Tobermory Lifeboat Finds Missing Diver
On January 10th a scallop diver, missing for over four hours, was found on a remote shoreline in Ardnamurchan after an intensive search by the Tobermory Lifeboat crew. The alarm was raised when the diver failed to surface close to the Red Rocks in the Sound of Mull, and the
Tobermory all-weather lifeboat, Elizabeth Fairlie Ramsay, was launched at 4.15pm, when the winter daylight was already fading. The lifeboat was joined by coastguard rescue teams from Tobermorym Salen and Kilchoan, who scoured the adjacent coastline, and the Stornoway Coastguard Rescue Helicopter was also deployed.
At around 6.30 pm Grant Carmichael, a lifeboat volunteer member, was put aboard the scallop diving vessel at the request of the missing diver’s fellow crew-men to help them in the search. Both weather and visibility were rapidly deteriorating – but shortly afterwards, a voice was heard shouting in the darkness from the shore, close to an area known as Maclean’s Nose. The Tobermory lifeboat stood by with its Y boat (a small dinghy) ready to be deployed whilst the diver was airlifted to safety by the rescue helicopter. The rescued diver was taken to hospital in Oban for a check up, but was found to be safe and well.
Tobermory Coxswain Phil Higson said: ;When the light faded, hopes began to fade too and we feared the worst, but all the search teams involved carried on. This was a tremendous result for everyone concerned.’
John Kinsman has just become an honorary agent of The Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners’ Royal Benevolent Society (or the Shipwrecked Mariners for short.) This national charity was founded in 1839, and John sends us the following note about its history.
The Shipwrecked Mariners society (SFMS) operates throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland in order to provide help to former merchant seamen and fishermen and their widows and dependants who are in need. Mr John Rye, a retired doctor, and his servant Charles Gee Jones, a former Bristol pilot and landlord of the Pulteney Arms in Bath, founded the charity after a storm in November 1838 engulfed the Clovelly fishing fleet, with terrible loss of life. Aided by Sir Jahleel Brenton, at that time Governor of Greenwich Hospital, Mr. Rye went from house to house in Bath collecting half crowns as a start to setting up the SMFS. The portrait of Mr Rye and Mr Gee Jones shown here was painted to commemorate the founding of the Society, and it now hangs in the boardroom of the Society’s Headquarters in Chichester. It shows them discussing the Clovelly disaster.
The first president of the SFMS was Admiral Sir George Cockburn, who was in Chesapeake Bay in the War of 1812, and captured and burnt Washington. (Not, perhaps, a popular man in the USA.) Queen Victoria became the society’s first patron, and it has had a royal patron ever since. Today that duty has passed to HRH the Princess Royal. The society was for a few years operating its own lifeboats, but in 1854 it decided to concentrate on helping survivors and/or bereaved families, so its lifeboats were transferred to the RNLI.
The SFMS, which operates through a national network of volunteers known as Honorary Agents, deals with over 2,000 cases of need a year and is based in Chichester, West Sussex. Many people will have seen the 2nd World War mines now harmlessly deployed as big piggy-banks at harbours where locals and visitors drops in the coins for which the SMFS is so grateful.
