'ONE of the outstanding things about our station', explained Mr. Frederick W. H. Park, M.B.E., honorary secretary of the Torbay, South Devon, life-boat station, 'is that we are never short of men to man the life-boats. As for honorary secretaries here, well, I've been in harness since 1948. Back in history we had other honorary secretaries who stayed for a good many years.' Which, I suppose, all adds up to a happy station.

What were the beginnings of the Brixham station which is called Torbay? Apparently the great gale which swept Torbay on 10th/llth January, 1866, caused the loss of between 60 and 70 ships at shelter there. Nearly 100 lives were lost. As a result of this tragedy the R.N.L.I, established a life-boat station at Torbay. The life-boat house was built for a mere £175, and the cost of the first life-boat was paid by the citizens of Exeter. The Torquay station was founded in 1876, closing in 1923, when a motor-life-boat was placed at Brixham. A year later—in 1924—the Brixham station was renamed Torbay.

Y.L.A. POTENTIAL The population of Brixham has greatly increased since the early days of the life-boat station. The resident population of about 12,000 expands in summer to some 30,000, many owning boats; and the Brixham life-boat beat brings in such coast names as Hopes Nose, Berry Head, Start Point and Prawle Point. At some points the cliffs are 200 feet high. There is a strong Y.L.A. potential in the area.The Torbay station accommodates a conventional life-boat, tne Princess Alexandra of Kent, which is a 52-foot Barnett type, a Hatch boarding/rescue craft with the hull markings 18-03, and an IRB. The boats are crewed mostly by trawlermen who go out at about 5 a.m. and return between 6 and 8 p.m. in the evening. There are always enough men for a double crew.

Mr. Park, who came to live at Brixham in 1915, showed me round the life- boat station, and when I asked why the accommodation seemed a little unusual, with part of the slipway showing but unusable, he said that in preparation for D-Day in June, 1944, when the invasion of Normandy was being planned, the U.S. Army took over the life-boat station and altered it as a control point for loading. Thus the station, apart from many exciting rescues, has seen the greatest invasion preparations in the history of man. For Brixham was one of the key stepping off points for Normandy.

FOUNDATION LINK A living link with the foundation date—1866—can be found at Brixham today.

Miss Edna Sanders, aged 75, of the Strand, is the daughter of the late Coxswain William G. Sanders, and she remembers her mother telling her how the first local life-boat, the City of Exeter, was drawn from Fore Street on a carriage and of how she watched the procession from premises now demolished to make way for Lloyd's Bank. That life-boat stayed until 1885.

Talking of her father, who died in 1944 at the age of 84, Miss Sanders, who is the proud owner of a box of local life-boat photographs and press cuttings, said he was coxswain of the Torbay life-boat 'for 36J years'.One of the old undated press cuttings which Miss Sanders showed me, and which is reproduced here, illustrates very well how lucky her father was'in matters of the deep'.

Said the report: 'Mr. Wm. Sanders, captain of the Brixham lifeboat, on Monday night took bis son, aged 8, and two others beyond Berry Head in a small boat to catch mackerel. Subsequently the trawler Lark coming along took them all on board, making their boat fast astern. About 9 o'clock Mr. Sanders was hoisting the foresail when bis son fell from the gangway into the sea unnoticed by the crew of the Lark. One of the boys, however, saw him and shouted out. Mr.

Sanders, looking round, saw in the darkness the straw bat of his son floating aft, but the boy could not be seen. The father immediately dived where the hat appeared and caught his son about five or six feet under the surface. Coming up, he caught at the rail of the punt which was being towed, and which the skipper of the Lark had, with presence of mind, veered astern. By that means both father and son were rescued.' In 1920—on 28th January—Coxswain Sanders was aboard the second life- boat to be named Betsy Newbon on a service to a condemned German destroyer in a whole easterly gale when she was upset by an exceptionally heavy sea. All the crew were able to scramble back aboard the life-boat.

MAN ON MAST Miss Sanders told me: 'As the Betsy Newbon with sails set went over, my father said: "Betsy Newbon, let's see what you can do". In her upturned state a member of the crew seized the mast and, as the boat came round, slid down'.

In the course of his long service with the Torbay life-boat, Coxswain Sanders, who was a smack owner, received several letters commending his life-boat work, and one written by a Mr. Henry Knott, a former Torquay boy, from Radnor, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., in December, 1929, told of the local life-boat's exploits which had been reported in The New York Times. Mr. Knott said the report of four services undertaken by the Torbay boat between 5th and 7th December, 1929, made 'my heart beat fast with pride, and my very being diffused with joy'.

Coxswain William A. Mogridge also carried out a number of daring rescues while in charge of the Torbay boat. On 23rd January, 1937, he was awarded a clasp to his bronze medal for 'the gallant and dangerous service' to the steamerEnglish Trader which had run ashore at the entrance to Dartmouth harbour.

The life-boat took off 52 men.

In 1938 and 1939 Coxswain Mogridge won further awards; and in 1944 Coxswain Frederick C. Sanders, a nephew of the late Coxswain William G.

Sanders, was honoured for 'splendid seamanship and courage' in a night rescue service. Then in 1959 Coxswain Henry O. Thomas won the Institution's silver medal for a very courageous service to a Dutch tug and barges (see photograph on page 32) off Torquay. This also resulted in medals being awarded to all the crew by the Queen of the Netherlands.

BRAVERY RECORD CONTINUES In more recent times the same kind of bravery has persisted, Coxswain Harold Coyde, who is at present in charge of the boat, having been awarded a silver medal for attempting to rescue two men from a motor vessel on 22nd December, 1964. Others in the present crew include Second Coxswain Dudley Stone, Motor Mechanic Barry Pike, Assistant Mechanic Owen Mclnally, and Signalman Alistair Mackay.

Newspaper headlines were made on 9th July, 1968, when the Torbay life-boat, in dense fog, found with the aid of her radar a ferry aground and took off and landed 126 passengers and a dog in one go.

As I said at the start of the article, Torbay has had a steady line of honorary secretaries, two other long serving in that capacity being the Rev. R. Fenwick Elrington, Vicar of Brixham, who was secretary from 1866 to 1891, and Mr. H.

M. Smardon, secretary for 25 years until his death in 1948.

Mr. Park, who is the present Mayor of the County Borough of Torbay and has a fairly busy diary, has to delegate authority so that Capt. Arthur K.

Bamberry, the assistant honorary secretary, is able to act for him in despatching the life-boat.

Torbay is proud of the tribute paid to them by a former secretary at the London headquarters of the R.N.L.I. When Sir George F. Shee retired, and a life-boat was named after him, he decided without hesitation to select Torbay as her station.

BELL AND RINGER VANISHED I was sorry to learn from Miss Sanders that in 1957 the ancient handbell, which had been rung to summon the life-boat crew before the maroons were fired, was stolen. This bell was originally used by the fish-salesmen on Brixham market to summon would-be buyers ready for the fish auction. As the years went by fishermen understood that the furious ringing of the handbell meant that they were wanted at the life-boat station—in fact, the bell often alerted them before the maroons.

Miss Sanders told me: 'I remember the day the bell was taken. I heard the bell—one couldn't mistake it—being rung, as if someone was walking through the town with it, and I telephoned the fishmarket. At first they did not believe me and finally, when a search was made, the bell and its ringer had vanished.' NEW RADAR There was a ceremony at Torbay, South Devon, on 10th September, 1969, when a plaque was unveiled aboard the life-boat Princess Alexandra of Kent to commemorate the gift of radar equipment and finance to install it. The radar was given by the Hay ward Foundation, and the cost of fitting the equipment was met by special funds obtained by the Lions Club of Torquay and the local R.N.L.I. branch. The Hayward Foundation has now given eight radar sets to the R.N.L.I.

Power Boat Race prize to R.N.L.I.

Officers and ratings from H.M.S. Churchill who won the first prize for mem- bers of the armed services in the recent power boat race sponsored by the Daily Telegraph and B.P. have decided to present all their prize money, which amounts to about £300, to the Barrow-in-Furness branch of the Royal National Life-boat Institution.

A cheque was presented to Mr. W. D. Opher, C.B.E., chairman of the Barrow- in-Furness branch of the R.N.L.I., at Biggar Village, Walney Island, on 18th September, 1969.

The helmsman of Tornado, which was manned from H.M.S. Churchill, was Lieutenant D. Ruscombe-King, R.N.

LONGHOPE ENQUIRY In connection with the report of the inquiry into the Longhope disaster which appeared in the September issue of LIFE-BOAT (pages 662-666), the reference to 'five miles east of Halcro Head, North Ronaldsay', should have read 'five miles east of Halcro Head, South Ronaldsay'..