'The wind was of hurricane force, with fierce squalls accompanied by snow and sleet and the seas were mountainous.

' ... 'It took two hours to board the lifeboat and three times the boarding boat was driven back on to the beach by the storm and very rough sea.' . . . 'At 6.05 pm the lifeboat slipped her moorings and started on a 42-mile passage to the distressed vessel.' Three separate incidents, factually described from official service reports, give an insight into the operations of the three lifeboat stations on the west coast of Ireland which summer trippers, charmed by the welcome, beauty and sunshine of Donegal, Galway or Kerry can hardly imagine. The matter-of-fact approach of the lifeboatmen of Arranmore, Galway Bay and Valentia also obscures the unique difficulties they face; visitors who see the stations' Barnett lifeboats gently stirring at their moorings may never know that these are three of the remotest stations in the RNLI.

Communications, geography and economics mean that the west coast of Ireland is composed of small, isolated communities. Inland, farming is all important.

Even now hay is gathered in pitchforked haycocks and digging turf from peat bogs is an essential and very economical source of fuel. On the coast, fishing is expanding with harbours such as Killybegs in County Donegal and Rossaveel near Galway seeing a considerable increase in landings. Freighters, Irish and foreign, ply the west coast and recently more yachts are making trips up from the south or down from the north. Guarding the safety of the seafarers are the three lifeboats, widely spaced but with many common features.

Arranmore, Valentia and Galway Bay all have 52ft Barnett lifeboats, the boats still regarded by many lifeboatmen as extremely fine sea boats, although they lack the high standard of manoeuvrability found in modern fast lifeboats. There is no coastguard service to back any of these stations; HM Coastguard operates in Northern Ireland and some of the east coast stations in the Republic link up with Welsh or Cornish Coastguards, but in the west, all communications are with local VHP stations which pass on messages to and from the Marine Rescue Co-ordination Centre (MRCC) at Shannon.

All three stations are on islands and because of the distances to the flank stations, all three have of necessity to be particularly self-reliant. Co-ordinated searches with two lifeboats are virtually unknown on this coast, though massive searches with a lifeboat, fishing vessels, Irish navy vessels, aeroplanes and helicopters are often carried out. Because of the distances, Arranmore, Galway Bay and Valentia lifeboats may have 10 or 11 hours of hard steaming into a storm before a casualty is reached. Such calls are rare, but they do happen.

Equally, casualties within sight of the stations can founder, and even though the lifeboat is there within minutes, lives may be lost.

Such an incident occurred at Arranmore in October, 1981. Early one morning, in darkness, a fishing vessel struck a reef off Aran Island, Co Donegal, and her sister vessel fired red flares. Within 15 minutes of being alerted, Arranmore lifeboat launched into the gale force winds; ten minutes later she was on the scene. Four men had been washed ashore and survived; two or three were washed ashore but either drowned or died from hypothermia and the remainder perished nearer the wreck. The lifeboat spent over nine hours on a harrowing search, to no avail. So the distance from the station and the communications to shore are not the only factors in a successful rescue. Discussions about establishing" another lifeboat station on the west coast, perhaps between Arranmore and Galway, have been going on for some years; but even were there a fourth lifeboat station on this coast, incidents like the one described above would still occur.

Arranmore Fortunately, tragedies are rare and Arranmore can boast a proud lifesaving record. Landing on Aran Island, one of the first buildings is the lifeboat station which houses the boarding boat. Inside, a small plaque on the wall records a remarkable gold medal rescue carried out in 1940. At that time convoys across the Atlantic were bringing vital supplies into Britain. On December 7 a Dutch steamer, Stolwijk, was driven ashore on a reef off Tory Island, 24 miles north of Arranmore. For three days the wind had been blowing hard from the north north west. It was now at hurricane force with fierce squalls, accompanied by snow and sleet. The seas were mountainous.

As the lifeboat set out the seas were so heavy that she was lost from sight within minutes. The wreck was exposed to the full fury of the gales and the seas sweeping in from the Atlantic, which were breaking right over her. Ten of her crew had tried to get away in one of the ship's boats but it had been smashed to pieces and they had drowned. When the lifeboat arrived she found the steamer's crew huddled near the stern. The lifeboat anchored and, at times lifted by the waves to the height of the steamer's masts, fired a line; it was seized by the survivors and a breeches buoy was rigged. One by one, men were hauled through the breaking waves, each man being in the water for five minutes or more.

After five had been saved, the line, which was chafing against the steamer, broke and the lifeboat had to pull clear, anchor again, fire another line and go on with the rescue. Ten more men were hauled to safety through the seas. Then the veering line wore through again and the lifeboat swung almost under the bow of the wreck. The coxswain brought his boat around again and for the third time it all had to be done from the beginning. Again a line was fired, this time with the last cartridge on board the lifeboat. The last three survivors were hauled in. The rescue of the 18 men had taken more than four hours.

The lifeboat turned back to Arranmore but the weather was too bad to land there, so the coxswain put in to Burtonport on the mainland. The lifeboat had been out for 16 hours. The crew were so exhausted that they could not get out of the lifeboat unaided.

Even then they could not rest for there was no way of mooring the lifeboat.

They had to remain on watch all night, going ashore in turns for food.

Coxswain John Boyle was awarded a gold medal by the RNLI and another by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.

His mechanic, Teague Ward, was awarded silver medals by both the RNLI and Queen Wilhelmina; the crew, which included Acting Second Coxswain Philip Boyle, another Boyle but unrelated to the coxswain, were all awarded bronze medals by the RNLI and by the Queen of the Netherlands.

One of Coxswain Boyle's crew, Philip Byrne, later became coxswain himself and he was awarded a silver medal in 1966, again for a winter service to Tory Island. A young boy was seriously ill with appendicitis and a doctor advised that an urgent operation was necessary.

The weather was bad, with a northwesterly gale and very rough seas. It took the lifeboat 2'/2 hours to reach the island but because of rocks and shoal water she could not reach the jetty. A local currach, rowed by ten men, put out, reached the lifeboat and put the sick boy and his father on board. As this was being done an oar was broken and the thole pins on one side of the currach snapped. The boat could no longer be kept head to wind and sea. An anchor was dropped but failed to hold and the currach began to drag quickly on to the rocky lee shore.

Coxswain Byrne realised the great danger but without hesitation ran the lifeboat in towards the currach. A line was passed and the currach towed clear; she was taken close to the pier and then let go, to reach safety. The lifeboat then set out for Burtonport, landed the boy and returned to station where, because the weather was so bad, the crew had to wait for an hour before going ashore in the boarding boat. The second coxswain of the crew was Philip Boyle and the mechanic was Charles Boyle.

In the boat for this rescue had been two pairs of Byrne brothers, from two generations: Philip and Neil, the coxswain and assistant mechanic; and Neil's sons, Brian and John. They were not the first, nor were they to be the last men from the Byrne family to help man the lifeboat. Back in the days of pulling and sailing lifeboats one of the bowmen of the Arranmore lifeboat had been another John Byrne. Now, in the 1980s, Bernard Byrne, Philip's nephew, is coxswain of the Barnett. He talks noncommittally of the long, hard services.

Almost every year the station has at least one call which takes the lifeboat to sea for more than ten hours, to search for a boat in trouble or stand by a vessel with machinery failure—even on a false alarm. On Aran Island every move of the crew of young men is watched by small boys. The acceptance of the lifeboatmen's job and their part in the community is summed up by a boy on the quay watching the crew prepare for an exercise: 'Where are you going? What sank?' Galway Bay Arranmore shares with Galway Bay the name of its island, Aran, and an unusual type of service: acting as an ambulance. Galway lifeboat is stationed at Kilronan on Inishmore, one of the group of three Aran Islands in Galway Bay. As the two stations are frequently cut off by bad weather, more than half their calls are to take sick people to the mainland, and these missions can literally be lifesavers where hospital attention is needed. Coxswain Bartley Mullin of Galway Bay has never yet had to deliver a baby on board his lifeboat but has had some close shaves: 'It's happened a couple of limes in the ambulance.' An aeroplane link with the mainland has reduced medical calls but in bad weather the lifeboat is still the only link with Galway City, three hours steaming away. The coxswain describes the hazards . . .

'In the wintertime it can be a bad coast . . . all the At/antic swell is coming on top of us, a long swell when you get around the back of the islands . . . you get it very bad with a west or north-west wind . . . you get used to it . . .' Boarding the lifeboat in the harbour presents its own problems. Here, an easterly wind blowing across from the mainland means a nasty swell and a hard pull. In 1967 the crew rowed for two hours, their boarding boat driven back on to the beach three times, before they reached the lifeboat: ' was night time, too, when the call came and the weather was very bad with plenty of wind in it, blowing a storm. We were driven back right on the strand and had a job to try and get out again. We wondered whether we'd make it or not.

Finally we got out.' At that time Bartley Mullin was motor mechanic, serving under Coxswain Coley Hernon, who is now the honorary secretary. Five years earlier they had both been awarded the bronze medal for the rescue of eight men from a grounded Dutch coaster. The wind was gusting to force 10 and as the coxswain held his boat out to sea, Bartley Mullin, then assistant mechanic, and Crew Members Thomas Joyce and Patrick Quinn took turns to try to row a small boat to Mutton Island, where the survivors were sheltering. On the first attempt six men were taken off, but after that the little boat was beaten back five times before, on the seventh attempt, she was successfully brought in to take off the last two men and their dog. Bartley Mullin's account is typically modest: 'It was a bad night and there were plenty of seas running. We had to launch a little dinghy and row to the Island. We were getting swamped. We took off the crew and landed them In Galway.' To the lifeboatmen of Kilronan it was another rescue, another eight men saved. The community of about a thousand people produces a crew, volunteers eager to ensure continuity for a strategically placed station, miles out in Galway Bay and ready to head north towards Eagle Island or south to Loop Head.

Valentia Modern technology has brought a shared problem to the islands of Inishmore and Valentia. Microwave transmitters carry telephone messages but are found unreliable in the summer.

This is particularly ironic for Valentia which used to be the last staging post for Western Union's transatlantic cables. At one time Western Union employed 300 people in its neat buildings in Knightstown at the easterly end of the island, where the lifeboat is stationed. Fortunately, radio communications are excellent with Valentia Radio, the main link for the lifeboat, and the honorary secretary, Paddy Gallagher, can only remember one anxious night when radio communications with the lifeboat were lost for some hours.

It was in 1970, when the 650-ton Limerick vessel Oranmore broke down over 40 miles from Valentia. The weather was appalling and when radio communications were lost Galway Bay lifeboat was alerted. However, Valentia lifeboat reached the casualty in the very high seas and heavy Atlantic swell.

After standing by for two hours. Coxswain Dermot Walsh received a signal that the master was ready for some of his crew to be taken off. The lifeboat rose and fell 20 to 30 feet with crashing seas but one man was snatched from a rope ladder. On a second run in, two more men were grabbed, but it was impossible to hold the lifeboat alongside for more than a few seconds.

For almost an hour the coxswain took his lifeboat alongside and moved out again. Ten men were rescued though another one, who mistimed his jump and fell into the sea, died in spite of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by Coxswain Walsh and Motor Mechanic Joe Houlihan. Dermot Walsh was awarded the silver medal for this rescue and his crew all received the thanks of the Institution inscribed on vellum.

Joe Houlihan, the quiet spoken mechanic of the lifeboat with a wealth of knowledge about boats and engines, had earlier won a bronze medal for a singlehanded rescue. In September 1963 he saw a dinghy capsize about 600 yards from the lifeboat storehouse where he was working. He launched the boarding boat into the rough seas, rowed out to the dinghy and managed to pull one man in. The other survivor, a clergyman, was too heavy for the mechanic to pull on board the boat. He therefore told the clergyman to hang on to the transom. The return trip was extremely difficult as the man hanging in the sea created a drogue effect and there was a rough following sea. Joe Houlihan eventually managed to beach the boat and land the two men, by which time he was nearly exhausted himself.

A remarkable account of weather conditions off Valentia survives in the form of a letter to The Times in 1866. It concerns the trials of two five-oared lifeboats built in the style of whaleboats, one made by Forrest of Limehouse, the other by Whites of Cowes. According to the letter . . .

'The 26th of November last opened on the west coast of Ire/and with a very heavy gale from WNW. The force of the wind was 10. A tremendous sea was running and breaking wildly on the headlands of Dingle Bay. In one place it was observed some miles off, bursting over a cliff more than 100ft high.' Considering the severity of the conditions and the size of the boats it seems incredible that the correspondent, a local JP, wrote: 'Everything was considered suitable for a thorough trial of the lifeboats.' As the boats set out, the gale whipped the oars out of the rowlocks and over the men's heads, but they kept going. The Coastguard inspector, Mr White, was determined to see what the boats could do and told one of them to lie in the shelter of an island while he and his crew took the other out into the bay. As they struggled to mount the rollers, the crowd on shore saw a huge wave gathering a mile to seaward . . .

'Like a mighty Andes towering above the lesser mountains, this Atlantic giant swept in . . . as the water shoaled, that which had been a rolling mountain rose into a rushing cliff of water.' The men strained at their oars as the crest of the wave towered above them.

Men were thrown all over the place, including the steersman who . . .

'. . . was caught head downwards as she passed, then found himself suddenly freed and rising rapidly. On reaching the surface 'he met his chief boatman already afloat, but looking very much confused.' Here, the account becomes even more extraordinary as it states: 'She (the lifeboat) had been shot about a quarter of a mile under water . . . she must have been about two minutes under water.' She probably, in fact, was out of sight in a boiling mass of water. What was clear was that the sea had ripped off the rudder and swept away the oars but had not capsized the boat. The other lifeboat went to her aid and both reached harbour safely.

Although the lifeboatmen on the west coast of Ireland still look out at the same Atlantic swells, none will describe them so graphically. Dermot Walsh of Valentia merely says, 'We don't bother with weather forecasts.

We can feel it.' And Joe Houlihan adds, 'You know your own waters. If you cannot see the swell, you can feel the motion.' Quietly, efficiently, the men of Arranmore, Galway Bay and Valentia continue their lonely vigil out into the Atlantic..