BY JACKIE MACKENZIE
A volunteer coxswain at the Isle of Skye RNLI lifeboat station has turned off his pager and retired from duty after 35 years of active service.
Hamish Corrigall, a native of Skye, signed up to join the crew in October 1990 and was officially enrolled on 1st November 1990. He was one of the very first people to be part of the crew when the first lifeboat arrived on station in spring 1991.
Hamish recalls the day he decided to join the volunteer crew: “The RNLI came to Portree in October 1990 with a view to installing a lifeboat service either in Portree or Uig. They had a bit of paper for people to add their names to who were interested in joining a crew, and I decided to put my name down. I was officially enrolled in November 1990 and joined the RNLI for what would become 35 years of service.”
In 1996, with the arrival of the current Trent class lifeboat Stanley Watson Barker, Hamish took on the role as a volunteer coxswain. In July 2013, he became the full-time volunteer coxswain at the station, which meant always being on call and having the pager beside him throughout his daily life.
Despite a strong family connection to fishing and the sea, Hamish had initially planned to follow a different career path:
“Before I left school, I had no interest in working at sea,” said Hamish. “I was due to be a boatbuilder alongside my uncle. But my uncle passed away before I could start and this plan fell through. It was decided that I would start working on the fishing boats and trawlers. Fishing and the sea are very much in my blood, despite initially wanting to take a slightly different path!
“When I joined the RNLI, I gained proper training and experience in a variety of subjects such as sea survival, firefighting, first aid, leadership and VHF/MF radio certificates. I’ve also had the opportunity to travel to other lifeboat stations across the UK and Ireland. Wherever I’ve been, I’ve always received a warm welcome from crew members and station volunteers. Being part of the RNLI always feels like a big family.”
Among the highlights of Hamish’s service was being invited to attend the opening of the RNLI Lifeboat College in Poole, performed by Queen Elizabeth II in July 2004, and the garden party at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh in July 2016.
After 35 years of active service in the lifesaving charity, Hamish has attended hundreds of shouts with Portree RNLI, but remembers a particularly challenging emergency: “We were tasked with assisting a creel boat off the coast of Gairloch that was taking on water. When we arrived on scene, the boat had sunk to the level of the deck, and we were convinced that the boat would sink entirely.
“However, we decided to put a pump onboard to try and see if this would stop the boat sinking further. A nearby vessel had evacuated the crew members, but the crew came back onboard and we managed to refloat the creel boat, allowing it to be towed to Gairloch. This is an incident where we saved not just the members of the crew but also the creel boat itself, which I remember to this day.”
Hamish officially turned off his pager at the start of November and is now enjoying some time away from active service.
Douglas MacDougall, Portree RNLI Lifeboat operations manager, said: “Hamish has been involved in hundreds of service calls over his 35 years, some sadly tragic, but many more where lives have been saved. His seamanship as coxswain was outstanding and he is highly respected by crew, the wider RNLI community and other seafarers on our coastline.
“The station is indebted to him for his dedication over those 35 years and we extend our thanks and admiration for his commitment to the RNLI and the local community.”