RNLI rescues two anglers from sea when kayak sank off Northumberland coast

An RNLI team helped to save the lives of two anglers who were cast into the sea when their kayak sunk off a Northumberland Coast village.

Newbiggin RNLI received a call from Humber Coastguard to report a swamped kayak off Church Point in the village at dusk on Monday at around 10:20pm on Monday night (June 3). The team launched its Atlantic B Class lifeboat 'Richard Wake Burdon' and arrived at the search zone around quarter-of-a-mile from the shore within minutes.

With dwindling light and no sighting of the two casualties, the volunteer crew switched off their equipment to listen. Their training for such a scenario proved worthwhile as they heard a distant call for help in the rapidly-increasing darkness.

• Read more: North Tyneside search and rescue team has busiest May on record with 18 callouts

• Keep up to date with all the latest local news from Northumberland with our free newsletter

The lifeboat headed towards the sound and found the first angler, before visually locating the second. By this point, their kayak had sunk and both were suffering from early affects of hypothermia.

After initial casualty care and safety checks were carried out, the two anglers were passed into the care of the North East Ambulance Service.

Richard Martin, who has been a lifeboat volunteer for more than 50 years, told ChronicleLive: "We turned the engines off and there was a bit of a draught, but you could hear. Just a bit like when they're searching for bodies in a building, we switched everything off to hear the lap of the water.

"We had a torch going around and then we heard a cry. If we hadn't done that, it could have been a very different matter, but thankfully it's got a happy ending."

Richard finished: "I think for all the volunteers in a situation like this, it's about training kicking in. I've been a lifeboat volunteer for over 50 years here and what I find is that the days when the weather's glorious, those are the days something will happen."

A statement from the North East Ambulance Service read: "We received a call at 10.40pm last night (Monday 3 June) from colleagues at HM Coastguard in Newbiggin to reports of two patients requiring medical attention following an incident in the water. We dispatched an ambulance to Newbiggin Lifeboat Station and transported two patients to the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital (NSECH) for further treatment."