50 years after he died at sea, I finally knew my father

In the 1970s, Angie Weatherhead lived in Great Yarmouth with her mum, Gwen. Her father, Rick, was a foreman rigger on a derrick barge out in the North Sea, working on oil platforms.

“The earliest memory I have is one night, when I was about five years old, two men knocked at the door,” says Angie. “I remember my mum being quite hysterical in the kitchen, in tears over a sink.”

Her next recollection is being told that her dad had died in hospital. “Other than that, there's just a big gap, really, in my early memories.”

But Angie’s father hadn’t died in hospital.

During a row in the playground, Angie’s friend blurted out the truth: her father had drowned. It took Angie two years to summon the courage to ask her mum what had really happened.

“He went up on the upper level of the barge, the Hercules. He was with another guy. It was very rough seas.” Rick’s colleague urged him not to go to the edge of the boat to investigate a problem. “My dad ignored him,” says Angie. “Didn't put on a safety line and there was a freak wave, and the freak wave washed him overboard into the North Sea… They threw him a life belt, and that was the last they saw of him.”

Her mum was well compensated and money was put in trust for Angie until she was 18.

But there was no body; there was no funeral. “There wasn't a bench or a stone or anything at all to even remember what day he had died on,” says Angie.

Angie had a difficult relationship with her mum Gwen

As she grew up, Angie had a difficult relationship with her mum Gwen. Gwen was disapproving of Angie's husband Hugh, and for seven years she refused to communicate with Angie at all. But they reconciled months before Gwen's death.

“We sat and chatted through that period,” Angie recalls. “I was incredibly lucky. I was lucky that in that last six months, we had conversations.”

Angie’s mum told her that she was enormously proud of her. “It meant such a lot,” she says.

She also told her there was a box full of letters, to do with her dad, and a case of photographs. She wanted Angie to look at them, after she was gone. Then she passed away.

Angie didn’t touch the box. She was worried it would be painful. “You put it in a cupboard and you think, I'll do it one day. Next week. And then you don't.”

It crept up on Angie that it was going to be 50 years since her dad had died. She wanted to mark it somehow.

She came across a Facebook page to do with the UK oil and gas chaplaincy and the annual service of remembrance they held. “One day I thought, right, I’m going to ring this number.”

Angie sobbed down the phone as she explained what she was hoping to do for her father. “I think I was on a mission, and I was determined that he was going to be remembered.”

In the following days, she received an email. They would add her dad’s name to the book of remembrance at the service. “I was incredibly gobsmacked,” she recalls. “It was going to happen. He lost his life in that project that everyone benefits still from today. But he's remembered. He existed. And no matter how he died, he was incredibly brave. And he was my dad.”

Angie travelled to the kirk in Aberdeen to be part of the memorial service. “I have spent the best part of 50 years of my life waiting for that,” she admits. Amongst the other families who’d lost loved ones, she knew she was not alone.

She lit a candle, received condolences from the Lord Provost of Aberdeen, and left with one of the books with her father’s name inside.

“When I came out with my husband, I had a sense of joy, of relief… I've talked about my dad since that more than I’ve talked about him in a lifetime, and I’m at peace with it.”

“I feel incredibly loved”

Angie decided she was going to open the box of letters.

She knew her parents had an off-on relationship and that they’d been reconciled around three weeks before her dad died, but she didn’t have concrete evidence. “Then I found a series of letters going back probably over six months, from my dad, in his handwriting.” In the letters, he talks about how much he loved her mum.

“Then I came across three things that took my breath away,” she states. “I'd done a Father's Day card to my father which he had kept… It's probably the only Father's Day card I ever did in my life.”

“I found a letter from my father, which was dated the morning he died.” Aswell as mentioning the extreme weather on that fateful day, he talks about how much he loved them both.

“And then I found a letter, unposted, which was written by my mum, and this one was possibly harder.” It was never posted because she then received the news about Rick’s death. It contains a small note from Angela to her father: “Dear Daddy, no snoring, no coughing, no smoking. Please can you get me a Scotch kit, size age 6. Love Angela.”

The letters prove her parents were going to share a life. “I now know, they loved each other.” And she too, feels “incredibly loved.”

Angela wants her experience to show others that it’s never too late: “I don’t know what the word closure means in terms of bereavement, but I have found some inner peace.”

“I’ve achieved what I wanted to achieve for my dad.”