The pages of the Lifeboat feature many brave and skilful rescues but it is easy to overlook that, before a lifeboat reaches a casualty, just launching can be a demanding task If all lifeboat stations were based in easily accessible harbours that did not dry out at low tide, every lifeboat would simply 'lie afloat' between services. One such example is at Falmouth, Cornwall, where crew members need no assistance to launch but simply get aboard, cast off and head for their destination.

However, at stations where there are more difficult geographical features, or a large tidal range, the lifeboat must somehow be transported from the boathouse to the water.

With increasing technology, the RNLI has developed a variety of ingenious solutions to this problem. Each requires a special team of shore helpers to put it into operation.

The most visible means of launching is the slipway. Although many people strongly associate slipways with lifeboats, there are actually only 17 stations around the UK and Rol that use this method of launching. The launch is of course rapid but, on return from service, a slipway-launched lifeboat must be carefully reversed to the foot of the slipway and a cable attached before she is winched back up into position ready for another launch - not an easy task in rough conditions.

(See page 28 for the most modern example of slipway launching.) Elsewhere, the only way to ensure that a lifeboat can launch at all times is to carry her overland to the sea. All weather, and the larger inshore, lifeboats can be launched from a variety of bespoke carriages while the smaller inshore lifeboats are usually carried on a trolley. Upon reaching deeper water, the buoyancy of the lifeboat floats her off and, on a calm day, she can simply pull away. Other inshore lifeboats are lowered into the water from, say, a pier, by a kind of crane known as a davit (see opposite).

There are a host of similarly specialised vehicles for, in their turn, manoeuvring the carriages and trolleys: 'quad' bikes, tractors and, on mud or soft sand, tracked vehicles.

Some are designed to continue operating when almost fully immersed in salt water.

Whether lifeboats are launched from slipways, davits, carriages or trolleys, the stations' winch operators, tractor drivers and other shore helpers are crucial to a safe and speedy launch.

People and horse power Throughout the 1800s and into the early part of the twentieth century, the most common method of launching was to physically pull the lifeboat into the water. In those days, though, just as there were no engines to propel the lifeboats, tractors were not available to pull them. Instead, the strength of people or horses was relied upon. At Newbiggin, Northumberland, the saying was: 'Every man to the boat, every woman to the rope', referring to how the local women would pull the lifeboat over greased timbers to the sea, at which point the lifeboatmen would take up the oars. Horses were used in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, and, in 1915, a sudden wave hit the team as they werelaunching to aid a minesweeper. The horsemen were knocked off their horses and two of the horses were swept away and drowned.

As time went on, the farmers who previously hired out horses to lifeboat stations began to use tractors instead. Modified agricultural tractors proved to be a suitable alternative for pulling lifeboats too. Following trials, the RNLI began to place them on service at lifeboat stations in the 1920s. The last team of lifeboat horses reached the end of their work in 1936 at Wells-next-the Sea, Norfolk. The news led The Lifeboat Journal to state: 'Thus passes away one of the most familiar and spectacular features of lifeboat work, a feature at one time as familiar as the horses of the old fire brigades.' (See page 25 for details of a special day soon to be held at Wells-next-the Sea lifeboat station.) Not all stations replaced their horses with tractors, though. When Cramer's first motor lifeboat arrived in 1923, a new boathouse and slipway were built at the end of Cramer pier.

It meant the new, heavier lifeboat could be easily launched in all tides, away from rocks and groynes.

Lifeboats and their launching systems have thus developed side by side and so there are many parallels to be drawn: slipways, carriages and tractors have to be just as sturdy and reliable as the lifeboats they launch; a 'fleet' of relief equipment is available, just as with the boats themselves, ready to replace gear that needs repair; and, in the same way that the RNLI relies on volunteer crew members, it relies on trained volunteers to put lifeboats to sea, recover them and prepare them for their next service. Without the volunteers on shore, many potentially lifesaving rescues would not begin, or end, successfully..