Pat van Eyssen and Ian Hamilton Celebrate 55 Years of Service

Fifty-five years ago, two young men began journeys with the NSRI that neither could have imagined would span more than half a century.

Pat van Eyssen was just 19 when he was invited to a training session and thought sea rescue sounded like “fun”. Ian Hamilton, meanwhile, knew very little about boats or seamanship when he became involved in establishing a sea rescue station in Mossel Bay.

This year, both are being recognised for an extraordinary 55 years of service: Pat at Station 3 Table Bay, and Ian at Station 15 Mossel Bay.

Two Very Different Beginnings

For Pat, the sea had always been part of life. He grew up in Bloubergstrand when it was still a small seaside village and spent much of his time aboard his father’s fishing boat. His brother-in-law, Peter Bestbier, was a coxswain at Station 1 and invited him along to a training session.

“I was a young 19-year-old and soon got stuck into training and everything else required of a young trainee,” Pat says. “Being a member of the NSRI became part of my life.”

Ian’s path was quite different.

In 1969, he was the youngest member of the Mossel Bay Rotary Club and was drafted onto a committee investigating the need for a sea rescue station in the town. Having grown up in Pretoria before moving to Mossel Bay in 1968, he had little experience of the sea. But the enthusiasm of the then NSRI leader , Lieutenant Commander Alan Hollman, proved infectious.

When Station 15 officially opened on 1 June 1971, Ian was a crew member.

Building a World-Class Rescue Service

Both men would go on to see the NSRI, and sea rescue itself, transformed.

Pat remembers a time before mobile phones, when volunteers relied on landlines and, later, pagers. Ian remembers an organisation where resources were scarce, and volunteers made do with what they had.

“In the beginning, there was no money, so when something broke, we fixed it. When we needed something, we went out and found someone to donate it. When I was Station Commander, my car was the Station Mobile, and I paid for the petrol,” Ian recalls.

Today, he describes the NSRI’s growth as a fairytale come true: “In the early 70’s the NSRI was a cinderella organisation. Today it is an icon and a world leader in search and rescue at sea. Something to be truly proud of.”

The Moments That Stay with You

Even with all that has changed, it is the people behind the rescues who remain at the heart of both Pat and Ian’s memories.

Pat recalls a search lasting more than 20 hours for a fishing boat lost in thick fog off the West Coast. The vessel and its crew were eventually found. The following day, while visiting Paternoster, Pat went looking for the fishermen and discovered them with their families at an informal church service, praying and giving thanks for their safe return.

“I found this to be a very humbling experience,” he says.

It is moments like these that have kept him volunteering: “Seeing the relief and appreciation on the family members' faces when you return to the station with a casualty who has been rescued. This is difficult to describe. This is what makes being a volunteer for NSRI all worth it.”

Ian, too, carries vivid memories of lives saved. Among them is a gruelling night-time rescue in the late 1980s, when Station 15 Mossel Bay launched into a south-westerly gale to find four people aboard a 5m ski-boat with engine failure near Still Bay.

Huge seas battered the Edwin Wassung, at one point filling her with knee-deep, ice-cold water. After hours at sea, the crew spotted the ski-boat just as a parachute flare was dying out and towed it safely into harbour.

They arrived to waiting family and friends, hot coffee, breakfast and dry clothes – “satisfied that we had saved 4 lives and had made a difference for their families.”

A Legacy Measured in More Than Years

For Pat, receiving his 55-year award has also brought recognition of the people who made those decades of volunteering possible.

“I certainly feel honoured. I am humbled to have received a citation of such magnitude,” he says. “I am grateful to my family for the sacrifices they made and for standing by me through these 55 years. Without their support it might not have been that easy.”

Asked what he would tell the 19-year-old who first walked into the NSRI, Pat says he would change very little. “Always give your best as this moulds you and prepares you for many things in life and makes you a better person.”

As for Ian, he hopes his generation has passed on “dedication, commitment, and determination to get the job done” to those who have followed them.

And his message to the young man who became a crew member all those years ago is perhaps the perfect measure of just how far the organisation – and these two volunteers – have travelled:

“You won’t ever believe where this organisation will be in 55 years.”