Coast is home.
And we're exploring the most endlessly fascinating shoreline
in the world - our own.
The quest to discover surprising, secret stories
from around the British lsles continues.
This is Coast.
We're here to explore what happens when our coast becomes a wild frontier.
Land and sea don't always live in harmony.
When the water boils, the land quakes,
and so do we.
Whole villages washed away.
Boats in a battle of life and death.
What becomes of us when we face peril from the seas?
We're venturing to wild waters in the Western lsles.
Dick is with one of the unsung heroes of the RAF,
weather forecasters who helped determine the outcome of D-Day,
battling Atlantic storms.
MAN: Quite a few aircraft were struck by lightning.
Chunks of ice would fly off
and you'd hear a bang on the side of the fuselage, quite a loud bang.
NlCK: Down on the southeast coast, peril from the seas strikes Tessa.
Ding, clash, dong, bang!
NlCK: How did the Victorian iron men, building the new ironclad navy,
help shape our welfare state?
They received medical treatment
beyond the wildest dreams of everybody bar the very rich.
NlCK: On the icy North Sea, Coast's newcomer,
poet and storyteller lan McMillan
uncovers a century-old shipwreck that shocked the nation...
and made our perilous seas safer.
One woman was lucky enough to get off the stricken ship,
but, then, Mary Roberts was a lucky lady.
Two years before she'd been rescued from the Titanic.
But she said the shipwreck off Whitby was even worse than that.
NlCK: My tale of peril starts on the shore of East Anglia...
..where trouble is brewing.
The curious calm here in Norfolk seems idyllic enough.
But a breath of wind brushing your cheek brings a change of mood.
The hairs on the back of your neck bristle.
Something wicked this way comes.
lt's November, 1 703.
A megastorm is about to devastate a huge swathe of southern Britain,
leaving thousands dead.
Lethal winds whipped across the land
before blowing out into the North Sea.
Go back 300 years and windmills were a common sight on the coast of Norfolk.
Then one dreadful night in November, the weather turned.
And so did the sails of the mills.
lnside there's a brake,
a wooden block that presses against the spinning shaft to stop the sails.
But the wind is irresistible.
There's no stopping the sails and they spin faster and faster.
The wooden parts of the mill run out of control.
Friction creates smoke.
And where there's smoke, there's fire.
lt's said the great storm set over 400 windmills alight.
They were seen blazing like monstrous candles.
While they burned, thousands of people perished
around the coasts of southern Britain.
There's a way to relive that terrible night as if it were yesterday.
When the wind died down,
one man was determined to make sense of the chaos.
The journalist who wrote the definitive account of the great storm of 1 703
is a great hero of mine, Daniel Defoe.
Defoe was a commentator on the momentous events of his day.
He knew Norfolk well.
This was a prosperous part of Britain 300 years ago,
thanks to trade across the North Sea.
Daniel Defoe's travels around these shores inspired his work.
He'd go on to write the classic castaway story Robinson Crusoe,
but this book, Defoe's first book, The Storm,
tells true tales of ordinary folk battling extraordinary odds.
He says of the storm, ''No Pen can describe it,
no Tongue express it, nor Thought conceive it.''
Defoe investigated the facts behind the great storm,
and key to that investigation
was the drawing together of eye-witness accounts.
Daniel Defoe's use of first-person testimony
was a revolutionary approach to journalism,
which he used to produce a vivid overview of the storm's impact.
lt affected a massive area.
From the southwest and Wales,
it hit London and crossed East Anglia, where l am now.
Defoe carefully catalogued the tales of devastation left in the storm's wake.
The first impacts were felt here, on the coast of Cornwall.
The storm blew in from the Atlantic.
The granite outcrops of Cornwall's coast were impervious to the battering,
but the people were not.
The most infamous casualty died alone.
Henry Winstanley was inside the lighthouse he'd recently completed
on the Eddystone Rocks.
lt had taken years to build
but was blown away in minutes by the devilish sea.
Winstanley's body was never recovered.
The storm raged on along the south coast,
taking a terrible toll on the Royal Navy.
A staggering one in five of their sailors perished.
Many of them died here, on the Goodwin Sands, just off Kent.
There's a really graphic picture drawn at the time
showing the naval ships running aground on the sands
and sailors desperately struggling to reach the shore.
Defoe's description was so graphic that it would have shocked his readers.
He wrote, ''The fatal Goodwin Where the wreck of navies lies
A thousand dying sailors Talking to the skies. ''
The storm wreaked her fury across the whole of southern Britain
before the killer wind whipped over Norfolk,
out across the North Sea.
There were tales of ships off this coast getting swept 1 00 miles away.
One ship ended up in Norway.
That dreadful night three centuries ago
was even more severe than the notorious storm of 1 987.
Then southern England again witnessed extraordinary scenes of devastation.
But if a storm on the scale of 1 703 raged across Britain today,
it would cause catastrophic damage in built-up areas,
estimated at more than £1 0 billion.
Wherever we live in our isles,
what blows in from the ocean puts us all in peril from the sea.
lt's an ill wind indeed that someone can't find a use for.
Those in search of the biggest breeze head northwards.
The Western lsles of Scotland are some of the windiest bits of Britain.
Our weather often blows in this way from the Atlantic,
so there's an automated weather station on the tiny isle of Tiree.
Reports from Tiree are a familiar sound for many.
RADlO BROADCAST: Tiree Automatic, southeast by east 6, slight showers,
five miles, 987...
NlCK: What's less well known is how vital Tiree was to weather forecasters
who helped win the Second World War.
To relive a rarely told tale of aerial heroics,
Dick is with veteran RAF weather observer Peter Rackliff,
who's flying back to his wartime base.
- When was the last time you were in Tiree? - 1 945.
- 1 945? - Yes. l'd just turned 1 9.
DlCK: How debonair are you there? Look at that.
Debonair? Well, l don't know. l didn't put my Brylcreem on that day.
- No? - No Brylcreem, no.
DlCK: Peter wasn't a Brylcreem Boy of Fighter Command.
He flew in a Halifax bomber converted to carry met observers,
men measuring the weather coming in from the Atlantic, heading towards Europe.
Peter and his comrades of 5 1 8 Squadron
were storm chasers of the Second World War,
at the forefront of the forecast running up to D-Day.
Advance warning of the weather was a life or death matter in the war.
D-Day could have been a disastrous failure
were it not for people like Peter feeding observations into the forecast.
The painstaking preparations for D-Day meant planning for every eventuality,
especially bad weather.
A storm would make the landings impossible.
The forecasters of 5 1 8 Squadron would help set the date for D-Day.
But the work down here at Tiree has largely been forgotten.
We're here to put that right.
- Peter, you recognise this runway? - l do, yes.
So you would use this runway?
- Definitely, yes. - Where did you go?
Well, one flight was westerly into the Atlantic for 800 miles,
and then we flew northeast towards lceland,
returning to base at Tiree.
lt was a ten-and-a-half-hour trip, yes.
Those lengthy forecasting flights took them nearly halfway to Canada
before coming back to the airfield at Tiree.
From 1 943, planes like this rolled out day and night onto the tarmac at Tiree
to measure the weather coming in from the Atlantic.
Soon the ocean was all too close below.
PETER: We used to like to get down to about 60 feet if we could.
l was right up in the nose. A navigator sat immediately behind me.
l used to give him surface winds,
and he used to give me the winds at height, which were very important.
DlCK: The crews deliberately flew into weather that would ground other planes.
PETER: The pilots often had a job to handle it.
The second pilot and the skipper would have to
sort of do whatever they could do with the controls
to try and keep the aircraft reasonably stable.
DlCK: They flew into the face of Atlantic storms
measuring temperature, pressure and wind speed,
readings sent back in coded radio messages.
PETER: lt went to the stations in Bomber Command,
and it meant that they could draw a pretty comprehensive chart,
and that would make a radical improvement to their forecast.
DlCK: The finest hour for the forecasters of 5 1 8 Squadron
came in early June 1 944.
NEWSREEL: The landings were the greatest hour of crisis of the global war.
The Germans had boasted it could not be done, but it was done, and a mighty...
DlCK: But the success of D-Day wasn't a done deal.
Weather flights from here on Tiree
played an important part in planning the invasion.
Meteorologist Sarah Cruddas is showing me the forecast map from D-Day.
Lots of observations marked around Britain,
but the weather was blowing in from the far Atlantic.
That was our blind spot.
That's why places such as Tiree were so important.
They were able to fly a thousand miles up towards the lcelandic gap
and really collect all that information that was missing.
Because our weather comes from the west,
we could get a better idea of what was coming,
and it gave us an advantage over the Germans.
There'd been high pressure over France, low pressure over England,
so it had created quite windy conditions just before D-Day.
But this area here, just by the Normandy landings, that's called a ridge.
That brought in settled conditions, calmer seas and less windy conditions.
There was just enough of a break in the weather for them to be able to land.
DlCK: Timing the day of the invasion
to coincide with the brief break in the weather
was a masterstroke ofjudgment.
Group Captain James Stagg was responsible for the D-Day forecast.
To help him, Stagg used vital information from 5 1 8 Squadron,
who flew out over the Atlantic to measure an incoming cold front.
PETER: This cold front was formed by two depressions
which merged to the northwest of Scotland.
Our aircraft must have flown through it from Tiree on half a dozen occasions
on 3rd and 4th June.
l know Eisenhower wanted to go on the 5th,
but, l mean, he just couldn't do it, because Group Captain Stagg told him,
''Well, that cold front that we've been able to locate by our aircraft
is going to be in the Channel on the morning of the 5th,
and it's going to cause an awful lot of grief on the French coast.
So if you can time it to go on the 6th, then everything should be fine.''
DlCK: The men storming the beaches of Normandy on 6th June
couldn't have known that shoulder to shoulder with them
were the storm chasers of 5 1 8 Squadron some 700 miles away on Tiree.
To forecast the weather heading towards France,
they had to fly high over the Atlantic into thin freezing air.
Their enemy was ice.
PETER: Chunks of ice would fly off
and you'd hear a bang on the side of the fuselage, quite a loud bang.
DlCK: They weren't just measuring the weather. They were part of it.
PETER: Quite a few aircraft were struck by lightning,
and on the nose raindrops used to fracture
and you'd get what l called a golden spark discharge.
lt was simply charged-up raindrops hitting the Perspex
and producing a little golden-coloured spark.
lt was actually quite dangerous, these missions.
- There was loss of life, wasn't there? - Oh, yes, yes.
ln the 1 8 months l was here, we lost 1 2 aircraft.
Some went missing on the North Atlantic,
but unfortunately we never found any wreckage.
They just seemed to be, you know, swallowed up by the ocean,
l think, most of them were.
We certainly lost quite a few crew.
DlCK: You must feel some pride about what you achieved
and the work of 51 8 Squadron.
PETER: Yes, l do, l think the world of the squadron,
and l think they did a marvellous job over the Atlantic,
and, there we are, it's one of those things in the past
which is something you never forget.
NlCK: We're on a journey to explore peril from the seas
that surround our isles.
On the south coast of England,
we've often faced unfriendly neighbours across the Channel.
Along this shore there once lay a ring of steel -
steel ships to protect us from invasion.
Naval seamen sign up knowing they may be called upon to roam savage seas.
But even in dock,
ships at close quarters bring their own dangers.
Go back 1 50 years
and building Britain's first iron fleet was a lethal business.
Our naval dockyards used to be perilous places,
as they know in Chatham.
A shipbuilding boom transformed this workplace into hell on earth,
a story Tessa's here to explore.
TESSA: Chatham is home to a remarkable cathedral-like structure.
Built to house wooden warships,
the roof protected their timbers from rotting.
But by the mid 1 800s these huge halls were slipping into history.
The age of wooden warships was over.
The navy's future was iron.
Here in Chatham in 1 861 ,
they began building their first iron giant, the Achilles.
Bending the metal into shape on the ship took a terrible toll on its workers.
Charles Dickens came to Chatham and saw the construction of the Achilles.
The site struck him as a wild frontier, a vision of a new industrial hell.
TESSA: The nightmarish sounds inspired Dickens to write..
''Ding, clash, dong, bang!
This is, or soon will be, the Achilles.
lron armour-clad ship, 1 200 men over her bows, over her stern,
under her keel, between her decks,
crawling and creeping into the finest curves of her lines
wherever it is possible for men to twist.''
Building in metal was always a dangerous game,
where health and safety consisted of flat caps and quick hands.
ln the Victorian era, the welfare of workers often wasn't considered,
but constructing warships was so crucial to the empire
that the builders of the queen's fleet enjoyed special care.
By the mid 1 800s, the health and welfare of shipbuilders
had become so vital to the Royal Navy,
they received medical treatment
beyond the wildest dreams of everybody bar the very rich.
For instance, when they were injured, they were treated by top naval surgeons.
Here in Chatham the surgeon was William Gunn.
His letters detail the new perils the men faced from working with iron.
Each letter is a window into the world of surgeon William Gunn.
lt's almost as if he's talking to you.
MAN: ''The men in the metal mills work five nights in the week,
and they are very liable to accidents from the peculiar nature of their duty.
Contusions, lacerated and punctured wounds and burns,
particularly of the head, hands, feet, face and eyes are now very common.''
TESSA: The dockyard surgery dealt with a steady stream of casualties.
Medical historian Richard Biddle has seen how the shift to metalworking
led to different kinds of injuries.
With wood they're very focused on the lower half of the body
because the men are using axes to chop wood.
Then when they begin to use iron,
if you're riveting iron plates, for example, you're up here,
and so what happens is the injuries shift upwards.
The old injuries continue,
but injuries to the eyes and burns - eyes in particular.
Did surgeons see suddenly their work quadruple, if you like?
Well, Gunn certainly talks about how the frequency of injuries go up,
but he's also concerned by the new nature of injuries.
They're horrific, some of them.
His surgery, we ought to think about it as being a cross, l would say,
between what we would think now as a GP surgery
and then an accident and emergency facility.
TESSA: The workers also received home care and half pay while off injured.
To check up on his patients, William Gunn paid them surprise visits.
Surgeon Gunn soon learnt that where there are welfare benefits,
there are also welfare cheats.
On 5th October, 1 864,
surgeon Gunn decided to call in on a man called William Tiltman.
He was meant to have been off sick for three months,
but when he found him,
he discovered he'd actually been moonlighting as a butcher.
Those early benefit cheats got the sack.
But plenty of genuine cases needed the special skills surgeon Gunn developed
to deal with horrific metalworking accidents.
MAN: ''As injuries of the eyes caused by pieces of metal
had become so frequent of late,
l have demanded an electromagnet.''
l mean, that's a pretty clever thought.
lt is, yeah, and we've actually tried to mock up
an electromagnet and iron filings in an eye,
which l thought would be interesting to see whether this thing works or not.
TESSA: Oh, my G... - They're not human.
- You're going to switch on the power. - l'm switching on, so here we go.
TESSA: They're just hopping out. - lncredible, isn't it?
TESSA: lt looks almost painless.
You've got a stubborn one. Let's get that last one.
- Go on, give it a go. TESSA: The man is screaming in agony.
Yeah. Yeah, sure enough.
RlCHARD: People with eye injuries,
despite, when you read, the initial accidents appear to be very gruesome,
they do go on to recover and return to work.
TESSA: So they could keep bashing metal ships into shape,
the navy's new iron men were patched up
and given privileges the public could only dream of.
lt took nearly 1 00 years and two world wars
before free health care became a right for all.
When servicemen began returning home in 1 945,
the mood of the nation was to build a Britain fit for heroes.
The time was ripe for the birth of the welfare state.
NEWSREEL: On July 5th the new National Health Service starts.
Are you sure l don't have to pay anything for all this?
Nothing. You and your family...
Do you think the work here was actually a precursor
to our modern-day welfare state?
Certainly what you see in Chatham is the beginnings of a welfare state.
lt's a microcosm, perhaps, of things that happen after that.
So for Chatham as a dockyard town,
l think it functioned as a welfare state.
TESSA: Building Britannia's ships to rule the waves was a dangerousjob,
but it left a legacy of welfare for workers that we all now enjoy.
NlCK: Unexpected benefits come from our relationship with the sea.
But so do some clear and ever present dangers.
Many who live on the coast are in peril from the sea.
And the sea shows no mercy to those who venture offshore.
Each wreck tells a story.
The most famous fictional tale of a foundered ship
began here at Winterton.
Author Daniel Defoe was as captivated as me by this calm yet perilous coast.
So fearsome was the reputation of this shore
that Daniel Defoe used it to open his book Robinson Crusoe.
Crusoe was eventually marooned on a distant isle in foreign seas.
But the first shipwreck in this book
is here at Winterton on the coast of Norfolk.
The dangers here can't be seen from the beach.
l've got to venture out to sea.
Way offshore there are deadly strips of sand,
which only reveal themselves at low tide.
This looks like dry land, doesn't it? But it's not. lt's a sandbank.
ln an hour or so it's going to be covered in water.
And if you look over there, one and a half miles away across the open sea,
you can see mainland Britain.
The coast of Norfolk is lined by many other sandbanks
which lurk just beneath the surface.
This is the graveyard of countless ships.
You can understand why Daniel Defoe chose this lethal coast
for the opening passages in his book Robinson Crusoe.
Sandbanks and ships don't mix.
The church at nearby Happisburgh
has a grim memorial to those in peril on the sea.
This neatly tended plot
is the mass grave of 1 1 9 men.
They drowned when HMS lnvincible failed to live up to her name,
coming to grief on a notorious sandbank in 1 801.
So many ships foundered here
that parishioners decided they couldn't rely solely on spiritual salvation.
They took more practical steps.
And they cleverly combined doing a good turn with turning a profit.
The boatmen from Norfolk villages
set up their own rescue teams long before the RNLl was born.
What those rescuers needed was a vantage point like this
where they could spot ships in trouble.
l've got a photograph from further along the coast.
You can see a wooden watchtower built by one of the rescue teams
and below it their hut.
Rescue teams like this were some of Britain's earliest emergency services.
They called themselves ''beachmen''
and were only found on the East Anglian coast.
lf you go looking in the dunes of Winterton-on-Sea,
there are still clues to the beachmen's presence.
David Higgins is showing me.
- Around here they had their watch houses. - How do you know?
Here you can see some of the building materials they used
to make the watch house.
This has still got mortar attached to it. Look. How interesting. Look at that.
DAVlD: Within the dunes there's rectangles
defined by plants that shouldn't be here,
and even here is an apple tree.
Look at that. With apples on it.
So this is probably an apple core hurled down from the watchtower
by a beachman who'd been looking out for wrecked ships.
Who exactly was a beachman?
DAVlD: A beachman was a man who did salvage work on the sandbanks,
looking for ships to snag themselves on the sandbanks
and then they would race out there and get the salvage work
and hopefully get a good payout.
They drove a hard bargain when they got out there and talked to the masters.
They would tell the master they were in grave danger
and they'd readily sign up to get this work done.
You make them sound like land-based pirates,
rushing out to take advantage of other people's misfortunes.
Well, they didn't see it that way.
They saw themselves as rectifying the master's mistakes.
NlCK: There's a part of you that would have been a beachman, isn't there?
l can see you running down the beach to grab the tiller first
and setting off towards Scroby Sands to pick over a derelict, David.
Well, l would love to have done that, yes.
And David isn't alone.
Generation after generation wanted to join the beachmen.
Well, this is a book of the family trees of the Winterton beachmen, effectively,
all the families,
but particularly the Georges which was the biggest family in the village.
- My goodness. - We go...
- lt goes on and on. - 1 6 feet.
Make some space on the...
ls the beach big enough, David? Wow.
And that's how important the George family was
to the whole seafaring community here in Winterton.
NlCK: Lifesaving runs in the blood of the boatmen here,
a promise to protect and serve passed from father to son.
The beachmen were trailblazers in making lifesaving into a living.
But by the late 1 800s their boats were out-dated,
and the rescue service pioneered here in Norfolk had grown nationwide.
So beachmen became part of the Royal National Lifeboat lnstitution,
operating from Caister.
By the 1 960s, their station held the record for the most lives saved.
They had rescued over 1 800 seafarers,
but that wasn't enough to save their own service.
Faster lifeboats could now cover a greater area.
The RNLl thought fewer stations were needed.
ln 1 969 they left Caister.
But the beachmen's descendants wouldn't hang up their sou'westers.
Derek George is a fifth-generation beachman of the famous George family.
How did Caister keep their lifeboat afloat?
Many people in the village thought it was impossible.
There were no precedent, no previous experience, to run a private lifeboat,
but nevertheless a ten-man committee was formed,
and over the years...
This is our 41 st year of independence and we are here still today.
As we approached the millennium and technology marches on,
we needed to have a more modern lifeboat.
August of 2004 we took delivery of the fastest lifeboat in the United Kingdom.
1 ,000 horse power, 40 gallons of fuel an hour.
Are you trying to get one up on the RNLl?
l can't answer that question.
NlCK: You only really appreciate just how powerful this beast of a boat is
when you've got the salt spray parting your hair.
l think it's safe to say the spirit of the original beachmen
still survives on these seas.
Those that work on water know how perilous the sea can be.
Whether their boats are big or small,
fishermen keep a weather eye on the sky right around our shores.
Like here on the edge of the English Channel at Alderney.
This tiny isle gets battered by weather rolling in from the wild Atlantic.
So the fishermen look for feathered friends
to help with the forecast.
And folklore plays its part, as Andy Torbet's finding out.
AND Y: lt's a lonely old business being a skipper at sea.
Spotting a storm can mean the difference between life and death.
lt's no surprise, then, that fishermen can be a superstitious bunch,
and they look to the creatures that surround them
for signs of approaching wild weather.
Now, this little chap is a storm petrel,
so called because to see one of these little sea birds
was a signal that a big storm was heading your way.
AND Y: The storm petrel gets its name and its fame
from its weather forecasting talents.
When they're feeding, they seem to walk on water,
but if they sense an approaching storm, they fly to land,
a sure sign for fishermen to follow them.
l want to see this feathered weather bird for myself,
but l've got my work cut out.
ln the English Channel in the 1 950s
it was thought there was 1 0,000 storm petrels.
Today it's less than a tenth of that number.
lncreased pollution of our seas hit the storm petrel population hard.
They only come to land to breed,
spending the rest of their lives out on the open sea.
l'm going to try and track them down,
and l'm starting my search with those who know these little birds best.
Like storm petrels, fishermen here are few and far between these days,
but Ray Gaudion is hanging on.
- How you doing? - Pleased to meet you.
- Can l come on board? - Yeah.
Ray is going to take me out on a trip
in the hope of seeing the storm petrels at sea.
So you're normally out here looking for lobsters,
but today we're looking for these chaps, storm petrels.
- They're tiny little creatures to see. - The size of a sparrow?
Well, l'd say more like a starling. They fly fast as well.
And do you see as many as you used to?
No, l don't. l'm sure, when l was younger, you used to see a lot more.
There's quite a few kind of myths and legends
surrounding the storm petrels, aren't there?
Well, they've always been revered, to start with.
With the older seamen that l went to sea with,
we never had long-range shipping forecasts or anything like that,
and we'd always, ''Oh, Mother Carey's chickens. There's bad weather coming.''
That's one of their nicknames, isn't it?
That's what we always, the old fellas always used to call them, you know.
AND Y: Whatever you call them, these storm petrels are elusive blighters.
Ray's seen storm petrels here before,
but without a storm, they could be far out at sea.
l'll have to tempt them with some tasty treats.
ln here is a special recipe
of cod-liver oil, mackerel, herring and skate guts.
l am assured this potent mix is perfect for attracting petrels.
RAY: Well, the gulls like it. - Yeah.
lt's attracted a load of black-backed gulls and some herring culls,
but no storm petrels yet.
The scavengers are loving the free lunch,
but it seems my own quarry has a more refined taste.
Looks like l'll have to go the extra nautical mile or so to find them.
l learnt to drive boats just like these in the forces,
maybe not bright orange ones,
so l'm going to take us across to the island now.
l'm heading to a storm petrel breeding site.
Appearing now off the bow is Burhou lsland.
Now, that's a welcome sight
for birds that'll spend the vast majority of their life out at sea
and they come back to land on these rare occasions to breed.
l'm joining a team of scientists here to study the petrels.
- Liz? - Hi.
Heading up the conservation efforts is Liz Morgan.
Welcome to Burhou.
Most storm petrels won't come back till after dark,
but a few may still be on their nests deep in this old wall.
Liz has a trick to find out.
LlZ: This is a storm petrel call.
lf an adult's on the nest, it should reply.
(Bird call)
Can you hear a little peeping noise?
Yeah, l can hear that, yeah.
Yeah, that's a storm petrel chick.
The chicks are probably sat there by themselves.
The adults out at sea fishing
won't come back to land while it's light
because of predators like the gulls.
Under the cover of darkness, that's the only time they feel safe.
(Chirping)
That's it, my first storm petrel.
With baby home alone, the parents can't be far away,
but they won't be back till night.
As darkness falls, Liz and her colleagues set up nets
to ring and monitor Burhou's population.
After that flop with the bait before, let's hope sky fishing works better.
These nets normally do very well as the birds sweep in off the sea.
Stretched across their flight path,
these nets are specially designed to catch but not damage these little birds.
Now we have to wait, and hope.
Got one!
And another.
With the nets filling up nicely, Paul Veron picks the petrels out.
AND Y: lt's not actually doing them any harm, is it?
No, they hit the net and drop into this little pocket
and then we have to go and take them out.
lmagine that bird riding out the fiercest storms
that the oceans can throw at it.
AND Y: ln all we get 61 birds, a great sign for the petrel population,
which Paul now reckons is around 1,000 breeding pairs.
This fragile little chap somehow manages to survive the perils of the sea.
lt's a rare privilege just to see one. To hold him is magical.
You don't really get any closer than that.
- Paul, shall l release it now? - Yes, please, just on the grass.
Designed for a nomadic life, bravely roaming the oceans,
the storm petrel is almost helpless on dry land,
where they stumble around like little drunken sailors.
By the morning, the wild seas have reclaimed these drifting creatures.
Until the next storm, we're unlikely to see them again.
When you're tucked up warm at home, sheltering from a storm,
rain lashing at the window can be strangely comforting.
But think of those at sea.
When in peril, beacons of bright hope bring seafarers comfort.
We have over 200 lighthouses around our coastline.
Now their keepers have been retired, the lights shine automatically,
but they still need maintenance.
The Northern Lighthouse Board looks after those in Scottish waters.
There's one visit that brings back dreadful memories,
of tragedy on the Flannan lsles.
We're now just approaching the Flannans. We can see them up ahead here.
We can see islands quite clearly there,
and you can see the lighthouse very prominent on the north side.
NlCK: The Flannan light stands as a sombre reminder of peril from the seas.
Growing up, of course, we heard about the mystery
of the Flannan lsles and the keepers.
Probably first of all when l was in primary school
and we did the poem by Wilfred Gibson about the Flannan lsles.
''Of the three men's fate we found no trace
Of any kind in any place.''
NlCK: Men like Captain Eric Smith
remember how, on 1 5th December, 1 900, the Flannan light went out.
lts three keepers had vanished, never to be found.
Were they snatched by sea monsters? Were they plucked away? Did aliens land?
Were they kidnapped by some foreign boats? Who knows?
There were all these stories going around cos nobody knew any different.
Copter is just coming in to land now on the island.
Today it's just such a quiet day, flat, calm,
what little weather there is coming from the north,
absolutely nothing between us and America,
and it's hard to appreciate what could happen
and how big the seas get up here.
Because you know something happened,
there's a kind of eerie feeling sometimes.
First time l've been here since well over 20 years.
And now this is the living area, living room.
Very cramped.
But it's functional.
This would have been the principal light keeper's.
He's got two windows, l suppose, cos he's the senior man.
Well, here we are at the optic for the light,
which is the main reason for all this,
the lighthouse, the construction, the landings, everything - to keep this optic turning.
A terrible, terrible tragedy. There's no other way.
Three people lost their lives and all the families were affected.
lt was just so incredible that such a thing could happen.
NlCK: The inquiry into the lost lighthouse keepers was inconclusive.
lt's thought a huge wave washed the three men away.
Peril from the sea used to strike in secret around our shores.
Today there's help at hand.
From the air.
From the water.
While we sleep, remarkable rescues take place in pitch darkness.
But once the sea held sway,
like here at Whitby.
Holidaymakers are unaware,
but 1 00 years ago the town looked out to sea in horror
as a tragedy unfolded within sight of land.
Unravelling a dramatic yet forgotten disaster story
is Coast newcomer, poet and storyteller lan McMillan.
l've got here the front page of the Daily Mirror
from Monday, November 2nd, 1 91 4.
A hospital ship has foundered just a few hundred yards from this coast,
but it's so stormy that it's almost impossible to rescue the crew.
One woman was lucky enough to get off the stricken ship,
but, then, Mary Roberts was a lucky lady.
Two years before, she'd been rescued from the Titanic,
but she said the shipwreck off Whitby was even worse than that.
Now, with the help of Mary Roberts's relatives and lifeboat men of Whitby,
l'm going to tell a tale of terror at sea
that gripped the entire nation for days.
A disaster that caused outcry
and helped propel Britain's coastal rescue services into the modern age.
Our seas would never be the same again
after the wreck of the hospital ship Rohilla.
To see why, l'm going to examine the tragedy of her loss with a forensic eye.
Every accident investigator needs an incident room,
and l've set mine up here at Whitby lifeboat station.
l've collected a precious few of the possessions
that were recovered from the wreck of the Rohilla.
Her story starts on 29th October, 1 91 4,
scarcely three months after Britain had declared war on Germany.
The hospital ship Rohilla left harbour in Scotland, bound for France.
So, what happened next?
To see why Rohilla came to be wrecked just off the Whitby coast,
l'm meeting up with Colin Brittain.
He's spent years researching the dramatic events.
We're looking out here so we can more or less see where the Rohilla ended up.
That's right. There's just a small part of the ship's double planking.
- The weather was terrible, wasn't it? - lt was very bad.
- lt turned into a very severe gale. - Why did she end up down here?
Because of the wartime restrictions,
all the lights were turned out and the navigational buoys were silenced.
This part of the coastline here, at Whitby Rock, is a very treacherous part.
lt's claimed many ships in the past.
lAN: And it had a big impact throughout the country.
COLlN: lt did.
lt's still recorded today in the annals of the RNLl
as one of the worst it's attended.
So, on 30th October, 1 91 4, at 4am,
the Rohilla hits rocks and tears apart.
Later that morning it became clear just how close the wrecked ship was to land.
But a raging storm stopped survivors from swimming ashore.
Rockets with ropes attached were fired from the cliffs.
But they all missed.
Rohilla had no rockets to fire a safety line herself, a fatal lapse.
Now she was relying on Whitby's lifeboat.
The rescuers here on shore could almost reach out and touch the Rohilla,
500 yards out there on the rocks,
but the boiling sea kept them back.
For those onboard, trying to swim to safety looked like a suicide mission.
So where was the lifeboat?
MAN: Pull.
My next witness is Peter Thomson, a former lifeboat coxswain.
This is the kind of boat they would have tried to row out to the Rohilla on?
This is exactly the same as the original boat
that made the first rescue attempts.
lAN: And it feels like a very sturdy kind of boat,
but the conditions at the time were terrible, weren't they?
PETER: What we have to remember is that we're approaching the harbour now,
and the waves across there will be anything from 1 5 to 20 foot high,
breaking seas.
The boat is 34 foot long, so it would have just been swamped.
lAN: With the storm raging,
it was impossible to row beyond the safety of the harbour.
Outside the sturdy walls, monstrous waves lay in wait.
Going out into the open sea wasn't an option.
lnstead, they decided to launch the lifeboat from shallower water,
on the beach beside the Rohilla,
but that meant manhandling their heavy wooden boat
over an eight-foot high sea wall
and across the rocks on the other side.
Then, of course, it was straight into the surf opposite the wreck
and the rescue started then.
lAN: When the lifeboat reached the Rohilla,
the five women aboard the stricken ship were the first to be rescued.
Among them was Mary Roberts,
who had survived Titanic just two years earlier.
We think this is Mary here. Let's go and meet her relatives.
Today her great-granddaughter Mandy, and her husband Ray,
have returned to the scene of Mary's traumatic ordeal.
RAY: She seemed to have spent most of her life at sea.
Quite a woman for that age. We're talking back in the early 1 900s.
But she did compare, actually,
that the Titanic was an easier wreck than this one out here.
This was the worst wreck.
l guess that's cos with the Titanic, it just hit an iceberg, it wasn't a storm,
whereas this was in this terrible, terrible storm.
Yeah, and, of course, being able to get survivors off of this beach,
with the cliffs, must have been horrific.
Must have been so frustrating for the people on the cliff
to see the boat there.
MAND Y: And not be able to get down and do anything.
What did she do then? Gave up the sea forever?
- Went back to sea. - Did she?
Absolutely.
ln all, the lifeboat took 1 7 survivors from the Rohilla on its first attempt.
Dragging the lifeboat over the rocky shore
tore a hole in her hull.
Even so, she managed a second rescue attempt,
bringing back 1 8 more survivors.
But then she had to be abandoned.
The lifeboat was dashed on the rocks and pounded to pieces.
Hope faded with her.
Survivors brought back to shore
painted a terrible picture of conditions for those left on the wreck,
corpses lashed to woodwork battered by the storm,
survivors clinging to the wreckage as the ship broke up.
No wonder some of those left on board tried to brave the raging seas
and make that terrible swim to shore.
Rohilla wasjust over 500 yards out to sea,
but only 35 of the 229 on board had been rescued.
As news of the unfolding tragedy spread,
a newsreel crew was dispatched to film the drama
for a public hungry for news of the tragedy.
Let's see what they saw.
lt is funny, when you watch this, you realise how close it is.
lt does genuinely look like you could just wander out to it.
lt's also quite gobsmacking to think that here's a piece of film of it,
that what was before just a story, a thing in a newspaper,
suddenly it's there, it's moving.
You can see the waves moving, the waves crashing against the boat.
Hard to fathom how terrifying it must have been,
but you do get a very good image of it from here.
So this was rolling news from nearly 1 00 years ago.
Some desperate souls swam for shore.
Many others remained on board the wreck.
As darkness fell, those battling for their lives on the Rohilla
braced themselves for a night of horror.
Saturday morning didn't bring any respite from the atrocious weather.
More than 24 hours after the hospital ship Rohilla had struck the rocks,
lifeboats from along the Yorkshire coast were struggling to reach her.
So despite heroic efforts,
the rescue crews couldn't get close enough to the boat for long enough,
cos these boats relied on manpower,
and rowing against the power of the sea proved impossible.
But help was on its way - motorised help.
From up the coast on Tyneside,
a lifeboat that represented the future for the RNLl
had powered her way down to Whitby.
Motorised lifeboats able to battle through rough seas
were few and far between in 1 91 4.
But now she was the last and only hope.
At 6.30 on a Sunday morning,
the Henry Vernon, a motorised lifeboat similar to this old gem,
sets off to the Rohilla,
where the survivors have been clinging on for more than two days.
On board in 1 91 4 was second coxswain James Brownlee.
On board now is his granddaughter Dorothy Brownlee.
First light, they set off from Whitby harbour
and they picked up the last 50 survivors.
My granddad's quoted in a newspaper
as saying that they were bruised from head to foot.
And l think it just touched everyone who saw the state of all these people.
lAN: So without your granddad,
the loss of life would have been much greater.
lt really would.
l can't see any way in which those last 50 men could have survived.
Efforts had just about been given up because it was too severe.
The storm showed very little signs of abating.
lt certainly proved the value of a motor lifeboat,
because the men didn't get so exhausted.
So you must be very proud of your granddad.
l really am, yes, l'm very proud.
Here's a picture of him, which was very familiar to me as a child,
and he's wearing his medals.
Three of them are for the Rohilla rescue.
lAN: But who was the last person off the boat?
The captain was the last person to come off the boat,
and it is said that he climbed up the ladder
and he was carrying a small black cat, the ship's cat,
which apparently had been unperturbed by all the commotion.
Of the 229 people on board His Majesty's hospital ship Rohilla, 85 perished,
but, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the rescuers,
1 44 survived to tell their extraordinary story.
Rescuing survivors from our perilous seas would never be the same again.
More motorised lifeboats were brought into service.
The days of rowing to the rescue were numbered.
NlCK: Where the sea meets the land, danger is ever present.
Many have met that challenge - and still do -
facing peril from the seas
with ingenuity, resourcefulness and simple courage.
Manning every lifeboat is the crew,
and it's these brave men and women who keep us safe on our wild coast.