Nigel Millard
Royal Mail Stamps 'Mayday - Rescue at Sea'
Nigel's images show the marine search and rescue work of the RNLI and the MCA. They feature in a special 'Mayday-Rescue at Sea' Royal Mail stamp issue...
Nigel worked closely with design team Mark Wheatcroft and Gareth Howat from hat-trick to produce the Mayday-Rescue at Sea series. The stamps commemorate the 100th anniversary of the adoption of S-O-S as the worldwide Morse Code distress signal. The S-O-S signal consisting of 3 dots followed by 3 dashes followed by 3 dots can be seen in the perforations along the top and bottom edges of the stamps.
1st Class Stamp
The First Class stamp shows Barra Islands Severn class lifeboat in action. Nigel recalls
'Following advice from Donald MacLeod, the Barra Lifeboat coxswain we selected a
stretch of water around 12 miles South West of Barra Island called the Sound of
Berneray. This specific location allowed us to benefit from the huge sea swells of the
Atlantic Ocean whilst remaining protected from the worst of the weather. Camera
position was in the 'Y' boat, a 3m inflatable rib carried on the back of the Severn. On
the day, the weather was not as bad as we expected, but it did however provide us with a good 3.5 meter swell and around 30 knots of wind.'
46p Stamp
Appledore's Tyne class lifeboat is featured on the 46p stamp and was shot whilst out on a training exercise. 'We were over the notorious Bideford Bar, a submerged sand bank around 1 mile off the North Devon coast - an extremely treacherous area of sea that has been the scene of numerous RNLI rescues' comments Nigel.
48p Stamp
Whiskey Bravo The Maritime and Coastguard Helicopter based at Portland, Dorset provided the shooting platform. The brief was to shoot a casualty being winched up from a vessel at speed. Nigel recalls, 'Flight time was around two hours and we were tracking the boat constantly for around an hour. In order to see the winch-man and casualty, we positioned them over the wake of the boat and then shot vertically down at a variety of heights between 20 and 40 feet off the deck.'
54p Stamp
Featured here is the St Ives Inshore Lifeboat (ILB) with its crew of three powering through the surf off Hayle Towans beach, North Cornwall. 'We had gone out training but as the conditions were perfect for the shot we had in mind, I got out of the ILB and dried off the cameras' comments Nigel. He continues... 'Wearing a dry suit and shooting chest deep in breaking surf is not the most stable of situations to work in. We were after the butterfly splash that you get when the ILB hits breaking waves. I take my hat off to the crew, as they had to do this around 50 times in order to get things just right, mind you, they were not the only ones to suffer... I did have to stand them a few beers in the pub when we got back!'
© Nigel Millard 1st . 46p . 54p royal mail 48p - reproduced by kind permission of the royal mail