Millies 2017: Hero Overseas Individual

The winner of the Military Awards 2017 'Hero Overseas Individual’ category is Leading Seaman Sally Hughes, who led her sea boat team through rough seas to rescue 14 sailors. 

"I'm really overwhelmed. It is a great honour."

"When it was actually happening all my training kicked in... one of the greatest honours I have had is meeting one of the people from the rescue that day."

In February 2017, HMS Dragon – one of the Royal Navy’s Type 45 air defence destroyers – was diverted to rescue the yacht Clyde Challenger 500 miles south-west of Land’s End.

The yacht, which had competed in round-the-world races and was crewed by 14 volunteer sailors, had been de-masted in 18 foot seas and damaged in a failed rescue attempt by a nearby merchant vessel.

The yacht was taking on water and drifting further out into a worsening Atlantic storm when HMS Dragon arrived on the scene.

Nick Lynch, one of the sailors rescued from the yacht said: “In the darkness of the evening, we got knocked over – pretty much rolled all the way over – by a giant, if not freak, wave.”

“We lost the mast. We lost the deck cover. The boat was in quite a bad state.

“We’d all kind of been through the mill inside the boat.”

LS Sally Hughes’ role was to drive the Ship’s seaboats – 24 foot rigid inflatable boats fitted with diesel engines, more usually found conducting boarding operations and anti-piracy patrols than acting as rescue boats.

Conditions were dangerous; the seaboat and the yacht were regularly completely lost from view as they dipped into the Atlantic swell, and the 40 knot winds made it difficult to hear the seaboat’s radios.

Nick Lynch said: “One of the guys on the boat said ‘there’s a warship outside’. And I was thinking, well that’s great but how are we gonna get on there.”

LS Sally Hughes said: “Everyone knew it was over the limits and that the winds and the swell was… more than we could even imagine.”

“But it just would never have been an option for me to say that I wasn’t going to do it.”

“As we were coming in, there was such a swell that at times the yacht seemed like it was 3 metres above our kind of sea level.”

“It was a 10-15 second window where we could get in and get the personnel off.”

Nevertheless, LS Sally Hughes was able to manoeuvre the boat accurately enough for her fellow crewman to hand an emergency VHF radio over to the sailors on the sailing boat.

Despite the danger to herself and her crewmate, LS Hughes persisted with the rescue and made 13 approaches over a gruelling two-hour period to lift the crew off the stricken yacht and ferry them back to the safety of HMS DRAGON.

During one such cycle, the seaboat was swung into the side of DRAGON by the high seas and the force of the impact punctured the boat and injured LS Hughes’ arm.

LS Hughes elected to switch to the reserve seaboat and continue to rescue, rather than have a shipmate take her place.

Nick Lynch said: “You’ve got somebody who leaves the safety of a massive warship, gets in a tiny rubber boat and battles their way through this pretty rough sea to get to us.”

“You cannot belittle the achievement and the courage that it takes to do that.”

LS Hughes: “I was doing my job and helping out 14 people.”

Nick Lynch: “We are forever in her debt. There are 14 people who as far as they’re concerned and as far as I’m concerned, she saved our lives.”