ALTHOUGH I had been to Padstow, Cornwall, years ago on holiday, the visit I paid in July this year for the purpose of this article was the first since then, I found, as before, a bustling village in high summer and, some miles way, the lifeboat station down how many 'steps?—well, I didn't count them but I'd say close on 150.

As I arrived at Padstow at dawn from Bodmin Road, where the night sleeper put me out, I saw the village wake up and, unlike London, it does this most gracefully, keeping the hungry traveller waiting until past nine for breakfast! But it is well worth waiting for.

With time on rny hands before meeting Mr.

H. H. Lobb, the honorary secretary, who is a native of Padstow and has been associated with R.N.L.I. activities for the past 11 years, I wandered round the harbour looking for lifeboat signs. There were well placed life-boat collecting boxes on both sides of the harbour, and interesting up-to-date local wreck charts, one of which is reproduced on page 180.

Elsewhere steps had been taken to protect holidaymakers against taking risky holiday trips in overloaded boats. A painted board on the South Quay—it was erected by the Padstow Harbour Commissioners—listed fishing boatsand speed boats by name which were licensed to carry not more than 12 passengers.

There have been two life-boat stations at Pasdstow, the No. 1 station being established before 1825 and the No. 2 station in 1899. The R.N.L.I. took over full control of the station in 1856. In 1962 No. 2 Station was closed. Today the remaining station is located at Mother Ivey's Bay, Trevose Head, having been resited from Hawker's Cove, Padstow, in 1967 due to silting.

The decision to resite the station at Trevose Head followed careful wave recordings taken over a period of two years which showed it would be possible to launch the life-boat in any conditions.

The building of the new station—it cost over £140,000—gave the engineers many problems, weather conditions always being a major factor to contend with. Work began early in 1966 by the building of a quarter mile road across the fields to the cliff edge overlooking the slipway site 100 feet below. Next, a five ton derrick with a 150-foot jib was put up on the cliff edge and a military trestling staging erected on the beach.

From this staging the head of the slipway was constructed. A mobile gantry on top of the slipway cantilevered forward to enable the remainder of the piles to be placed in position andthe rest of the slipway structure to be built 'over hand' about 300 feet to seaward to below water mark. Length of the slipway—the longest at any life-boat station in the British Isles-—-is 240 feet.

The Padstow station, when the inshore rescue boat stations are closed for the winter, has a coastline to protect of about 90 miles. When I asked Coxswain Gordon Elliott how long on average they took to man the life-boat from the sounding of the maroons, he said: "Well, we reckon that a 3 a.m. call on a winter's day will get us those five odd miles to the life-boat station, and down the steps, in the space of 16 minutes. The drill is that some members of the crew and helpers we pick up in the Land-Roverout of Padstow, members of crew and helpers living near the station, block difficult roads and lanes to give us free passage." The history of the Padstow life-boat station is studded with courageous rescues great and small.

Apparently one of the most outstanding rescues was undertaken by the life-boat Arab, under Coxswain William H. Baker, on 12th November, 1911, and, asthephotographonpage!79shows, it made the front page of The Daily Mirror for 15th November when the paper cost a modest halfpenny.

The caption under the picture states: 'A noble deed was performed by a volunteer lifeboat crew at Pasdstow, Cornwall. Two vessels were seen approaching the harbour during a fierce gale, and the crew of the life-boat Arab was summoned. Residents of Hawker's Cove,where the life-boat house is situated, quickly got the boat afloat, and the crew, having arrived from Padstow, set out.

'They rescued the crew of the first vessel, the Island Maid, which struck the dreaded Doom Bar, and brought them ashore.

"Meanwhile the second vessel, the Angele, of Brest, also struck the bar, but the men after one attempt declared that it was impossible to reachthe doomed vessel. Coxswain YV. Baker then got together a volunteer crew, who rescued the captain from the rigging.

'(1) The Arab and its crew, (2) Captain Lazac, of the Angele, (3) the two wrecks: (Y) the Angele, (Z) the Island Maid, (4) The volunteer crew, which included a police constable'.

Cyril Noall and Grahame Farr in their book Wreck and Rescue Round the Cornish Coast, The Story of the North Coast Life-boats noted that the Arab from the Island Maid got the crew of five and her skipper, Captain J. T. Kinch. Therescue of survivors, if any, still left on the Angele proved much more difficult as the original lifeboat crew, though they tried to row for the stricken vessel, were too exhausted from the first service. At Hawker's Cove there were crowds of spectators but no volunteers came forward. It was then that Captain A. Mitchell of the R.N.L.I, steam tug Helen Peele and Police Constable Turner arrived on the scene and at once volunteered to go out with tugmen, trawlermen and fishermen who formed the scratch crew.

'These men', Cyril Noall and Grahame Farr noted, 'sublimely overcoming their lack of practice in pulling so large a boat, made a desperate effort and reached the wreck, now submerged save for her rigging. The captain of the Angele, who must have been a very athletic man, dived into the sea and swam towards them wearing a lifebelt. His action made it unnecessary to adopt the dangerous procedure of going alongside, for he was able to explain in broken English that he was the only survivor'.

Three times in the history of Padstow there have been life-boat accidents. The first occurred on 6th February, 1867, when the second Albert Edward life-boat—a gift of the City of Bristol Life-Boat Fund—capsized while assisting an American schooner wrecked on Doom Bar. Five of the life-boat's crew of 13 lost their lives.Twice misfortune struck the station on 11 th April, 1900. The life-boat Arab, while at anchor close to a stranded ketch, was struck by a tremendous sea which washed eight of her crew overboard and broke nine of the 10 oars.

Fortunately the men were able to regain the boat but the Arab became a total loss on the rocks.

The steam life-boat James Stevens No. 4, which went out after the Arab, was also hit by a tremendous sea. She was spun broadside to the seas and was tumbled over, keel upwards, in an instant. The seven men in the cockpit were flung clear, but the four men battened below, at the engines and the boilers, were trapped.

Altogether eight of the crew lost their lives.

And the record of local bravery lives on.

For on 23rd November, 1965, Coxswain Elliott, who had been appointed a year earlier, won the Institution's silver medal for the rescue of two men from the fishing vessel Deo Gratias.

Conditions were such that it was impossible to pass a towline and by then the fishing vessel was settling rapidly by the stern. So Coxswain Elliott waited for a lull and put the bow of the life-boat against the fishing boat's starboard quarter. The two men were hauled aboard, but before he could go astern a heavy sea rolled the fishing boat under the bow of the life-boat. The life-boat—she was the Joseph Hiram Chadwick— crashed through her bulwark on to the deck.

As in many life-boats today, fathers and sons are among the crew of Padstow's 48-foot 6-inch Oakley James and Catherine Macfarlane which was named by the Duke of Kent on behalf of his mother, the late Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, on 19th July, 1968.

Other crew members are: Second Coxswain Trevor R. England, Mechanic Eddie Murt, Crew Members Bill Tummon, Riekie Tummon, Arthur May, Phillip May, Peter Poole, Alf Prosser and Mike Hughes. Then there is Signalman Jack Brenton, Head Launcher Arthur Permewan, Winchman Ernie Bennett, Assistant Winchman Ian Kendall, with Mr. Pat Rabey and Mr. Harry Brenton on recovery. The Medical Officer is Dr. M. Rees.

The 200-strong Padstow ladies' life-boat guild plays a big part in the fund-raising side of the station, and last year they raised £1,250 by their efforts.

Padstow in winter has a resident population of about 2,000 but in the summer this increases to 8,000 to 10,000.

Mr. Lobb told me: 'Padstow does not get a mass flow of visitors in the summer. We attract families, whose children grow up, and then they in turn return with their families. We are, I suppose, self-generating so far as visitors go.' As already stated, my visit to Padstow took place in high summer. Some of the old salts I met in a local inn made it clear to me that I should not leave Padstow without getting firmly into my head that there was another side to the place.

'You be from London?' said one of the old men.

I said I was.

'Know anything about the sea?' asked another.

I replied that my work made me read about the sea.

The first verse of Ethel Fielding's poem 'The Wreck of the Padstow Life-boats'—she wrote it in 1900—gives a clue: ' Twas night on the coast of Cornwall, And fiercely raged the deep.

When rockets sped through the startled air, And banished thoughts of sleep..