NAVY NEWS, NOVEMBER 2010
New Year’s Eve rescuers honoured
FOUR naval airmen who were ‘pushed to the limit’ saving four fi shermen have been singled out for their bravery. The last day of 2009 had been quiet for the crew of Rescue 193 – pilots Lt Cdrs Martin Shepherd and Steven Hopkins, observer Lt Alex Stevenson and aircrewman PO ‘Cags’ Lacy – until, with the sun about to slip below the horizon, their Sea King was scrambled from Culdrose to collect a heart attack victim from Porthtowan. Instead, however, the 771 NAS aircraft was dispatched to the Western Approaches when Falmouth Coastguard picked up a distress call from a fi shing vessel, 50 miles south-west of the Scillies.
The four crew of the Trevessa
were about to abandon ship after fi re ravaged the trawler. The boat had lost power and its life raft was no use. The fi shermen huddled on the stern and waited for the Sea King to come.
The helicopter arrived on the scene in darkness, with wind upwards of 40kts, a sea state bordering on six, and driving rain. There was no radio communication with the fi shing vessel, which was cloaked in darkness thanks to the power failure.
With wires, masts and other obstacles – not least the fi re still burning – there was just a few safe feet at the stern from which to evacuate the fi shermen. PO Lacy was lowered on to the pitching and wallowing deck of the Trevassa, but as he tried to climb over the guardrail the boat pitched and he was thrown 20ft into the Atlantic. Still attached to the wire,
he was winched back into the Sea King, then made a second attempt to board the Trevassa. This time he succeeded and the senior rating was able to get all four fi shermen off the stricken craft by hi-line transfer. The rescue lasted 50 minutes in conditions described by PO Lacy as “appalling” and by the fi shermen as “a screaming gale”. The rescue earned all four fl iers the Edward and Maisie Lewis Award for Skill and Gallantry from the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society; they were, says their citation, “pushed to the limit” last New Year’s Eve. It continues: “Determined pro- fessionalism, high order teamwork and bravery enabled the crew of Rescue 193 to transition from a complex airborne medical resus- citation, to successfully executing a perilous winch transfer, thereby saving the lives of four men from Trevessa tions.”
in treacherous condi-
PO Lacy, who’s subsequently left the Service, has also been awarded with the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for his bravery that day.
27 FOSTies, BOSTie and Westie
WHAT is it with birds stowing away on Her Majesty’s Ships this month? We’ve had a scops owl cadging a lift aboard HMS Montrose in the Indian Ocean...
...and now a slightly less exotic
a bright yellow budgerigar who dropped in on HMS Westminster off Plymouth as the frigate was ‘enjoying’ the travails of Basic Operational
BOST – hence the bird’s name). The ship was in the throes of some punishing serials in the Plymouth Exercise Area when Westminster’s Executive Offi cer Lt Cdr Nick Wood came across the bird on the upper deck. According to the XO, the budgie looked “somewhat disorientated and tired by its procedural FlyEx” after the ordeal of fl ying all the way out to the ship. So the stowaway was treated to
bread, nuts and water in the XO’s cabin, allowed a decent period of rest, and then ‘invited’ to meet the ship’s company – and possibly some of the 63 FOSTies (that’s one for every three members of the crew...) on board for BOST.
Diamond jubilation
FROM the shape they’ve formed on the sprawling fl ight deck, it’s pretty obvious that this is the ship’s company of HMS Diamond (watched by a few bemused matelots on HMS Ark Royal). They’re raising their caps to celebrate the new destroyer being formally handed over to the Royal Navy – hence the White Ensign rather than the Blue fl ying. It, fi ttingly, fell to the RN’s Head of Destroyers, Cdre Steve Brunton, to formally accept Diamond – the third of the £1bn Type 45s to be handed over.
Diamond arrived in Portsmouth in late September, and found the naval base devoid of Type 45s as both her older sisters, Daring and Dauntless, were away on trials, the former with the Americans off the Eastern Seaboard of the USA, the latter successfully fi ring Sea Viper missiles off Scotland.
Training, being the new ship in town, Diamond’s guest book is fast filling up. Her passageways, mess decks, as well as the rooms and compartments which are home to her ‘business end’ have already echoed with the sound of voices from Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, France, Belgium, Germany, and the UAE – each one keen to see what all the fuss is about when it comes to Type 45. Not that this never-ending procession of VIPs can detract from
the core business of preparing Diamond for front-line duties; D34 has an ‘in service’ date of July 2011. She also has quite a substantial number of sailors who’ve never been to sea before... “It’s a steep learning curve for each and every one of us – not a
day has gone by without an inspection of some sort, but you can feel the enthusiasm on board, with everyone eager to get to sea and really start transforming Diamond into a front-line warship,” says her CO Cdr Ian Clarke (pictured at the front of his ship’s company by LA(Phot) Kyle Heller).
“Diamond performed magnifi cently during its early sea trials. It is an enormous responsibility to command a ship with Diamond’s cutting edge.”
After a few weeks alongside in Portsmouth, Diamond has now resumed her demanding trials programme.
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Academic excellence Cont
tiinuiitnu ty
Firm found ar
rt foundations
Caring comcommunity Sport for all ha
to A chance to perform As well the raft of inspections by the staff of Flag Officer Sea Sea Training (or
● BOSTie takes a break on LS Mark Priestman’s cap when the excitement on Westminster’s bridge grows too much for him
Sadly, that’s where the happy tale of BOSTie ends; the sailors were all set to release the rested bird when the general alarm sounded. The budgie suffered a suspected heart-attack and died; he was buried at sea. “I’ll miss Bostie,” said Lt Cdr
Wood. “He was only in our lives for a brief time but he made our day.”
news, Westminster was due to undergo her fi nal inspection from
In non-feathered-friend-related
the FOSTies as Navy News went to press.
personnel and material effi ciency of HMS Westminster to the limit, but as the old adage says, ‘Train hard, fi ght easy’,” said CO Cdr Tim Green. “We have the most capable Type
23 frigate in the Navy, having just emerged from upkeep with a number of upgrades, so we’ve been looking forward to putting her through her paces.”
“These two months test the
avian... in a slightly less exotic location... Enter ‘BOSTie the Budgie’,
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