What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done when no one was watching?
I’m not sure I’d call it brave. It was more a matter of weighing up the risk and deciding that I could probably do something about it.
I was a keen sailor and regularly took the RIB out as race support. On one occasion, as I left Newhaven Harbour, I saw a bird in distress — a juvenile gull caught in fishing line, hanging from one of the wooden groynes.
It had somehow taken the hook and bait in its beak and was in considerable distress.
There was nobody there to impress and nobody watching. I simply had to decide whether to attempt a rescue myself or go and find someone else.
The difficulty was doing it safely. I had to manoeuvre the RIB underneath the bird, keep the engine idling and hold the boat in just the right position so that I could stand up without either falling overboard or driving the boat into the groyne. Then I had to get hold of the gull and somehow bring it into the boat.
Which I did.
Once aboard, the next problem was considerably more animated. I had to fold my arms around its wings, hold it firmly enough not to be flayed by them, and somehow remove the fishing hook from its beak — while remaining conscious that the boat was drifting with the tide in the approaches to a working harbour.
Eventually the hook came free.
I put the gull down in the bottom of the boat. For a while it simply stayed there. Then it stood up.
I headed out into Seaford Bay.
After a while the gull jumped onto the side of the RIB and sat there. I carried on. Perhaps ten minutes later it opened its wings and flew away.
That was it.
So I’m reluctant to nominate it as an act of bravery. There was no dramatic leap into the sea and no audience. What I remember is assessing the risks: the bird, the hook, the boat, the tide, the shipping, and whether intervening was more sensible than going for help.
Then deciding that it was.
Perhaps quite a lot of bravery is like that when no one is watching.
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