Winchman

By Chris Murray

This is the life story of Chris Murray from Stornoway. As a winchman on Search and Rescue helicopters, for 22 years he was involved in the rescue of many people from the seas and mountains around the north of Scotland and further afield. He details his exploits from his early days as a Royal Navy diver in the elite Faslane diving team, disabling explosive devices; as a civilian diver working offshore for various companies and finally - 22 years as the winchman on a Sikorsky S61; frequently hanging from a wire in stormy seas and snowstorms, risking his life to aid fishing vessels in distress and on one memorable occasion, receiving the Queen's Gallantry medal for the rescue of crewmen from the fishing vessel The Hansa. Includes 32 pages of photographs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fledgling Press
• Release date: May 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781905916665

Chris Murray

Chris Murray is professor of comics studies at the University of Dundee and director of the Scottish Centre for Comics Studies. Murray is author of Champions of the Oppressed: Superhero Comics, Popular Culture, and Propaganda in America During World War II. He is also editor of UniVerse Comics, coeditor of Studies in Comics (Intellect), and co-organizer of the International Comics and Graphic Novel conference.

Book preview

chapter 1

You thought you would pick up this book and read the life story of Chris Murray, eh? Well, sorry to disappoint you. That’s not my name. No, no. You haven’t picked up the wrong book. Let me explain.

My real name, the one I was christened with, is William Iain Murray. Chris was actually my father’s name. Confused? You will be. In the Highlands, and I’m sure elsewhere, people refer to their sons as little versions of the father. So, my father was Big Chris and his eldest son, my older brother Donald, was often known as Wee Chris. Everyone then knew who they were talking about. My birth messed up that cosy arrangement. My brother Donald was no longer Wee Chris but Big Chris and I, although I am now nearly 6ft 2in, became Wee Chris. Still, I was the youngest and that’s how it works.

Over the years Donald lost his nickname completely but mine stuck. Except, as I kept growing I was obviously no longer Wee Chris, but Big Chris. It’s making your head hurt? Just think how I felt. Why couldn’t everyone call me by my correct name? William. So you see, Chris was actually a nickname of sorts, but one which was really only used by people outside our family. It wouldn’t feel right if anyone who was related to me called me by that name. They would, of course, always call me William, as would most other people who have known me since I was young.

The other nickname I had back then was The Whale, because my Dad had been a whaler. Not surprisingly perhaps, that was one name I really didn’t like. And, of course, because I let them know I hated it, the more the other lads would shout, Thar she blows! So, although this book is actually about William Iain Murray and not Chris Murray, I hope you are still interested in learning a bit about my life. That’s fine; I have a fair few tales to tell if you bear with me.

How did I come to write this book? Over the years quite a few people had suggested it after hearing yarns about my past adventures. It is perfectly possible these tales were told in the pub and then passed on to others. I dismissed all those suggestions although I knew in the back of my mind that there had been some colourful incidents I could tell people about. As the years crept up on me, I began to realise that people like the late Dr John Macleod of Lochmaddy, who I mention later on in this chapter, may have been right and I should commit my memories to paper.

My hope for this book is that it will be read and understood by the general public and not just by people in the worlds of search and rescue and the military. Therefore, I am going to try and avoid jargon and where it is impossible to do that, I shall try and explain what I mean in plain language. It is my intention to make people smile as well as inform them. Yes, there have been heart-stopping moments in my career as a diver, as well as my 20-odd years dangling on the wire. However, there have also been unusual, thought-provoking and hilarious times too.

I almost came a cropper many times. You will hear how I had to be rescued myself, when I was washed off a boat in the Atlantic; how I was caught as helplessly as an insect on a fly swatter when a pipeline I was diving on, in 140 feet of water, suddenly shot up towards the surface, and how I froze when I realised that my young daughter and I could be wiped out as my dog ran up to us with an unexploded grenade in its mouth.

However, I will also tell you how I set my father’s much-loved shed on fire when my daft attempt at making gunpowder went drastically wrong, how I was set on fire myself for other people’s fun, how I completely failed to recognise one of the most famous footballers on the planet, and all about the time I came to be caught in a deluge of fresh cow manure from the heavens. Remind me also to tell you how I was shot by some mad, jealous Frenchman who left me for dead in the street.

So, who am I? I reckon it’s important to explain where I came from. Firstly, a bit about my family history. My grandfather was the Reverend William Murray. Born in the parish of Little Rogart in the county of Sutherland, his parents also came from there. He was married on June 20, 1905, having known my grandmother, Margaret Sutherland (from Hillview at Rearquhar, in the parish of Dornoch) for some years. Soon after, they went off to Africa where they were both missionaries. In those days the wife had to help the husband and they both set to work in the country we now know as Malawi. In those days, it was known as Nyasaland. They were very busy out there – so busy that they managed to have five sons and one daughter. These were James, David, Willie, John and Christopher, my dad, as well as a daughter, my aunt Marion. She went on to be a nurse and matron who was highly decorated for her work in hospitals and hospital ships around the world.

Being a missionary was a tough existence and there was a constant battle with disease. My grandfather picked up many bugs out there and was often unwell. When Dad was 13, they all came back to Dornoch for an extended holiday due to my grandfather’s poor health. My grandfather had just bought a house called Reefton in St Gilbert Street. During his break at home, Grandpa began to show signs of blackwater fever – a disease caused by complications arising after bouts of malaria. His condition deteriorated and he died and was buried in Dornoch. Having lost his father while still just 13, my father then became a pupil at Dornoch Academy. After his school years, not a happy time for him, as I shall explain, he went off to London where he worked for many years in the Smiths clock factory. He then joined the Metropolitan Police and served at various London stations. At one stage, my dad was one of the regular police guards for 10 Downing Street.

Towards the end of World War II, he decided to do his bit in another uniform and joined the Royal Navy, serving on HMS Howe from 1944 to 1945. After the war ended he soon wanted to come back to Scotland and took up forestry work around Dornoch for a time. After a few years he got itchy feet again. Jobs were scarce so it was back to sea, and he joined the whaling ships. He spent several seasons in the Antarctic as a whaler. It was a hard, cold job and when the time came to move on he eventually headed north again and managed to land the job as janitor of Dornoch Academy and then with Grants of Dornoch, the food company. He was at Grants until he retired but sadly died soon afterwards, as a result of injuries he suffered in a car accident.

However, it was when he was in London that my father met mum who was housekeeper to the Tate family, of sugar producers Tate and Lyle. She was Angusina Maclennan who hailed from Marvig in the South Lochs area of the Isle of Lewis. They got together, and before long my older brother Donald, and then myself, put in an appearance. Home was No 16 Maresfield Gardens in mega-posh Hampstead, in the north of the city. I was born in St Mary’s Hospital there. Hampstead is still one of the areas with the most millionaires’ houses anywhere in the country. I am not sure how or why we ended up living in such a posh area. Maybe it was a police house we had; I never asked.

Our near neighbours, I was told later, were a family called Freud. The family included the famed Clement Freud; the writer and broadcaster, always described as lugubrious, grandson of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and brother of the artist, Lucian Freud. First known as a household name for advertising dog food in a deadpan sort of way on television in the 60s and 70s, Clement then became an MP, a deadpan sort of Liberal MP. Later, of course, he was Sir Clement. We moved back to Scotland when I was just three months old and before long, my younger brother Alasdair was born in Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.

Mum and Dad were good-living people. However, I remember my father being more of a friend than a parent. A brilliant man, he just seemed to touch everyone he came across. Everyone liked him. He didn’t smoke but he would certainly take a wee dram on the odd occasion – yes, I do take after Dad in some ways. The old man was full of fun, always cracking jokes and he was a fantastic artist, particularly of cartoons. He was a notable sculptor too, and the type of person who could turn his hand to most things.

Dad also wrote poetry. I remember some of his poems on display at the doctor’s surgery. After he died, our next-door neighbour, the late Tom Mackay, gave me a cutting from the Northern Times newspaper of a poem my father had written about the street we lived in.

It is simply called St Gilbert Street:

Because of Holy Gilbert’s fame

A street was honoured by his name.

The chief street of this ancient town

Where Dornoch worthies sauntered down.

Proud of all that they had done

To make this town a modern one

With Gilbert’s street their special pride

Admired throughout the countryside.

But now we hasten to survey

This famous little street today

To see what progress there may be

In this progressive century.

But first of all, you must enquire

Where is this street that you desire?

There is no name-plate there to tell

And maybe it is just as well.

For what you see appears most quaint

If tribute to our patron saint.

If Gilbert Murray now could see

This back street to his memory

A cart-track with uneven crust

Of pot-holes, pools and flying dust;

The likes of which you wouldn’t see

In jungle-ringed Trincomalee.

Then would he understand the worry

And chagrin of another Murray.

Life had its challenges, though, for Dad from an early age. He had problems at school in Dornoch which were down to one particular teacher with a drink problem. Some mathematics exam papers he had completed were torn up and thrown in the bin by that teacher so he failed the exam for having ‘lost’ them.

Yet he was determined that setbacks like that wouldn’t hold him back in his life. He did not complain about how he was disadvantaged although he did eventually explain to me why things had not gone so well for him at school.

Of my parents, Dad was the one who was the regular churchgoer. He was also very fond of nature and wildlife and, as any parent would, he also took a great interest in my life and everything I was doing. Yeah, I have very happy memories of my dad. Mum was, well, Mum. She was certainly far stricter than Dad. A smoker all her life, she would never smoke in front of her mother back home in Marvig. It was pretty much taboo back then for island women to puff. She was quite strict towards my older brother although I seem to remember she wouldn’t go to church herself as often as my father.

It’s true that she wasn’t as outgoing as other mums in Dornoch at that time and she kept herself very much to herself. Her great obsession was spending all holidays back in her former home village of Marvig. That was her place, the place of her birth, and her love for it never changed.

I was still in school when I decided I wanted to be either a carpenter or a joiner. When I was 15 I began to wonder whether I should leave school and then I learned of a vacancy at the county council. They were looking for an apprentice joiner.

A job with the council? That’s a job for life, everyone said. Well, I applied, got the job and started soon after at the yard in Dornoch. It felt a bit strange going there in my overalls with my piece box but actually knowing very little about joinery. I did have some tools because I had managed to get a grant. The tools cost the princely sum of £15 for the lot, and you know what? I still have them all to this day. After the leisurely atmosphere of the woodwork class in school, where I was really quite good at making small things with wood, going into that workshop with those huge, noisy power tools was very different.

Thankfully, my journeyman, James Matheson, was a fantastic guy who taught me everything he could about the trade. As well as joinery, I was tiling, painting and doing plumbing work as well. I used to make doors, windows and gates from scratch. Apprentices, however, had no electrical tools available to them so I had to do this all by hand. That was an experience. I sure learned the work the hard way. Of course, I made mistakes along the way but that’s how you learn properly.

The work largely involved running repairs of all kinds to the various council properties all over the county of Sutherland. If somebody’s roof blew off in a gale, we’d go and replace the slates. If pipes had frozen or a boiler had burst, we would be sent. In the morning we could be fitting draught excluders and in the afternoon doing roof repairs. There was no trade union then to say who would do what. You were expected to do everything. Of course, when we did get power tools, things became a lot easier.

As part of my apprenticeship, I had to attend day release, and sometimes block release too, at the Sutherland Technical College in Golspie. It was a fantastic place and even had its own outdoor swimming pool. My brother Donald had gone there before me and told me all about it beforehand. The courses were fairly hard, I suppose. I seem to remember finding them tough going. Some of the teachers could be hard on the students too, but most were far from that. There were some you could even ask for a cigarette and who did treat us very much like adults, although we were still quite young. We were never into any serious drugs – unless you count sex, alcohol, nicotine and rock and roll. They were quite addictive.

The college itself was on the edge of a forest and during the lunch break you could get away from it all by heading into the woodland. I suppose that was when I met and got to know some of the local ladies for the first time. Some even became girlfriends of mine for a time. Ah yes, I remember those lunchtimes very well.

My friends and I lived for the weekend. Every Friday we headed off to a dance somewhere. It wasn’t that we had to go far. There was usually a dance in Golspie or sometimes in the Burghfield Hotel in Dornoch. Now and again, we might even go further afield and head for the bright lights of Helmsdale. Or Tain, when there was a free bus. Occasionally, we might even go to the Strathpeffer Pavilion. There was usually a show on most weekends.

If the Maurice Lynch Showband, an Irish band which seemed to be constantly touring in Scotland, was appearing in Wick or Thurso, we might even take the bus up there. Those four or five years of my apprenticeship were a very enjoyable time for me and I learned a lot. I even managed to learn a bit about being a joiner too.

I had a friend, Graham Grant, known as Goondy, who was a slaughterman in Dornoch. His father, Angus, was the head gamekeeper on the Torrish Estate, out near Helmsdale. We would go over there some weekends, often with Jimmy Bain, the under-keeper, when there were big shoots for grouse or woodcock, or even to do some salmon fishing on the river. We would be supplied with guns and would go out on the estate with Angus and Jimmy. Although I didn’t mind shooting birds, I didn’t really take to killing four-legged beasts. Most of the estate people were really very good to us and we would often be given some of the day’s kill to take home. A rare treat. After the shoot, of course, we would all pile back to the gamekeeper’s house and, in accordance with Highland tradition, the alcohol would flow. Those parties would go on to the wee small hours and some of them were really quite wild. It was quite an eye-opener, living it up with some very well-off people and, even now, it would not really be appropriate to go into too much detail about what actually happened at some of those estate dos. The guests would come from all around Europe and were paying a lot of money for their week’s shooting and fishing. When I did manage to get an invitation to their late-night parties which often went on to 6am, I rarely said no. Funny that.

Home in Dornoch was, of course, Reefton in Saint Gilbert Street, then just a cobblestone and dust path. The house was named after some place in South Africa, or maybe New Zealand, where my grandfather had been. One of my earliest memories is of the time I went missing when I was little more than a toddler. Snow was falling heavily and search parties looked for me for two hours without success. Eventually I made my own way back to the house where I was quizzed about where I had been. All I remembered was the snow swishing around me and falling into a snowdrift at one point. It was all just good fun to me.

Dad decided that it was better dealing with me one-to-one. He took me upstairs, away from everyone else, and asked where the heck I had been. I looked at him earnestly and then I made up the most fantastic tale about a big wind which had come down and swept me up, up and away. There was nothing I could do about it, I told him. Poor Dad, that wasn’t quite the explanation he had been looking for. I was only three or four years old and many a time since then he reminded me of the tale I came up with which I thought would keep me out of trouble.

Growing up in Dornoch was a happy time for me. I got up to all sorts of mischief although I can’t say I actually enjoyed school that much. I didn’t really knuckle down to it and I suppose I was a bit of a big softie. I was bullied a bit but I do think I brought much of it on myself by talking back to people. School was Dornoch Primary and then Dornoch Academy. A lot of my friends at that time came down from the west coast of Sutherland and stayed during the week in the hostel in Dornoch. I was not what you would call academic. In fact, I ended up in a ‘P’ class – I think that stood for Practical. It meant we were offered a lot of practical classes instead of academic and I really took to metalwork and woodwork. That’s where I was happiest.

Quite a few of my friends also ended up in the ‘P’ class. For some of them that proved no hindrance at all and they went on to have academic careers. I am still in touch with some of my former classmates and there is even a professor or two among them. My memories of my teachers are all really very positive. I can’t think of any I had problems with. They pretty much all went out of their way to help me. I was the problem. At that stage, I just didn’t want to learn anything other than practical subjects. I just couldn’t see the value of academic subjects although, of course, my opinion has changed a lot over the years and now I often wish I had applied myself more.

When I was 13, I joined the Army Cadets. That was something different which I found exciting. There was a uniform to wear and exciting activities too, like rifle shooting. We did a lot of that at Fort George and I did well in competitions with the .303 rifle – quite a number of times Cadet Murray came home with medals for shooting, destined for the sideboard. While I was still in school I went with the cadets to Nijmegen, Holland, to do a four-day, 100-mile march − another new experience: meeting people from other nations and seeing how they lived. We all finished the march and received a medal to confirm it. I’m not quite sure where that gong is now but I do have many happy memories of going Dutch.

*

For some time my dad worked on the Royal Dornoch Golf Course as a greenkeeper. During the summer he was usually up about 4am or 5am to make sure that the greens were fit and ready for those who were paying a lot of money to play on the course. The bunkers had to be raked and there was always mowing to be done; always lots to do. When I was in school and Dad was working there, I used to get up early too, to go round the golf course with him.

It was a beautiful spot, just beside the Dornoch beach and I used to envy my dad – although it wasn’t always lovely weather – we had some horrible rainy days too, but the work had to be done just the same. Dad was always jovial, whistling or singing a song to himself, and round he would go. He would tell me all kinds of stories about people he met on the golf course. He was told one particular day before he went to work that someone had lost a highly expensive watch. When I say highly expensive, it was worth thousands of pounds and that’s going back a good number of years. Dad being Dad, said he would look for it. He went right to the end of the 18-hole course towards Embo and on the way back had to answer a call of nature. He went into a secluded bunker to have a wee Jimmy Riddle. Now my dad would never tell tales or anything like that. He was very straight in the way he recounted events. As he was piddling away, the stream uncovered a watch in the bunker. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He cleaned it off and took it back to the clubhouse. It was indeed the watch which this person had lost – there was a chance in a million something like that could have happened. He also came across a gent’s gold wedding ring once, as he was raking a bunker.

A particular TV and film celebrity often seen around the Dornoch area when we were young