Two lifeboat men have recalled the “violent” weather on the night they were called out to search for the Solway Harvester.
Saturday marks 25 years since the Kirkcudbright-registered scallop dredger went down in rough seas off the Isle of Man.
The seven crew – skipper Andrew Mills, 29, his brother Robin, 33, their cousin David Mills, 17, Martin Milligan, 26, John Murphy, 22, David Lyons, 18, and Wesley Jolly, 17 – all lost their lives.
They were from the Wigtownshire villages of Whithorn, the Isle of Whithorn and Garlieston.
They had set sail from Kirkcudbright on January 10, 2000 on a voyage to fishing grounds in the Irish Sea.
The bad weather saw them head for the Isle of Man the following day but the boat sank in rough conditions.
Ahead of Saturday’s anniversary, Manx Radio has produced a special podcast speaking to some of those involved with the search and recovery of the boat.
Among them are Peter Cowin and John McCreadie, who were part of the RNLI Lifeboat crew operating from the island’s capital Douglas.
Mr Cowin said: “I was sat in our dining room having tea. Pagers went off and my wife said ‘Who the heck is out on a night like tonight?’.
“I said it’s got to be a false alarm. The week before, Ramsay had a false alarm and I said it was probably something like that.
“All you do is grab your car keys and run straight out the door.”
Mr McCreadie remembered being paged at 6.30pm and it was “blowing a real gale”.
He said: “As soon as we were round the back of Douglas Head we realised where we were going. It was 11 miles south of Ramsay, it was horrendous seas, and we realised it’s a trawler that was missing.
“Two of us were out on the main deck with search lights and nine times out of 10 we couldn’t see where we were going. We had goggles on, masks down and waves were coming over the top of us.”
He said he had “never been involved in conditions like that” in more than a quarter of a century with the RNLI, with Mr Cowin describing it as “really violent”.
The search involved other lifeboat crews from the island, a car ferry, a navy vessel and a helicopter.
In the early hours of the morning, they found the Solway Harvester’s life raft – but no one was on board.
Mr Cowin said: “We struggled getting it on board the boat, we improvised with a scrambling net, obviously it was full of water. It took five or six of us to get it on board.
“We found other bits of debris, a life ring, all sorts of other bits that would have floated off the boat and that was the part we started to realise it was serious.”
The lifeboat crew returned to Douglas about 5.30am and refuelled, took on some new crew and headed back out.
By this time it was daylight and the weather had changed.
Mr Cowin added: “We just found pots and pots of what they must have used on the fishing boat. There was debris everywhere.
“It was that flat, we just picked it up and picked it up.
“We rehoused about four o’clock on January 12 and I think there was a realisation that was it, there were no survivors.”
The Isle of Man Government initially tried to recover the boat with the seven men inside.
However, that proved difficult and the bodies were removed first, with the boat lifted and towed to Douglas Harbour in June 2000.
Investigations followed, with a model used as part of the process currently in display in the island’s House of Manannan.
The Solway Harvester’s Owner, Richard Gidney from Gatehouse of Fleet, was charged with manslaughter in 2005 but acquitted.
In 2008, a coroner delivered a verdict of accidental death on the crew.
The men will be remembered with the laying of a floral tribute at the Solway Harvester Memorial on Douglas Head on Sunday to mark the anniversary of the tragedy.
The Solway Harvester episode of Manx Radio’s Island Life series can be listened to at https://www.manxradio.com/podcasts/manx-radios-island-life-series-specials/