Two rescued in dramatic tug capsize
The UK’s Cowes, Lymington and Calshot RNLI lifeboats were involved in a major rescue in Southampton Water in late March when a tug suddenly capsized, resulting in a dramatic rescue of the two crew aboard.
Just after 8pm on Monday 30 March, the tug, the Asterix, attached to oil refinery at Fawley, capsized and subsequently began to sink just off the refinery’s pontoon.
One crew member of the Asterix managed to jump clear and swim to safety, leaving one man still unaccounted for so a search and rescue operation was started.
Calshot RNLI launched its Atlantic 85 B class lifeboat Max Walls and reached the scene in minutes, where they recovered one crew member from the water.
The Calshot crew was quickly joined by the Cowes RNLI Atlantic 85 B class lifeboat Sheena Louise and Lymington’s new Atlantic 85 B class lifeboat Doug Bradley. Together they conducted a multi-vessel search of the area for the missing crew member.
Joining the three lifeboats in the search was another Fawley tug, Ibex, together with Red Funnel’s car ferry Red Eagle and catamaran Red Jet 4.
Meanwhile, a Fawley emergency employee (and ex-RNLI volunteer) who was watching the capsized vessel from the pontoon, glimpsed an arm in a small pocket of air behind a window in the tug. He leapt into the water, smashed the window and extracted the trapped crew member.
Both were evacuated from the water just before the tug sank. Both rescuer and rescued, plus the man who was rescued from the water earlier, received immediate emergency care from RNLI crew members. All three men were then taken by ambulance to hospital.
By Anne-Marie Causer
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