Tag Archives: Penlee lifeboat
Penlee Lifeboat: Forty years later, pre-Christmas bravery still marked by heartrending village ritual
Forty years ago this weekend, the Penlee lifeboat Solomon Browne was launched into hurricane-force winds that had whipped up 50ft waves off the treacherous Cornish coast. The crew of eight experienced volunteer lifeboatmen were attempting to reach a stricken coaster, the Union Star, which was in danger of drifting on to rocks. What followed was an audacious act of seamanship in extreme conditions which nearly succeeded in saving 
those in peril. Instead, it is remembered as one of the greatest tragedies in the 197-year history of the RNLI.,, The Coastguard telephones Trevelyan Richards, 56, a trawler skipper who has been coxswain of the Penlee lifeboat Solomon Browne for the past 11 years. It explains the plight of the Union Star and asks Trevelyan to put his crew on standby. As his widowed mother, Mary, lays the table for supper, he starts phoning senior crew members to warn them they may be needed. photos, >click to read< 19:17
Overboard fisherman dragged for five miles
A lone fisherman had a miraculous escape after falling overboard at sea. He managed to grab his nets and clung on as his boat dragged him five miles for more than an hour through the freezing sea to shore. Fortunately Nathan Rogers’s vessel was on auto-pilot and heading for the Cornish port of Newlyn, where it ploughed into a pier wall. The alarm was first raised by eagle-eyed Louis-Matisse Nicholls, who saw the crash from Sandy Cove, a beach on the edge of Newlyn, and spotted Mr Rogers, 40, in the water. The 11-year-old boy said: “I was beach cleaning and saw this boat crash right into the harbour and saw this head bobbing up and down. I told my dad to phone 999.” >click to read<12:37
