EMERGENCY services were at full stretch yesterday coping with the devastation caused by a blast of wintry weather that stranded hundreds of motorists, cut power to thousands and brought havoc to shipping.

At least one person died as a result of the weather that brought sub-zero temperatures, gales and blizzards across large parts of Britain.

A 20-year-old mother was killed near Aberdeen after the car she was travelling in with her young daughter and boyfriend flipped over on an icy road on Friday night.

More than 45,000 homes were without electricity in the northeast, Yorkshire and Lincoln-shire following strong winds on Friday, although by last night fewer than 1,000 were still in darkness.

Coastguards were involved in three shipping dramas hundreds of miles apart. The injured skipper of the Horn Cliff, which was taking a cargo of fruit from the Caribbean to Dover when it was hit by 30ft swells 200 miles off the Isles of Scilly, was successfully airlifted to hospital by the RAF.

The captain, a Lithuanian who had suffered spinal injuries after apparently being crushed by crates of melons and bananas, was taken to the Royal Cornwall hospital in Truro where he was recovering last night.

Six other crew members and passengers were also airlifted to safety before the Horn Cliff managed to reach the harbour at Falmouth.

The owners of the Riverdance ferry, which ran aground near Blackpool’s beach resort after being hit by a freak wave on Thursday, said two heavy trucks of salvage equipment would soon arrive from Holland to help to inspect the vessel.

A spokesman for Riverdance’s owners, Seatruck, said the first priority was to remove the vessel’s 150 tons of fuel to avoid the possibility of pollution. Weather conditions mean it could be a week before the boat is refloated.

There were also fears last night that a Spanish-crewed trawler that had foundered off St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides on Friday could pose an environmental hazard if the rats believed to be on board reached shore.

Susan Bain, of the National Trust for Scotland, said that rodents from the Spinning Dale, which is resting on rocks, could threaten the seabirds’ eggs on the island, which is free of ground-based predators.

St Kilda, which is home to many species including puffins, gannets and guillemots, is the most important seabird breeding station in northwest Europe. The trust has now launched its “emergency rat procedure”, which involves activating rat traps to catch any of the animals that manage to make it past the coast.

National Trust experts will also visit the island to lay down a chocolate-flavoured wax bait.

The rescue and clean-up operations were helped yesterday by slightly warmer weather. Forecasters said that temperatures in Scotland had reached –11C on Friday and winds of up to 70mph were recorded.

Heavy rain and gales are predicted for today, particularly in the west.

One of the worst affected areas has been the A66 between Cumbria and Co Durham, which was closed on Friday after blizzards made driving impossible. Police rescued 200 stranded motorists, including a coachload of pensioners. A group of 30 primary schoolchildren from Co Durham were forced to spend the night at an adventure centre in Alston in Cumbria after their route was also cut off.

The mission to rescue the captain of the Horn Cliff had begun on Friday but the severity of the weather and the distance of the ship from land meant that the attempt to winch him to safety by helicopter had to be postponed until yesterday morning.

A paramedic was eventually winched down from an RAF helicopter and the captain, who had also suffered internal injuries, was airlifted together with five passengers and one other member of the crew, two of whom had minor head and hand injuries.

It is thought they were injured while trying to secure the load of 130 crates of fruit, which came loose during the force nine gales on Friday. All but 40 of the crates fell over the side.

Flight Lieutenant Jonathan Singh, who took part in the rescue, described the conditions as “horrendous”. He said: “It was obviously pitch black out there. The sea swell was probably between 35ft and 40ft and because the vessel had suffered some power failure it was unable to manoeuvre.”

Dahne Carstensen, 64, a German who was one of the rescued passengers, was on the Horn Cliff as part of his honeymoon with his wife Suzanne. “I’m a sailor so for my honeymoon I wanted to travel by cargo ship with bananas from the Caribbean. I guess it didn’t go so well,” he said.

His wife Suzanne, 50, added: “I thought it was our last moment of life.”