tip of the British Isles, lying at 60° north latitude, close to the
Arctic Circle. They are situated between the Atlantic Ocean and
the North Sea, and twice a day the tide runs in and out between
the islands at ferocious speeds. Tidal races are common—the pilot
book says that the flow can reach speeds exceeding 12 knots in
the Pentland Firth that runs between the Orkney Islands and the
Scottish mainland. Combine these tides with fierce westerly gales
that sweep the region in the winter months and you have a recipe
for some of the wildest seas in the world.
STRESS TEST
The crew of this 70-foot boat (simply dubbed “70-001”) lived on
board, so we were ready at very short notice to head out to sea
in an emergency. We were based in Lerwick, the main town of
the Shetland Isles. The first three days of my assignment, I took
the boat out just to get a feel for how she handled. We headed
down to the bottom end of the main island to Sumburgh where
the tide race would be ideal for testing the new design. Not only
does a tide race generate some very wild short and steep seas,
but because the waves have quite clearly defined edges, you can
dodge in and out of them to the extent you feel comfortable.
The first thing that became obvious was that this lifeboat was
very wet. She had a relatively low bow and when pushed hard, as
she would be when engaged in rescue work, a great deal of spray
came over the bow. However, this was only spray, and the bow lifted
readily to waves so we did not ship any heavy seas. She was the first
RNLI lifeboat built of steel and also the first to have a deep draft, so
she sat well in the water. The deep draft gave a reassuring footing,
particularly in following seas where there felt little risk of broaching.
Built along traditional lines, she was a heavy displacement boat with
almost no straight lines anywhere in her construction.
Power came from a pair of eight-cylinder Gardner diesels.
These massive engines only turned at around 1200 rpm, and
their reassuring rumble made you feel like they would last forever
and never fail. To minimize stress, each engine only produced
230 horsepower, and they were housed in separate engine
compartments for added security. With a top speed of 11.5 knots,
we were not going to break any speed records heading out on
a rescue, but we knew we would be able to keep going when
everyone else was seeking shelter.
To get familiar with the waters, we planned an extended
cruise on the lifeboat, first heading south to tiny Fair Isle. Well-
known around the world for its distinctive knitted sweaters, the