Women's Work . . .

. . . IN THE RNLI IT IS NEVER DONE.

by Ray Kipling DEPUTY PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER, RXLI '/ don't know where we would have been sometimes without the ladies. No credit would be too high for what they did.' Ben Tart, former coxswain of Dungeness lifeboat, was talking about the ladies who used to launch his lifeboat. He could just as well have been referring to the overall role of women in the RNLI for there is hardly an aspect of lifeboat work in which they are not involved.

Ladies no longer help to launch the lifeboat across the beach at Dungeness or anywhere else in the country. Last year the woods (greased wooden skids) which for so many years they had hauled over the shingle and laid in a line so that the lifeboat could slide down to the sea were replaced with a tractor and carriage. It was the end of an era for the lifeboat service.

There used to be many small fishing communities where most of the male population was needed to crew the lifeboat, leaving only a few men and the women to launch her. Each station has its stories of courage; Holy Island, where the women turned out in the blinding snowstorm of a January night to launch the lifeboat, 60 helpers wading waist deep into the sea to get the boat afloat; Runswick, where the fishermen's wives used to launch the lifeboat which, when the fishing fleet was caught out in bad weather, would escort their husbands to safety; Cresswell, where Margaret Armstrong helped to drag the lifeboat half a mile to the sea and then ran five miles along the coast, waded across a storm swollen river and finally collapsed when she reached Newbiggin Coastguard station to tell the officers that the rocket apparatus was needed; Newbiggin itself, where the cry used to be: 'Every man to the boat and every woman to the rope'.

The ladies of Dungeness brought the long and honourable tradition right up to the present day; ladies like Mrs Serena Fair, for instance, who served as a launcher for more than 50 years; like Doris Tart, Ben Tart's wife, who served for 44 years; and like Joan Bates, wife of the late honorary secretary, Mick Bates, who served for 37 years.

The worst launch Mrs Fair recalls was in 1929 when her husband, Edwin, was in the crew. The storm was so severe that a man in the stern of the lifeboat could not be seen from the bow. In those days there was no radio so the launchers, cold, soaked and exhausted, used to huddle around a stove, awaiting the return of the lifeboat and the important job of recovery.

7 never expected to see them again, sometimes,' said Mrs Fair, 'but J never missed a launch.' To meet the returning lifeboat the heavy woods were laid across the beach and then the boat was hauled up with a capstan pushed around by men and women alike; there was no electric winch in those early days. It took two hours to heave the boat up.

'It was never a woman's job,' says Ben. 'It was too hard. But there was no one else to do it.' Launching can make great demands, too. When the lifeboat hits the sea the depth of water is critical.

'If she meets a sea going in, she's all right,' Doris Tart explains. 'If she meets a drawback (as the sea recedes), you're in trouble. But when the pin's gone, she's away.' On February 11, 1974, the 42ft beach lifeboat Mabel E. Holland met a 'drawback' when she launched into hurricane force winds to take a seriously injured man off MV Merc Texco.

The conditions were the worst ever experienced at the station and the lifeboat was swept broadside on to the huge breakers. As the launchers dashed down the beach to haul her up for another attempt, Ben Tart gripped the wheel and made a snap decision.

The lifeboat started lifting on the next wave and he drove her out stern first.

Somebody watching the launch thought that the lifeboat would overturn and had reported this to the press, so there was little rest for Joan Bates when she returned to the house and the telephone after helping to launch the lifeboat.

'That night, Mick and I kept getting calls asking if the boat had capsized.' Doris Tart had been blown off her bicycle twice on her way to the lifeboat house.

'The only time I was really worried,' she said, 'was the night of the Merc Texco.' When the lifeboat returned, Doris thought it was too rough for the boat to come ashore. It was so bad that the men who waded into the sea to connect the winch wire were secured with a rope so that the other launchers could hold on to them should they be swept off their feet.

The women of Dungeness all remember the terrible storms, the long run between the houses before roads were built, banging on doors to alert the crew and their wives, the dinners left on the table to go cold, the blizzards, the drenchings and then the sitting and waiting, making coffee or soup for their husbands' return.

Waiting. That is perhaps the hardest of all the contributions made to the lifeboat service by the wives of crew members. And they give, and they give, and they give again. The part they play is fully appreciated by their husbands.

Keith Bower, second coxswain of Torbay lifeboat, said after the rescue which earned him a gold medal: '/( was probably more difficult for my wife than for me. I had a job to do all the time, whereas she could only contemplate the hazards we were facing.' 'It's the women, waiting at home, that have the worst of it.' is the verdict of Matt Lethbridge, coxswain of St Mary's lifeboat and three times silver medallist.

A)i round the coast, lifeboatmen's wives are very actively involved in raising funds for their stations; and they are backed up by the members of ladies' lifeboat guilds in towns and villages throughout the land on whom the Institution puts such dependence.

The first organised ladies' committees were formed at the end of the last century. Following the tragic loss of 27 men from the St Anne's and Southport lifeboats in 1886, Sir Charles Macara, a Lancashire businessman, analysed the income of the RNLI and found that two-thirds of it was provided by about a hundred people. In 1891 he founded Lifeboat Saturday, the first-ever charity street collection, and a year later Lady Macara organised the first Ladies Auxiliary Committee, in Manchester and Salford. A network was soon established throughout the country and in 1921 a Ladies' Lifeboat Guild was formed, absorbing earlier organisations.

The Duchess of Portland was president of the guild and Sir Godfrey Baring, chairman of the RNLI, announced at the Institution's annual meeting: 'We, on the Committee of Management, anticipate great things from that guild. We hope we shall soon be able to rake in a good deal of money and it has led the Institution to take a step which I can only describe as being revolutionary in character. We have placed two ladies on our Organising Sub-Committee . . .

may I say at once to those who may be, perhaps, a little nervous at such revolutionary proceedings, that this is not our old and esteemed friend the thin end of the wedge—it would be unchivalrous to compare a lady with anything so prosaic and dull as a wedge . . .' The 1921 Committee of Management can hardly have envisaged just what 'great things' the ladies' guilds would achieve in years to come, for the guilds have raised millions of pounds for the RNLI. Some individual members have, indeed, devoted almost their entire lives to ensuring that the money to build and maintain the boats would always be there. It was not, however, until 1975 that two ladies, Lady Norton and Mrs Georgina Keen, were elected to the Committee of Management.

Lady Norton and Mrs Keen had been active fund raisers for many years and both admit that the invitation to join the Committee came as a surprise —and an honour. They feel that, as well as taking their part in the normal work of the Committee itself, they have an important role in opening up better communications between the Committee and the branches, guilds, crews and their wives. Regularly attending RNLI functions, they welcome the opportunity of meeting and talking to lifeboat people. Also, as Mrs Keen says: 'The ladies' role can be a little broader than fund raising. We try to learn more about the other aspects of the service on visits to the coast.' An expert on the operational, as well as the fund raising, side of the RNLI is Mrs Maire Hoy, honorary secretary of Clogher Head lifeboat station. Mrs Hoy's husband was the honorary secretary for eight years and, when he died suddenly, the district inspector of lifeboats, Cdr Acworth, asked Mrs Hoy if she would take over as a temporary measure. That was 18 years ago and Mrs Hoy now regards it as an everyday job.

'/ didn't find any difficulty taking over.

I was in contact with the job as my husband was the honorary secretary. I just take it in my stride.' Mrs Hoy's deputy launching authority is the harbourmaster and they usually consult about lifeboat launches.

She finds no difficulty working with the men of the crew and, as she is also responsible for the station's fund raising, she enlists their help as collectors.

Sally Parker, the wife of Crew Member Michael Parker, is also actively and deeply concerned in the running of a station branch. She is sta- tion administrative officer at Mudeford and, living near the boathouse, is close at hand to fire the maroons and help launch the D class ILB. A strong swimmer. Sally did not hesitate when, one November day in 1974, a man fell into the Run and was carried into turbulent water near Bass Rock. While the ILB was being launched, she jumped in, swam to the man and brought him back to the quayside. For her prompt and courageous action she was awarded the Royal Humane Society's testimonial on parchment.

Another lady at the 'sharp end' of the service is Dr Margaret Shimmin, honorary medical adviser of Aith lifeboat.

She is the GP for the Bixter area of Shetland and her two predecessors, both local men, were lifeboat doctors.

Dr Shimmin was a little apprehensive about being the only woman on the lifeboat and also thought the crew might feel inhibited. Her first call came in 1974 when a steel hawser snapped on the factory trawler Schiitting and wrapped around the first and second mates. Dr Shimmin remembers the incident well.

'There was a bit of lumpy water, as the Shetlanders say. There was no rope ladder long enough to reach the lifeboat so the trawlermen threw down a rope. The second coxswain tied a knot around my waist and they hauled me up the side of the trawler. I gave first aid but the men needed a hospital so we sailed to Scalloway . . . I wasn't sick on the lifeboat which gained approval.' Dr Shimmin is also chairman of the station branch and was proposed for the office by Coxswain Ken Henry, so the rope trick must have worked! She was president of the ladies' guild for some years and held all three jobs concurrently.

Aith lifeboat does not get a large number of calls but, as Dr Shimmin says, '. . . When they come, they are fairly nasty.' Aith lifeboat has the extra role of ferrying a doctor to offshore islands when aeroplanes cannot go in and also acts as an ambulance. On exercise Dr Shimmin has had practice lifts from the lifeboat to a British Airways search and rescue helicopter.

Latest on the list of women's jobs in the RNLI is ILB crew member. There was a reserve crew of women for the offshore lifeboat at Coverack in the first world war, when many men were away fighting, but they never launched on service. The first female ILB helmsman, who qualified in 1970, was Elisabeth Hostveldt, an 18-year-old student at Atlantic College where the ILB is crewed by students. There are now over a dozen women in ILB crews throughout the country and their reasons for joining are much the same as those of their male colleagues.

Kim Edwards at Gorleston became involved as her father was in the crew.

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