'The great majority of lifeboatmen are fishermen. They are men who daily sail the seas. They have acquired a skill in handling boats which touches the miraculous, and they know their own piece of coast, its sunken rocks, its shifting sandbanks and its currents and tides, as another man knows his own garden.' THOSE WORDS WERE WRITTEN in 1935 by Major-General the Right Hon. Lord Mottistone, PC CB CMC DSO (formerly General J. E. B. Seely), a regular member of Brooke lifeboat crew for over 40 years, for three years its coxswain.

Before the last war, as an art student in search of first-hand material for marine paintings, I went out into the North Sea in the old steam herring drifters, experiencing the hard and dangerous life of the fishermen. I am proud to be able to write this article as a tribute to them.

Unlike the trawler, which drags a net shaped like a large conical bag along the sea bed to scoop up its catch, the herring drifter puts out a wall of vertical netting suspended below the surface of the water. The size of the mesh allows the herring to get its head and gills through, but it cannot withdraw, as the gills hold it fast like the barbs of an arrowhead. The steam drifter was a specialised fishing vessel which had evolved from the days of sail, and survived in Britain in large numbers up to the end of the second world war.

Wooden hulled drifters, propelled entirely by steam, were being built around the turn of the century, and rapidly superseded the old sailing drifters; wooden construction gradually giving place to iron and steel hulls.

The average steam drifter varied from 50 to 90 feet in length, with a beam of 18 to 20 feet, and a service speed of about 9 knots. They were stout, seaworthy vessels and were almost identical in hull layout.

Forward, in the bows, was a storeroom and fish hold with a large hatch of nearly 9 feet square. Behind this came the cross coal bunkers, and then the single 'Scotch' boiler flanked by the two side bunkers giving a total fuel capacity of 40 to 50 tons. Most of the remaining hull space was taken up by the compound, or triple-expansion engine, leaving only cramped living quarters for the crew above it. In this confined space they both ate and slept.

The entrance was on one side of the raised superstructure with a small galley for cooking on the other. Behind the wheelhouse, forward, was the engine room casing surmounted by the tall, slender funnel. The mizzen mast with its gaff sail served to steady the vessel and keep her head into the wind when the nets were out. A distinctive feature of the .herring drifter was the foremast hinged in a steel tabernacle and always kept lowered at sea into a wooden crutch on top of the wheelhouse to reduce wind drift and rolling.

Herring fishing in the North Sea began in the spring up in the Shetlands, and each year the drifters followed the shoals of herring as they moved down the east coast. Even in the declining years before the last war, over 800 steamdrifters would be working from Yarmouth and Lowestoft at the height of the autumn fishing season.

An average drifter would put out between two to three miles of nets, usually steaming out to the fishing grounds in the afternoon and returning with her catch the following morning.

Once the nets were out they had to be hauled in again despite weather conditions, but if a gale suddenly sprang up, as they often do in the North Sea, it was sometimes impossible.

This happened to the steam drifter Harmony of Eyemouth in May of 1914.

About 2100 the wind began to freshen and quickly increased to gale force.

While the nets were being hauled in, a heavy sea struck the vessel and swept right over her, putting out the boiler fires and her crew were in danger of being washed overboard. With the remaining steam pressure in her boiler Harmony ran for Berwick-on-Tweed, but the tide was low with heavy surf breaking on the bar. The lifeboat Matthew Simpson, built in 1903 as a pulling and sailing self-righting boat, was launched and made for the river mouth. However, Harmony managed to run the gauntlet of heavy seas and get inside the pier ends where a fishing coble took her in tow.

Storms were not the only hazard with which steam drifter crews had to contend. On the night of November 26, 1912, the drifter Sheila of Buckie was crippled with a burst boiler. She was sighted about two miles from the shore to the north of Eyemouth, burning flares and sounding her siren continuously as signals of distress. Anne Frances of Eyemouth, a self-righting pulling and sailing lifeboat built in 1909, was launched into a full gale blowing from north north west with a very rough sea. They found a tug, Granite City of Aberdeen, with her pumpschoked and leaking badly, towing the disabled drifter. Some of the lifeboat's crew were put on board the tug and drifter, and both vessels eventually reached Eyemouth harbour safely.

Shortage of fuel almost caused the loss of the drifter Flower O'May on the evening of November 19, 1933. She had been towed about 50 miles by another fishing vessel in atrocious weather, and cast off about two miles from Fraserborough.

A south-east gale was blowing with a very rough sea, rain and fog, and the drifter was soon in serious difficulties.

The Fraserborough self-righting motor lifeboat, Lady Rothes, built in 1915, answered her distress signals. They found Flower O'May about two miles north east of the Balaclava light. She had no coal left and was in danger of sinking as she had shipped a lot of water. Four of her crew of ten got into the lifeboat, but as the rest decided to stay with their vessel the coxswain asked a nearby trawler to tow the drifter in to Macduff. The trawler master agreed, provided the lifeboat accompanied them, and they managed to reach harbour safely at 0420. The lifeboat had undoubtedly helped to save both the drifter and her crew and had been out for over 15 hours.

I went to sea in steam drifters during the late 1930s when there were some very severe autumn and winter storms.

During the gale on the east coast which raged for four days in November 1936 there were six lifeboat launches from Cromer, Great Yarmouth and Gorleston, and a motor drifter, Olive Branch of Peterhead, turned turtle and sank with all hands. The Cromer motor lifeboat Harriot Dixon, a Liverpool type built in 1934, could find no trace of the capsized drifter; she reported that it was impossible that anyone could have lived in such a sea. The search for the missing Olive Branch lasted for three hours in a gale force wind and heavy sea.

At 1900 on that same wild day a disabled steam drifter being towed by another drifter parted her tow rope and was being driven towards the beach.

She was Pitagaveny of Banff with a crew of ten. The drifter had an anchor out but it was not holding and she was dragging rapidly in towards the breakers about half a mile south of Gorleston Pier. The Cromer lifeboat again put out and went alongside, damaging her bow against the helpless drifter, but managed to rescue the whole crew before Pitagaveny was driven ashore.

On November 23, 1938, the severest gale since the great storms of the winter of 1929-30 struck the British Isles. The wind reached a speed of 108 miles an hour. Lifeboats were out all round the coast, and on that one day there were 27 launches.

At 1353 a vessel was reported to be showing distress signals about 2| miles east south east of Skegness Pier. The Skegness Liverpool type motor lifeboatAnne Allen, built in 1932, was launched at 1424. A full gale from the south west was blowing with a very rough sea, heavy rain and squalls. She found the steam drifter Dusty Miller of Yarmouth in a sinking condition. Heavy seas had stove in some of her planking and flooded the engine room. A small steamer was standing by, but in such seas could do nothing to help except offer some protection with her lee side to the lifeboat crew as they went alongside the stricken drifter. They managed to take off the crew, and Anne Allen reached her station again at 1610.

The coxswain described it as one of the worst trips he had ever experienced.

So, when fishing fleets are at sea and sudden gales spring up, lifeboats may be out in numbers, too; usually the only craft to be seen battling their way out from our shores into raging seas. It may mean taking a disabled vessel in tow, or escorting small craft, sometimes a whole fishing fleet, back to the safety of ports and harbours, especially where the entrances, almost obscured by waves and spray, are narrow and restricted..