A massive search began in the early hours of the morning of Wednesday 2nd December 2008 in the southern North Sea for a reported man-over-Board from a passenger ferry!

Lifeboat crews were alerted at around 05:55 to launch their lifeboats and requested to take part in a massive search area for a crew member of the passenger ferry the 'Pride of Rotterdam' who had been reported as missing by the captain of the vessel as it neared the mouth of the river Humber in Lincolnshire UK.

The crewman had been seen last at midnight, when the vessel was off Cromer, but as the crew prepared to birth at Hull he could not be found on board. At around 05:00, as the vessel docked in port the local police force sent officers aboard to carry out a thorough search of the vessel before alerting Coastguards at Great Yarmouth MRCC in south Norfolk about the missing man!

As details continued to come in the MRCC staff began requesting the launch of RNLI & Independent lifeboats along the Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk coast, initially giving them all an overall search area to proceed to. As well as the lifeboats the MRCC also requested the attendance of RAF rescue helicopters from Leaconfield in Lincolnshire & Wattisham in Suffolk!

In all 8 lifeboats from: Humber, Cleethorpes, Skegness, Wells, Cromer, Caister, Gt. Yarmouth & Gorleston and Lowestoft were involved in the search for the missing man along with numerous volunteer coastguard search team checking the beaches.

Unfortunately there was no sign of the missing crewman and with the cold weather conditions at the time and a sea temperature of approximately 10 degrees Celsius, hopes of finding the man alive faded fast! After nearly 8 hours of searching the search teams and lifeboats were stood down to return to their respective stations.

Were you a member of a search team involved in this rescue?

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