‘Three cheers for the Lady Rothes!’

In 1915, seas carried extra danger. After a steamer is sunk by a submarine, RNLI lifeboat Lady Rothes is launched. Fraserburgh Sea Cadets pick up the story.

The champagne had barely dried on Fraserburgh’s newly named lifeboat, when her crew were called into the fray of a First World War rescue. The Lady Rothes had just been donated to the town by the Countess of Rothes’ father, grateful that his daughter had survived the 1912 Titanic disaster. On 8 August 1915, the lifeboat’s volunteer crew launched after a German submarine was sighted 15 miles offshore. Fraserburgh’s first motor lifeboat was about to claim its first rescue.