THERE is a rhythm to life, it is said, that we ebb and flow between birth and death like the tides.
It smells of music, the word rhythm, like the sea smells of salt. Looking out over the sea off the Isle of Whithorn, it is hard to hear music, to feel rhythm or pattern. Seven young men set out across that water and died, seemingly randomly. But thos
e left behind know it doesn't much matter if you like life's music or not. All you can do is dance to it, till you drop, dance to the tune of someone else' s making.
IT WAS just before midnight when the Solway Harvester sailed into the Isle of Whithorn on Sunday, January 9. From her house on the hill above the bay, Jane Galloway looked down at the harbour lights and watched the boat dock. Her partner, Craig Mills, was skipper on the Harvester and had been at sea for the last three days. He was only in port briefly, landing the catch and allowing several crew members to swap over before setting off again for the waters round the Isle of Man. Jane could look through the window at the harbour activity but she couldn't run down to see Craig as she wanted: the couple's five-year-old daughter Rachel was asleep in bed. Jane watched the boat leave, never suspecting the Harvester was sailing out on a tide that would never return.
The youngest of the seven men on board was 17, the oldest 33. All were from the three villages of Isle of Whithorn, Whithorn and Garlieston that lie in a triangle in the southern tip of Galloway. They have been described as fishing villages but despite ahistory of fishing and boat building in the area, there are no boats based there now. Only in the summer is the harbour busy, with a handful of boats from Ireland and the Isle of Man landing their catches of small scallops, called "queenies". The Har vester normally sailed from Kirkcudbright; it was only because Craig Mills was from the area that the boat stopped at the Isle and was crewed by local men.
Not all were experienced fishermen. Just three hours before the Solway Harvester docked, Craig had phoned his brother Robin, a painter and decorator. The phone rang out in the inland village of Whithorn, three miles from Isle of Whithorn. "Robin said: 'Just leave it,'" recalls Robin's wife Karen, who was seven months pregnant at the time. The answering machine clicked on and Karen heard the familiar sounds of the boat, though no message was left. "I said: 'It's Craig, you'd better ring back.'"
Minutes later, Robin stuck his head round the living room door. Craig was short of crew; he wanted Robin to fill in at short notice. Robin, an ex-coastguard, had filled in before but it was two years since he had worked on a boat. He found it hard work, and in any case he did not want to leave Karen, who was about to start maternity leave from her job as a district nurse. The couple already had a two-year-old daughter, Sarah, and Karen's pregnancy was making her feel very tired. "I'll only go if you 'll be okay," he told his wife. But the two couples were close; Craig and Robin phoned each other every week and Karen and Jane had developed a close friendship too. They helped one another. "I said: 'If Craig needs you, he needs you,'" says Karen.
She wonders now what would have happened if she had left the phone as Robin suggested. Would Craig have rung back? But it is a pointless word, 'if'. It changes nothing. Later, when Robin never returned, Karen discovered he had told a friend he would never go back to sea. "He only went because Craig was short," she says. "He really, really didn't want to go that night. He was very low about it."
Robin kissed her before he left at quarter to midnight. She was lying in bed and heard him open the door of Sarah's room to kiss her too. "He would have done anything for me and Sarah," says Karen. The next night he phoned from the boat at tea-time and Karen remembers thinking how lovely it was to hear Sarah chat to him. He was a hands-on dad and Sarah always referred to him in the same proprietorial way: "My daddy".
Karen worried about Robin but not because she thought the Harvester would sink. It was only eight years old, solid and reliable, the top of the fleet. Karen used to think it looked like a three-storey house when it was docked in the bay. But she knew boats were dangerous places and she worried about Robin injuring himself on board. She remembers her last ever words to him: "Be careful, love you." She smiles. "I knew he didn't say love you back because there was someone with him; there was another ma le there."
Craig called from on board the ship too. He spoke to Jane every day and the last time was at 4.30pm on Tuesday, January 11. "Everything was normal," says Jane. "I know there was nothing wrong because he wasn't harassed or anything." When she thinks of him now, she thinks of that last conversation. "I can visualise him sitting in the chair because the last time he spoke to me that's where he would be."
Across the water from Isle of Whithorn, on a clear night, you can see the lights of Ramsey in the Isle of Man. Just over an hour after Craig spoke to Jane, the Harvester was 11 miles off the other side of the island, pitching in a force six gale. It was nothing the boat had not handled before. And there lies the mystery. There was no Mayday call, no frantic radio call for help. Craig had a reputation locally for being a good, reliable skipper. In the last radio contact from the ship, he reported tha t they were heading for the Isle of Man to shelter. But at 5.45pm the Harvester's emergency distress beacon, a device which operates automatically when a boat sinks, was triggered.
While a storm raged off the Isle of Man, for those left behind in Galloway, life's rhythm was unaltered. Jane helped Rachel with her homework before leaving for work as a chef in the local Steam Packet Hotel. Her shift started at 6pm; she would have beenpreparing for work just as the Solway Harvester was hitting the sea bed of sand it came to rest on. In the Isle, the inky water round the harbour was as smooth as glass. In Whithorn that evening, Karen Mills prepared home-made soup for a man who was already dead.
The news started as a ripple, then swept like a tidal wave across the villages. At 8pm, the boat's owner Richard Gidney phoned Jane at the hotel. The Harvester was missing. He needed to know which crew members Craig had on board. Jane left work and went home to wait for news. She did not want to phone Karen, not in her condition. There was nothing to know yet. But at 9.50 that evening there was no choice. The story had leaked onto Teletext before the families had been informed. Jane got her mother t o phone Karen. "I'm sending someone round to you," Jane's mother told her down the line when she heard Karen's uncontrolled sobbing. "I'm sending someone round."
In Garlieston, the third point of the triangle of villages, John and Liz Milligan were watching television when a friend called to tell them about the Teletext report. Their 26-year-old son, Martin, was on board. He had worked in a sawmill when he left school, had only been at the fishing for 18 months. They had never liked him being at sea and to tell the truth, Martin didn't always like it either. Sometimes he was frightened. "It was only the money attracted him," says John.
There are photos of Martin on the wall of the Milligans' neat sitting-room. He is a well-built, cheery-looking boy. In every picture he has a gleam of irrepressible laughter in his eyes. "He was easy-going," says John. "He liked a drink, a bet on the horses." John and Liz both smile quietly when they talk of him; but they deal with their joint grief differently. Every Friday, Liz takes a bus from the fish factory where she and John work to the graveyard where Martin is buried, and spends time with h er son. Today, the cemetery is iced with winter frost but still there are vases of fresh flowers on Martin's grave. Liz changes them every Sunday. But John finds he can't go regularly. "I want to go," he says, and his voice catches, "but it's just too painful."
John has a gentle smile that belies what is happening inside him. There is a lot of anger. And a space that can not be filled. "There's an emptiness, part of your life taken away that can never be replaced." You can't imagine, he says, what it is like tobury your own child. "On the day of his funeral I lowered Martin into the grave and I thought, what's this all about? He should have been doing that for me."
Whatever the anger, John refuses to anticipate what caused the Solway Harvester to sink, ahead of the official report which is soon to be published. But he is dismissive of rumours that the boat was in poor condition. He even phoned the BBC to complain about an investigative programme showing a couple of local lads talking about the boat being a "wet boat" that leaked water. There is clear scepticism, not just among the Milligans, but amongst locals too, about the claims. They knew what the Solway H arvester was like. They saw it often enough. "Martin's not the kind of boy who would have worked in those conditions," says Liz. "He was happy-go-lucky but he was particular. His shirt had to be right, his hair just right. Martin would never have worked on aboat if it had water."
There is one person who knows for sure the state of the Solway Harvester. James Gorman was a regular crew member. He was due to sail that Sunday night but had been in hospital with food poisoning. Robin Mills took his place. There was nothing wrong with the boat, says James. The living quarters even had central heating. "We hoovered the boat and Craig used to get one of the boys to polish it inside. The kitchen was cleaned with detergent every Sunday. It was spick-and-span. Craig kept that boat in p erfect condition".
There was no reason James knows of for the boat to go down. Sometimes they had even fished when the ferries were tied up and the Harvester coped without difficulty. What was it like on board during a storm? "Craig wouldn't be bossing you about, you'd just be going about your normal things, maybe going down to bed to get a couple of hours sleep to ride out the storm." He never felt frightened. "You didn't think about it for one minute," he says.
He thinks about it now. He was so distressed at the loss of his friends that he has never been back to sea since. But emotionally, he has not cut off completely. "It's something that's in your blood. The urge is always there to go back. It's hard to let go." But he has a wife and young children to think about and the loss of his friends to cope with. "I'll never replace my mates. When you're out there it's like a family." He gets a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about it. "I'll never come to terms with it, especially knowing I should have been there with them and there were others who shouldn't have been."
He waited, like the families, for news that Tuesday night the boat went down. There was a faint hope at first; only one empty lifeboat had been found. Perhaps, some thought, there would be better news when they located the second. But others knew immediately. Karen Mills is an impressively positive woman; even though you can feel the pain inside her, you can also feel her energy and her determination. But she was negative from the start. Something sudden and catastrophic must have happened for there to be no Mayday. Robin was not coming home. She has no recollection of saying the words, but her father will never forget her putting her hand on her stomach and saying: "This baby is never going to see his daddy."
Karen has a superb memory normally but for her, like the others, a large part of those early days is just a blur. It is as if her memory is protecting her. But there are some things which can't be blotted out. Wednesday, January 12, dawned a grey, dreichday, which was just the way she felt inside. She and Jane were together as they were for most of those early days. They were waiting for news of the second life raft but Karen can't remember who told her it had been found empty. All she can remember is the sound, the unforgettable sound, of Jane wailing.
THERE WAS A piper playing at the edge of the harbour when the bodies of the seven men, draped in the red flag of the Isle of Man, were carried ashore at Douglas Harbour. It was three weeks after the disaster. The MAIB (Marine Accident Investigation Board) had visited the families immediately, telling them no government department was responsible for raising bodies. Their only priority was to send cameras down to try and determine the cause of the accident. "They were very cold-hearted," recalls Liz Milligan, a feeling shared by other families.
It used to be said that the sea was a fitting grave for sailors. It is also a cheaper grave. The British Government will not pay the cost of raising wrecks. But evidence from the disasters involving the Solway Harvester and the Aberdeenshire vessel, The Sapphire, suggest many fishermen's families do not want their loved ones lying at the bottom of the sea. In any case, men at sea are no longer exclusively from traditional fishing families. Few jobs are for life now and more men are dipping in to fis hingas a short-term job. In Galloway, there was huge relief when the Manx Government offered immediately to pay the cost of raising the Solway Harvester because it sank within their 12-mile territorial waters.
It is the Chief Minister of the Isle of Man government himself who phones back when questions are asked about Manx policy regarding boat accidents. If it does not endanger further lives, says Donald Gelling, the Manx Government sees it as their duty to raise the boat. Had the Manx government discussed the Solway Harvester with the British Government? "We did discuss it and we were told their policy was to leave the vessel where it was and the bodies where they were. They said it was traditional. Wel l when I spoke to the relatives they did not want that. They wanted a proper burial, a chance to say goodbye."
Maybe Manx politicians have more heart than British ones. Gelling has personally visited the bereaved families in Scotland and says the Isle of Man prides itself on being a caring nation. It is clear the Manx government responded to the Solway Harvester disaster as a human tragedy before they responded to it as a political and financial problem. The Department of Environment and Transport in London says its policy is unchanged, and if it does change, it will not be funded by government money. "We wi ll be talking to everyone involved about the possibility, only the possibility, of setting up trust funds to raise money for raising bodies," says a department spokesman.
Gelling's language contrasts starkly with the language of British officialdom. "Those widows can now say to their little daughters: 'That's your daddy and there's his grave and he lost his life at sea,' instead of just saying: 'He went fishing and never came back.' I have no doubt in my mind that we did exactly the right thing."
It is hard to help children grieve. Jane and Karen have each told their daughters that daddy is in heaven. Rachel never talks about how she is feeling but the other day she found a picture she had made with her dad and told Jane she was going to keep it forever. "I just keep functioning for Rachel," says Jane. "She's the only reason I'm here. I don't know what would have happened to me if she weren't." Karen's daughter Sarah put her arms round Karen when she saw her cry once. "It's OK mummy, we'll b e all right," she told her. She doesn't say much to Karen now but she loves male attention, tells workmen who come to the house all about her daddy.
The families want answers about why their men died and Gelling is determined they will get them. The Manx authorities are in the middle of a major investigation which will be published in the coming months. It is exactly the same, says Gelling, as if a coach went off one of their mountain roads and crashed into a ravine. They would want a police investigation to find out why. He was also aware that some of the families had little confidence in the MAIB. Some suspected there would be a cover-up. Gell ing can't promise the relatives they will like everything in the Manx report but he can promise them the truth. All rumours about the sinking, from the theory that the serious damage found at the front of the boat was caused by a collision with a submarine, to the accusations that the boat was in poor condition, will be investigated. "We want to address perception as well as reality," says Gelling.
When the Harvester was raised, British marine investigators decided they wanted to investigate too. "They didn't want to pay but once we had, they wanted to do a report," says Gelling. "It'll be interesting to see how it corresponds with ours."
There is nothing but praise in Galloway for the Manx, for the dignified way they treated the families and their men. "I don't think we could have accepted it if we hadn't got Martin home," says Liz Milligan. "We would always have been looking for him. Itwas very important." They would, say the Milligans, have raised the money themselves if the Manx had not helped. "The British Government should have helped the Isle of Man with the costs," says John Milligan. "I'd like to meet Tony Blair face-to-face and say: 'What if it was your son?'"
For the families gathered at Douglas harbour, the bringing of the bodies ashore was an emotional moment. "I wanted dignity for Martin," says John Milligan. "He went with dignity and glory." The muscle that has been quivering in his cheek for the whole conversation suddenly gives way. His face crumples, but he, too, does not lose his dignity.
For Karen Mills, there was a strange calmness inside when the bodies came ashore. She had Robin back. She and Jane went together to see their dead menfolk. They were in coffins, their faces covered. Karen remembers an instinctive pull when they entered the room. "Craig and Robin were side by side and Jane and I didn't notice the lids of the coffins with their names at the sides of the room but we just automatically crossed - Jane went one way and I went the other - and it was the right coffin."
Karen finds it hard to think of Robin's final moments. She wonders how much he knew of his impending death. Her one consolation is that he was found wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts on top of the bunk. He was probably asleep. But there is always the slight fear that he woke when the coldness of the water hit him. "I hope he was warm and cosy and went to sleep thinking when he woke up he would be nearly home. I just hope there was something nice for him if he was sleeping."
It helped to see him again, even this way. It is always easier to accept that a person really is dead when there is a body. Rationally, she never doubted it, but somehow when the police handed back Robin's wedding and signet rings that they recovered from his body, it was the tangible evidence she needed that he really was dead. Sometimes, we need to see with our own eyes. "I said from the start I wanted to see Robin. "I would like to have held his hand. I know his hand would have been cold and free zingbut I do always wish I had put my hand on him." Karen told him that night when she sat beside him at the coffin that she was going to call their baby Robin, or Robyn if it was a girl. Her husband had been convinced the baby would be a boy.
He was right. Eight weeks after the Harvester sank, Karen was in the operating theatre for an emergency Caesarian because the baby was breech. "I just remember lying there and I could feel the tears rolling down my cheeks. Especially when they said it was boy. Part of it was relief the pregnancy was over and he was safe and well, but it was a terrible feeling, just such a feeling of loneliness."
She buried a husband and bore a son in the same year. The Milligans too have been told of new life in their family: their other son and his wife are expecting their first child this year. It is hard for the families to think about the future. "It doesn'tseem possible that there is a future," says Jane Galloway. But there is always a future; a future that laps steadily towards you whether you think of it or not, a new rhythm, a new tide.
