Why every British beach needs a Baywatch dog
An ex-lifeguard tells how his pup could have saved lives this summer
It has been a deadly summer on Britain’s beaches, with 12 people drowning off its shores over the course of the past week. Five men in their 20s were caught in a fatal rip tide at Camber Sands on Wednesday; the weekend prior, six swimmers died in Essex, Poole and Aberdeen; a few days later, two-year-old McKayla Bruynius, whose father Rudy was killed when they got into trouble in Fistral Beach, Newquay, that same weekend, passed away in hospital.
The danger of the water is something Steven Jamieson, a former lifeguard of 32 years, knows only too well. With the help of his Newfoundland, Bilbo, an 89kg mass of silky brown fur, the pair patrolled Cornwall’s beaches together for nearly a decade, seeking to teach locals about the importance of sea safety.
“The problem is education: there isn’t any,” the 63-year-old says. “As an island nation, lessons on understanding the sea should be compulsory – it could help to prevent so many tragedies.”
Trying to get people interested in learning how to protect themselves in the water had been a long-time trial for Jamieson, who became head lifeguard at Sennen beach, Cornwall in 2000 – that was, until Bilbo came along three years later. “I had never really wanted a pet. I thought they’d be too restrictive,” he remembers. “But when my office manager brought this 14-week-old thing into the office, he was just a hoot; so full of energy, everybody fell in love with him straight away.” A year after that first meeting, Jamieson had Bilbo to stay at his shed, where he lives alone, atop the Cornish cliffs for a few days. When he returned to his owners, without Jamieson he was inconsolable, howling constantly and refusing to eat. Less than 48 hours later he was by his side once again. But Bilbo wasn’t going to be left to pad around the garden while Jamieson was at work. “I said that I’d take him on one condition: that he’d be with me wherever I went – in the office during winter, and out patrolling the beaches in the summertime.” They soon hit a stumbling block: dogs were banned on a number of Cornish beaches, including Sennen Cove and Land’s End, in 2008. However, by then such was Bilbo’s following that 20,000 people signed a petition urging the council to rethink their stance. “I suggested to them that if I could get Bilbo to just sit on the back of my quad-bike and only go into the sea, rather than onto the sand itself, then he wouldn’t technically be on the beach.”
Eyebrows were raised at the suggestion, but Jamieson had another trick up his sleeve. “I knew that Bilbo could be a great educational tool.
had given lifeguards a reputation as beer-drinking layabouts who looked at women all the time, but Bilbo helped to change the way people saw us.”
He had been trained to recognise the international signal for help – raising one arm in the air and shouting – and with enormous feet that could paddle at pace, it was finally decided that he was an asset and not a liability.
Quickly, he become a local legend, earning the title of the UK’s first official lifeguard dog and being featured in news coverage from South Africa to Thailand, later being crowned Dog of the Day at Crufts in 2009. Jamieson capitalised on the buzz by getting Bilbo a jacket made in the red and yellow hues of the warning flags used at sea, because “I thought that people would find that easier to understand than the expensive signs that had been introduced to Cornish beaches at the time”.
His hunch was right: with more people taking interest in the dog, the flags’s message soon caught on and the average number of rescues per season went from 40-60 down to just three in the final period of Bilbo’s employ. He was also credited with saving three lives himself, running over to swimmers in danger and raising the alarm with his gruff barks.
According to Lee Heard, head of volunteering at the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS), there is always a “significant spike” in incidents during August – though it remains to be seen whether 2016 has proved more deadly than the same month last year, in which 35 people drowned. Camber Sands has been criticised for its lack of lifeguards, but due to shortages in staff and funding, Heard says “it’s a real challenge to police every metre of the coast”.
Bilbo died aged 13 last year, but Jamieson hopes that his work will live on. “You can put lifeguards on the beach but you also need a service that’s proactive, not reactive.
“Waves are predictable, and if more people can be taught how to spot patterns in the water, and when waves can become dangerous, we can be spared more of these disasters.
“We have to reach people before they get into trouble, and that’s why Bilbo was so good.”