WRITING ABOUT LIFEBOATS JS HCVer easy.

To many people, every lifeboat rescue is an act of heroism, carried out in a tortuous battle against the elements; to lifeboatmen, even the worst conditions are modestly played down and real acts of heroism are shrugged off with genuine embarrassment. Striking a balance between these extremes is even more difficult when dealing with history, for there are less first-hand accounts and more temptations to romanticise and exaggerate. So the story of pulling and sailing lifeboats, an easy one to imagine, is a difficult one to research accurately. Fortunately there are just enough men and records still in existence to bring a reasonable perspective to the subject.

The lifeboatmen The most striking feature of any lifeboat story is the lifeboatmen. The crews of pulling and sailing boats were tough, weatherbeaten fishermen who spent all their working lives at sea, building up the muscles, skill and intimate knowledge of local waters needed " for rescues. Calls were infrequent and were almost exclusively to merchant vessels and fishing boats. In the small fishing villages, there were strong family traditions, verging almost on obligations to join the lifeboat crew. There was also the very practical point of mutual self protection among the fishermen, the lifeboat being the best means of ensuring safety for the men of the local fleet.

In the last century money was an important feature of lifeboating. The pay for a service was 10 shillings by day and £1 by night, with 4 shillings for an exercise launch. This was a substantial amount in relation to the small wage earned from fishing when times were hard. Salvage was not uncommon and though the RNLI had strict rules about salvage being secondary to lifesaving, in the early days the Institution used to take a portion of salvage money to cover the risk of damage to the lifeboat.

Today, of course, salvage is virtually unknown and the Institution has no part in any salvage claim.

The launchers Launchers were hard to come by in small villages and often women would launch the lifeboats while their husbands and sons formed the crews. In larger communities there were some-times too many eager helpers and at Whitby brass discs were issued to identify launchers. There was once such a scramble for the discs that three men crashed through a plate-glass window trying to get one. It was arduous work at the best of times, by no means without danger, and phenomenal efforts were sometimes made to haul the boats overland to the best place to launch to reach a vessel in distress.

The lifeboats were sturdy but offered little protection to the men. Already hardened by their work they found normal services and exercises routine, but long winter services took their toll.

In October 1927 the Moelfre lifeboat sailed right over a ketch to rescue her crew but the lifeboat was damaged. She spent a total of 17 hours in fierce gales and one lifeboatman died from exhaustion.

The coxswain, who had been at the tiller the whole time, was completely blind for several hours after landing, though he later recovered.

Apparently some lifeboatmen used to drink hot soup out of their oilskin sou'westers, the heat freeing the linseed oil to mix with the soup. Their provisions were basic: some chocolate, a flask of rum and whatever else they could grab on the way, including on one occasion, raw potatoes.

The lifeboats Right from the beginning the RNLI took lifeboat design very seriously and was constantly striving to improve all aspects of the boats. Competitions brought forward a great many designs, ranging from the practical to the whimsical.

In different areas, the men had different preferences. In Norfolk and Suffolk, for instance, the lifeboats were big, heavy non self-righters, relying on large sails. Elsewhere, the RNLI began by discouraging the use of sail as, in very high winds and squally weather, it could cause capsize unless skilfully handled. Controversy raged over the relative merits of self-righting and non self-righting boats. The Institution produced figures to show that less men were lost from self-righters but, even so, many crews still preferred the non self-righters which were less lively at sea and, they thought, less likely to capsize.

Experiments with oars were as important then as trials with engines now and a series of tests were held in 1866 to find the best woods for the job.

Comparative trials of different classes of lifeboats were held in 1892 but the results, which showed the Institution's preferred Watson and self-righting boats to be best, failed to convince crews of Norfolk and Suffolk or the crews of tubular boats. The tubular boats, first proposed in the Duke of Northumberland's 1851 design competition, were chiefly used in North Wales and the Mersey and the last was in service at Rhyl until 1939.

The services The services of the pulling and sailing lifeboats were, like lifeboat services today, largely routine with the spectacular minority attracting attention.

Routine for lifeboatmen meant standing by a grounded merchantman for ten hours until she floated off on the next tide or escorting a dismasted ketch to the safety of harbour in a gale, but the tales that have been handed down from the 100-year span of oar and sail recount the most hazardous rescues which won medals for coxswains such as Charles Fish of Ramsgate, James Cable of Aldeburgh and Robert Smith of Tynemouth.

Some rescues were more unusual: at Whitby the rowing lifeboat once went two miles inland by road and launched into a river to rescue people from their roofs after the river flooded. Some rescues even had their humorous side: in the Isle of Wight a lifeboatman was admonished by a rescued mother for allowing her baby to get wet.

If some rescues were marked with humour, a few were tinged with tragedy. Shoal water near the shore was the greatest danger, making launching and getting under way a perilous task.

Sometimes the conditions proved too much for the boats and they were overwhelmed and flung back on to the beach. Over the years the losses of lifeboatmen mounted, 250 in the first hundred years. But in that time 40,000 people were saved and crews kept up their struggle against the elements.

The end of the era of oars and sails came gradually as steam power was introduced, later to be rapidly overtaken by petrol engines and then diesel.

By the 1920s engines had made a big impact on the RNLI fleet and by the beginning of the second world war, pulling and sailing boats were few and far between. The last sailing boat left New Quay, Cardiganshire, in 1948 and although there was a pulling lifeboat at Whitby until 1957, she was mainly used inside the harbour while the town's motor lifeboat was at sea.

The days of oar and sail were grim but glorious and rescues then, as now, brought their own reward..