A BAptism By fiRe ANd WAteR At the northernmost tip of mainland Scotland, the waters of the Atlantic Ocean siphon into the North Sea and back again, twice a day, through a churning channel less than 7 miles wide. One new recruit will always remember the Pentland Firth as her place of greatest testing. Elizabeth Paine reports There was, as the RNLI’s Tony Trickett later observed, ‘a hell of a sea on’ around Orkney on 11 November 2006. The Shetland Coastguard had taken a call shortly after midday from the MV FR8 Venture, an oil tanker battling heavy seas in Pentland Firth. She had three crew seriously injured by a massive wave that had swamped the deck.

After liaising with Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, the Coastguard requested assistance from both their own rescue helicopter based at Stornoway and the RNLI’s Longhope lifeboat station.

Deputy Launching Authority Ian McFadyen responded immediately and the brand new Tamar class Helen Comrie was on her first ever emergency ‘shout’.

Expert medical help would be needed but Longhope’s Lifeboat Operations Manager and Medical Adviser, Tony Trickett, was still en route home from a visit to RNLI Headquarters in Poole. Acting as Relief Doctor at the GP practice on Hoy was Christine Bradshaw. Assisting with saving lives at sea was not in her job description but, as she said: ‘On an island, you all pitch in.’ Dr Bradshaw’s sole experience of lifeboat service so far had been a flat-calm attendance on a sick diver a few weeks previously: now the weather was promising something entirely different.

Today’s knock on the door came with the plea: ‘Go straight to the pier and don’t let the lifeboat leave without you.’ Prepared for anything? Casting off in a north westerly force 9 wind, the lifeboat’s crew knew that using her ‘in anger’ in the ferocious weather that they would meet once they had cleared Cantick Sound would be even tougher than the poor conditions experienced during recent training. But they had full confidence in the seaworthiness of their new vessel, built for just such an eventuality.

The Doctor, too, trusted both lifeboat and crew. It was the uncertain extent of the casualties’ injuries rather than the logistics of the rescue that occupied her thoughts. A clue to what might be to follow should have been when Mechanic John Budge handed her a drysuit: ‘There’s just the one size … large … .’ As the lifeboat entered the Firth the swell was reaching an astonishing 15m. Coxswain Kevin Kirkpatrick and helicopter Mike Uniform’s pilot Captain Tim Noble agreed that a direct transfer of the Doctor from lifeboat to tanker would be impossible. When asked if she would ‘mind’ being winched across, Christine simply said: ‘Tell me what to do.’ This would be her first such experience. The two rescue craft diverted to the lee of the small island of Swona, as to chance more open water in these conditions would have meant injury to both Coastguard and RNLI personnel. Kevin remembers that the Tamar’s greater room on the afterdeck made the tricky manoeuvre more manageable than it might have been. However, with the wind gusting to force 12, Tim’s view was obscured by the three-storey-high waves. He was reliant on Winch Operator Phil Warrington to guide his positioning and needed several attempts before Winchman Chris Murray could lift off both the Doctor and her emergency kit.

Tim recalls the first time he glimpsed Christine: ‘She was coming across the deck of the lifeboat on her hands and knees, because nobody could actually stand up … she was presented to us in a formless rubber suit, like any other RNLI person, and we took her as such.’ Into hell Some 20 minutes later, the helicopter was approaching the Venture and Dr Bradshaw watched waves breaking over her deck, the whole of which was awash. She began to feel a little apprehension: ‘I wondered how on earth we were going to get down there – safely.’ To make matters even worse, a squally hailstorm now enveloped them, and the dense spray off the tanker was reaching 30m – the equivalent of a 10-storey block of flats.

A vessel the size of the Venture generates a massive turbulence ‘bubble’ behind the superstructure, a phenomenon described by Tim Noble: ‘like someone’s taken hold of the tail of the helicopter and is trying to bounce it around in the sky.’ Phil concedes: ‘It can all go wrong, very quickly.’ Nonetheless, the experienced Coastguard air crew managed as smooth a set-down as possible.

The Doctor and Winchman found the casualties in three separate rooms inside the wheelhouse – but one had died and, tragically, a second soon followed, despite the Doctor’s best efforts. The third was revealed to have head and spinal injuries, which needed immediate stabilisation to prevent more damage. However, evacuation could not be attempted yet: Mike Uniform had to leave the scene to refuel at Wick. The call out was at the furthest extent of its range and had been demanding on its resources.

The tanker’s crew prepared her for the subsequent lift-off, turning her side on to the towering waves.

Christine could sense their anxiety. Removing a stretchered casualty would require extreme care but conditions had deteriorated further – even Chris Murray seemed a little nervous. But no sooner had the enormity of the task become clear than the helicopter had returned and they received instruction to go leaving the Venture to struggle on against the storm.

Relief and reward To everyone’s delight, the airlifted man eventually made a full recovery. All involved still feel deeply saddened that they were unable to save the other two but know that they had all worked to their physical and technical limits. The Tamar had come up trumps, with a superior communications system and hightech hull and seating that allowed much greater speed in the water: ‘We had faith in the boat and the technology there. We looked after it and it looked after us.’ They are even more impressed with Dr Bradshaw, who has since volunteered as a crew member. They variously describe her as ‘a good seawoman’, ‘plucky’ and ‘really cool’. Coxswain Kirkpatrick affi rms: ‘She undoubtedly saved a man’s life.’ Regular Medical Adviser Tony Trickett concurs: ‘This was no bob around the corner: this was serious stuff.’ He admits: ‘I wouldn’t have liked it to be me on the end of that string. She is more than a brave lass. She couldn’t not join the crew. The boys said, “She’s joining!”’ Coastguard Winchman Chris Murray declares conditions had been the roughest in which he’d ever been down inside a vessel, and commends Christine’s actions: ‘We need people like that, who aren’t afraid – she’s a volunteer at the end of the day and it’s volunteers that save lives.’ Tim Noble adds: ‘It’s hard enough to get somebody winched out of a stable helicopter at 6m on a nice day; it’s a very different matter when you’re in the middle of a raging storm, dangled over huge waves out the back of a pitching boat, for your fi rst time … it’s a baptism by fi re. Most people wouldn’t have even left the aircraft; to go down in those conditions to look after somebody else, I think just typifi es her character – admirable.

‘It’s all credit to both the RNLI and Christine that they have people like her working for them. We do a very similar job and complement each other – but I get paid to do my job and they don’t. I have total admiration for them and everything they do.’ tHe DetAIL Coxswain Kevin Kirkpatrick (40) Crew Members Angus Budge (46) Mechanic John Budge (56) Frank Gaertner (47) Ian Avis (44) Michael Johnston (41) Non-RNLI medic Dr Christine Bradshaw (49, relief GP) Tamar class lifeboat ON-1284 (16-05) Helen Comrie Built: 2006 On station: 14 October 2006 Funding: £2.5M from the legacies of Mr Thomas Comrie, Dr Frederick Benjamin Porges and Lorraine Fyfe and gifts from the MV Millhouse and Evelyn Murdoch Charitable Trusts, Mrs Ruby Brown and Mr George Derbyshire ‘The RNLI’s a brilliant organisation; it does a tremendous job, I can’t fault it.

I’m very proud to now be part of it.’ Dr Christine Bradshaw, Bronze Medal awardee and new recruit Photo: Western Morning News dr Bradshaw is the ? rst ever non-RNLi woman doctor to be awarded the Bronze medal for gallantry, recently bestowed at the RNLi’s Annual presentation of Awards in London for her part in this rescue.

Regularly practising at truro in Cornwall, she spends 4 months a year as relief doctor at the gp surgery on the island of Hoy in the orkneys. since participating in this rescue, she has become an of? cial RNLi crew member and medical adviser.

Christine was once rescued by the RNLi herself. While sur? ng off the north Cornish coast, she was taken out by a rip current and a sea mist came down, leaving her stranded and lost, far from shore. ‘Lo and behold,’ she recalls, ‘this white nose appeared out of the gloom, and some blond-haired lifeguard towed me back in … it’s good to put something back.’ .