A visit to the Kentish life-boat station and its crew is described in what is hoped will become a regular series on life-boat stations by Margaret Peter.

The men of Dungeness who form the life-boat crew are proud of their life-boat, proud of the opportunity to save life at sea. Since they were old enough to stumble across the shingle to the life-boathouse to watch their fathers, uncles, elder brothers launch- ing the life-boat into high seas they have been "mad to get in the crew." Some have done so on their i8th birth- days, others have had to wait longer to take their place among the 10 men who man the 42-foot boat.

The coxswain of the Mabel E.

Holland, George Tart, who is now in his sixties, began to help in the launch- ing of the life-boat in the 1914-18 war. "I was mad to get in the crew although my father did not want me to join," he says. "I remember as a young lad that when the helpers were hauling the life-boat back on to the slipway the district inspector saw me gazing at it.

He said, 'You might be coxswain one day.' I never thought it would become true." Idolized Coxswain Coxswain Tart speaks slowly, draw- ing out his vowels in the Kentish drawl—they speak of "la-a-rnching" at Dungeness, not of "launching." His face is bronzed and weather- beaten, his eyes blue and far-seeing, and his quiet manner suggests the imperturbability which inspires con- fidence in his crew at times of danger.

In 1956 he won the bronze medal for gallantry from the Institution, after the rescue of nine men from the Tees- wood in a hurricane-force wind.

His cousin Ben Tart, the second coxswain, was impatient to join the crew from the time he left school.

When his father was coxswain he was taken regularly to the life-boathouse when the boat was launched. "We all looked up to my dad as coxswain as though he were a king—as perhaps the Beatles are to the kids today. He was our pop idol." In Their Blood Most of the other men who form the crew have the life-boat "in their blood." Their fathers and grandfathers before them were in the old pulling and sailing boats or were life-boat helpers.

Very often they meet on Saturday evenings over a pint of beer and darts discussing, perhaps, the Teeswood rescue or the rescues that might have been but weren't—the time, for in- stance, when people were reported to be signalling for help in a yellow dinghy and who, on closer inspection, turned out to be a pair of unsuspecting seagulls on a bale of straw.

Even when they go on holidays, few of the crew would travel inland. They keep to the coastline and, wherever they choose, a life-boat station is unlikely to be far away. They seek out the local life-boat crews because they know they will be certain of a "really good evening together" drawn into closeness by the same compelling urge to save life at sea. Their wives, too, are brought together by the life-boat.

They speak of the curious affinity which exists between women whose husbands are in the crew, women whoare always glad to see each other and to help each other out.

Women Launchers The women of Dungeness have long been famous as life-boat launchers - tough, exacting work usually consid- ered to be a man's job. For years they have gone out with their menfolk in all weathers, to lay the heavy wooden skids between the end of the slipway and the water and to heave on the ropes that pull the life-boat over the last stretch of shingle, which lengthens yearly as the sea recedes. Seventy- eight year old Miss Madge Tart, whose brother, Mr. Fred Tart, is honorary secretary of the station, has helped for over 60 years. Whenever the life-boat has been called out she has hurried to join the women at the slipway, thickly-coated and welling- ton-booted. At one time there were as many as ten, now only four women are among the launchers.

Mrs. Doris Tart, wife of the second coxswain, is another of the women who, throughout the war, continued their work at the risk of their lives.

"Sometimes you would get a call when the doodlebugs were about," she says, "and there were minefields on either side of the slipway. There was only a little space left where the launchers could safely stand." In War-time In war-time Dungeness was a top security area. This fist of shingle- covered land jutting out into the Channel, with its scattering of fisher- men's cottages and sea grasses, was taken over by the military authorities.

Through it was laid the PLUTO line which carried oil under the Channel to France in readiness for the allied 126 invasion in 1943. Relics of the war- time emergency can still be seen.

Between the groups of modern as- bestos-walled bungalows and the old stone cottages of the fishermen which crouch low to the shingle along the roadways and railway track lie the decaying skeletons of the army huts.

Beyond them—a post-war develop- ment—loom the two great hulks of the Dungeness nuclear power station and beyond these stand the fishing boats, upright on their skids, masts needling into the sky. From their cottage win- dow close to the shore the women can watch for the safe return of their hus- bands from the sea.

Gaily into Danger If the women have had their fears it has always been for the crew's safely, not their own. "When dreadful things happen round the coast you look at your husband in a different light," says Mrs. John Thomas, whose husband is a member of the crew. "They all go off in such a matter of fact way. 'The life-boat's needed—get my boots.' It all sounds so bright and gay, as though they were going on a summer picnic." The day the Teeswood capsized, on 29th July, 1956, Mrs. Thomas was working in a local restaurant. "I shall never forget that day," she says, still shuddering slightly. "The wind was so strong you could almost lean on it. I was supposed to be working but I didn't serve any teas that day. I really got emotional." Coxswain Tart takes up the story of the rescue. "By midday the wind was blowing force 10 to 12. The Teeswood was loaded with coal and was trying to take shelter. One big sea took charge of her and made her broach to. The cargo shifted and the ship capsized.

All the crew jumped into the water.

Four-hour Rescue "My cousin heard the ship giving out Mayday calls, asking for immediate assistance. We went straight away—if the call had gone through the normal channels it would have taken much longer and all would have been lost.

"When we got there we found she was a small B.P. tanker. There were six men alongside on the raft and others dotted about in the water. The first we picked up was a young boy. It was his first trip.

"The tanker's propellers were jam- med up with flotsam and jetsam but the mechanic freed them. It took about four hours to do the service and it took us a long time to get back, punching against the wind and sea." With characteristic modesty, Cox- swain Tart says little of the fierce conditions which made the rescue so gallant a feat—the high waves, the flying spray and rain which almost blinded the life-boatmen's eyes.

Real Satisfaction For him and for the other members of the crew this was one of the rescues which make membership of the life- boat crew immeasurably worthwhile— compensating for the false alarms, the routine calls to help inexperienced yachtsmen or to escort boats in rough weather.

"The real satisfaction of being in the crew," says Coxswain Tart, "comes when you really know that you have saved somebody, when you rescue people from the water or when the ship goes down just after you get there.

It comes when you know that there would be no other chance of their being rescued if the life-boat was not there." Fred Richardson, known to the crew as "Treacle," shares the feelings.

"When there is a really genuine emergency you get a bit of satisfaction about doing some good." Others enjoy the tension and sus- pense which life-boat rescues may bring. "It is mostly the excitement which I enjoy," says Arthur Haines, the bowman. "Excitement is one of the things I go for," says Bob Tart, son of the coxswain.

In the Families Bob Tart, who joined at 23, is the youngest of the four members of the Tart family in the crew, and until recently there were also three Oillers in the life-boat. Arthur Oilier and John Oilier, the second mechanic, still remain and until his place was taken by bearded Frank Paine—the youngest in the crew—Alexander Oilier was the mechanic.

The life-boat at Dungeness has always been a family concern—domi- nated by the two families who were the first settlers on this wind-swept knuckle of the south-east coastline. The Tarts, from whose name the "e" has since been dropped, escaped from France at the time of the Revolution, sailing across the Channel in their fishing boats and bringing their nets with them. The Oillers, descended from a Cornish family, settled at Dungeness some years later, Changing Community Gradually, through inter-marriage and the arrival of new settlers, the fishing village grew larger and at one time there were 70 children in the village school. Nowadays there is noschool in Dungeness and some child- ren go as far as Ashford and Folke- stone for their grammar-school educa- tion, afterwards leaving Dungeness to seek their living in London and else- where. The future may bring radical changes to the area but it is the hope of those who love and know it best that Dungeness will long remain the close- knit community of fishermen who, in their own words, "never want to live anywhere else"..