MICHAEL JOHNSON sends clips from his powerful new film about the storm-tossed night that the George Elmy capsized and nine people were lost.

Folk talk of remembering where they were when Kennedy was shot, says a chap at the start. They remember when Princess Diana was killed or John Lennon died.

In Seaham Harbour, on the Durham coast, older people still recall their feelings on November 17, 1962, the terrible night that the lifeboat overturned.

Michael, born and raised in the Harbour, is now a freelance television and film editor who commutes between Durham and London. “We learned about it as we grew up, no one will ever forget it,” he says.

As darkness fell and the storm worsened, the lifeboat was launched to help the crew – four men and a nine-year-old boy – of the Economy, a local fishing coble.

Michael uses inquest reports to quote a lifeboatman’s widow. “It was about four o’clock. He said he’d probably be back by five.”

The George Elmy had rescued all five from the coble when, near the South Pier, it was turned over by a “monstrous” wave. The lifeboat’s crew were lost; only David Burrell, a 32-year-old miner, survived from the coble.

The film also tells how the George Elmy was returned to RNLI service in Dorset, itself became a fishing boat and, incredibly, was returned to Seaham.

“I was just raking around on eBay and there it was, the George Elmy lifeboat,” says one of the locals.

After a major fundraising campaign the boat was restored on the Tyne – “lots of riveting, lots of sandpaper” – and returned to Seaham under its own power in 2013.The film, with voice-over by international opera singer and Seaham lad Sir Thomas Allen, has taken two-and-a-half years to make and is self-financed under the aegis of Blast Beach Films.

It has a private viewing at New Seaham Conservative Club on March 8, from which we plan a further report.

DAVID WILKINSON, landlord of the Golden Lion in Barnard Castle, seeks the column’s help in identifying the oldest pub in County Durham. His own place, according to the Good Beer Guide, dates back to 1679.

But what of the Bay Horse in Bishop Auckland – “at the heart of Bishop’s pub scene since 1530” says the GBG – or the Shakespeare near Durham Market Place which centuries ago was the Theatre Royal?

The Lord Crewe Arms at Blanchland might have a claim, too, were it not just over the border in Northumberland.

Paul Dobson of Durham Camra says that a pub has been on the Bay Horse site since 1530, but doubts if much of the original remains. They’ve also had problems authenticating the Shakespeare.

“We had a good look at its history when it was refurbished in 2014, but the only bit of the Theatre Royal which still exists is a bit of the pub’s back wall.

“Basically it looks old, but structurally it isn’t, which is why several attempts to have it listed have failed.”

So can the Bay Horse claim to be the county’s most venerable pub. Old, old story, readers may be able to help.

MARTIN BIRTLE’S television sub-titles could probably fill every column for a year, but this one’s irresistible. A Sky News report on Donald Trump and his opponent Ted Cruz managed “Cruz” OK but clearly had a problem with Trump. They called him Donald Duck instead.

ANOTHER attempt at take-off for Teesside Airport railway station, a “mass visit” to one of Britain’s least frequented halts is planned for March 13.

It has to be a Sunday because that’s the only time that a train – in either direction – actually stops.

A piece in Rail magazine supposes that the visit, organised by the independent ticket offices at Chester-le-Street and Bishop Auckland, is “to draw attention to the potential for the station”.

The grounded aviators leave Darlington on the 11.05 for Hartlepool – that also being a “parliamentary” service which runs just once a week – arriving at the airport station at 11.14 and leaving again at 12.35pm.

How they plan to plan to spend 80 minutes on a wooden platform in the middle of nowhere hasn’t been revealed, but the column is much inclined to find out.

THE restored Flying Scotsman wasn’t the only train to be stopped in its tracks last week, reports John Rusby.

A slightly more sedate service from Darlington to Bishop Auckland had to make an emergency stop near Newton Aycliffe because of a pig and her family on the trackside.

“The pigs had more sense than the train spotters,” adds John. “They moved.”

BISHOP Auckland station featured here a couple of weeks back, the piece on the new railway exhibition at the nearby Four Clocks Centre including a splendid photograph of a labrador lolloping in front of the signal box fire.

Though the guys thought the dog was called Bish, Lynnette Webster is sure it’s Byron, a “real character” owned by Frank Webster, her signalman father, and often taken to work. Unlike Frank, also the Bishop Auckland NUR branch secretary, Byron would sometimes slip off home to Coundon Gate, or get chased by the station cat.

On other occasions he’d simply wander off down Newgate Street, thoughtfully depositing himself in the waiting room at Wilson’s veterinary surgery, half a mile away.

“From there,” recalls Lynette, “Ruth the receptionist would phone to get us to take him home again.”

SEVERAL male readers appear to have used last week’s New York New York column as a means of reminding their wives that there are men yet more sackless than they.

Ray Price in Chester-le-Street is more constructive. While at our village shop in Middlton Tyas, he says, it would have been better to have tried the ham sandwiches – “best in the county, and with real mustard, too”.

Others have highlighted the hopeless mistake in supposing that Fairytale in New York was sung by the McColls. It was the Pogues, of course, though Kirsty MacColl was one of them.

John Gray not only points out that Kirsty MacColl met a horrific end while scuba diving, but that she was also known for a song called There’s a Guy Works Down Our Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis, number 14 in 1981. That was probably a fairy tale, an’ all.

…AND finally, another hour last Tuesday evening at the ever-eclectic Candleliters Folk Club at the Moore Lane Social Club in Newton Aycliffe, music ranging from John Denver to Dire Straits. The highlight of the brief visit, however, may have been a Dutch fiddler who played something called Mason’s Apron. It’s also nicely coincidental because tonight I’m at an open Lodge meeting in Darlington. More on the Masons’ apron next time.