Authors: Rob Mundle
Sometime during the afternoon a beautiful albatross landed in the water near the raft and looked sadly at the two forlorn sailors. It then flew over and sat right beside Gibson. Both agreed it was a good luck sign.
“We just lay there for a long time in silence. I remember thinking to myself, Jesus I’d better try and liven this up a bit so I said to John, ‘Do you reckon we’re on a steamer path here, a ship’s path here?’. He said ‘No Gibbo’. Then we just lay there in the water with the raft going splish, splosh, splash, splat.
“After a while I asked, ‘Steamer, do you think any of the Hobart boats would come out here’?”
‘No, mate.’
‘Steamer, where do you think we are?’
‘I reckon we’re about 90 miles east of Eden.’
‘Well Steamer there are no boats.’
‘No Gibbo.’
‘No yachts.’
‘No Gibbo.’
‘We’re 90 miles off.’
‘That’s right Gibbo.’
‘Mate, who gets to eat whom first?’
“There was no answer. Not even a grunt.
“We continued to drift along and I started looking at my hands. They were both oozing blood. Steamer then looked at them and then we looked at each other. We didn’t say anything but we were both thinking the same thing – old ‘Jaws’ sniffing along behind the blood trail towards us. It was an additional part of the equation that we weren’t ready for. We just dismissed that one altogether. The cold started to move through my body; muscle contractions, shudders and shakes. I distinctly remember as I attempted to shuffle my shoulders back up – to try and keep as much of my upper body out of the water as I could – that the effort needed to push against John for leverage was growing all the time. It was getting harder to do.”
“Gibbo was trying to have a chat all the time – probably because he’s a barrister,” Stanley recalls. “But he never complained about his hands, not once. I suppose I didn’t complain about my ankle either. Gibbo had lost his contact lenses and couldn’t see, so I was his spotter for planes.”
At around four or five o’clock in the afternoon Stanley and Gibson were convinced they had seen a fishing vessel, a big commercial trawler. They were also hearing aircraft. Then, finally, more than 24 hours after
Winston Churchill
sank, came their first real hope for salvation. Stanley
heard then spotted a plane to the north of the raft. He waved frantically but was not seen. About 20 minutes later the plane returned but once again missed the raft. Stanley’s efforts were rewarded sometime later. He saw a large aircraft at a low altitude coming straight at them and he shouted to Gibson to give him the yellow life vest. Stanley grabbed it and waved it in large, sweeping arcs over his head. He was desperately hoping that the vest would give a better contrast against the sea than the black raft. He kept waving furiously as the plane went past and was overjoyed to see the wing light flash.
They were little more than two yellow pin pricks in a vast expanse of bubbling sea but about an hour later the plane returned, accompanied by a helicopter, and both flew straight past them. Stanley and Gibson had not been spotted. The chopper was on its way to rescue the four others.
Darkness closed in on Stanley and Gibson for the second night in a row. They had no food or water yet were still, somehow, managing to hang on. At that moment new hope burst from the sky. The pair were roused from their near comatose state when they heard a search plane. They then saw it emerge from the blackness, its navigation lights flashing brightly. Gibson had a strobe light and Stanley had a Mag light which were both working. They aimed them at the plane and it flew overhead for about 10 minutes, indicating to them they had been spotted. As comforting as that sight was, the two sailors still had no idea how or when they would be rescued.
Then, above the roar of the storm, Steamer and Gibbo began to hear the deep-throated engines of a large helicopter approaching. It became louder and
louder. A lumbering Navy Sea Hawk chopper emerged from the clouds with its searchlights blazing. The two sailors were elated.
The fact that the frigate HMAS
Newcastle
, manned by a skeleton crew, was in the area proved to be a springboard back to civilisation for Stanley and Gibson. It provided an offshore refuelling point for the Sea Hawk helicopter piloted by Lieutenant Nick Trimmer. He and his crew, Lieutenant Commander Rick Neville, Lieutenant Aaron “Wal” Abbott, and Leading Seaman Shane Pashley, had been searching offshore almost all day for disabled yachts and Glyn Charles who was missing from
Sword of Orion.
“It was dark and we were heading back to Merimbula,” recalls Pashley. “We heard an Air Force PC–3 Orion on the air. He was obviously searching using infra-red stuff. We heard him advise AusSAR that they had seen a light, a strobe in the water, and someone was shining a torch at them. Obviously it wasn’t just an abandoned liferaft but someone alive and in the water. He couldn’t get a good enough ID on it with his infra red. He had also dropped a couple of flares in the water near the target. We judged that the target was abeam of our track into Merimbula, probably about 20 miles to the south. We waited to hear if any other aircraft were around and when it was obvious that there was nothing available we advised the PC–3 we’d come down and have a look. When we got closer to the search area the PC–3 dropped a couple of flares in the water for us, close to the liferaft. Through the murk we started seeing the torch. It was still a few hundred yards away and hard to see. But it was there.”
The crew aboard the Sea Hawk now had to work out the most effective rescue strategy. They knew the two
stranded sailors had been in the water for some time, possibly were injured and most definitely were fatigued. This ruled out dropping the strop into the water and letting them fend for themselves. The only option was to winch Pashley down. He landed with a splash in the water and went straight under before popping up and flipping into the raft. He didn’t realise the raft was bottomless and went straight down under again! Pashley was doing his first ever night-time sea rescue in conditions that he didn’t want to know about. He was also concerned about the threat of a shark attack.
“He was an agile bloke and jumped over the top of the raft – straight into the water,” recalls Stanley. “I had to shout to him, ‘Watch out mate. We haven’t got a floor. Be careful’. I told him to take Gibbo first because of his hands, and away they went. All of a sudden I saw the pair of them take off sideways, really hard and fast. I thought the pilot must have wanted to move them that way before he started lifting them. Regardless, I have to say that the guy who grabbed Gibbo, and the pilot, did a magnificent job.”
“Just as I got the strop over the first man the aircraft had an auto hover failure and slid away a bit,” Pashley recalls. “The wire just went tight and literally tore us sideways and out of the raft. It felt like you’d tied a rope around yourself, attached it to a car, and then the car took off at high speed. Gibbo went sort of backwards and sideways while I went forward and over the top of him. That’s when my knife in the leg of my wetsuit caught on the side of the raft and carved into my knee, so much so that it subsequently needed surgery. At that time though, I could have lost my whole leg and probably not realised it. I also knew then that if either of us had had any of the wire wrapped around us at that very moment we would have lost a body part. It’s fine wire. It would have ripped a limb off pretty quickly.”
With the chopper now on manual hover Gibson and Pashley were winched out of the water. Gibson was placed on the floor of the machine, covered in a space blanket, given some water and a quick check over. It was then John Stanley’s turn, but as Pashley prepared to go down he was advised the plan had changed. The chopper crew felt it would be too dangerous lowering Pashley again and thought that two men on the winch would work better. Pashley drove the winch while Abbott guided the aircraft into position using the little thumb control beside the door.
“I was surprised to see that the guy didn’t come back down on the cable to get me,” Stanley recalls. “They just lowered a ring to me. I thought they must have assumed that I was OK. He landed the ring right beside me and I put it on. I got my arms and shoulders through it but while I did that I must have tangled a rope from the liferaft into the ring with me. He started lifting and all of a sudden I looked down and said to myself, the liferaft’s coming with me. I must have a rope tangled. I got to about 25 feet and thought, oh no, this is going to be dangerous so I just put my hands in the air and bailed out, straight back into the water. The next thing the guy just landed the ring about two feet away from me. I climbed back into it again. I remembered having watched these rescue procedures before; you don’t put your hand onto the wire but lock your hands underneath the strop.”
Stanley and Gibson were in remarkably good condition considering their 30-hour ordeal. They told the Navy crew everything they could about what had happened with their three mates the previous night, all in the hope that they might still be found alive. Pashley and Abbott talked to the two incessantly, knowing it was vital to keep them awake and alert to minimise any shock that might set in before they were in the hands of doctors.
Mallacoota, a tiny town on the south side of the NSW–Victorian border was, as the first four survivors of
Winston Churchill
were to find out, a town with exceptional community spirit and a very determined will to help those in need. From the moment they were helped from the rescue chopper, still wet and bedraggled, they were made to feel safe and comfortable. A local resident was allocated to each survivor, their role being to comfort and care for them. The Red Cross and local Volunteer Coastguard group were also on hand to help.
“They were just unbelievable,” said Gould. “The hospitality, the way that community pulled together, they were just fantastic. They took our names and telephone numbers so they could call our families and reassure them we were OK while we were checked over and then taken to the showers. Dry clothes arrived for each of us. Nothing was a problem.”
The joy of speaking with loved-ones on the telephone was followed later that evening with the news that the second raft had been found.
“We assumed, obviously being optimistic after our rescue, that all five of them would be on board,” said Gould. “We didn’t know how or when they would be picked up or where they would be taken to, so we had a beer in celebration and – because we could hardly keep our eyes open – went to bed. The sweetest thing on earth that night, after being jammed into a liferaft with three others for so long, was to be able to stretch out my full six-foot-three-inch body in a bloody big bed.”
Richard Winning rose early next morning to do a national television interview. When he went on air he was
asked how he felt about losing three crewmates from
Winston Churchill.
He had not heard the news. Mike Bannister and John Dean, two of his closest friends since they sailed dinghies as 10 year olds off Vaucluse, on Sydney Harbour, were gone. Jim Lawler, a friend in more recent times, was also gone. Winning bowed his head – deeply shocked and choked with emotion – and walked away from the interview.
For Bruce Gould, the best way to deal with the demons that came in the wake of his horrid experience following the sinking of
Winston Churchill
was to actually tackle them head-on. On Boxing Day 2007 he set sail on what was his 38th Sydney to Hobart race – his eighth of the nine staged since 1998.
However, it was fear that drove him to this point. “I can’t stop,” he said. “If I did I think I’d just sit around and be haunted by thoughts of what happened with the guys. And besides, I think I should be doing this in memory of my mates. I’m sure they wouldn’t want me to stop.”
Gould had another close call in March 2008: he was sailing aboard the yacht
Strewth
in the China Sea Race, when the keel suddenly snapped off. Incredibly, through a massive stroke of luck, and a quick response from the crew, the yacht stayed upright and was safely navigated for 170 nautical miles to Hong Kong.
John “Steamer” Stanley remains quite philosophical about the impact of the 1998 Hobart race. He doesn’t bear any deep scars, and his concern now is more about what impact it had on the sport. However, it’s not surprising to learn that the dreadful experiences he
endured after
Winston Churchill
sank were enough to completely erode his desire to go ocean racing.
“While some people suggest a wave of fear went through the sport after the 1998 race, I see it more as a wake-up call,” said Stanley, who now works as a wardsman at a Sydney hospital. “For me, the people who were most woken up at the end of the day were the organisers, the bloody weather bureau, and the liferaft manufacturers.
“I still say that the liferaft we were in was an absolute joke. Much to my delight we were able to prove that some months after the event when I went to the Australian Maritime College in Launceston.
“The police investigating the tragedy flew me to Launceston for the liferaft tests they were doing in the big indoor tank they have there. I took John Gibson with me because he still had a lot of doubts in his head after the incident, mainly because it was his first-ever Hobart and it wasn’t quite what he expected. After the excitement of the build-up and the start, the next thing he knew was that the yacht was sinking and he was jumping into a liferaft in horrendous conditions, asking himself over and over, ‘What the f*** is going on here?’ So, I was sure that by taking him to Launceston with me he could watch the tests and see for himself what I had been saying all along – the raft was rubbish, and that was the reason for what happened after we abandoned the yacht.
“By the end of the day we’d proved just that. The guy who coordinated the test was a good bloke, but he had the people in the water bringing the raft upright in what was a flat water pool. It bore little relation to what we experienced, so I said to him, ‘Listen, mate, I want you to put three people in this thing when it’s upside down and I want you to then try to pull this particular liferaft upright’.