Dougal Robertson

And he liked to lie on the bed to work the sights out.

So he was lying on the bed down below in their stateroom in my mum and dad's cabin to work it out.

My brother Sandy was on watch.

He'd been on the 8 to 12 watch.

So he'd been on watch since 8 o'clock.

It was now sort of 10 o'clock.

And so he'd been on watch two hours.

And I'd been on the 12 to 4 watch in the

So I was asleep and I'd woken up at about 9, 9.30 and I think I'd taken Sandy a drink of coffee and taken it to him on watch.

So me and him were in the cockpit anyway and Sandy was steering and I saw something over on the starboard bow.

It was a black shape, but it wasn't a bird.

You can tell the difference between birds and non-birds.

It had a very sharp definition, triangular shape.

It must have been a fin, but I didn't know that then.

And then, maybe 20 seconds later, bang!

Bang, bang!

Huge crashes came through the bottom of the boat.

Lifted the boat bodily out of the water and it sort of back into the water.

The crash was ear-splitting him.

It was so loud and I knew instinctively that that was dangerous.