A businessman and blue water sailor yesterday donated $1,000 to help stranded sailors who lost everything when their boat went down hundreds of miles off Bermuda.

Jim Butterfield, of wholesaler Butterfield & Vallis, handed over the money yesterday after reading of the plight of Len and Lisa Rorke, who, with crewman Henri Worthalter, almost died when their yacht the Blue Pearl sank en route from the Caribbean to the Azores.

And the Bermuda Sailors’ Home and associated Mariner’s Club announced it would hold a special raffle tonight to raise more funds for the couple, whose 50-foot yacht carried only third party insurance.

Mr Butterfield said: “It didn’t take more than a second to decide what to do when I heard. I am sympathetic to anyone who has lost everything and survived.

“My heart goes out to people like that and to give a few dollars for three people.....I feel for them.”

Mr Butterfield also offered to pick up the tab for onward flights from Bermuda — but was told that families had taken care of the airline tickets.

He added: “It’s a very simple thing for me — people that are mariners and are in difficult circumstances, it’s nice when people help. Sometimes they don’t.”

The Rorkes and Mr Worthalter thanked Bermuda for its generosity after the tanker Tilda Kosan that plucked from their leaking life raft last week dropped them off in Bermuda.

Mr Butterfield, a member of the Mariners’ Club, said: “It’s nice to know that from the moment they got on that tanker they have been treated like family and I’m delighted that the Sailors’ Home has played such a key role.”

And, quoting the traditional sailors’ hymn Eternal Father, Strong to Save, he added: “It’s a mariners’ tradition to help those in peril on the sea.”

The three, together with the Rorke’s pet Jack Russell terrier Dexter, have been staying at the Sailors’ Home since the second night of their arrival on the Island.

Mad Hatters restaurant, which runs out of part of the Pembroke premises, has been providing the three sailors with meals.

Mariners’ Club member Brian Robinson said the raffle was the idea of club barmaid Joy White.

He added: “The Sailors’ Home doesn’t get much notice because we don’t have that many people who need this kind of help, but we are a charity and we help distressed sailors as much as we can.

“We have the rooms available if needed and the members chip in to help sailors when they do come in.”

Mr Robinson said he had taken the Rorkes out shopping and, when staff at AS Cooper on Front Street recognised them, management insisted on providing new clothes free of charge.

Mariners’ Club board member Joanne MacPhee turned up at the club with bags of dog food for Dexter, while an English woman who has a timeshare at Newstead stopped the Rorkes on Front Street and handed over cash to buy dog food for Dexter.

Mr Worthalter flew out of Bermuda last night en route to his homeland of Belgium, while the Rorkes are expected to leave the Island to meet family members in the US at the weekend.