THEY CAME FROM FRANCE, the TartS of Dungeness. They were Huguenots and it was in the days before religious toleration. So when persecution became too great they took to their boats, being fishing people, and sailed across the Channel to England. Some journeyed on, right inland, but some stayed to settle that little world of wind and shingle and fishing boats that is Dungeness. In those days their name was written Tarte, but the final 'e' had disappeared by the 1850s.

They had looked to the sea for refuge, and in their turn, from generation to generation, have made the safety of seafarers in peril on the waters of the English Channel their concern.

Side by side with the Tart family have stood the Oillers, who came from Cornwall to join the fishing community of Dungeness. The story of the two families and of the lifeboat is inextricably intermingled; both men and women have given long years of service either in the crew, or as launchers, or in the administration of the station.

1974, the Institution's 150th anniversary, was to be a climax to the story. It was, of course, a year of celebration for lifeboat people; it was the year of the silver medal service in hurricane force winds to MV Merc Texco; and it was the last year for the last Tart in the Dungeness boat—Tom Richard 'Ben' Tart. Ben had joined the crew in 1938, a young man in his early twenties; he subsequently served as bowman from 1946, as second coxswain from 1947 and as coxswain from 1965. When he retired on January 5, 1975, it was the end of an era.

Ben and his wife Doris (an Oilier by birth) can recall so much of the history of the Dungeness lifeboat station; it is not only the story of their boat, it is the story of their own people. Reaching retirement, they can look back down the years with peace and pride—and pleasure.

'We've done a service, of course we have', said Ben, 'but the RNLI has given us so much, too. We've been to places we'd never have gone to, met people we'd never have met . . . and taken part in some wonderful occasions'.

'The service at St Paul's', added Doris, recalling the Year of the Lifeboat. 'And the Guildhall dinner . . . that was the best day of my life.' To meet Ben and Doris Tart is to come face to face with happiness and contentment.

At the latter end of the last century both families held positions of responsibility in the boat. One of Ben's great uncles, Robin Tart, was second coxswain, another, Alfred, was in the crew (he was to take over as second coxswain in 1897), and Ben's grandfather, William 'Uncle Bill' Tart, was head launcher.

Doris's grandfather, Charles Oilier, was in the crew too. Those were the days when the fishermen took over the boat from the coastguards. 'They kind of ousted the coastguards', explained Ben, 'and there was actual fighting... you see, in those days the fishermen and the coastguards didn't hit it off. It's no secret. Everyone knows that years ago these old fishermen did a lot of smuggling . . . but these old people couldn't have made any money, because our family never had any money . . . when I was young, in the '20s, after the first world war, we had a job to get a loaf of bread The Dungeness lifeboat still has a crew of fishermen and, needless to say, nowadays the relationship between them and the Coastguard is of the friendliest and co-operation couldn't be better! Then, to return to the past, there was Doris's other grandfather, Isaac Bonguarde Tart (the echo of France still lingered . . . ), one of the Dungeness lifeboat crew who received medals from the King of Sweden 'for extraordinary exertions in saving life on the occasion of the stranding of the Swedish barque Aeolus on November 11, 1891. The medal is treasured with other awards made to the family.

Like the gold badge presented in 1953 for 50 years service as a launcher to Mrs.

Ellen Tart, Ben's mother; and the gold badge (1953) and bar for 60 years service (1963) presented to Miss Mabel Tart, Doris's aunt. It is traditional at Dungeness for the womenfolk to help with the arduous, and often hazardous, task of launching and recovery of this beach-launched lifeboat.

The lifeboat stands high up on the shingle headland of Dungeness. She starts on her way down a slipway, but the last part of her journey to the sea is made over heavy wooden skids so placed that they will be in her pathway even though she is deflected from her straight course by the wind. Experience, good judgment, teamwork and great exertion all play their part. If the boat cannot get away first time, she may have to be hauled back and start again—and someone will have to enter the breaking seas and connect the winch wire to the forefoot. On return from service she will have to be hauled up in the same way.

Ben remembers what it was like in the days of the sailing lifeboats (before 1933). 'There was no electric winch as there is today. It was all done by hand with an old windlass. It took 30 people, and it took you two hours to heave the boat up. I can remember many a time when I was a kid and could hardly reach the bars, walking round and round there for a couple of hours, getting the boat up, wind and rain. It was terrible . . . but we always used to get a full quota of helpers in those days, simply because nobody had got any money. The fishing was on the floor . . . ' From the early 1900s to 1965 the greater part of the crew was made up of Tarts and Oillers. The sailing boat needed a crew of 15. In the first motor lifeboat, which came into service in 1933, there was a crew of 10. Now there is a crew of seven. There were, of course, other men and other families: the father of Albert 'Honker' Haines, the present coxswain, joined the crew around 1920, for instance, and John Thomas was in the crew in the '50s and '60s—he is the father of Peter Thomas who was awardedthe bronze medal for gallantry on the Merc Texco service last year. But Tarts and Oillers predominated—at times they formed 90% of the crew. They appear as coxswains, second coxswains, bowmen, motor mechanics, signalmen ...

For the boys of the family their greatest ambition was to join their fathers and uncles in the crew. Members of the families also served as honorary secretaries, and who can say how many added their weight on shore ? Doris's father, Douglas Oilier, was coxswain for 31 years, from 1916 to 1947. He was awarded the bronze medal in 1929 for his share in the service to the barge Marie May of Rochester. Three years later he was accorded the thanks of the Institution inscribed on vellum when the No. 2 pulling and sailing boat went to the help of a London barge, Shamrock, in a full gale. The thanks of the Institution were also accorded to the women of Dungeness for their gallant services in helping to launch the lifeboat.

Thirty-seven launchers, 14 of them women, pushed the 42' long boat, one of the largest and heaviest in the RNLI fleet, down the skids to the sea. Twelve other women, wives and sisters of the men launchers, helped too. At the first attempt, so violent was the wind, that a sudden gust blew the lifeboat right off the skids, on to the beach. She was hauled up again by the windlass, the skids replaced, and at the second attempt, although wet to the skin and hardly able to keep their feet on the loose stones, the launchers succeeded in getting her away.

From 1947 to 1965, Geoige Tart, Ben's cousin, was coxswain. Those were the years Ben Tart was second coxswain.

Robert Tart, George's son, was in the crew during this period, and so was James Tart, and Arthur, John, Sydney and Alexander Oilier.

Arthur Oilier was to be one of the crew in the Merc Texco service in 1974; now he is the only one of the two families who is still in the boat.

George Tart was coxswain at the time of the great Channel gale of 1956, when, on the last weekend of July the fury of the wind rose to hurricane force. It was the height of the holiday season so that, as well as commercial shipping, many yachts and pleasure boats were caught out; on top of that, the Royal Ocean Racing Club fleet was at sea on the Channel Race. From late evening of Saturday, July 28, the RNLI experienced its busiest 24 hours on record: there were 52 launches from 38 stations: 107 lives were rescued and 12 other people were landed.

Dungeness lifeboat launched three times between noon and midnight on Sunday, July 29. The first launch, at 1255, was to motor vessel Teeswood of Middlesbrough, in distress 4 miles east of Dungeness. By the time the lifeboat arrived, at 1330, Teeswood had capsized.

ss BP Distributor was standing by and had picked up six survivors; the lifeboat rescued a further nine. The height of the waves, together with flying spray and rain, made it extremely difficult to find the survivors in the water and rescuing the men, none of whom was capable of helping himself, was no easy task. At one stage, when the boat was in the middle of a group of survivors, the propeller became fouled by wreckage.

Motor Mechanic Alexander Oilier immediately went down into the engineroom, uncoupled the shaft and, by turning it by hand in the reverse direction, cleared the obstruction.

For this service the bronze medal was awarded to Coxswain George Tart and the thanks of the Institution inscribed on vellum were accorded to Motor Mechanic Alexander Oilier and Crew Member W. Thomas, who for 1 hours had tried to revive one man withartificial respiration while he and his patient were being washed about on deck by heavy seas. Also in the crew were Acting Second Coxswain Albert Haines, Acting Bowman Frederick Richardson, Assistant Mechanic Sydney Oilier and Crew Members John Thomas, Robert Tart and Arthur Oilier.

Ben Tart was appointed coxswain in 1965. It has been his experience that at Dungeness, standing out as it does into the increasingly busy shipping lanes of the approaches to the Straits of Dover, almost as many launches are to ships in collision as to those overtaken by storm.

Mabel E. Holland, the station's 42' Beach boat, cannot be fitted with radar, so, in fog, navigation has to be by dead reckoning. Ben has his own method of searching for collision casualties in fog.

He stations the crew on lookout, two forward, two amidships and two aft and tells them not only to use their eyes but their noses as well. Where there is a collision, oil will have been spilt and the smell of it will drift down to leeward. As soon as anyone smells oil, therefore, the lifeboat is headed straight up wind and will home in infallibly on the casualty. It is so obvious—when someone has pointed it out! It is not possible for Dungeness lifeboat to launch in the hour or two around low water; the exact timing depends on the state of the shingle beach, the formation of which is continually changing with the movement of the sea. Every day of the ten years he was coxswain, Ben Tart kept in his mind the tide changes, and the state of the shifting shingle, so that, should a call come, he would know to the minute whether the boat could launch. There has never, however, been a serious call when the lifeboat hasn't been able to get away.

Thinking back to the evening of February 11, 1974, when Mabel E.

Holland went out in hurricane force winds to take a badly injured man off Merc Texco, Ben said, 'Strange, isn't it? I've been in that lifeboat all these years, and yet I was in my last year before 1 came to these conditions. We'vehad some rough old do's, of course we have, but never as severe as that. If you ask anyone down here they will tell you that it was the worst weather that the Dungeness lifeboat has ever launched in, in living memory. And I don't fancy it would have been done in an old sailing boat—you just couldn't have got away from the beach. So it was the roughest weather in which a lifeboat has ever gone out down here ...

'It was uncanny to steer the boat', he continued. 'I would say that the top 3 feet of water were going along with the wind. It was very confused and there wasn't any weight on the wheel. You couldn't feel anything. It was strange. I think there was air in the water. You'd have to ask some scientist to tell you whether, when it blows hard, there is much air in the top 3 feet of the sea.

Because you could actually turn the wheel over with your little finger . . .

'Going alongside—that was the dangerous part, because the ship was rolling down right on top of us. She was stopped, but she was blowing through the water broadside at, I would say, about 2 to 3 knots, and of course rolling down on us. If you got under her stern when it was coming down it would smash your boat and kill half your crew, perhaps. Sometimes you are 8 or 9' from the vessel and then the next few seconds you are banging up against her again. When a big sea hits the ship, and you are on the lee side of her, she comes lurching towards you and has the greater speed on impact; this gives you a shove broadside. Then, of course, when she rolls back, she doesn't come to the lee so f a s t . . . you know, in between the troughs. This is where young Peter did such a marvellous job in jumping aboard. He had to watch his chance and when the ship rolled down on us he made a jump and grabbed on to the rails and our boys gave him a push and he was aboard. When the ship rolled right down, her deck came nearly down to ours; then, when she rolled back again, you got half the bottom up, her side right out...

'When it came to getting the injuredman across, Alec, our mechanic, did what I asked him with the engines and was concentrating on positioning the boat, keeping her as close as I could.

The rest of our boys—very good seamen, all of them—watched their chance and said when to let the man come. As she rolled down they all put out their arms, and when he touched they shouted, "Right! We've got him!" Then Peter jumped aboard when he got a chance.

And this was in the darkness, which made it more difficult. It was a lovely job. It went fine. We were lucky. On the way out, one of our crew said to me, "You aren't half having some luck, Tart!" It's not only judgement—you've got to have some luck when you do these jobs, or the Lord on your side.' Doris was among the shore helpers: 'When they first came back from there, 1 didn't want them to come ashore.

thought it was too rough. The sea was tremendous . . . ' Ben took up the story again: 'I said to Honker, our second coxswain, "What do you think about it? Think we can make it? What do you suggest?" "It's up to you", he says. "You do what you think." So I says, "Right, if nobody don't mind, then in we're going!" ' All the threads of the story of the Tarts and the Oillers seemed to come together on the night of February 13, 1975, when the lifeboat people of Romney Marsh met in the town hall of Lydd for the presentation by the Mayor of vellum awards for the Merc Texco service. Commander F. R. H. Swann, chairman of the Committee of Management, was there, and Dr. Geoffrey Hale, another member of the Committee, Commander Bruce Cairns, chief of operations, Lieut. Alan Tate, divisional inspector south east, at that time, and other representatives of the RNLI as well as visitors from other stations.

The silver medal for gallantry had been awarded to Ben Tart and the bronze medal to young Peter Thomas.

The thanks of the Institution inscribed on vellum were presented to Second Coxswain Albert Haines, Motor Mechanic Alec Clements and CrewMembers William Richardson, Colin Haines and Arthur Oilier. There was yet another presentation: the thanks of the Institution to the launchers and shore helpers for their efficiency and dedication to duty in the worst beach conditions ever experienced at Dungeness: Ronald Oilier (head launcher), Graham Hancock (winchman), T. Dominy (assistant winchman), Michael Steward (shore attendent), Ex-Coxswain George Tart (telephone messenger) and shore helpers Leonard Oilier, B. Isted, John Thomas Snr, John Thomas Jnr, Patrick Richardson, Ronald Haines, Tony Isted, Frederick Voller, Jeremy Oilier, Eric Oilier, Robert E. Oilier, William J.

Oilier, A. Padgett, David Jones, Mrs Joan Bates, Mrs Doris Tart, Mrs Janet Hancock, Mrs Mai Steward, Miss Kim Bates, Mrs Dilys Oilier, Mrs Pauline Fair. Ex-lifeboatmen, wives, fathers, mothers, girls, boys . . . the old, the young . . . the people of Dungeness. The vellum was received on behalf of the launchers by Mrs Serena Fair, who holds the gold badge for 50 years' service.

It was a happy, family evening, the celebration after a job well done, with a table of home baked refreshments down the middle of the hall as soon as the presentations were made: and so much to talk about. There were a few impromptu speeches, too, the last one from Ben Tart: 'When I go up to get my medal, I will not feel that it belongs to me more than to anyone else in the crew. As I see it, the RNLI has recognised the service we—the whole crew—did that day, by giving me a silver medal. And therefore, when I receive this medal, although it is mine and it will have my name engraved upon it, I shall consider it is for the whole crew for what they did that day.'.