Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [4]
It was, and still is, a magical place.
But not on that night.
On board the ferry, Walter watched the Scottish coastline fade as the steel, flat-hulled ship slid out into the jaws of the awaiting tempest. The crossing became progressively rougher and rougher as the weather deteriorated even further. Until, only a few miles from her Northern Irish destination, the Princess Victoria found herself in the middle of one of the most ferocious Irish Sea storms ever witnessed.
Initially the ferry rode it, but a weakness in the ferry stern doors would prove disastrous.
Slowly the doors started to ship in water. As the seawater poured in and the waves began to break over the freeboard, the ship began to lose her ability to manoeuvre or make headway.
The bilges, also, were struggling to cope. Leaking stern doors and an inability to clear excess water are a killer combination in any storm.
It was only a matter of time before the sea would overpower her.
Soon, swung broadside to the waves by the power of the wind, the Princess Victoria began to lurch and tilt under the weight of the incoming water. The captain ordered the lifeboats to be lowered.
A survivor told the Ulster High Court that Walter was heard giving out the instructions: ‘Carry on giving out life jackets to the women and children.’
Over the roar of the wind and storm, the captain and his crew ushered the panic-stricken passengers into the lifeboats.
No one was to know that they were lowering the women and children to their deaths.
As the lifeboats were launched, the passengers were trapped in that ‘dead man’s zone’ between the hull of the steel ferry and the breaking white water of the oncoming waves.
In the driving wind and rain this was a fatal place to be caught.
The lifeboats lurched, then pitched repeatedly under the violence of the breaking waves. They were unable to escape from the side of the ferry. The crew were powerless to make progress against the ferocity of the wind and waves, until eventually, one by one, almost every lifeboat had been capsized.
Survival time would now be reduced to minutes in the freezing Irish January sea.
The storm was winning and the speed with which the waves began to overpower the vessel now accelerated. The ferry was waging a losing battle against the elements; and both the captain and Walter knew it.
The Donaghadee lifeboat, the Sir Samuel Kelly, set out into the ferocious sea at approximately 1.40 p.m. on the Saturday, and managed to reach the stricken ferry.
Fighting gale force waves and wind, they managed to retrieve only thirty-three of the 165 passengers.
As a former pilot in the First World War, Walter had always preferred flying as a means of travel, rather than going by sea. Whenever he was in the Dakota, flying over to Northern Ireland, he always asked for the front seat, joking that if it crashed then he wanted to die first.
It was bitter irony it wasn’t a plane that was going to kill him, but the sea.
Everything he could possibly do to help had been done; every avenue exhausted. No lifeboats remained. Walter quietly retired to his cabin, to wait – to wait for the sea to deal her final blow.
The wait wasn’t long, but it must have felt like an eternity. The glass in Walter’s cabin porthole would have shattered into a thousand fragments as it succumbed to the relentless pressure of the water.
Walter, my great-grandfather, the captain of the Princess Victoria and 129 other crew and passengers were soon swallowed by the blackness.
Gone.
They were only a few miles from the Ulster coast, almost within sight of Walter and Margaret’s house at Portavo Point.
Standing at the bay window of the drawing room, watching as the coastguard flares lit up the sky, summoning the Donaghadee lifeboat crew to action stations, Margaret and her family could only wait anxiously, and pray.
Their prayers were never answered.
CHAPTER 4
The Donaghadee lifeboat went to sea again at 7.00 a.m. on the Sunday morning, in eerie, post-storm, calm