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Coxswain Victor Sutherland talks to Mark Stephen about the outstanding efforts of the Fraserburgh RNLI volunteers to save lives in World War One.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution is the charity that saves lives at sea. During the First World War, with younger men on active duty, it was often down to the older generation to go to the aid of those in danger around our coasts. The war also brought with it a different type of casualty. RNLI lifeboat crews were called out to ships that had been torpedoed or struck mines.

On the 8th August 1915 Coxswain Andrew Noble made the decision to launch the RNLB Lady Rothes following a report that a submarine had been sighted near two ships 15 miles off shore. The first motorboat for Fraserburgh RNLI had been donated by a grateful father whose daughter survived the sinking of the Titanic. Only four days after the naming ceremony the new lifeboat found the steamer SS Glenravel and its crew who had been fired on by the submarine. The 14 crew were all saved.

In 1919 coxswain Andrew Noble and the acting second coxswain Andrew Farquhar were drowned in the first of three lifeboat disasters in Fraserburgh.

Image courtesy of RNLI

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