Over the years he has attended more than 800 sea rescues
"Seeing the lifeboat men, in their yellow sou’westers, that was amazing," he said."That's how it all started. I never thought I'd end up runningMr Berriff's lifeboat story began as a six-year-old boy, lying in bed with mumps on a family holiday to Whitby in 1952. In the early hours of the morning, he heard a plane overhead.
"Not long after we heard the lifeboat maroon rockets go off," he recalled."The following morning we learned they had been called to a plane crash just off Whitby."We could see the lifeboats out, searching for any survivors. It was all very dramatic, to a six-year-old boy.
Still, that interest in lifeboats remained. Eventually, after his first feature film aired of a daring expedition down the Colorado River, Coxswain John King had told him:"If you can do that, on rafts and kayaks, you can certainly do it on the Bridlington Lifeboat."It was to prove an adventure, which saw him dubbed an"honorary lifeboatman" with the Bridlington crew. When he wasn't on assignment, he would join them on missions.
Once, he recalled, the call came at 1am, in the middle of a force 11 northerly gale in"horrific big seas and squalls". A father and son were missing, they hadn't returned."I remember switching the searchlight, back and forwards over the front of the boat, while throwing up over the side," he said."We were out for hours but we never found them.
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