Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2008 | Page 29

INTERVIEW
brother was trapped under the
boat. I grabbed my brother’s
hand just as a huge surge came
and took the boat out to sea.”
Now the three of them were
stranded with the man, who
was in fact dead, on the beach.
The lifeboat came, but the seas
caused the nylon anchor robe
to be entangled round the port
propeller, anchoring the boat
and making it impossible to
help John and the others. A
helicopter was scrambled but
the rotors were too close to the
cliff to reach the beach. So in
the end it was the cliff rescue
team who hauled the three
men up one by one. “We had
no helmets, stones were falling
constantly …” says John.
“Before we were rescued they
had dragged the body as high
up the shingle as possible to
be collected in quieter seas the
next day.”
He, his brother and the Dr
Broadbent were honoured for
that act of bravery, an award
presented by Sir Charles
Baring, chairman of the IoW
RNLI.
Brushes with death came in
all shapes and sizes. In 1970
the lifeboat was called to take
fire crew out to a burning
oil tanker, the Pacific Glory,
off St Catherine’s, and as
they approached the wall of
heat and fumes John had to
reassure a petrified young
crewman that the whole thing

wasn’t about
to blow up.
More than
the fear is
the memory
of the burnt
bodies of
the Chinese
crew, still
clinging to
the railings.
“You seem
to take the
harrowing
things in
your stride
when you’re
young,”
says John.
“I’ll never forget the stench of
death.”
It is not a little embarrassing,
when you are crew of the
lifeboat, to have to be rescued
yourself. One Cowes week he
and a friend took out a motor
boat, the Pentagon, and when
steaming along by Saltmead
one of the engines died. “I
looked below and found a foot
of water,” says John. They
didn’t get far in their attempt
to reach shore before the other
engine died, so John decided
they must sink the boat and in
turning it over, he engineered
the boat to trap a huge bubble
of air, for buoyancy.
“We sent up a flare, we
heard the maroon sound in
Yarmouth and there we were
sitting on the upturned boat
thinking we’d soon
be ok. But before the
lifeboat got to us it

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turned back. We found out
later the crew thought the flare
was someone having a beach
barbeque in Newtown.”
In the event, one Dave
Kennett (later to be a crew
member and coxswain) who
was on a fishing trip, saw
the flare and came over to
investigate. John laughs as he
remembered the incredulity
with which Dave found them,
floating on the upturned boat:
“ ‘What you doing there?’”
“It was such a mix of fun and
seriousness,” he says. “Through
the lifeboat I’ve met the Queen
and Prince Philip – on the
day the Queen took her first
hovercraft trip. I’ve met Lord
Mountbatten, who asked why
I wasn’t wearing a hat and
had one issued to me the next
day; and I’ve been to a Garden
Party at the Palace.”
“I’ve had some cracking good
times.”

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