VERSAILLES / CHARTRES

If you look at the pictures of the Chartres you'll see that several front windows have been boarded up. During the storm mentioned in '90 or early '91, she took a heavy sea over the bow which stove in the windows and shorted out some electrics which for a while left her helpless in mid-channel and beam on to the storm. Newhaven Lifeboat was launched (Mike Beach at the helm) to go to her assistance but we were not quite sure of what assistance our 7 man crew would have been able to give to her.!! Fortunately they managed to restart the engines, regain power and turn and make for Dieppe which is where she hit the harbour wall on the way in causing further damage. Regards to Chris.

I was on the Chartres during the storm. Until they got the engines restarted and turned the bow into the sea, we were violently thrown around. I was lucky, and held on tight to a chair. On several occasions, the ship rolled beam-on to the waves (force 11/12) and just kept rolling until the far side of it was above us, almost ready to capsize.
After a couple of these rolls, I made my way to stand by an exit, thinking that if it did capsize, I would try to walk onto the bottom as it went over. OK, in the dark, in that sea, the chances of managing it were incredibly small, but the chances of survival in that sea, or if it capsized were zero.
Scary!!

This was January 1991 and the lifeboat was launched to back up the helicopter that had been tasked from Lee-on-Solent, the helicopter would have taken a dozen or so off at a time and dropped them onto other ships in the area, for our part on the boat the first 3 waves past the breakwater end did an incredible amount of damage to the boat, all windscreen wipers bent and buckled, radar scanner u/s and also bent the MF radio aerial and we only got 3 miles out before we were stood down as the ferry was making its way to Dieppe, one of the livlier trips of my lifeboating career.