At the beginning of the Support St Abbs Lifeboat campaign, letters had been sent to people like Sean Connery and Boyd Tunnock of the leading Scottish company “Thomas Tunnock & Sons Ltd” and Boyd had replied enclosing a £10,000 cheque (but Sean didn’t bother – shame on you Sean!). An ensuing thankyou telephone conversation led to Mr Tunnock offering and eventually donating sufficient funding for the purchase of the new independent lifeboat in its entirety, so touched was he by the personal thank you. Mr Tunnock, no stranger to generosity to local causes and events, later went on to be knighted in the Birthday Honors for services to business and charity in June 2019.
On 8th December 2015, 4 members of the Lifeboat committee travelled up to the Tunnock factory in Uddingston to meet Sir Boyd and receive the donation. After a tour around “streams of caramel and rivers of warm chocolate” in the factory and lunch at the Tunnocks shop, the time came to “swap” the £10,000 cheque for a £250,000 cheque and Sir Boyd just said “Keep them both”.
Tunnocks had been in business since 1890 and in 1911, the year St Abbs Lifeboat was launched for the first time, Sir Boyd’s grandfather, Thomas Tunnock, was opening a tearoom and building a new bakery following a dramatic fire which destroyed the old one that had existed since 1890. By the time Sir Boyd was born in 1933, our Lifeboat, The Helen Smitten (1911-1936), had covered over 20 shouts and the Tunnock Business was expanding rapidly. The Caramel Wafer first appeared in 1952 when our lifeboat, the JB Couper of Glasgow (1949-1953) had attended 4 shouts. The Tunnocks Teacake didn’t arrive until 1956 when our lifeboat had become the W Ross McArthur (1953-1964) which went on to save 16 lives and undertake 32 launches. In the year that St Abbs Lifeboat was taken away, the Tunnock family were investing in a new caramel log robot which significantly increased productivity and the 5th family generation, Sir Boyd’s 3rd grandchild, had just joined the business. Family, inter-generational service, community pride and resilience – its clear to see that the Tunnock business and St Abbs Lifeboat had followed parallel tracks in life. Sir Boyd, who’s company now makes ten million teacakes and caramel wafers a week, was also a seasoned yachtsman and had been racing yachts since 1962. He’d been on yachts with broken masts, blown out spinnakers and in winds of 60 knots knowing that “on the boats you always knew the lifeboat was there to rescue you if need be”.
And so our boat, the Thomas Tunnock, (2016-present), was born.
The announcement was made to the community on 24th November 2015. The Tunnock family had turned a 5 year appeal that had gained so much momentum, into a 1 year success. Whilst Stage 2 of the appeal was still needed and ongoing, a Lifeboat for St Abbs was assured and would be launched within almost a year to the day of the RNLI boat being taken away. The message that went out to the press from the Lifeboat Chairman, Alistair Crowe, was jubilant:
“This is a highly significant development and the emergence of Tunnocks as a major donor has unanimous support from the Community of St Abbs. On behalf of the St Abbs Community I would like to express my sincere gratitude not only to Tunnocks, but also to all our other donations both big and small. We look forward to becoming an operational Lifeboat Station at St Abbs again as soon as arrangements can be put in place, which will include a new purpose built boat.”
To be continued……on 11th December with “The Paperwork”….
If you were involved in the campaign at the time and have any memories you’d like to share about what you did and what it meant to you, please use the link above to post your thoughts.
If you have any photos you’d like to include in this album we’d love to see them so please email them to [email protected]
