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THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Daniel Kirkpatrick, lifeboat coxswain, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at a theatre in Glasgow, from where the programme was then broadcast.

Daniel is the coxswain of Longhope Lifeboat on Island of Hoy in the Orkneys and is surprised on his 53rd birthday.

programme details...

• Edition No: 208
• Subject No: 209
• Broadcast live: Tue 1 Jan 1963
• Broadcast time: 7.55-8.25pm
• Venue: Glasgow theatre
• Series: 8
• Edition: 13

on the guest list...

• RT Hon Jo Grimond MP
• Jackie Groat (via radio from Hoy)
• Ellen McGory
• Eben Kirkpatrick
• Dan Kirkpatrick
• Stig Koenigson
• Commander Errol Bruce
• Gordon Duff
• Commander John Woollcombe
• Mr & Mrs Donald Sutherland
• Ray Kirkpatrick – son (via radio from Hoy)
• Jack Kirkpatrick – son (via radio from Hoy)

production team...

• Director: Vere Lorrimer
• Producer: T Leslie Jackson

• names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

Life Savers

heroes of the emergency services

Jo Grimond

The Times 19 March 1969

Tragic irony of coxswain

By PHILIP HOWARD

While lapels in London last night were still perforated with paper flags bought for lifeboat flag day, four senior officials of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution flew north through Glasgow to an inquest into the loss of the Longhope lifeboat.

They will arrange for immediate payment of pensions to dependents of the crew who died, and will begin inquiries into the circumstances of the loss.

The RNLI, which is entirely and inadequately supported by voluntary contributions, made a bleak statement of grief: the loss was “extremely tragic”; and “we can only express deep regret and sorrow for the families concerned”.

By a tragic irony the coxswain of the Orkney boat, Mr Daniel Kirkpatrick, was to have gone to London next Tuesday to receive the RNLI’s silver medal for the bravest act of lifesaving in 1968. He would have become the only man alive to have been awarded the silver medal three times. His latest award was for the rescue of 15 men from the trawler Ross Puma on April 1 last year off Tor Ness Point on the island of Hoy, a few miles from where his capsized boat was found yesterday.

The account of his bravery that night, which was to have been put before the annual meeting of the RNLI, re-creates even in its official prose something of the maelstrom of wind and fierce waves in which the Longhope lifeboat did its business “… almost continuous skerries and rocks extending about 600 yards out to sea … at times the raft was several feet below the level of the deck, and the next instant it was several feet above it”.

Mr Kirkpatrick, aged 59, had been coxswain of the Longhope since 1955. His first two silver medal awards were for rescuing the Aberdeen trawlers Strathcoe, in 1959, and Ben Barvas, in 1964. He became a national celebrity five years ago when he appeared on the BBC television programme This Is Your Life.

The rest of his crew, which included his two married sons, were to have been presented with vellum scrolls from the RNLI registering thanks for their courage last April. Their famous 47ft long lifeboat was built in 1962, and was described as “virtually unsinkable, but, unfortunately, not uncapsizable”.

In answer to a private notice question in the Commons yesterday, Mr Rodgers, Minister of State, Board of Trade, said: “This is one of the worst stretches of water in the world, and it is an act of singular courage for the boat to put out in the prevailing conditions of last night.”

Mr W H K Baker, Conservative member for Banffshire, who had asked the question, said: “The incredible behaviour and self-sacrifice of lifeboat crews was exemplified by the Longhope putting out on a mission of mercy in such appalling weather.”

The search for the lifeboat was conducted from dawn yesterday over a strip of 120 miles of 20ft high waves and 60mph winds by three Shackleton aircraft, four neighbouring lifeboats, a helicopter from the Royal Navy Air Station at Lossiemouth, and two coastguard rescue companies.

By another sad paradox of timing the RNLI announced yesterday that they are withdrawing lifeboats from May 4 from the Gourdon (Kincardineshire) and Whitehills (Banffshire) stations in Scotland; the conventional lifeboat will be withdrawn from Cullercoats (Northumberland), but the fast inshore rescue boat will remain in operation during the summer.