In the English Channel, there are breaking swells higher than houses. Shrieking winds whip up a storm of snow, sleet and spray. Amidst it all, a huge cargo ship named Bonita, with 36 people onboard, has rolled onto her side. She will never come up again. As the hurricane rages, it’s the beginning of a week of courage and loss that will always be remembered by the RNLI

The Ecuadorian cargo ship Bonita left port for the last time on 10 December 1981. She had been loaded with fertiliser in Hamburg, and had 36 people aboard: Ecuadorian crew members, plus engineers and an electrician from Spain and Norway. Two of the crew – the Captain and the First Engineer – had their wives and children with them.

Norwegian John Aicher was the Chief Engineer of the 8,400-ton ship. ‘On Sunday 13 December, we hit a hell of a weather front. We had 9m waves by lunchtime. The ship was rolling so heavily that nothing remained on the shelves in my cabin.’

On Guernsey, St Peter Port RNLI volunteers were summoned to move their lifeboat Sir William Arnold to a safer position in the harbour. ‘I said to my wife “this shouldn’t take long – hold lunch as long as you can,”’ says Peter Bougourd, who was then Second Coxswain. Some 40 miles offshore to the north, Bonita was getting a pounding. At 1.10pm, two giant waves hit her port side, causing her to list heavily to starboard. Then came the killer blow. A third wave caused the ship’s cargo to shift, and she was unable to right herself. The Captain decided to try and run the ship aground off France, and asked John to increase power.

John had just entered the engine room when the ship lost all power. Without her engine holding any sort of course, Bonita quickly turned so that her flat bottom faced the huge waves, making the rolling even worse. John was covered in oil and had to tackle a torrent of seawater in order to get out of the room. ‘My fear and frustration turned to rage after the thought that I could be drowned like a rat,’ says John. ‘That was probably why I managed to climb out.’

Up on the bridge, the Captain was still trying to steer the ship to safety, but John staggered in and told him that they had lost engine power. With his ship now at the mercy of the sea, the Captain sent a mayday alert. This was relayed to St Peter Port signal station, and the town's lifeboat crew.

The volunteers were aboard the lifeboat, preparing to move her to a safer position in the harbour, when they heard they were needed mid-Channel and immediately headed out to sea at 1.23pm. ‘The conditions were quite horrendous, and the further we went, the worse it got as we left the lee of the island,’ says Peter Bougourd, who had the task of navigating. He used the given position of the ship and her likely drift in a force 12 to plot a course.

Meanwhile, a Royal Navy rescue helicopter had headed to the scene, and Winchman John Spencer braved the 100-knot winds and rolling ship masts to take four people off Bonita, including the Captain’s wife and 2-year-old child. But then the helicopter’s rotor blades began to ice up. The aircraft crew could not risk lingering.

At 4.30pm, the Sir William Arnold reached the Bonita. ‘I was very pleased because I gave an estimated time of arrival as 4.20pm and we were only 10 minutes later,’ recalls Peter Bougourd. ‘That was important, being on time, because once hope goes, people start to go downhill.’ The scene that greeted the lifeboat crew will always stay with Mike Scales, who was Coxswain.

‘I saw that ship on its side, knowing lots of people needed to come off and that the helicopter had done as much as they could. And I was thinking “How the hell are we going to do this?”’ says Mike. He battled 15m waves to take the lifeboat around Bonita, which was by now listing at 45°.

The lifeboat volunteers spotted most of Bonita's crew assembled on the high side of the ship. But Mike knew that there would be no way to get the survivors off from that point – he needed them to move to the stern of the ship if he was going to get near enough without risking his own crew. Struggling to be heard in the shrieking hurricane, the lifeboat volunteers managed to usher the Bonita crew towards the stern using a combination of directing the searchlight, pointing and radio messages.

Aboard the ship, reaching the stern proved difficult and dangerous for the crew. ‘We were freezing, in shock and exhausted,’ recalls John Aicher. ‘With what strength they had left they walked on hands and knees along the outside of the hull to the stern.’ John also faced the difficult task of moving a casualty who could not walk. The Second Engineer had broken both his legs in a fall and John helped him to the main deck with the help of the Electrician. ‘The poor soul was in excruciating pain,’ recalls John, who noticed that another member of the crew, a motorman, had also fallen and broken his leg. He was on one of the ship’s hatches, which were being hit by waves. Next to him was the ship’s steward.

‘The Steward was totally motionless with shock,’ says John Aicher. The Steward later fell and was killed instantly when he hit the side of the ship. His body floated in the sea, watched in horror by Bonita’s crew. Meanwhile, the injured Motorman clung on for his life.

Mike Scales brought the lifeboat’s port side alongside the ship’s transom, and two men jumped aboard from the stern. In the falling swell, a third man jumped unexpectedly. He mistimed his leap, fell head first on the lifeboat and suffered a serious head injury. Crew Members Alan Martel and John Webster carried him into the wheelhouse, where Mechanic Bob Vowles tended to the wound. The other two men sheltered below in the fore cabin.

Concerned that more attempts to get alongside would risk his crew and lifeboat, Mike Scales formed a new plan.

Peter Bisson operated the searchlight. Mechanic Bob Vowles was based in the wheelhouse, in charge of communications and first aid. John Webster, Richard Hamon, John Bougourd and Alan Martel were on deck, preparing to pull people aboard and take them inside. Peter Bougourd went to the foredeck.

‘Peter probably had the hardest job standing on the bow,’ says Mike Scales. ‘I asked him to stand there because he was our rocket launcher – he could throw the line the furthest.’ The plan was to approach the transom head-on and throw a line to the ship, which people would attach to themselves, jump into the sea and then be pulled aboard. It would take great skill to hold the lifeboat in position in such conditions. One moment the lifeboat would be on the crest of a wave, level with the top of Bonita’s stern, the next she would be in a trough, below the propeller. ‘Mike Scales showed wonderful boathandling,’ says Peter Bougourd.

The wife and two daughters of the First Engineer were among the first to receive the heaving line from Peter, wrap it around themselves and jump, despite the risks of impact and immersion in the ferocious, cold sea. They were quickly pulled aboard, but not all transfers went so smoothly.

‘There was a fellow in a white jumper who let go of the heaving line,’ says Alan Martel. ‘I just saw this dark patch in the water, so I hung out of the boat and pulled him by his hair.’ With the help of the other lifeboat crew, Alan pulled the man aboard. He had stopped breathing, but the volunteers resuscitated him.

After 16 people had been successfully rescued using a line, Mike Scales drew away from Bonita to give his crew some respite. They had been working for hours in sub-zero temperatures, hurricane-force winds and three-storey seas. ‘For me it was a chance to bring my trousers back up because they were down around my knees inside my oilskins – most uncomfortable!’ smiles Peter Bougourd. After 10 minutes, the lifeboat returned to the stern of the ship, much to the relief of the ship’s crew, who thought they had been abandoned. During one approach, the lifeboat’s engines stalled, and she was trapped under the ship’s transom. Peter reached out and pushed against the ship’s hull. ‘We were stuck. It was only when a wave came behind us and the engines restarted that she popped out backwards.’

By now there were several rescue helicopters on scene, but it was still too dangerous for them to send a winchman down to Bonita. However, the ship’s crew managed to get a message to a rescue helicopter that there was no way that the injured Second Engineer would be able to jump. Risking their lives, the helicopter crew hovered low enough to dangle a strop. After three attempts, it was secured to the injured man and he was airlifted to hospital.

John Aicher was wondering if his turn to jump would ever arrive. ‘I felt the urge just to slide into the raging sea just to get away from this nightmare,’ he says. When his turn did come, he jumped with the Electrician and both were pulled safely aboard. That just left three men: the Captain, the injured Motorman (who had by now been lashed to a hatch to avoid him being swept away) and a panic-stricken crew member who was afraid to jump.

The frightened seaman eventually tied the line around his wrists, jumped, and the lifeboat crew hauled him to the Sir William Arnold. Then the Captain was safely taken aboard too.

Although he did not want to leave the injured Motorman alone on the ship, Coxswain Mike Scales reluctantly decided to head to shore. He had hypothermic, exhausted people aboard. The man who had suffered a head injury was unconscious and needed urgent medical attention. The crew decided that Brixham, Devon, was their best destination – by now it was only 27 miles away, while Guernsey was around 60 miles to the south. At the same time, the Torbay lifeboat was heading in the opposite direction. Her crew had been occupied rescuing a yacht crew when Bonita first called for help, but now they were available and were heading to the ship.

Before the Torbay lifeboat arrived at the Bonita, the crew of a French tug managed to get the injured Motorman off the hatch and to safety. St Peter Port Mechanic Bob Vowles heard the good news on the radio and passed it on to the Bonita survivors in the lifeboat’s fore cabin. ‘I could not resist bursting into tears,’ says John Aicher.

Although they had made it off the Bonita, the survivors were not home and dry quite yet. They faced a rough journey back to Brixham, and the inside of the lifeboat resembled a toilet in parts: many casualties were suffering from seasickness, shock and injury. The lifeboat finally reached Brixham at 11.13pm, after more than 10 hours at sea.

Three decades on, John Aicher says he owes everything to the St Peter Port lifeboat crew. ‘If these men had not been there I would not be here today. They gave me 30 more years.’

Medals and tears

The St Peter Port crew were not the only RNLI lifeboat volunteers who battled violent storms in December 1981.

When the Bonita had first begun to list heavily at lunchtime on 13 December, the Beaumaris lifeboat headed into a gale and blizzard to rescue a fishing boat off Anglesey. Coxswain David Gallichan managed to get close enough for his crew to take two men off the stricken vessel before it was wrecked on the shore.

Off the Yorkshire coast, the Humber lifeboat was also called into action. Humber Coxswain Brian Bevan and his crew went to the aid of another ship that had suffered a shifting cargo. Facing storm force winds gusting to force 11, Coxswain Bevan took the lifeboat alongside eight times, taking off three men. The ship’s Captain and Mate decided to stay aboard their vessel, so the Humber lifeboat slowly escorted them through the storm into the Humber Estuary.

On the morning of 14 December, the St Peter Port lifeboat crew woke up in a Brixham guesthouse and set off for home after a hearty breakfast. Second Coxswain Peter Bougourd took the wheel while Coxswain Scales rested. Although she had hit the Bonita several times, and battled hurricane conditions, the Arun class Sir William Arnold was mechanically sound, and made short work of the journey to Guernsey in large swells and gale force winds.

Of the 29 people brought back to Brixham, all survived except the man who had suffered a head injury. Sadly, he died from his wounds in hospital. Bonita Chief Engineer John Aicher faced a busy few days in England. ‘I had to help get people home to Ecuador, and I had to make a statement about the ship. I was not able to think what I had been through. I had lost everything, including my clothes and passport.’

The St Peter Port crew members were still coming to terms with all that they had  seen and done when, on 19 December, the crew of the Penlee lifeboat launched off the Cornish coast. The lifeboat Solomon Browne headed to a coaster, Union Star, which was being battered towards the shore in a hurricane. The crews of both vessels were all lost. It was the worst lifeboat tragedy in living memory. In typical understatement, Peter Bougourd said: ‘It took the shine off Christmas.’

In May 1982, the St Peter Port crew headed to London. It was the day of the RNLI’s Annual Presentation of Awards – a day so often associated with celebration. But this year it was to be tinged with sadness.

No fewer than 29 Medals for Gallantry were awarded at the ceremony. They included a Bronze Medal for Beaumaris Coxswain David Gallichan and a Bar to Bronze Medal to Humber Coxswain Brian Bevan, for the courage and skill they showed on 13 December. As for the St Peter Port crew, Coxswain Mike Scales received the Gold Medal, while the crew all received Bronze Medals.

The wives and mothers of the Penlee crew received posthumous Medals for Gallantry on behalf of their husbands and sons. ‘It was very tearful – it could so easily have been the wives from Guernsey that were up there instead of the Penlee ones,’ says Pauline Bisson, wife of the late Peter Bisson. ‘It was a really sad but special night.’

For Bonita survivor John Aicher, there is no award or gift that can sum up his gratitude: ‘We survived,’ he says, ‘thanks to the tremendous efforts and great gallantry of the crew of the St Peter Port lifeboat.’