AN OKEHAMPTON member of North Dartmoor search and rescue team saved nine people from drowning, eight of them children, while holidaying in Cornwall last week.

As Storm Ellen swept in from the Atlantic across the Westcountry, NDSART member James Watts and his 15-year-old son used a kayak and stand-up paddleboard to rescue the nine holidaymakers, who were swept out to sea by ripcurrents from Maenporth beach in Falmouth.

James, a physicist and honorary professor at Exeter University who runs a telecommunications company, described how the drama unfolded between 2 and 3pm on the Thursday afternoon (August 20), as a strong swell developed while swimmers were in the water.

He was out on the water in the kayak, which he and his wife had bought for their two sons for the holiday, when he realised some of the swimmers bobbing about in the waves were in trouble.

‘When the tide came back in there was a huge swell and I suddenly heard three children screaming “help”,’ he said.

‘I saw they were being swept out to sea. I paddled over to them and got them to grab hold of the boat.

‘A couple of surfers came out and helped me bring them back to the beach. There were three children about eight or nine, wearing black wetsuits so if they had gone further out they never would have been seen.’

Minutes later, he and his son Thomas, 15, once again headed out, after realising there were more people in diffculties in the water.

‘I thought ‘there’s more people out there, so I got on the kayak with buoyancy aids on the back and my son Thomas, who is 15, came too on his paddleboard.

‘There was a girl and her stepmum who were struggling and a girl who couldn’t have been more than six or seven who was crying, being swept out into the bay, so we gave the older two buoyancy aids and the girl popped on the kayak.

‘Meanwhile my son rescued this girl’s brother, who was a bit further out. He was 11 or 12 and he was a long way out. We took them all in.

‘My wife called the Coastguard because it was so dangerous and people were still swimming in the water.’

He then spotted two small children who had been swept out of their depth in the shallows with a bodyboard.

‘I picked them up and towed them against the ripcurrent back to their mum,’ he said.

‘Then the Falmouth lifeboat arrived and the coastguard. About 20 minutes later, another three swimmers got into trouble and the coastguard got a rope out to them.’

James added: ‘Afterwards I was in shock. I thought, oh my goodness, they could have died, because no one had seen them and nobody could hear them. They were people on the rocks, but they couldn’t hear them because of the sound of the sea.’

He added: ‘Of these nine people that I was involved in rescuing, only one was an adult. They were in four separate groups and only one of those had an adult with them. They didn’t understand the dangers.’

There is no lifeguard service at Maenporth.

‘It goes without saying that without some quick thinking, this incident could have had a very different outcome,’ said a Falmouth Coastguard spokesperson.