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#rescue – An elderly man with a walking aid was rescued from soft sand just 50 metres off the prom in Morecombe today after he sank up to his knees.

At just before 11.30 this morning Liverpool Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre received a 999 call from a member of the public. He told the coastguard about the elderly gentleman's predicament. The specialist coastguard mud rescue teams from Morecombe and Knott End were immediately sent to the scene with the RNLI hovercraft based in Morecombe and the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service mud team.

The elderly man was extracted from the soft sand by the coastguard rescue teams and fire and rescue service. He was brought ashore by the RNLI hovercraft before receiving medical attention and being taken to hospital by the North West Ambulance Service.

Watch Manager Stuart Atkinson who coordinated today's rescue said:

"The winter storms have moved the sand around offshore. This means that areas that were safe to walk are now areas of dangerous soft sand.

"Please take care if you are out on the sands. If you become stuck try to spread your weight as much as possible. If you have a mobile phone call 999 and ask for the coastguard."

Published in Coastguard
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About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).