John Haughie Puts the Arisaig Rescue Into Mermaid Falls

John Haughie has published Mermaid Falls, a children’s fantasy he wants in Scottish schools as a cold-water safety lesson. The 38-year-old HGV driver, raised in Helensburgh and now living in Alexandria, pulled a mother and three youngsters from the sea at Arisaig on 9 August 2020.

Accidental drownings in Scotland rose to 39 in 2025. He is sending the lesson from that beach into classrooms, wrapped in mermaids, wolves and talking animals.

A Children’s Book With a Cold-Water Job

Mermaid Falls follows two siblings who stumble into a hidden world of talking animals, mermaids, wolves and underwater adventure. Haughie has pledged a percentage of the proceeds toward cold-water awareness, with the work aimed at local schools and young people, after watching how fast cold water can take a family down.

Pegasus Publishers, the Cambridge house that has been bringing out books since 1999, already named him as one of its authors in January 2021, months after the rescue and the award that followed it. The children’s story has taken years to arrive. The safety job he wants it to do has not gone away.

His sister Ann, who still lives in Helensburgh, put the aim in plain words: education, awareness and prevention. She said lochs and rivers turn dangerous every year, above all for young people who do not grasp how quickly cold water hits the body.

Seeing my brother’s hard work and imagination turned into a published book is such an amazing achievement, and I couldn’t be prouder of him. Educating our youth today can help make our lochs and rivers a safer place for future generations. Mermaid Falls is a children’s story with a message, and John hopes it can make a real difference both on and off the page.

Ann Haughie, sister of the author, Helensburgh

John hopes to take that message into local schools and to get young people to respect the water, understand the risks, and know what to do if they or someone else gets into trouble. The share of proceeds is not named. The direction of the money is.

Four People Came off That Beach Alive

The family on the sand at Arisaig, on the west Highland coast near Fort William, had come from a caravan weekend. Katrina McCallie, from Hamilton, had taken the children to the beach. Her husband David, an Army veteran, was back at the caravan.

Ben, then 14, his sister Poppy, nine, and Katrina’s younger brother Lewis, eight, were playing in the sea when a strong undercurrent pulled them into deeper water. Katrina cannot swim. She ran in anyway, then found the seabed dropped away under her feet.

I ran into the water, but the current was strong and I had no chance of saving all of us. I was trying to hold the kids up, but there was nothing below me. We were all screaming and the kids were clawing at me. It probably didn’t last more than a few minutes, but I honestly thought my babies were going to die.

Katrina McCallie, mother, after the Arisaig rescue

Haughie was on the same beach with his partner Cheryl, their daughters Bella and Kiera, Kiera’s friend Ellie, and a young baby. He is an Army reservist for 7 Scots and a former soldier, and he had passed the beach while working as a truck driver. The night before, he had suggested they drive there and pick a spot for the day. His eldest daughter screamed at him to help.

He ran from the top of the beach, dived, and grabbed the three youngsters and Katrina, then dragged all four to safety. The youngest McCallie child, Willow, had been buried in the sand and never entered the water. When they got back to shore they were all crying.

John later said he saw them struggling, that the tide had taken them out, and that a drop-off had taken the floor from under their feet. “I only did what I would have expected anyone else to do,” he said. He also said he believed fate had put them on that beach, and that he hoped people would be more aware of the dangers of playing in open water as a result.

David found them later and thanked him. Katrina still struggled, she said, even to look at the photos from that day. The rescue was one of 11 stories honoured at the first Pride of Scotland awards, where Haughie, then 32, took the Outstanding Bravery prize in 2020. Footballer Ally McCoist was used to surprise him. He is a former pupil of John Logie Baird Primary and Hermitage Academy, and his mum Anne still had family in the town.

FROM THE BEACH TO THE BOOK

1. 9 August 2020: Pulls Katrina McCallie, Ben, Poppy and Lewis from the sea at Arisaig after a drop-off and undercurrent take them out.
2. December 2020: Receives the Pride of Scotland Outstanding Bravery prize among 11 winners, in a Hogmanay show from the University of Glasgow Cloisters.
3. January 2021: Pegasus Publishers introduces him as one of its authors, tying the rescue to a forthcoming book.
4. 25 July 2026: Water Safety Scotland launches the 2026 to 2030 drowning prevention strategy, with school education as a core aim, on World Drowning Prevention Day.

Mermaid Falls is the story that house finally put on sale. The hope he voiced on the sand is the part he has bound between covers.

The Inland Water Toll Schools Still Face

The National Water Safety Forum, working with Water Safety Scotland, recorded 39 accidental drownings in Scotland in 2025, up from 33 the year before. That 2025 count is still 22 per cent below the 50-a-year accidental baseline used when Scotland’s first drowning prevention strategy was drawn up from 2013 to 2015 figures. The 2018 plan had aimed to cut accidental deaths by half by 2026.

Inland water took most of the 2025 toll. Fifty-five per cent of those accidental deaths were in rivers, canals, reservoirs and lochs. Eighty-four per cent of the dead were male. Argyll and Bute and the Highland area recorded six accidental drownings each, the highest local figures released. West Dunbartonshire recorded four, as did Dumfries and Galloway, Fife and Glasgow.

Helensburgh sits in Argyll and Bute. Alexandria is in West Dunbartonshire. Arisaig is in Highland. The councils that cover his childhood town, his home, and the beach where he went in are all on that list.

ACCIDENTAL DROWNINGS, SCOTLAND

Across the UK, the Forum, led by RoSPA, recorded 202 accidental drowning deaths in 2025, and 57 per cent of those were inland. Recreational activity accounted for 63 per cent of the UK accidental deaths. Walking and running, people who had not planned to go in, accounted for 32 per cent. Forty-three per cent of the UK accidental dead were under 40. August was the worst month, then June and July.

Cold water shock is the mechanism behind a lot of those inland deaths. Many lochs and rivers stay at 16°C or below even in a warm spell, the point at which a sudden immersion can force a gasp, panic, and a loss of swimming ability, and can spike heart rate and blood pressure. Professor Mike Tipton, chair of the National Water Safety Forum, said people who get into trouble should float on their back until they feel calm, then wait for rescue or swim to safety if they can. He also said they should enter water slowly, and stick to supervised sites with lifeguards when they can.

The Forum’s Phone Float Throw advice for a bystander is to call 999, tell the person to stay calm and float on their back, and throw anything that helps them float, rather than go in. Katrina ran in because her children were already going under. That is the instinct the advice is written against, and the instinct that put four people in the water instead of three.

What Mermaid Falls Wants From Local Schools

Scottish classrooms already have water safety material. Education Scotland hosts water safety learning resources for schools built with Water Safety Scotland, the RNLI and Scottish Swimming. Gayle Gorman, then chief executive of Education Scotland, said young people often are not aware of the dangers of swimming in open water, and that the materials were meant to reach as many of them as possible.

The RNLI’s Scotland team took its Water Smart education programme into primary schools at the start of March 2026 and, in 2025, reached about 21,000 primary pupils across 115 schools, mostly near lifeguarded beaches in Fife, Dundee, Edinburgh and the Lothians. The team is now pushing that work into youth groups and community organisations. Lifeguards cover eight Scottish beaches in the summer season. Most of the inland water that killed people in 2025 has no lifeguard on it.

WHAT PUPILS CAN ALREADY BE TAUGHT

• The code: Scotland’s Water Safety Code, including a pictorial version, is the national plain-language briefing on open water.
• The curriculum hook: Swimming and other water activity can sit inside Health and Wellbeing, though specific content is not statutory outside religious and moral education.
• The lifeboat visit: RNLI Water Smart sessions go into primaries before the warm months, then on into youth groups.
• The pool route: Education Scotland points families to local pools, Scottish Swimming games, and Young Scot cards that can cut the cost of a swim in some council areas.

Haughie’s bet is that a story children will actually finish can carry the same warning into the schools the RNLI tour does not reach, including the inland towns along the Clyde and Loch Lomond corridor. Ann said the book is for young people who may not understand how quickly cold water can affect the body. That is a curriculum gap a mermaid plot can enter without a worksheet.

Scotland’s New Plan Puts Classrooms on the Hook

Water Safety Scotland launched Scotland’s Drowning Prevention Strategy 2026 to 2030 on 25 July 2026, World Drowning Prevention Day. The vision on the page is “towards zero drownings.” The second stated aim is to strengthen water safety education across Scotland.

The rest of the plan is data, local authority water safety policies, public messaging, search and rescue, and suicide prevention at water. The 2018 to 2026 strategy had already listed learning to swim and water safety in early years, primary and secondary schools among its six objectives, and had aimed to cut accidental deaths by half by 2026 from that 50-a-year baseline. Thirty-nine accidental deaths in 2025 is not half of 50.

So the new document asks schools to do more of the work the old document also asked them to do. A lorry driver with a children’s book and a percentage of proceeds is not a national programme. He is one adult trying to put a usable story into the same gap the strategy keeps naming.

Pegasus sells the book from its own site. There is no public price sheet in the launch material, and no named charity partner beyond the pledge to awareness work with schools and young people. The novel is the vehicle. The cold-water brief is the cargo.

His Sister Is Asking Helensburgh to Buy In

Ann still lives in the town where John went to school. She asked people to take a minute to look at the book, or even grab a copy, and said it would mean the world to him. That is a sister moving copies. It is also the distribution plan for a safety message that only works if it is read.

The children he pulled out of the sea at Arisaig were 14, nine and eight. The people dying in Scottish inland water now are often older males, but the 2025 figures still leave teenagers and families on lochs and rivers with a drop-off they cannot see. A fantasy about mermaids will not change the temperature of Loch Lomond. It can change what a child has already heard before the bank gives way.

Mermaid Falls is on sale from Pegasus. A percentage of what it earns is meant to go on the same warning John voiced on that beach in 2020, when he said he hoped people would be more aware of the dangers of playing in open water as a result.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who presented the Pride of Scotland show that honoured John Haughie?

Elaine C Smith and Kirsty Gallacher hosted the first Pride of Scotland awards from the University of Glasgow Cloisters, as a Hogmanay programme on STV on 31 December 2020. More than 50 well-known faces took part, and Haughie was one of 11 winners; footballer Ally McCoist was brought in to surprise him before two more of his sporting idols sent a message during the show.

Where is the publisher of Mermaid Falls based?

Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie Publishers is based in Cambridge and says it has been publishing since 1999, with more than 2,000 titles sold in 33 countries, across fiction, non-fiction, children’s, educational books and poetry, on both traditional and hybrid contracts. Mermaid Falls is listed for sale on the Pegasus site.

Is there an illustrated Water Safety Code for children?

Yes. Water Safety Scotland issues a full Water Safety Code and a separate pictorial version, both hosted with Education Scotland’s learning materials, covering the sea, rivers, lochs and quarries and the way conditions at those sites change. The pictorial edition is the one written to be read without a dense block of text.

Can Scottish children get cheaper access to swimming pools?

The Young Scot National Entitlement Card is free to children and young people living in Scotland and can unlock discounted or free pool entry in some local authority areas, while people aged 5 to 21 can apply for free bus travel to reach those pools. Education Scotland also points parents to Scottish Swimming’s learn-to-swim games for use in the water they can already get to.