Home port of the 44' Waveney Offshore Lifeboat The Scout and Atlantic 21 Inshore Lifeboat Guide Friendship III by Joan Davies BY THE EXPRESS WISH of Her Majesty The Queen, the theme for this, her Silver Jubilee year, is youth and the enterprise of young people. It is fitting, therefore, at this time that the thoughts of lifeboat people should turn to Hartlepool, where the Atlantic 21 Guide Friendship III is alreadv on s t a t i o n and hich w i l l , before this journal is published, be welcoming the new 44' Waveney class lifeboat The Scout, to be named by Her Majesty on July 14. The Scout will re-establish Hartlepool as an offshore lifeboat station after an interval of some nine years.

The funding of inshore and offshore lifeboat were both memorable contributions to the RNLI's own 150th anniversary celebrations in 1974. That year the Guide Friendship Fund announced its intent to raise money to provide one Atlantic 21 ILB: such was the spontaneous response that it was able to provide no less than three, Hartlepool being the third. The Scout Association set as its target £100,000 for a Waveney lifeboat—and beat that target by £1,525.

The Hartlepool 'fleet' is a shining example of the warmth and imagination with which young people respond to human need, with how much energy they are prepared to back their visions and just how much they achieve. Scouts, Sea Rangers, Cub Scouts, Rangers, Guides, Brownies all over the country joined in. They will want to know about the exploits of 'their' boats and they will undoubtedly want to know about the crew members who man them, and about the lifeboat station.

Hartlepool has a venerable lifeboat history. No one can be quite sure when a lifeboat station was first established there, but it was certainly before 1825.

Since then there have been five stations at different times. Two were at West Hartlepool and were taken over by the RNL1 in 1869, and three were at Hartlepool and taken over by the Institution in 1875, when the story of the present, single, station really began.

As always happens with a lifeboat station, a look back through its history reveals a wealth of interesting information.

For no fewer than 57 of the 102 years since 1875, for instance, the office of honorary secretary was held by just two brothers; H. S. Belk, honorary secretary from 1875, was succeeded in 1881 by his brother Alfred, who continued in office until 1932—a remarkable span of 51 years.

Then, from ninety years ago, back in 1887, we hear the echo of another, golden, jubilee: 'The remaining boat, Hartlepool No. 3, was provided from the Cyclists' Jubilee Fund, contributed through the founder, Henry Sturmey, Esq., editor of the Cyclist newspaper, about 6,000 wheelmen having subscribed to make the gift to the Institution. There was an extraordinarygathering at Hartlepool on the occasion of the first launch of this boat on the 17th December last, the display being without parallel in local annals. The Mayors and Corporations of the two towns, the County and Borough Magistrates, and other local bodies officially took part in the proceedings, which were witnessed by many thousands of spectators, including a large number of subscribing cyclists; some of them having come from London, Liverpool, Glasgow and other distant places . . . the cyclists could not have adopted a more practical method of celebrating Her Majesty's long and auspicious reign.' There have been other such happy days. Days like July 21, 1941, when setting on one side, temporarily, the shadow of war, HRH The Princess Royal came to Hartlepool to name the new 46' Watson lifeboat The Princess Royal, a gift from the Civil Service Lifeboat Fund. The Princess Royal had come on station in October 1939, having made the passage up the Channel and the east coast from Cowes in convoy with three other new motor lifeboats in the early days of the war.

Six months after her naming, The Princess Royal was called out at 0830 on January 26, 1942, to go to the help of the crew of Hawkwood. She had been driven ashore in an easterly gale, with fierce snow squalls, and had been broken in half. The two halves, being swept by very heavy seas, were 200 yards apart in such shallow water that the lifeboat, under the command of Coxswain Lieutenant William H.

Bennison, could not at first reach either of them, and she had to return to Hartlepool to wait for the tide to rise.

By 1215, still in gale and snow, The Princess Royal was back at the wreck, and on that occasion the coxswain managed to bring her alongside the fore part of Hawkwood and hold her there while the five exhausted men on board, watching their opportunity, jumped aboard the lifeboat. The heavy breaking seas were so violent that at times the lifeboat was almost standing on end.

As it was still impossible for hei to reach the stern half, to which the Coastguard were attempting to get a line from shore. The Princess Royal returned to harbour to land the survivors before making yet another attempt to reach the men still stranded. But she still could not get within range of the wreck.

Trying her best, she touched the sandy bottom, and a sea breaking over her stern flooded the after cockpit, stunned Motor Mechanic H. W. Jefferson and injured another member of the crew..