{"id":390820,"date":"2026-01-26T05:15:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T05:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/390820\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T05:15:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T05:15:14","slug":"how-a-rescue-attempt-of-a-whale-in-the-thames-brought-millions-together-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/390820\/","title":{"rendered":"How a rescue attempt of a whale in the Thames brought millions together"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Later that morning he boarded a boat near Albert Bridge where the whale had been located, and a plan was devised.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Thousands of people were now cramming on to the surrounding riverbanks and bridges trying to get a glimpse of the 19ft (5.85m) long whale, while in the water the team were being pursued by a vessel filled with press and photographers<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With the promise of getting &#8220;the best photographs you&#8217;re ever going to get&#8221;, Stevens persuaded the journalists to use their boat to help manoeuvre the mammal on to a sandbank to secure it so that a veterinary check could be carried out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He says that while the team considered the chances of the whale surviving to only be &#8220;50-50 at best&#8221;, they still decided to attempt a rescue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The weight of the whale meant a crane was required to winch it on to a barge so it could be taken out to sea, so inflatable pontoons were first positioned on either side of the mammal to carefully manoeuvre it in place.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, this work then accelerated dramatically as they learned they were racing against the tide otherwise the crane would not fit under London&#8217;s bridges.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;As soon as the whale touched the lifting barge and was on the boat, we started moving &#8211; the anchor wasn&#8217;t even up at that time because there was such a rush but we just about made it,&#8221; says Stevens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Later that morning he boarded a boat near Albert Bridge where the whale had been located, and a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-390820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}