THE SURVIVOR
After the fishing boat Louisa sank in minutes, her four crew clung to their deflated life raft in the pitch darkness. They even laughed and joked to keep their spirits up. But by dawn, three of the men would be dead. The fourth, Lachlann Armstrong, 28, te
HE was the sole survivor of a fishing boat tragedy that claimed the lives of his three crewmates. Now Lachlann Armstrong has revealed for the first time how he cheated death when the Louisa sank off the Hebrides.
His electrifying testimony describes how, wearing nothing but a pair of tracksuit trousers and a faulty life jacket, he swam for his life, battling in complete darkness through water only a few degrees above freezing, towards a shore he could not even see.
Speaking exclusively to The Scottish Mail on Sunday, the 28year-old discloses how his legs were tangled in ropes as he thrashed through the sea – and how, a short distance from land, he became confused and disorientated.
WE KNEW THAT WE WERE IN TROUBLE
Exhausted and numbed by cold, he lapsed in and out of consciousness and almost succumbed to a powerful urge to give up and drift into sleep.
Choking on a wave shocked him awake and he found the strength to struggle on to the shore where – two and a half hours after his boat sank – rescuers found him halfnaked and unable to stand, clinging to the rocks.
Last week, an official report highlighted a string of failings with the Louisa and concluded she sank when a hose used to clean the deck had been left on and had pumped too much water onto the boat.
But father-of-one Mr Armstrong – who, incredibly, returned to sea two weeks after his ordeal – said the life raft’s failure was the reason his crewmates died.
He spoke of the terrifying moment the crew awoke to the boat sinking and the panic when they realised the emergency raft would not inflate.
He said: ‘It was the worst night of my life, of our lives.
‘We knew we were in trouble. I still can’t believe the other three didn’t survive. I feel so sad, heartbroken. I still find it difficult to accept. I didn’t do anything remarkable, I was lucky.’
Tragedy struck during the early hours of April 9 last year.
For five days the crew of the Louisa – Mr Armstrong, Chris Morrison, 27, skipper Paul Alliston, 42, all from Lewis, and Martin Johnstone, 29, from Caithness – had been at sea harvesting crab and lobster.
After a run of gruelling 20-hour shifts hauling ropes and sorting their catch, they had finally earned a good night’s rest.
With fair weather and a flat calm sea, the skipper anchored the 50ft boat 650ft (200m) from the shore by Mingulay Bay, just off the Hebridean isle of Mingulay.
While the crew cleaned the deck, the skipper cooked a meal of steak, chips and peas. Afterwards, all aboard the vessel were collapsed into the first deep sleep of their trip. But as disclosed in last week’s report by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch, the hose used to clean the deck had been left on.
SKIPPER SHOUTED: GET UP! WE’RE GOING DOWN!
Around 2.30am, the crew woke up. Mr Armstrong said: ‘I had a weird feeling, like something was wrong. I pulled my curtain open to peer outside. It was pitch black so I couldn’t see anything, but I saw Paul was at the window. He suddenly shouted, “Get up, get up! We’re going down!”.’
They pulled on clothing as fast as they could – Mr Armstrong only managed to grab a pair of tracksuit bottoms – and quickly clambered up the ladder to the deck.
The skipper set off the emergency signal to alert the Coastguard and with the boat already nearly vertical, one crewman climbed over the wheelhouse roof to reach the barrel-shaped container where the life raft was stowed.
Their safety should have been guaranteed. Designed to activate either on contact with the water or when a cord is pulled, the rafts use high-pressure gas to inflate – in seconds – a 10ft emergency vessel that would have kept the whole crew afloat until help arrived.
Their raft failed to inflate. Mr Armstrong said: ‘Chris made it to the raft case but it wouldn’t inflate – the gas canister to fill it was empty. Paul climbed back down beneath the deck to fetch our life jackets – he was the only one brave enough to go back in.
‘We started cutting fenders from the railings to stuff inside the raft to try to make it float.
‘But it was useless and falling apart – it was as much good as a trying to float on a deflated paddling pool. When the boat went under and we all jumped on to it, the fenders started popping out and we were thrown into the water.’
SHIP’S GHOSTLY LIGHTS FROM UNDER SURFACE
The crew faced an appalling dilemma – should they try to escape the bone-chilling cold by swimming through the darkness to the shore, or obey the safety training manuals which tell fishermen to stay together with the life raft to boost the chance of a successful rescue.
Mr Johnstone headed for land, while the rest of the crew waited.
Mr Armstrong said: ‘It was freezing, unbearable. The shock, there are no words to describe how cold the water was – it was agony. We were panicking, your body panics and your breathing becomes so fast and heavy in that coldness – it takes ages to fill your lungs.
‘From there it was a struggle. I was getting my legs tangled up in the raft’s ropes and my head started going under the water because my life jacket hadn’t tied properly and was coming loose over my head.’
The group had managed to stabilise the situation – and even cracked a few jokes.
Mr Armstrong said: ‘Once we got ourselves together, we started laughing and joking, like about the coldness, and Paul was joking about the scratches and cuts on his legs, saying that the sea water would do them good.
‘We were trying to make light of it all. I don’t think any of us thought we would die – we were sure the lifeboat would be with us soon.’
In the dark, surrounded by floating boxes, ropes and oil, the three men tried to paddle their makeshift raft towards the shore.
But the lights from the Louisa – shining below the surface – were getting further away, and they realised they were being pulled farther out to sea.
Despairing of the situation and getting colder by the second, Mr Armstrong decided he also wanted
to swim to the shore. He said: ‘I begged Chris and Paul to make a go for it to the shore with me, but they wouldn’t. They said we had to stay together with the raft, like we’d been taught. But it wasn’t a raft.
‘It was a hard, hard decision. But I just got too cold and knew I had to get out of the water.’
Determined to survive, wearing nothing but tracksuit bottoms and a faulty life jacket, he powered through the water, guided only by a sense of where the land should be. I BELIEVED THAT I’D GONE, THAT I WAS LOST
He said: ‘I know 200m doesn’t seem much but the water is so cold – as soon as you start moving you can feel the heat sapping out of your body. You are burning with cold. It’s impossible to know how long I was in there for – it felt like an eternity.
‘The water was completely black, the sky was black and I couldn’t see a thing – the torch from my life jacket was blinding me, so I couldn’t see more than 2ft ahead.
‘Then I became so cold I couldn’t feel my feet, my hands, anything.’
With the water an chilly 5C (41F), his strength faded. He said: ‘A curand rent had caught me and dragged me out to sea. I believed I had gone, I was lost, and I almost gave up.
‘I thought, “I’m lost here, there is no point in swimming any more – I am running out of energy”. So I just tried to relax and chill out.
‘I was exhausted. Then I thought, “If I maybe just fall asleep, I could conserve my energy and the Coastguard could find me”... just close my eyes for a little while.’
Mr Armstrong was in the final stages of hypothermia and was becoming confused and disconnected from reality as he drifted in out of consciousness. He said: ‘I kind of got bored, just floating, so I started trying to paddle. I remember being delighted because I couldn’t feel my feet but I could hear them splashing behind me. DELIRIOUS WITH COLD, LAUGHING MY HEAD OFF
‘I was imagining they were chicken drumsticks slapping against the sea. I was laughing my head off. It was a bizarre feeling.’ It was only when a wave splashed him forcefully in the face – making him choke and gasp – that he was pulled back to reality.
He said: ‘Out of nowhere a wave splashed against me and I started coughing and spluttering. I panicked. I thought it was going to get choppy and realised I was stuck out in the ocean. I was going to drown.
‘I started kicking hard and then began to hear the shore. I kept splashing and then my elbows hit some rocks. I thought, “I have made it, I have done it”.
‘I was so happy but I was jammed because I couldn’t move my arms. I started shouting and then somehow managed to pull myself up.
‘I had cuts and was bleeding all over my arms from the rocks, and I couldn’t feel my legs at all.’
Around 5am – two-and-a-half hours after the first distress signal was sent – a lifeboat found him clinging to rocks several hundred metres to the east of Mingulay Bay, severely hypothermic and unable to stand up or walk.
Mr Armstrong said: ‘When the Coastguard found me, they said they couldn’t believe I was alive. They took me to the helicopter.
‘When my body was reheating, it was agony. I have never felt pain like it – like getting stabbed from the inside by knives. I was buckled over in pain.’ It was only when the pain started to subside that he realised the helicopter was circling the sky – and learned the grim fate of his crewmates.
Around 4.25am, Mr Alliston and Mr Morrison had been found unresponsive and face down in the water near the uninflated life raft.
The skipper’s body slipped from his life jacket as he was being recovered and has never been found. Mr Johnstone was found soon after, also face down in the water, 165ft (50m) from shore.
Mr Armstrong said: ‘I didn’t believe it. I struggled to believe it in my head. I knew what I was being told but it just wasn’t real. ALWAYS GOING BACK TO SEA... OUT OF RESPECT One minute you’re working with all your friends, having dinner and going to bed, and the next minute you’re in a helicopter and being told they have died. It is heartbreaking, so, so sad.’
He was kept in the Western Isles Hospital in Stornoway for a day and survived with only minor injuries – although he could not feel his feet for the following two months.
Astonishingly, he returned to sea and started fishing again only two weeks after the tragedy.
He said: ‘I was always going to
go back to sea. I never questioned it and I wasn’t afraid. It is like respect to them, because I know they would have done the same.
‘They were my friends, my family, and we worked for one another when on that boat.’
The MAIB report, released last Wednesday, raised concerns about the effectiveness of the life jackets worn by the Louisa’s crew, the time it took for rescuers to arrive at the scene, and about the life raft gas canister being empty. It also suggested the crew were overworked and exhausted.
But Mr Armstrong said: ‘The only reason any of us died was because the life raft never inflated. That was the sole killer. Life jackets and the Coastguard timings would have been irrelevant had we been sitting in a life raft. That was the one thing we were all relying on.’
He added: ‘It’s upsetting that a portion of the blame is being laid on our skipper, for our tiredness. That’s wrong. We all worked like that for years, we knew what we were doing – all fishermen are the same.
‘I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for Paul. He was the only one willing to go back into the boat when it was sinking to get our life jackets.
‘That guy, to me, is a hero. The Coastguard did the best they could. I am incredibly grateful to everyone who helped us and to all those who fundraised afterwards and went out in their boats to try to find Paul’s body.’