The village of Salcombe stands on the west side of the Salcombe Haven, u miles from Dartmouth, and years ago this little Devon port was noted for its trading schooners. The schooners like the clippers of Joseph Conrad's day have gone, but the traditions of the sea live on, particularly in the case of the local life-boat station which was established in 1869.

My first impression of Salcombe, which lies at the mouth of one of Devon's most beautiful estuaries, was that it seems to cling, like a drowning man, to a rather precipitous site by the river named after it. The roads leading down to the village are mostly steep and winding. Most of them seem to lead to the narrow main street where there is a public house called The Shipwrights' Arms and branching alleys. Everywhere the sea is reflected in the architecture and, sadly, elsewhere as I shall soon relate.

TIME TO MEDITATE Down by The Ferry Inn, which has a boat hull as a frame for the door and two ship's lanterns to port and starboard, I found the ferry landing stage. Here, where people have time on their hands while waiting for the ferry, are displayed boards - but just now not all the boards - listing the life-boat services from Salcombe. Here, too, a painted notice board gives instructions about calling the local life-boat in an emergency.

Elsewhere I found the memorial cross to those sons of Salcombe who had died in two world wars, and noticed that it included the names of 13 life-boatmen from the days when the community was only 1,900-strong. For one morning in 1916 the seas of this rocky coast overcame the life-boat, which was returning from a service, and suddenly Salcombe was in mourning . ..

THE DISTIN FAMILY I do not think that the village, despite the passage of 50 years, has ever forgotten that grim day when, on top of the casualties of the Great War, death struck at her men as wives and children looked on aghast.

And here, inevitably, must the Distin family be introduced as Edwin W.

Distin, now 76, who was dashed ashore bruised and cut, is the only living survivor. William Johnson, the only other survivor of the disaster, died shortly afterwards.

More about Edwin Distin in a minute. What is so interesting is that his son, Hubert 'Bubbles' Distin, who is 48, is the present coxswain, and his son, Eric, who is 21, is a reserve member of the crew - a three-generation living connection which is not so common in the life-boat service today.

ONLY SURVIVOR Mr. W. P. Budgett, honorary secretary, was able - but I don't know what he used for bait - to steer Edwin Distin into my hands in the life-boat store on the quay facing The Baltic Exchange, the present life-boat, which rides at anchor among the yachts and the sailing boats of Salcombe.

'Jolly lucky to get Edwin to agree to come round,' Mr. Budgett said. 'He's never, as far as I know, allowed himself to be questioned about the 1916 disaster.

I can't promise you'll get anything out of him.' Edwin Distin, who was punctual, came in looking much younger than 76.

Yes, he remembered with good reason the 27th October, 1916, when the pulling and sailing life-boat (she was a 35-foot x jo-foot Liverpool type) went out at reconstruction of the 1916 life-boat disaster by Edwin E.

Distin, now 76. His sketch shows how the sea hit the William and Emma from astern, turned her end for end (the line leading from the hull is the drogue by which he reached the upturned hull), and then washed all the survivors off as she reached the bar.

6.50 a.m. in a strong gale with very heavy seas to go to the aid of the schooner Western Lass east of Prawle Point. But the Prawle life-saving company rescued the crew before the life-boat could be of service.

Turning about for home, the William and Emma was 'the seaward side of the bar' - some accounts suggest that she was actually crossing the bar - when the routine order was given to take down all but the mizzen. Just as this was being done a great sea hit the life-boat from astern and she was thrown high into the air. Then another sea, as if to make sure that the victim would not rise again, turned her end for end and capsized her.

I asked Edwin Distin, whose sketch of the disaster appears above, if he could remember much of what happened.

'We had our drogue out at the time,' he explained, 'and I found my way on to the upturned hull by gripping the line. There were several of us on the hull, during those first moments after the accident, but very shortly we were all swept off. With William Johnson I was hurled on to a rock under Prawle Point from where we were eventually rescued from the shore. I have yet to see a sea like it.' A TOTAL WRECK Five of the crew were washed ashore, dead, soon after the disaster. Other bodies were subsequently recovered. But one - Edwin Distin thought it was that of William Lamble - was never found. The William and Emma was cast ashore 'totally wrecked'.

Edwin Distin and William Johnson, battered black and blue by the sea, were taken up the cliffs to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Michelmore, to whom the Institution awarded an aneroid barometer. There the two survivors lay, unfit to be moved, for a month. Only visitors were their families.

Without hesitation and undeterred by such a calamity members of the seafaring fraternity of Salcombe came forward to volunteer to form a new life-boat crew. But two years went by before Salcombe got a new life-boat.

"MAGNIFICENT SEAMANSHIP" Eventually Edwin Distin, whom the sea could not engulf, became coxswain of the Salcombe life-boat, and in 1939 and 1943 he won a silver medal and a bronze medal, respectively, for saving no less than 73 people from two wrecks.

On yth December, 1939, he showed 'magnificent seamanship both in crossing the bar and alongside the steamer' from which he snatched 62 people. In an easterly gale and a very high sea on 4th December, 1943, Edwin Distin took II survivors from an Admiralty salvage craft in distress.

And here, appropriately, is where Hubert Distin, the present coxswain, should have his say.

'I particularly remember that service to the Admiralty salvage vessel,' Hubert Distin said. 'You see, I was home on leave from the navy and, as was my custom, went out with the life-boat. On this occasion, however, it was nearly a knock-out. For one of the survivors, when ordered to jump, threw his suitcase instead of himself and that hit me across the face!' I asked Hubert Distin about his crew. They are Owen Taylor, second coxswain (fisherman), Cyril Baskerville, second engineer (ferryman), Michael Dornom, deck hand (boatman), Brian Cater, deck hand (boatman), Edgar Budd, bowman (painter and decorator), and his twin brother William Budd, deck hand (postman), Graham Griffiths, deck hand (fisherman) and Edward Hannaford, full time mechanic.

GREAT RESPECT FOR BAR The bar, despite its familiarity to these men, is treated with great respect by the Salcombe life-boat crew. At low tide, in fact, there is less than seven foot of water and much less, of course, in a storm. Thus, when their present life-boat, which had only just been commissioned, was returning from a service at night in 'a full south east gale blowing 8-9 force,' Hubert Distin decided not to cross the bar. They went instead to Dartmouth and came home by taxi. Back at Dartmouth two days later Hubert Distin, still wary of the bar, asked his father, who was a Trinity House pilot for over 30 years, to take a look. Edwin Distin, from the Prawle Point side of the river, confirmed that the time was ripe to come in and so the Salcombe life-boat returned without incident. Here, surely, was a nice demonstration of caution distilled from hard experience. And who better to ask for confirmation than Edwin Distin ? Of other tales there were plenty. Mr. Budgett took me to see Kenneth Richards, 69 years old, who was second coxswain of the Salcombe life-boat for a period. Just as we sat down and he produced an old postcard of the pulling and sailing life-boat they received following the 1916 disaster, Gerald Shepherd, 61 years old, who was coxswain for a good many years, was hailed and brought in to add his piece.

Both recalled, with admiration, the part that the womenfolk of Salcombe played in the days when all hands were needed to launch the life-boat from South Sands.

'They'd run miles - and it was quite a long run to South Sands - when they were needed,' Kenneth Richards said. 'I can recall one occasion when, being a man short after the launching, a man from the crowd swam out to the lifeboat.

Such was the spirit.' Down near the quay we found Laurie Prynn, 61 years old, the harbour master, who was a member of the local life-boat crew for many years. Now, with his active life-boat days over, he delights in giving lectures to local organizations on Salcombe and the life-boats of the Devon coast. 'I'm a kind of publications relations man on the subject and it goes down very well,' he told me.

RAISED NEARLY £500 Mr. Budgett (ex-R.A.F. Coastal Command), the honorary secretary, whose assistant secretary is Mr. J. P. K. Line (ex-navy), told me that, because of the difficult country, collecting for the Institution has to be done mostly on a doorto- door basis. During the financial year 1964-65 Salcombe Hope Cove and Kings Bridge raised nearly £500. Mr. Budgett has several ideas for promoting the work of the Institution. One is the making of a film on the Salcombe life-boat.

Mr. W. K. Carson, the chairman (he operated in Corsica during the war as a British officer with the Maquis), believes that, with the small community they have (just over 2,500), fund-raising efforts must be carefully timed and the local population, who are very conscious of their life-boat, not pressed too frequently for support. 'After all,' he said, 'many other charities are favourites here as well and one mustn't overdo things. I think we know the potential very well.".