Saved from rip tide by quick thinking and RNLI
Shirt used as buoyancy aid kept father and daughter alive for 45 minutes until lifeboat rescued them
BEATEN DOWN by unrelenting waves, father Ben Biltcliffe knew he would have to think his way out after he and his 11-year-old daughter, Grace, were caught in a riptide.
While he credits the RNLI and Coastguard for eventually plucking them from the sea on the Whitby coast, it was his quick-thinking removing his shirt and using it as a flotation device that kept them safe until help came.
The pair, from Ripon, North Yorkshire, had been on a lastminute holiday at Stoupe Beck Sands, close to Robin Hood’s Bay, along with Grace’s brother Peter, 12, the children’s mother Allanah Yeatman, 49, and her partner, Hugh Miller, 30, last month, when they got into difficulty playing in waist-high water in the surf.
Neither Mr Biltcliffe, 45, nor Mr Miller, who was with them, realised they were in danger.
He said: “Grace was in the middle of Hugh and I and we were holding a hand each. Occasionally she was getting pulled backwards a bit with the waves but always parallel to where Hugh and I were and never very far away.
“Then at one point, Grace got swept slightly to the side. She was no more than an arm’s length away but when I reached out to grab her, I realised that I
wasn’t standing on as much sand as before.”
He continued: “At first I thought we must have mistakenly gone into a deeper part of the sea and didn’t put two and two together.
“What I didn’t realise was that the beach was literally getting washed away from under us.”
Mr Miller did his best to reach the pair, to no avail, and Ms Yeatman and Peter watched in horror as they got into deeper and deeper waters.
After 15 minutes of struggling in the breakers, Mr Biltcliffe began to realise that he was going to have to “think my way out” .
He said: “Fortunately I was wearing a short sleeved shirt in the sea and I decided that I would take that off and try to use it as a flotation device.
“It actually proved really difficult to do while I was holding Grace up and I knew that I could only do one thing at a time.
“That was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do as a father – to push my daughter away while I got this shirt off, but I just couldn’t hold on to her while trying to get it off.”
Eventually, Mr Biltcliffe and Grace were able to use the shirt to help them keep afloat – a “huge relief ”.
He said: “By now we were getting further and further out to sea, which was actually better because the waves were getting less. But I knew there was no way we were going to get back to the shore ourselves.”
With the alarm raised on shore, Mr Biltcliffe admitted that both he and his daughter were starting to tire and get cold.
He said: “Grace was fantastic, she was really helping herself stay up, but it was getting quite cold and we were getting really tired.”
After 45 minutes in the sea, the Coastguard helicopter came out to mark their position to help guide the RNLI’s Whitby-based lifeboat to them.
The pair were checked over in the boat before the decision was made to winch them into the helicopter and take them to hospital in Middlebrough.
Mr Biltcliffe said: “We are incredibly thankful to the RNLI for saving our lives – without them we wouldn’t have been able to get back to the shore.”
Grace was fantastic - she was really helping herself stay up
Father Ben Biltcliffe, who got into difficulty on the Whitby coast with his daughter