Alistair honoured for 30 years’ service to Dunbar RNLI

Alistair, 64, joined the crew in 1993 and his first experience of the lifeboat gave a sign of things to come.

Alistair, who was born and bred in Dunbar, said: ‘I’d spent a lot of time on boats – I’d had little cabin cruisers of my own and been on fishing boats – so the coxswain at the time, Noel Wight, invited me to join them at North Berwick’s lifeboat day that year. Approaching the Bass on our way back we got a shout to a local dive boat in trouble. Iain McDougall, who is still part of the crew, had taken his bagpipes to the open day and played them as we went to pick up the dive boat. It was a different style back then!

After the shout, Noel said, 'So, are you going to join now?

'I suppose I’d better,' I said. ‘So, my very first experience of the lifeboat was a shout.’

Alistair served on both the station’s inshore lifeboat (ILB) and all-weather lifeboat (ALB) and was quickly trained up as a mechanic. One of his first official service calls was to a local fishing trawler that radioed the coastguard for help, saying it had ‘broken down, was taking on water and drifting to shore’. Dunbar’s all-weather Solent-class lifeboat responded and towed the vessel to safety. Alistair said: ‘That was the last shout for the Solent. By then we had the Waveney-class and the inshore D-class.’

He added: ‘All shouts are memorable but some you want to forget. Over the years, we’ve had to deal with some challenging incidents and you deal with them as best you can but you don’t always hear what the outcome was for the casualty. One that stands out is that of a young boy who had a nasty fall at Pease Bay. As well as the lifeboat, there were paramedics, the coastguard, police and a helicopter. He was in a lot of pain but at least that was a good sign he hadn’t suffered a severe injury to his neck or back. I always wonder how that turned out for him.’

Alistair’s day job throughout his time on the crew was as an electrician at the Tarmac cement plant, formerly Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers when he began his apprenticeship, and he worked there for 47 years until his retirement last year. Having been trained in first aid for work, Alistair has also often been called upon to deal with casualties at sea. He said: ‘I had some incidents at work so had experience of dealing with those.’

And he said of the more challenging callouts he’s encountered over the years: ‘When you come off a traumatic shout you can’t switch off. You’re thinking, what could we have done better, what went wrong, what went right? It’s always there. Nowadays, there are people you can speak to, which is a great thing. I’ve been lucky. I’ll have a sleepless night the first night but then I can get back into a routine.’

Having experienced both the satisfaction of saving a life at sea but also witnessing moments of tragedy, Alistair added: ‘It only takes one small thing to change everything.’

Alistair has also seen the lighter side of volunteering for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. He said: ‘We went out to one small day fishing boat with a flat battery and, as we approached, the man asked us if we could give him a jump start because the fish were starting to bite. We had to remind him we weren’t the AA and we’d have to tow him to the harbour like everybody else!’

Alistair has also experienced first-hand what it’s like to be airlifted to safety when he came to the aid of a young couple cut off by the tide below the cliffs at Winterfield promenade at the rocky outcrop known as the ‘pin cushion’.

‘Although it was summer, it was a rough day with a spring tide and a northerly swell running,’ he said. ‘The ILB dropped me off but they couldn’t come back for me because it was too rough. The water was coming up to where the couple were and the young woman was starting to get distressed. A Royal Navy Sea King helicopter was called and I set off a flare so it could find us. Once they arrived they did a grand job and quickly airlifted us one by one to Winterfield Park. On another occasion I spent an entire training exercise in a Sea King, which was a great experience, but when the exercise was over I was winched down into the water. Not pleasant!’

And perhaps his most unusual ‘shout’ was when he came to the aid of a woman who had slipped and hurt her head halfway up a mountain!

Alistair said: ‘I was up Glencoe one day and had just come down from climbing Bidean Nam Bian, when I saw a police motor come flying into the car park, shortly followed by Glencoe Mountain Rescue team. There were only four of them so I introduced myself and, when they realised I knew first aid, they asked me to join them. We went back up the hill I’d just climbed, found the woman and managed to walk her down. She said she hadn’t expected that to happen. I said, “I bet you also didn’t expect this – I’m lifeboat crew!”’

Dad-of-one Alistair, whose son Daniel, 28, is a corporal in the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Cavalry, says he recognises the strain being a lifeboat volunteer – who often have to drop everything at a moment’s notice to answer the pager’s call – can have on families. When his son was still a baby, Alistair was called out at 10pm one Sunday night to help Eyemouth lifeboat tow a trawler in rough seas.

Alistair said: ‘I’d just changed my son’s nappy when we were tasked. It was a dirty night when we picked up the tow. A few of the crew were ill that night. The trawler was totally disabled. We’d just got the boat into Eyemouth when there was another shout. That was a long night. It was 3.45pm the next day before we got back.’

Although he has since divorced from paramedic ex-wife Glenda, he says: ‘She has been very supportive over the years and that’s very important.’

Alistair’s actual anniversary on the crew was last year but he was recently presented with a medal to mark his incredible 30-year service with the RNLI.

But, although he will turn 65 in October, Alistair has no plans to hang up his yellow wellies just yet. He said: ‘I’m not ready to retire. As long as I’m passed medically fit and my line manager agrees I can stay on.’

ends

Notes to editors

Established in 1808, 16 years before the formation of the RNLI, Dunbar Lifeboat Station is one of the oldest in Scotland and is located on the south side of the mouth of the Firth of Forth. Since its formation, its volunteer crews have been honoured with 12 awards for gallantry.

It operates two lifeboats – the Trent class all-weather lifeboat (ALB) John Neville Taylor, moored at Torness Power Station, and the D-class inshore lifeboat (ILB) David Lauder, which launches from Dunbar Harbour.

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