HM Coastguard Responds After Lifeboat Beaches

Members of the UK’s HM Coastguard were dealing with a mystery early on Sunday morning, December 21, when they started receiving reports of a lifeboat washed up on the rocky shoreline near Sidmouth on the English Channel. The Beer Coastguard Rescue Team was dispatched, and they found a larger emergency boat badly damaged sitting on the coastline.

The boat was clearly marked with an IMOP number and the name of a vessel, BF Carp. Checking with the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre, they confirmed the boat had broken free from the containership, and efforts had been underway to track it and determine where it would come ashore.

The boat, which has a capacity for 19 people, was reported missing from the BF Carp (12,000 dwt) on Wednesday, December 17, while the vessel was near the French coast. It had departed Antwerp earlier in the day, bound for Spain.

The Beer team was instructed to search the boat and remove and secure any equipment, including emergency flares. A quick visual check showed extensive damage to one side of the fiberglass hull. No one had been aboard the boat when it launched.

Tractor was used to pull the boat further on shore away from the tide (Beer Coastguard Rescue Team)

The boat was going to be held till a private contractor hired by the shipping company could come to collect it. However, concern was raised that the boat might be further damaged and break up, or wash back out to sea, when the evening tide came in. The Sidmouth Independence Lifeboat crew arrived with a tractor and pulled the boat further up the shore to a secure position above the evening tide line.

The Devon and Cornwall Police, the Receiver of Wrecks, and the Environmental Agency have also been notified of the unusual boat on the beach. HM Coastguard reports it is unclear how or why the lifeboat became detached and launched for the containership.