MY INTEREST IN PAINTING an incident from the famous Lynmouth lifeboat service to Forrest Hall goes back to the time when I was boatswain in the little square-rigged replica of Nonsuch ketch.

We were on passage from Falmouth to Bristol in February, 1970, when, as we approached Breaksea Lightship at midnight, a fierce easterly gale sprang up and blew us back towards Lundy, pelted by snow and spray. All that night and the next day we lay hove-to, riding the seas gamely enough but wondering where we should fetch up should the gale continue. Although the wind then howled from a different quarter, this was the same situation which faced the crew of Forrest Hall after she broke away from her tug on the afternoon of January 12, 1899; and the same appalling weather lashed the men of Lynmouth, too, as they decided to launch their 34' lifeboat Louisa. It was plainly impossible to use their tiny harbour, and so the famous 'overland launch' began.

The story of that service, and especially the long trek over the moors to Porlock, is too well known to be repeated here. Suffice it to say that I chose the lesser known part—the labours of Louisa's crew out in the bay—as the subject for my picture.

My first task was to find out exactly what happened, and how the boat, ship and coast had looked at the time.

The best factual account I found was that by Tom Bevan and Coxswain G. S.

Richards, published in THE LIFEBOAT in 1933, but other sources added more information about Forrest Hall, and her tug Jane Joliffe, Louisa, the weather on that day, and so forth.

I had plenty of information on Forrest Hall but no photograph until eventually I traced one to a museum.

Then I found another photograph of one of her fleet mates taken in 1898 which provided the necessary indication as to how she was painted and minor changes in rigging detail at the time she fetched up in Porlock Bay.

Finding a reliable picture of the lifeboat proved even more difficult. I knew that she was a 34' self-righter with 7' 6" beam, pulling ten oars and built by Woolfe at Shadwell in 1887.

Then, just before completing the picture, I came across a rare old photograph of Louisa.

The final task before painting was a pleasant one: to get out into Porlock Bay and study and sketch the scene of action. I drove from Lynmouth to Porlock, retracing the lifeboat's overland route before arranging a trip in local lobster fisherman Paul Lawrence's boat. I had just learned from one source that Forrest Hall's anchors had finally held just past the five fathom line off Hurtstone Point, so armed with old charts and pilotbooks and Paul's special knowledge of the bay we found the site and sketched and photographed it thoroughly.

Back at home, it was time to use all the information I had collected by starting to paint. First came sky, with its racing, lowering clouds just touched by the pale morning sunlight. Then the sea, thundering past the crippled ship and piling up on the grim rocks of the Hurtstone. Finally came Louisa and her tired crew and the gaunt, grey shape of Forrest Hall, straining at her cables.

And then, with the last detail painted and checked, I sat back and hoped that I had done those men of Lynmouth justice. They deserved a memorial grander than of painted canvas, and this they have, in the living fame of their achievement.

The artist's sketch chart of Porlock Bay, showing Louisa's track..