Sea rescue 100 years ago today

Clive Mumford relates the story of a daring rescue off the Isles of Scilly that happened exactly 100 years ago today

As if there had not been sufficient mayhem during the four years of often merciless submarine warfare in the waters west of the Isles of Scilly there was an incident that extended this drama right up to the day the Armistice was signed.

The day before the November 11 cessation of hostilities (the same day poet Wilfred Owen was to lose his life on the Western Front) the rescue tug, Blazer (pictured) , one of a flotilla of such vessels working from Scilly during hostilities, was wrecked less than a mile from her St Mary’s quay berth. The rescue tug had been on a towage job to Falmouth and her skipper had decided to return to Scilly for what would undoubtedly be an end-of-war celebration.

Richard Larn, in his book The Isles of Scilly in the Great War, writes: “On entering St Mary’s Sound about midnight she passed inside the Woolpack Rock, went aground and her engine room commenced to fill.”

Her engines were put to full astern and temporarily she was refloated before again filling and starting to sink. About half of the crew of 28 managed to get into a small boat.

“The remainder were now in the sea fighting for their lives battling a mass of floating fenders and deck gear,” writes Larn.

The hero of the hour was a St Mary’s man, Joe Pender

(pictured) , father of a family that in due course was to expand to 14 children and skipper of “trot-boat No 9”.

The “trot boat” is described by Larn as a “twin-screw steam-driven naval harbour launch that ferried men and supplies out to vessels in the Roads that were moored to a string of ‘trot buoys’ laid by the Royal Navy”.

Larn says Joe was in the trot boat, lying alongside St Mary’s quay, waiting for orders from the duty lieutenant on board the drifter Marvellous.

Joe had seen the lights and distress signals and, despite having received no orders, used his initiative, cast off and was at the casualty within 10 minutes where they met a mass of floating wreckage. The screams of the men in the water were said to be “heart-rending” and to add to their problems they were being shouted at from coastguards ashore warning them not to try to swim in because the heavy seas would undoubtedly dash them to death on the rocks.

During all this time one of the engines of the trot boat failed, skipper Pender shouting to his engineer: “Carry on with the other, we’ve still got a good anchor and chain.”

The Scillonian magazine reported that Joe and his engineer “pulled men out of the water by boat hook and afterwards the former was reprimanded for acting without instructions”.

Larn says the lieutenant who should have been on duty said “mum’s the word, no doubt having been in Tregarthen’s Hotel celebrating instead of being on the quay”.

Later, when the trot boat was alongside the quay and discharged its shipwrecked cargo (all the crew were saved), Joe saw tangled in the trot boat’s propeller what looked like a body. It was a fender from the Blazer, around which was wrapped the captain’s coat resplendent with brass buttons.

Joe’s sole recognition for his heroic life-saving exploit seems to have been a thank you from the crew of the Blazer (now lying in five fathoms of water), which read: “On behalf of the Blazer’s officers and men, please accept the accompaniment of this note as our very small appreciation of valuable services rendered. You undoubtedly saved our lives and we offer our heartiest thanks.”

Subsequently skin-divers were advised to keep away from the spot where Blazer went down because of brass cylinders thought to be gun charges.

Just two of Joe’s 14 children are alive today: Frank, aged 99, and Bill, 89. Both followed their father in making their living on the water. Frank served in the Royal Navy in the Second World War and afterwards ran pleasure craft in the islands. Bill was a pleasure boat skipper before working as a docker on St Mary’s quay for 40 years.