THE Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which depends entirely on voluntary contributions, was founded in 1824 and has now saved over 98,500 lives in peace and war. Sir William Hillary, the founder, built the lifeboat service on sound principles, and the purposes he listed all those years back remain in being today: The preservation of human life from shipwreck, help to ships in distress, the succour and support of the rescued, regardless of nationality, rewards to those carrying out rescues and provision for the widows and families of those losing their lives in attempts to help others.

In the two world wars of this century (1914-1918, 1939-1945) the RNLI, despite many pressures, maintained a splendid record of impartiality on thelines of Sir William Hillary's principles of 1824. Indeed, during the early months of World War II, the RNLI faced criticism from those who felt that enemies should be left to drown. In 1940, when it was feared that German airmen might attempt to overpower lifeboat crews, rifles were carried for a time but were eventually withdrawn.

Steel helmets, on the other hand, were a necessity. The following summaries suggest why.

On October 4, 1940, the Lowestoft, Suffolk, lifeboat was launched to aJunkers 88 which had been shot down by British fighters east of Southwold, but only oil patches were found. A naval motor vessel which helped in the search was machine gunned by another German aeroplane, but the lifeboat was unharmed.

Then, when an American Fortress bomber was reported down, the Wells, Norfolk, lifeboat was called out on November 29, 1943. While the lifeboat was out, batteries on shore twice fired machine guns. But the fire was not directed at the lifeboat: it probably came from troops at exercise who could not be forewarned that the lifeboat was in the neighbourhood.

An attempt by escaped German prisoners of war to steal a housed east coast lifeboat was, in fact, the nearest the enemy came to taking over an operational RNLI craft—but it failed.

During the period 1914-1918 lifeboats belonging to the RNLI saved nearly 5,000 lives, and of this number over 1,600 were rescued from casualties directly attributable to the war, lifeboats having launched over 500 times to such casualties alone. The record during the period 1939-1945 was equally impressive: 3,760 calls of which 2,212 were to ships and aircraft in distress or danger on account of the war. The weekly average of lives saved in World War I was 18; in World War II it was 21.

The sinking off Aldeburgh on Sunday, September 10, 1939, of the steamship Magdapur of 8,640 tons saw the RNLI's first war service. It was the second Sunday of the war and apparently thousands of holidaymakers saw thesinking, which was due to a U-boat, after a loud explosion about five miles off the coast. When the explosion occurred a column of water shot into the air alongside the steamer, and she began to go down rapidly. Her crew numbered between 80 and 90, mostly Lascars, but there were 18 Englishmen aboard. Other ships went to the assistance of the Magdapur, owned by P. and J. Brocklcbank, of Liverpool, and built in 1921, and two of them took off her crew soon after 3.20 p.m.

Finally the Aldeburgh lifeboat brought the 18 white men and 56 Lascars ashore. The local ARP services were mobilised to deal with the injured, several of whom were in a serious condition. Nine had to be brought ashore on stretchers. The others, though much exhausted, were able to walk. All were smothered from head to foot in black oil.

The lifeboat Abdy Beauclerk was covered with oil and blood, but she was cleaned, refuelled and ready for service by 8 p.m. that day. As the lifeboat crew's clothes were badly damaged by oil, an increase in the usual money award was granted to the men.

The terse wartime reports of lifeboat services preserved in the RNLI archives give little evidence of what lay behind many of the incidents.

Take, for example, the following summary for December 18, 1939: 'Cromer, Sheringham, and Wells, Norfolk.

An aeroplane had been reported down in the sea, but she could not be found.—Rewards: Cromer, £39 13s. 6d.; Sheringham, £37 14s.; Wells, £30 9s. 6d.' On that day a raid mounted from East Anglia proved disastrous. Ten Wellingtons crashed in the sea or were seen on fire heading for the Dutch coast, two more 'ditched' on the way home, and three more were so badly damaged that they forced landed away from the base. Altogether 15 bombers were lost, and December 18, 1939, was long remembered as one of the blackest days in the annals of Bomber Command.

Squadron Leader Harris, leader of 149 Squadron from Mildenhall, Suffolk, returning in the same direction and anxious for the safety of the battered survivors, saw Flying Officer Briden's Wellington land in the sea in the Cromer Knoll area. He saw three of the crew clinging to the bomber's dinghy, which may not have inflated properly, so the squadron leader, although still over the sea, attempted to drop his own dinghy on to the wreck, but it did not drop clear, fouling the tail plane.

Squadron Leader Harris at once transmitted the position of the 'ditched' Wellington, which was last seen at an acute angle, with the rear part of its fuselage only above the water. His SOS for the trio in the sea without a dinghy brought out a high speed launch, RNLI lifeboats from Cromer, Shering-ham and Wells, and a destroyer.

Squadron Leader Harris, his fuel nearly exhausted, then made for Norwich where he landed. Next day the search continued but Flying Officer Briden and his comrades had disappeared.

The total of 6,376 lives rescued by lifeboats in World War II does not include the men of the British Expeditionary Force brought off from the beaches of Dunkirk. Nineteen lifeboats of the Institution took part in that operation, 17 of them manned by naval men, and two, the Ramsgate and Margate lifeboats, manned by their own crews. Between them Ramsgate and Margate brought off some 3,400 men and both coxswains were awarded the D.S.M.

It was at 1.15on the afternoon of May 30, 1940, that the Ministry of Shipping called up the Institution on the telephone and asked it to send to Dover as many of its lifeboats as possible. When the message was received the Germans were closing in round Dunkirk and the position was very grave. But as soon as the Institution got the call it telephoned to its stations from Gorleston, Norfolk, to Shoreham Harbour, Sussex.

While the urgent message was being sent to the lifeboats along those 190 miles of coast, two of them—those from Ramsgate and Margate—were already making for the hell of Dunkirk. They took a course through hurriedly swept minefields. In command of the Ramsgate boat was Coxswain Howard P.

Knight. Coxswain Edward D. Parker was at the helm of the Margate boat.

During loading operations carried out in darkness, for lights were answered by enemy shells fired at close range, Coxswain Knight took a wherry and naval men ashore. A voice called to them: 'I cannot see who you are. Are you a naval party?' He was answered: 'No, sir, we are men of the crew of the Ramsgate lifeboat'. The voice from the beach called back: 'Thank you, and thank God for such men as you have this night proved yourselves to be. There is a party of 50 Highlanders coming next.' With the coming of day the shelling and bombing increased, with Junkers 87 dive bombers pulling out just over their heads and propaganda leaflets fluttering down ordering the Allied armies to surrender.

The sea, like the beach, was littered with wreckage and was thick with oil, the latter clogging oars so that weary limbs could no longer overcome the drag.

The Margate lifeboat reached the beaches some hours later than the Ramsgate boat. Of the work of the Margate boat, it is recorded: 'More men were waiting. This time they were from the Border Regiment. She loaded up with them, and their weight sank her until she was hard on the sands. It was now low water and she waited until the tide flowed and she floated again....' The work of the rescuing fleet came to an end on June 4. All ships were ordered to leave Dunkirk by 2.30 that • Sir William Hi'liarv who founded the RNLI in 1824.

• Coxswain Edward D. Parker whose lifeboat found Pilot Officer Richard Hillary.

by courtesy of Keystone Press Agency • Eric Kenningtoris portrait of Richard Hillary.

• Popular edition of Richard Hillary's The Last Enemy.morning. But boats were still adrift between England and France. The lifeboats of the RNLI, some damaged but all very dirty, stayed for as long as possible. In those last hours the Southend-on-Sea lifeboat saved the destroyer HMS Kellet when, in a desperate bid to rescue 200 French soldiers, she caught one of her screws on something under water. As the harbour by then had been cleared of vessels, the destroyer was on her own, but suddenly the Southend lifeboat came by full of soldiers and she hauled the destroyer off the beach.

After Dunkirk followed the Battle of Britain (July 10-October 31) and during that time men of the lifeboat service went to the aid of many Allied and enemy airmen in the English Channel and the North Sea. Lifeboats were launched 1,093 times to the help of aircraft in World War II. They rescued lives from 56 of these aircraft, and the total of lives rescued, including German, was 142.

The total number of lives saved from aircraft was small beside the number of launches but it must be remembered that, to start with, there was really no Air/Sea Rescue Service for pilots until later in the Battle of Britain, but the RNLI during those critical weeks drove its boats to the limit of their endurance to rescue friend and foe. Often, through lack of speed, they were too late. But more often than not the crews of aircraft seen to crash into the sea were already dead.

It was on September 3, 1940, that, in searching for 'downed' pilots off the Kent coast, the temporary Margate lifeboat J. B. Proudfoot found one Pilot Officer Richard Hillary, fighter pilot, of No. 603 (City of Edinburgh) Auxiliary Squadron, who had been shot down and badly burned. He was just on the point of drowning. When the lifeboat landed the seriously ill young pilot it was learnt that he was of the family of Sir William Hillary who founded the RNLI in 1824. Later the pilot officer, who was killed in an air crash in 1943, wrote the best selling book The Last Enemy.

Mr Michael Hillary, the young pilot's father, wrote in a letter to the Margate honorary secretary on September 13, 1940: 'I am told that my son, Pilot Officer R. H. Hillary, who is now an inmate of the Margate Hospital, was rescued by the Margate lifeboat and I want to express the heartfelt thanks of my wife and myself to the coxswain and his crew for returning him to us. It would surely have afforded my ancestor, who founded the service, the liveliest satisfaction to know that his own kith and kin are numbered amongst those who have benefited by its wonderful work.' Among the interesting wartime pictures preserved by the RNLI is one of a painting by the late Mr L. F. Gilding, a former employee, showing Avro Lancaster J-GU standing on its nose in the sea with the Wells lifeboat along-side. The date of the incident was July 14, 1942, and the bold lifeboatman standing on the sinking bomber was the late Coxswain Theodor T. L. Neilson.

The story is that the Lancaster was seen to come down about three miles out just before 5.39 a.m. The lifeboat Royal Silver Jubilee 1910-1935 was launched, and Dr E. W. Hicks, who remained honorary secretary at Wells well into the 1960s, went with her. The bomber was found with its tail and part of its port wing severed.

Back at Wells the following details were logged: 'One airman . . . still conscious . . . was clinging to the underside of the port wing. He was lifted into the lifeboat. There was no sign of any other member of the crew, so the coxswain hoisted himself on to the edge of the wing and walked along it to the fuselage.

Its top had been blown away and he climbed inside to search for the rest of the crew. . . . At any moment the aeroplane might have turned over, or sunk, and the coxswain would have been trapped inside her. He searched but found no one, and the lifeboat put back to Wells. . . . The injured man . . . died.

The lifeboat then returned to the aeroplane and made a further search. She found nothing except a rubber dinghy, about a mile away. At 8.40 the aeroplane sank. An air/sea rescue launch, with the help of aeroplanes, began a wider search, and the lifeboat returned to her station, where she arrived at 9.15. Some of the bodies of the other six men of the bomber, all of whom lost their lives, were recovered later.' The RNLI during the two world wars assisted soldiers, sailors and airmen of many nationalities. During the historic attack on this country on November 11, 1940, by units of the Italian Air Force operating under German orders, Italian airmen parachuted over the sea off the Suffolk coast. The Aldeburgh lifeboat made a most careful search from 2.28 p.m. until 5 o'clock without finding bodies. However, a parachute waspicked up bearing Italian markings.

Later in the war, when the 8th USAAF started massive operations from East Anglian bases, lifeboats lay at prearranged points to receive 'ditched' aircraft.

Some lifeboats fells into enemy hands.

For instance, the St Peter Port and StHolier, Jersey lifeboats were captured when the Channel Islands were occupied by the Germans. Although the St Peter Port boat was mishandled by the Germans the St Helier one went out five times for 35 lives.

The RNLI allowed three of its lifeboats to be requisitioned by the Navy and the RAF for urgent duties. The No. 2 Aberdeen lifeboat went a long way from home—to serve with Coastal Command in the Azores.

And as if this war effort was not enough the machine shop at the RNLI Depot at Boreham Wood, Herts., when the building of lifeboats came almost to a standstill, began to make munitions.

In the middle of 1941 it was put on to aircraft work, and until the end of the war it was making light alloy parts for the famous Mosquito, the fastest machine of its type. The depot machined, fitted and assembled nearly 100,000 of these parts.—C.R.E..