The volunteer crew of a north-east lifeboat will pay tribute to the men who came before them tomorrow.
On January 21, 1970, the town’s lifeboat – the Duchess of Kent – was launched as part of the rescue of the Danish fishing vessel Opal about 35 miles off the coast of the port.
But of the six men who left the harbour that day, only one returned home. They left behind five widows and 15 children.
Now, as a mark of respect, the current crew lay a wreath at the station’s memorial each year.
Coxswain Victor Sutherland said: “We put a wreath on the memorial every year for the lifeboat disaster.
“In 2020 it will be the 50th anniversary of the 1970 disaster and we hope to plan something bigger.
“Irrespective, it’s important we remember them.”
The dead were coxswain John Stephen, the town’s assistant harbour master; Fred Kirkness, the lifeboat’s engineer; William Hadden, a customs and excise officer; fish worker James Buchan and tool worker James Buchan, who was reputed to have jumped on to the lifeboat as it began making its way out of port.
Within three minutes of reaching the Danish boat, the crew was swamped with massive waves and the vessel itself overturned. Frank Gilfeather, who was working for the Press and Journal at the time of the tragedy, recalled seeing the boat leave port on that fateful day.
Mr Gilfeather added: ‘“It was a total fishing community and there was not one person who was not touched by it. There was a horrible feeling in the town at the time but they all pulled together.”
Jackson Buchan was the boat’s only survivor. He never spoke of the tragedy and died a year later.
Sunday’s remembrance will mark the beginning of the RNLI’s 160th year in the town.
Fraserburgh Lifeboat was the first established station in Scotland when the charity started asking for willing men to sign up in 1858. Before then, life-saving apparatus was kept at the port and maintained by a tax of “6d per man on all vessels entering the harbour”.
Some time between 1848 and 1858, however, this privately-funded lifeboat station closed, and in 1858 the RNLI placed its own craft in the town in answer to calls from local people.
