LISTEN TO Dr Sydney Peace and, underlying all that he says, you will hear the ring of his abiding love of the sea. You will also hear the echoes of his deep respect of all seafaring people and in particular for the lifeboatmen of Orkney, whom he holds in great affection and to whom he has given his wholehearted support for more than a quarter of a century.

Dr Peace served as honorary secretary and honorary medical adviser (HMA) of Longhope lifeboat station from 1957 to 1962, when he handed over the responsibilities of honorary secretary to Jackie Groat. He continued in the office of HMA, however, for another year until, in 1963, he and his family moved to Kirkwall. A few years later he was instrumental in helping to set up a new lifeboat station at Kirkwall, for which he has been HMA since it was finally established in 1972. For his long and outstanding service, Dr Peace was awarded the Institution's gold badge in 1982.

That is a bare statement of fact behind which lies a record of strong, continuous and practical support.

Whatever, within his power, needed to be done for the good of the Institution and its people in Orkney, be it administrative or operational, has been done as a matter of course, and it has not only been done efficiently but with real understanding. His interest has also extended to fund raising, although here his part has mostly been in a supporting role to his wife, Helen, who is Kirkwall convener for the Orkney ladies' guild.

Sydney Peace is himself an Orcadian . . .

7 have lived in Orkney all my life, apart from some seven years at University and working in a hospital in Aberdeen, a short period in Shetland as a trainee assistant in general practice and six months in Essex.

We came back to Orkney in 1954 and took over the practice in North Ronaldsay, the most isolated island in the county. When we arrived, one of the first things I did was to buy a motor boat; something in which to get back to the sea. And a rather strange thing happened. The boatman who ran the mails and a few passengers between the island of North Ronaldsay and the island of Sunday suddenly gave up. At the time, I was chairman of the local district council and we had the task of nominating the successor. But in the meantime 1 used mv motor boat to do this job myself. I had plenty of time. By Highlands and Islands standards my practice was small in area. I ran the mails for seven and a half weeks and the next year I did it again for a similar period because the boat we appointed broke down. It was simply picking up an interest in the sea that I had since boyhood. I was brought up on a farm in Evie and used to spend a large part of my spare time lobster fishing and handline fishing; that sort of thing.' So Sydney Peace had known something about fishing in Orcadian waters all his life and, as a young man, had accepted the disciple of running a regular service between two of the northernmost islands. Then, a few months before he moved to the island of Hoy, to take up practice at Longhope, two experiences, very different to each other, were to give him his initial interest in the RNLI . . .

7 had gone across from North Ronaldsay to Sanday with a patient, going to hospital, on an inter-island steamer from Sanday to Kirkwall. On our return, we capsized the dinghy at the motor boat's mooring. A friend and I spent some 40 minutes in the sea. We were wearing three-quarter length rubber boots and, although we were alongside the motor boat, no way could we get back into her. I realised for the first time in my life what it was to be in danger from the sea. It gave me a personal insight into hypothermia. It also gave me some feeling of what it is like to be rescued . .

'About six weeks later, in my own boat, I was out off North Ronaldsay when a coaster ran on to the Reef Dyke, which runs north and south off the island's east coast. We went along, picked up the crew and took them ashore. This, for me, was a sort of redress for what had happened, really through my own carelessness. It gave me another view of the thing: the satisfaction, or whatever you care to call it, of rescuing someone.' Before he went to Longhope, Dr Peace knew that he would be doing the HMA's work for the lifeboat station . . .

7 had my eye on getting afloat in the lifeboat as a member of the crew as well, but it was not to be; a month or two after we went there the then honorary secretary, Minnie Sutherland, moved south to the Clyde and I was asked to take her place. I maybe knew a little about the sea but I didn't know one end of a lifeboat from the other. Nor did I really know what the job of honorary secretary entailed. But it was very interesting and something that I was delighted to take on. The experience of having been in the sea, cold to the point of passing out, and the experience of having rescued a crew gave a little piquancy to the whole thing; having already become interested in the RNLI, one's commitment became stabilised, as it were. You realised that this was something that you enjoyed doing, and you got on with it.' It was in 1963 that Dr Peace moved to a practice in Kirkwall. Some six years later, on March 17, 1969, Longhope's 47ft Watson lifeboat TGB, while on service to the Liberian vessel Irene, was capsized by a tremendous sea with the tragic loss of her whole crew. The lifeboatmen and their families were all well known to Dr Peace . . .

'When the disaster happened I fell that I had never left Longhope. I was in Edinburgh that night. I came straight back to Orkney the next day and I went across to Scrabster Harbour on our lifeboat from Kirkwall to bring home the bodies of the lifeboatmen who had lost their lives. It was a terrible experience. You can read about such a thing happening at other stations, but unless vou have lived through it as a member of the community, you cannot really realise what it means.' One of the eight Longhope men who lost their lives was Coxswain Dan Kirkpatrick, a lifeboatmen of great experience who had been awarded no less than three silver medals for gallantry. In Dan, Sydney Peace had lost a friend in whose company he took great pleasure and whom he held in the highest regard both as a man and as a seaman.

'Among my happiest memories of Dan Kirkpatrick are of Dan in his own house with his wife, Margaret. They were a very fine couple. Every New Year's Day they held open house and people came and went all day. And the sing songs that people used to have in that house on such a night! It was a very pleasant house to go into—a very happy home.

'On the lifeboat, Dan was an excellent seaman, and a considerate man; the sort of man who on a service could put himself into the place of the people shipwrecked.

Of course, he had worked as a seaman in his family's own sailing coasters. Thev used to carry coals from Blyth to Kirkwall and anything that a farmer needed taken from Orkney south, or from the south to Orkney. And they could never afford the best of boats. It wasn't much of a return that they got. He knew the problems with indifferent gear. He could relate to the person in trouble, and did.

'Dan was a cool man. He never did anything hastily. He always went for the safest method of achieving a rescue, even if it took a little longer, to ensure that the lifeboat and his crew were safe. This is the thing that stood out about him as a seaman.' But to go back, in the years after Dr Peace and his family had moved to Kirkwall, first the US Coast Guard 44ft lifeboat, forerunner of the RNLI's 44ft Waveney, and then the original 70ft Clyde lifeboat came to Orkney during their early operational trials round the coast of Britain. On each occasion Dr Peace was invited to go out and see what he thought of the new boat . . .

'Then, of course, the Institution was looking at the situation in the north isles of Orkney. There were slight problems in getting a crew at Stronsay and, apart from that, the plot of services indicated that a boat stationed at Kirkwall might be in a better position than a boat stationed at Stronsay. So 70-002, Grace Paterson Ritchie, came here on a prolonged assessment exercise. She had a staff coxswain, a mechanic, an assistant mechanic and two crew. For some time the boat was used partly as a cruising lifeboat and partly for crew training.' Dr Peace was asked to help in finding volunteer crew members for the new lifeboat from Kirkwall; to represent, as it were, the RNLI in the days before a station branch was established. Once again he found himself totally involved, almost as though he were an honorary secretary. A keen sailor, now with his own little crushing boat, he knew the local sailing fraternity.

'We have a verv nice club here, to which all the local sailing people belong and which is open to visiting yachtsmen. This club provided the nucleus from which the first volunteers came to form the Kirk wall crew. Our second coxswain, Dan Grieve, is without question the doyen of dinghy sailors in Orkney—and quite a bit out of it! He has been with the boat ever since the first batch of volunteers, and there are one or two others of the same sort.

'We like to keep a close tie between the sailing club and the lifeboat. I think it is good for the RNLI to keep in touch with yachtsmen because we cannot get crews from professional inshore fishermen now in the same way we once could—at least that it true here. The fishermen who once upon a time would be handling an inshore boat, perhaps with a set of lobster creels, is now in a much larger boat. He is possibly a seine net fisherman and the chances are that he is at sea when you need the lifeboat. So a sailing club provides a good nucleus of people ashore to help spread into other groups of the community to recruit crews. Thev would not be sailing club men if they were not interested in the sea and boats. They take to lifeboat work.

The self discipline demanded, for instance, in racing dinghies is in itself useful when it comes to lifeboat work. Then, again, people who race dinghies are usually fairly agile!' It was during this period of assessment of the 70ft Clyde lifeboat that the Longhope disaster occurred, and Grace Paterson Ritchie was also at sea that night. I spoke with the second coxswain.

The gales had been blowing from the south east for some ten days, and the lifeboatmen who were aboard remember the regular 60 foot seas which had built up and how, when they were in the troughs, they could not see a lighthouse standing 259 feet high. Then they met a tremendous rogue wave of about 120 feet. Grace Paterson Ritchie went up, and up, and up, before breaking right through that wave. And it took nine seconds for her to come back down again.

In 1972 Stronsay lifeboat station was closed and Kirkwall station was established.

Because of his professional commitments, Dr Peace could not take on the work of honorary secretary but he has been HMA for the station ever since. The present honorary secretary of Kirkwall station branch is Captain Magnus Work.

As honorary medical adviser, both at Longhope and Kirkwall, Dr Peace has been out with the lifeboat on a number of occasions, mostly to trawlers fishing in the area. Usually medical trips have been to deal with minor injuries or to take off a sick man when, in bad weather, a trawler would have had difficulty in getting into Kirkwall; sometimes, however, the call has been to a major injury. Dr Peace would have dearly loved to have been a regular crew member, had his work allowed— and he would have been welcome. As it is, he likes to go to sea in the lifeboat as often as possible because he thinks that, just as an industrial doctor should know about the workings of the business with which he is concerned, so a lifeboat doctor should know at first hand about the sea and lifeboats.

There are two occasions when he went out on the lifeboat, both while he was at Longhope, which Dr Peace remembers in particular. The first because of the violent weather . . .

'A trawler, George Robb, had run ashore near The Stacks of Duncansby.

When we launched a strong gale was blowing from the south east and the wind was rising. It was flood tide. We got there a little after midnight and by then the wind was up to hurricane force. We never saw that trawler. We came in on the actual position right enough. We put up parachute flares. But all we saw landwards was a whiteout of sprav. Duncansbv Head Light is 205 feet high and has a 17-mile range, but it could not be seen until the lifeboat was within five miles of it. As we came in, you could see sheets of water going right up over the lighthouse. Nothing was found of the George Robb.

Next day at low water she was seen half submerged with her back broken. At one point, south of Duncansbv and in complete darkness, a strong tidal eddv carried the lifeboat to within a boat's length of the northern-most stack . . .' The second service, on August 4, 1961, Dr Peace remembers because of its consequences on search and rescue in northern waters: 'Daisy, a Peterhead herring trawler on passage from Lerwick to Peterhead, sprang a leak in her engine room and sank. Her crew took to the liferaft. The weather was not really bad—a force 7 or 8 gale, something like that. Stronsay lifeboat was called out initially. She launched at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and we launched to assist her at about midnight. reaching the search area at about 0830 the next morning. At just about that time a Danish vessel, Nella Dan. picked up the ten fishermen, much further out. We rendezvoused with Nella Dan 104 miles out at about 1130 and the men were transferred to the lifeboat.

'That was a verv interesting service in that, to mv knowledge, it was the first time that a crew had been saved in these waters by means of a modern tvpe liferaft. It showed that, if you were searching for a crew that could get into a modern liferaft, with the increased chance of survival it gave, the search should be extended much longer than before, even up to the best part of a week.' From his own experience, Dr Peace has come to respect the way in which the RNLI is run. He has, in particular, one fond memory: 'During the first winter that I was honorary secretary at Longhope we had about four or five sightings of red flares in our "parish". On one occasion Dan Kirkpatrick himself had seen these flares. No radio messages. On each occasion we had launched the boat and gone to the area and searched and searched. Nothing found. It being my first winter as honorary secretary I got a bit concerned because I thought the bovs at HQ in London are going to say, "What is he launching the boat for when there is nothing there? Why all the fuss'.'" So I wrote a letter saying what had happened and that I was sorry that there was nothing to be seen. I got the most charming letter back saving, "We are not going to interfere. You are the man on the spot, working with the crew. This is a decision that is made on the spot". / think that sold me the RNLI from an administrative point of view.

People are given a job to do and left to get on with it. It is this trust of crews and branch officials which is one of the best lubricants in the whole organisation. It is so much better than a totally parental structure that sends out dictates from on high. Of course we get a bit of this—must have—but the RNLI is a trusting organisation and I think that is one of its greatest strengths. You will work for something voluntarily where you are given trust, and maybe a little praise here and there . . .' There has been great pleasure, too, for Sydney Peace in the people with whom he has worked in the lifeboat service, and the people he has met . . .

'The Institution is a very fine coastal club to which to belong, throughout the whole country. You meet somebody from another part of the coast doing a similar job to yourself and you can get inside his shoes right away. You meet people from all walks of life and you work more closely than you might otherwise do with all kinds of different people. There is something I think you could call a civilising influence about the RNLI. It mixes people from different sections of the community.

It gives people something to do that stretches them a bit, whether it is fund raising or lifesaving. It keeps them on their toes. It gives them a lot of fun and it gives them a great deal of satisfaction. If we did not need an RNLI, I think that we should need to invent something like it.' What more could be said of the Institution? So perhaps a last word about the sea? Dr Peace finds the Pentland Firth, with its many tidal streams, a fascination piece of water, and some years ago, he along with other members of Orkney Sailing Club worked with the editor of the Clyde Cruising Club in producing its first sailing directions for Orkney: 'The Pentland Firth is a fascinating piece of hydrodynamics, if you care to think of a mass of water going through a narrow tube and of the things that happen to it on the way. It is like a Scottish burn.

Just sit and watch a burn and see how rocks and pools divert the water and cause ripples. That will give you some idea. If you know the Pent/and Firth, like the local people do, and allow for the possible dangers, you can make use of those tidal streams. It is knowing the differences in the changing tide times, and when it will be slack water in this place or that, which enables people to fish. All the men in Longhope know it in far better detail than I ever will.

'Before I knew anything about the firth, when I went out with the lifeboat crew it amazed me how they could set out on the darkest night, without chart or tide table.

No position finding apparatus. Nothing more than a compass. And they would be there. Nowhere, I think, in the British Isles could local knowledge be of more importance to the lifeboat crew. These men not only know the local waters, but what they can get out of their boat at any given point on the sea. It is just long years of experience. Any competent navigator will get his boat round the Pentland Firth without any problems, but the local man can do it with a finesse, a panache if you like, which makes it all look so easy.

'When I lived at Longhope, in idle moments on bad days in winter, I used sometimes to take the car and go up and sit on the hill above the lifeboat station and look with binoculars at the firth. You could tell by the sea appearances what was happening. It was just a study. Well, some people take up bird watching: I used to take up Pentland Firth watching in bad weather.' •.