David Butler on Saving Lives at Sea

Lisa You’ve mentioned about the breeches buoy. Can you tell me exactly what it is?

Basically the breeches buoy was a life ring with a pair of, for want of a better term, breeches attached to it.

Yes, like a pair of cut off trousers, so when the rocket launcher put the line across the boat, a hauling warp was hauled out to the boat and secured, and then through a set of pulleys it was pulled up tight and then the breeches buoy was attached to the line and it was hoisted by hand out to the boat and then the people that needed to be rescued climbed into the breeches buoy and then they were hoisted back to land.

That was the theory behind it.

It never really I don’t think worked particularly well because you wouldn’t really have wanted to be in it on a rough night.

You couldn’t get the lines tight enough to stop it from dragging in the water.

I don’t think anybody ever drowned through coming …

Andy Butler: I think somebody did up in Scotland, I think.

Did they?

Andy Butler: A lot of people got injured.

But if you weigh up how many people were rescued by it in the sort of mid ‘18’s to the mid ‘19’s, it certainly served its purpose.