THE MUCKLE COAST GUARD

 

The Muckle Coastguard
Oil on canvas, 760mm x 1202mm

From where we stood on the beach we could see three casualties in the water. There was also the black bow of a small vessel sticking out of the water like a large shark fin. One of the casualties was trying to grab the bow to support himself but kept slipping under the water. He was obviously in a bad way. None of them were wearing life jackets.

Fortunately, the inshore lifeboat was easing towards them and a crewman jumped into the water to support the ailing casualty. Strong arms soon hauled them all aboard. Our radios crackled.

"Kinghorn Coastguard, Kinghorn Coastguard, this is Kinghorn lifeboat. We have three casualties. we'll take them into Dysart. Over"

"Kinghorn lifeboat, this is Kinghorn Coastguard. Roger, We'll inform the ambulance. Out"

One day I stepped out of the local shop and bumped into Bill Tulloch.

"Ah! Just the man. How do you fancy joining the Coastguard?"

This took me aback.

"Am I not a bit old for that?"

"No, no, as long as your fit and can drive."

I had no idea about what I was letting my self in for. Unlike the lifeboats, which are a charity, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency was a government organisation

responsible for safety at sea and the coastline of the British Isles. The local coastguard rescue units, however, were all volunteers with a variety of skills. We were trained in coastal searches and water, mud and cliff rescue with, of course, first aid. The scariest thing in training was not something obviously dangerous like cliff rescue, which I enjoyed, but using the radios. Fortunately the procedure soon became second nature and I still amuse myself walking along the street reading car number plates in the phonetic alphabet.

I was sitting at home on the white sofa drinking coffee when my pager went off. Unfortunately my elbow was resting on the pager which was set to vibrate and my arm jerked up and spilled the coffee all over the sofa. I was frantically pulling the covers off the cushions when Lyn walked in and looked aghast at the chaos.

"I've got to go! I've got to go! I've been called on a shout."

"Oh leave it. I'll sort it out."

I ran across  the road, down the steps of the Buttercup Close, through the garden of a fellow coastguard to the industrial unit that was the coastguard station. I took off my shoes, pulled on a blue boiler suit, laced up my boots and grabbed my waterproofs and helmet and stuffed them in the back of the crew cab pick up. Others were arriving now. The roller doors went up. We roared away with blue lights flashing and sirens blaring to a report of a body in the water at Aberdour. The radio crackled.

"Stand down Kinghorn. False alarm. The body was a log."

One dark night we had to search the beach from Kirkcaldy harbour to Ravenscraig. A woman had reported that her brother, who was on medication, was missing. As an after thought she mentioned she had checked his clothes and he was probably naked. The image of a naked madman jumping out from behind a bush stayed with me all evening. The search was without incident and the gentleman returned home fully clothed.

The full moon sparkled on the frosted stones and undergrowth as we searched the shore from Limekilns to Charleston. Eventually the police located the emergency call to a cosy pub in Dunfermline.  

We met the Leven team at the middle of Kirkcaldy promenade. An elderly man was missing from his home in Glenrothes. One team went north towards the harbour while we went south, looking over the sea wall to check the beach. At the car park I noticed a man who answered the description in a transit van, slumped over the steering wheel. There was no movement. I thought he was dead. I chapped on the window. He sprang upright, which gave me quite a start. Just then the radios came to life. The other team had found a body lying near rocks by the harbour.

The poor old guy looked quite fresh with only some grazing on his forehead. He hadn't been in the water long. Unfortunately we couldn't just bag him and stretcher  the body up the beach as technically this was a crime scene until the police ruled out suspicious circumstances. A crowd of onlookers were watching over the sea wall so we threw a blanket over him.

Eventually a couple of plain clothes police officers arrived and we held up blankets to hide the deceased from the curious masses as they went through his pockets and presumably looking for signs of foul play. When they had finished we thought we would get home but alas, we had to wait on the coroner. We waited and waited. The weak October sun was sinking below the horizon and we stamped about, trying to keep warm. The tide had turned now and was starting to come in. Eventually the coroner arrived, clutching a coffee. She'd been in Edinburgh and hadn't realised the urgency. The coroner quickly gave the all clear to bag the body and stretcher it over the sea wall. A photograph of the white blanket covering the body on the beach appeared on the front page of that weeks Fife Free Press.

Coastguard Stretcher Party
Oil on canvas 610 x 685mm

One afternoon we joined the South Queensferry team below the spectacular Forth rail bridge at North Queensferry. There is an old quarry here and new villas have been built along it's eastern side. We couldn't believe our eyes when we saw the huge spinnaker sail of a racing yacht wrapped round the chimney of a house. It belonged to a brand new and expensive vessel on it's second outing. There was a stiff, easterly breeze blowing and other vessels were racing under the bridge. I don't know exactly what happened but it certainly must have caused panic as they lost control and slammed into the rock armour at a high rate of knots. Fortunately none of the crew were injured and we were able to help them to the house garden over the bow of the boat. The lifeboat tried to tow it round to the little quarry harbour but the yacht foundered just outside the harbour entrance.

The Kinghorn teams responsibility was the coast from Kirkcaldy to Kincardine bridge, but each team was frequently assisted by the others on it's flank. I only remember once being called to Kincardine bridge. A man had decided to go for a swim and was swept away by the fast flowing river. The bridge had been closed to traffic but was a blaze of flashing blue lights from fire service, police and ambulance vehicles that were parked there. When I looked down from the bridge I could see a lifeboat searching round one of the pillars. We searched the shore in the dark  but nothing was found. A week later we walked the shore from Limekilns to Longannet power station where we met the team walking from Kincardine. Again,nothing was found, but the body turned up a few weeks later on the mudflats at the other side of the river.

The South Queensferry team had the heaviest burden as they had the hotspots of Cramond Island and the Forth Road bridge to cover. Cramond Island can be reached at low tide by the old military causeway and on fine summer days attracts hundreds of visitors. There are often picnics, parties, raves and all sorts of wild stuff going on. Unfortunately, these visitors are often forgetful or ignorant of the tide. The Coastguard and lifeboat are frequently called out to rescue stranded people from the island.

On a moonless night we drove over to Granton harbour and clambered down a ladder onto the waiting lifeboat. We were whisked at high speed to Cramond Island and landed on a small beach where we stood like penguins looking up at the black undergrowth. I was apprehensive about a night search, as the island was thickly overgrown with skin tearing brambles, dangerous with old military ruins and ankle breaking holes. However, it would have to be done as a young woman had been reported stranded on the island. I didn't notice it but one of the team spotted a light and went forward. He found the young woman but she was in a tent, happy to spend the night there. Earlier she felt that someone was following her and was worried about being stalked. It was thought this was the same person who raised the alarm. There was no danger now so we climbed back on the rib and left her to the solitude.

The opening of the Forth Road Bridge in 1964 was a great improvement on the old ferries. Unfortunately It was designed with walkways on the outer edges and is a spectacular walk but makes it easy to jump off, if a person is so minded. No one in the Coastguard looks forward to recovering bodies but someone has to do it. After my first experience I grew quite hardened until we had to bag a teenage girl a dog walker had found on the rocks at Braefoot pier. I was sad about this for days, as it was such a waste of a young life.

The Fife Coastal Path attracts many walkers and inevitably there are occasional accidents such as broken ankles .One day an exercise had been arranged with three coastguard teams and the fire service to compare their different method of rope rescue. To do this we needed a cliff. Usually we trained at the Hawkcraig sea cliffs at Aberdour but this time we drove to the highest cliffs in Fife, Kincraig near Elie. To get to the top of the cliff we had to engage four wheel drive and follow a steep, overgrown track. During World War 2 this area was fortified with coastal defense guns and a radar station to protect the entrance to the Firth of Forth. At the foot of the cliffs is the famous Chain Walk, only accessible at lower states of the tide. This entails climbing up vertical rock ribs using ladders of steel staples and traversing one part holding on to a cable. It is good fun but not for the unfit or faint hearted. We had just parked the vehicles when Joe said,

 

"Right lads, there's been a shout. Someone has fallen on the path."

I thought this was part of the exercise but when we reached the Elie end of the Chain Walk there was a woman sitting on a rock in considerable pain with an obvious compound fracture to her ankle. The ambulance men gave her first aid and I was anticipating a long stretcher carry across Earlsferry links, but Joe had other ideas and called for a helicopter. It probably took about half an hour for Rescue 131 to arrive from R.A.F. Boulmer in Northumberland. The Sea King helicopter was an impressive beast and the whup, whup, whup of it's rotors reverbated off the towering cliffs as it hovered above us. A crewman was lowered down who clipped onto the stretcher, disappeared into the sky again and then roared off to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. An intrepid photographer had taken a long lense photo of the aircraft hovering below the cliffs which appeared the next day on the front page of the Dundee Courier.

The painting of the Muckle Coastguard had a long gestation and was originally intended to be a landscape.There had been a storm overnight and it was still blowing hard with dark, scudding clouds overhead when I took the dogs for their morning walk on the beach. It was low tide and near the rocks at the western end of the beach I found a large buoy and mooring rope that had been washed ashore. I thought that this might be useful to some of the fishermen at the harbour so started dragging it along the beach. The dogs thought this was great fun and were leaping about and barking, trying to grab the rope. Back home I made a few doodles of this and eventually chose a tall canvas to make a painting. When I was pulling the buoy along the beach I had the houses and promenade on my left hand side, the harbour dead ahead and the Firth of Forth, East Lothian, Inchkeith and Arthur Seat on my right. I painted this but unfortunately there was a gap in the middle and I had no idea what to put in it. The painting lay around for years before the idea came to me. It needed a muckle coastguard.

I finally finished the painting but it took many more years to understand what I'd done. I'd inadvertently created my very own painted version of a Pictish power stone.

 

 

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