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Alex Salmond believes the successful campaign to raise the sunken Sapphire fishing boat and bring home the lost crew is his greatest achievement.

Scotland’s former First Minister said: “If I go to the Pearly Gates and my maker says, ‘What did you ever do with your life as an MP and all the rest of it?’ I might well say, ‘I helped raise the Sapphire.’”

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the tragedy, Salmond has spoken of the struggle, torment and emotional turmoil behind the scenes as he joined forces with the Daily Record to answer the call of the grieving families.

The Sapphire plunged to the seabed just 12 miles out after being hit by a freak wave as she brought her catch in to her home port of Peterhead on Wednesday, October 1, 1997.

Skipper Victor Robertson survived after scrambling out of the wheelhouse window but his four crew were swamped in their bunks below.

They were young men – husbands, dads, sons. The youngest, at 25, was Robert Stephen, then Adam Stephen, 29, (no relation), Bruce Cameron, 32, and Victor Podlesny, 45.

Breaking with tradition and arguing that the boat was so close to home and in relatively shallow water, the three widows and Bruce’s mum Wilma united to call for the men to be brought ashore.

But superstitious seafarers branded the Sapphire a ghost ship best left on the seabed.

Opinion was divided – but the families stood united.

Salmond, then local MP for Banff and Buchan, was asked to help and set up an infamous encounter with then Labour shipping minister, the Oscar-winning actress Glenda Jackson.

He recalled: “We were going to London to lobby with Glenda – the Record were already in the van campaigning for the Government to raise the boat.

“There was the adjournment debate that day and she came along totally unprepared.

(Image: Derek Ironside Photography)

“Her entire argument was that you could risk divers’ lives in recovering bodies from a wreck.

“Of course, the families had already produced a proposal to lift the boat.

“She had a copy yet she dissented – she’d obviously not bothered to read it.

“In the debate, I made her pledge to read it before the meeting that afternoon. She came along and she still hadn’t read it – it was unbelievable.

“She was the new minister and was probably out of her depth. The families were fairly charged up, as you can imagine.

“These were people in the midst of bereavement but even so, her behaviour was just extraordinary – it was like a political meeting.

“I was trying to keep things in order but her attitude was just so combative.

“She sat there sullenly in stony silence. It was like she was engaging in a political debate.

“I expected she’d be nice to the families in the circumstances and explain the government policy – or lack of policy – and why that was.

(Image: Daily Record)

“I remember the Record front page portraying her as the Acid Queen with her picture from her role as Elizabeth I.”

Salmond remains convinced the government were scared to set a precedent against the backdrop of the Hull-registered trawler Gaul.

The vessel, with a 36-man crew, got caught in a storm and was lost off the Norwegian coast in 1974.

Some relatives insisted it had been used to spy at the height of the Cold War and was sunk by the Soviet Union.

But the boat was found in 1997 and a 2004 inquiry concluded it sank after two chutes were left open and water rushed in as it was lashed by rough seas.

Salmond said: “I’ve often thought that, in the background, there was something going on that we weren’t seeing. I came to believe later that they were petrified because of a campaign on a boat called the Gaul.

“We later found out that World In Action had asked to examine the wreck, which had been found.

“I believed they were petrified to do anything about raising fishing boats because it would create a precedent.

“The Government were anxious not to compromise the position they’d taken on the Gaul.

(Image: National Pictures)

“They said that the sea effectively keeps its dead. That was the rhetoric – the old fashioned position.”

After being snubbed by Jackson, Salmond and the Record pledged to raise funds to lift the wreck.

Salmond said: “Attitudes were changing and the proof of the pudding’s in the eating – the campaign raised £600,000.

“These were days before crowd-funding and the support of the Record was absolutely necessary. A large amount of that money was raised from the Record readership.

“You can’t generate £600,000, the equivalent of several million today, unless you’ve got public support.

“The bulk of the community were behind the families. Most people took the attitude that it was what the families wanted so that was what should happen.”

But winter was closing in, when conditions in the North Sea can be harsh, and it was a race against time.

Raising the money was the easy bit as donations poured in. The fund stood at £500,000 within 10 days.

A huge lifting vessel from Rotterdam, the Taklift 4, sat in Peterhead Harbour for weeks waiting for a weather window.

Salmond said: “I went down every day to look at the water vapour from Peterhead power station and it was always blowing in the wrong b***** direction. The Taklift 4, support and safety boats were sitting there costing the company money, although harbour dues were being waived.”

By the time of the actual lift, it had been replaced by the bigger Taklift 7 in a bid to cope with the prevailing sea conditions and ensure success.

(Image: Daily Record)

After 11 weeks, under cover of darkness on Sunday, December 14, 1997, the Sapphire finally reached home and the families’ prayers were answered.

Police Superintendent Donald Struthers said the bodies had been found in the wheelhouse and the accommodation area.

Four funerals were held over two days just before Christmas – and that was the point when Salmond felt vindicated.

He said: “It was the most emotionally-charged campaign I’ve ever been involved in.

“As a constituency MP, it’s the most difficult thing that I was engaged in. It took two months and more, and it was constant.

“The reason I supported the appeal was because the families wanted it. I regarded myself as representing their interests and determination.

“When I went to the funerals just before Christmas, that was the moment I was

absolutely convinced we’d done the right thing.”

Salmond admitted: “I did have doubts, huge doubts, but I was committed to it because that’s what the families had asked me to do.

“I had genuine doubts about whether it was something that could be done. What would happen if we weren’t successful? How would that impact on the families?

“But the issue really became the determination and resolve of the families to achieve their wish – their drive and compulsion to return their men for burial.

“It really became a story about courage more than anything else, and I follow courage.

“As the weeks went on, I regarded it as my absolute obligation to make sure the conclusion was in the favour of the people who had fought so hard for it.”

Salmond recalled the last press conference with the families in Peterhead’s Palace Hotel, when they told the world’s media the lift was on.

He said: “Isabelle, Patricia, Shirley, Wilma and myself were saying the Taklift 7 was on site and we were hoping for a lift that day.

“It was extra-ordinary – four Peterhead quines sitting in front of what was really the international media by then.

“One journalist – who wouldn’t win any gold medals for diplomacy – asked the widows, ‘What happens if you don’t get all the bodies back?’

“There was a silence as hardened hacks looked sideways at each other, astonished by the question, and Wilma Cameron said, ‘If we get one body back, it will be a triumph’.”

(Image: Daily Record)

Salmond added: “There’s still a huge bond between all the people who were involved in the Sapphire campaign.

“It’s a story really about four families and their determination to have their loved ones returned – it’s a story about courage.

“Well done to the Record. It was in the best tradition of newspaper campaigns, and we don’t have many of them now – not good ones anyway.

“The campaign the Record ran was in the absolute best tradition of a campaigning issue responding to a public need.

“Opinion wasn’t unanimous but it was a majority of decent people believing that the right thing should be done.”