'When we're needed—we're needed! And when we're needed, we'll be there!' THESE WORDS of a Swanage coxswain, logged in the station history, are a promise this little Dorset town has been proud to fulfil. Opening the commemoration celebrations of the centenary of the station at Stone Quay on Sunday, July 27, the chairman of the branch, M. C. Hillier, paid tribute to the loyalty of the sons of the Swanage families; for 100 years nearly all members of the lifeboat crews have been Swanage born and bred.

Sunday, July 27, was a day of shimmering heat; the beach crowded with families on holiday; the bay populated with bathers and small boats; and on the horizon a mirage of cliffs and sails closed the gap between Hengistbury Head and the Isle of Wight.

As lifeboat people gathered for the service of thanksgiving and blessing, to be conducted by the Rev. David Bailey, Rector of Swanage, R.L.P., the present lifeboat, and Gilt, the ex-Runswick Liverpool lifeboat now owned by Paul Neate, deputy launching authority, Poole, came to anchor off the quay. A maroon was fired from R.L.P. It took its course right over Peveril Point.

In the disaster which precipitated the setting up of the Swanage station, Peveril Point and Poole lifeboat had both played a part, the one in the wreck, the other in the rescue. On January 23, 1875, the brigantine Wild Wave of Exeter was wrecked on Peveril Ledge in a southerly gale. At 0500 when rockets were fired she was on her beam ends. After tremendous efforts, made in the dark hours before a winter dawn, four men and a boy were rescued by Coastguards in four-oared open boats.

Chief Officer John Lose was awarded the RNLI silver medal for gallantry for this rescue.

A telegram had been sent to Poole, whose lifeboat Daylight was towed round by the tug steamer Royal Albert, but they had seven miles to struggle through the gale and when they arrived the survivors had just been taken off.

J. C. Robinson, of Newton Manor, was on the shore, and he was a man of action. That same day he wrote a letter to The Times; it was published on January 26. This letter he preserved with other papers in a scrapbook now housed at the Library in Dorchester.

'Swanage has hitherto had no lifeboat,' he wrote, 'but after this morning's work we shall supply that want.' Mr Robinson describes how Coastguards took out two boats and used rocket-firing apparatus, but how the boats could not get near enough; how a telegram was sent to Poole; how, at daylight. . .

'. . . five dark sodden bundles, rather than living creatures were seen, all clustered together, clinging to a mass of tangled rigging, at the highest part of the ship's hull.' Coastguard boats were manned again, and nine men went out with Chief Officer Lose. The wind mo'derated and shifted a point or two.

'Soon we see a coil of rope thrown from the largest boat and caught by one of the living "bundles" on the ship's hull, and in a few minutes (thanks be to Heaven!) all five—one a very small one, a poor little benumbed lad of 10 or 11 (who had been washed off once and caught again by the 'scruff' of the neck like a drowning dog) were safely stowed in the boat.' Soon after 0700 the Poole boat arrived; before 1000 Wild Wave was a thing of the past.

'Now, Sir, I have written this account less to record the excellent discipline, efficiency, and gallantry of the Swanage Coastguard, than to call attention to the urgent needs of the district and the adjacent coast. It will scarcely be believed that along all the line of the coast of Dorset and Hants, from Portland to Hurst Castle, there is not a single lighthouse nor a single harbour of refuge!' Mr Robinson was prepared to take direct action himself. Both he and G. Burt, of Purbeck House, at the scene of the wreck proposed to present £20 each towards a lifeboat. But on the same day that Mr Robinson's letter appeared in The Times, Richard Lewis, RNLI secretary, wrote to him: 'With reference to your letter in The Times of today, describing the wreck of the brigantine Wild Wave off Swanage on Saturday Morning last, and speaking of the formation of a Lifeboat Establishment at that place, I beg to say that Ihave no doubt the National Lifeboat Institution will be quite prepared to organize a Lifeboat Station at Swanage should it be found desirable and practicable to carry out your suggestion.' It was found desirable and practicable, and the lifeboat Charlotte Mary was on station at Swanage the following September. Moreover, Trinity House erected a lighthouse on Anvil Point in 1881.

Since then, as Major-General R. H.

Farrant, chairman of the Committee of Management, recalled when presenting the centenary vellum to Captain D. A. N.

Aldridge, honorary secretary of the station, the Swanage lifeboat has launched nearly 500 times and rescued 327 lives.

In the 100 years there had only been one tragedy to a Swanage crew. Coxswain William Brown was lost overboard on January 12,1895. His daughter, Miss Janet Brown, was at the centenary celebrations. So was Robert Charles Brown, who, as assistant motor mechanic in 1934 was awarded the bronze medal for going overboard and rescuing an unconscious man from the yacht Halley Lise, and who was coxswain from 1941 to 1966; and the present coxswain, Ronald J. Hardy, who was awarded the bronze medal in 1970 for rescuing a youth washed off the rocks into a cave.

Receiving the centenary vellum, Captain Aldridge said: 'We are often asked why the lifeboat service is voluntary—well no government could afford the cost of the danger, discomfort and unsocial hours. Judged by commercial standards lifeboatmen are beyond price. But there are always volunteers ready and willing to come forward and give their time, and if necessary their lives, in the service of others. This vellum marks a hundred years of service by such men and honours them. It inspires others to come forward and give another century of selfless service.' Swanage will be going forward into her next hundred years with a new lifeboat, for she will soon be taking delivery of a 37' 6" Rother class boat, /.

Reginald Corah.

AGM 1976 The next annual meeting of the governors of the Institution and the presentation of awards will take place at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on Wednesday, April 14, 1976.

We regret that in the report of the 1975 AGM, published in the summer issue of THE LIFEBOAT, the word 'hand' was omitted from the end of the third line of the second verse of the poem written in honour of the RNH's 150th Anniversary by Michael Burn. Copies of the corrected poem are available from RNLI Headquarters, Poole, on request..