While many lifeboats lie afloat in harbours, primed to head straight out to sea, others sit in boathouses on the shore. So, what – and who – is involved when it comes to getting an all-weather craft to sea in an emergency?

Capable of crashing through all weathers and any conditions, a Shannon class lifeboat is astonishingly manoeuvrable on the water. But weighing in at 18 tonnes (roughly the same as one-and-ahalf double-decker buses) some real expertise is needed to get the lifeboat out to sea in the first place. So when engineers were challenged to design a Shannon launch and recovery system for our crews in 2001, there were, unsurprisingly, some very specific requirements to meet.

Around 50% of our Shannons are launched from a beach rather than a slipway or from afloat. Many of these beaches are steep; many are battered by heavy waves.

The launching solution was a tractor and carriage set-up with a unique turntable cradle that rotates a beached lifeboat 180° to launch again, bowfirst. This entirely bespoke vehicle can haul its lifesaving cargo up a 1 in 3 gradient, and tow at 9mph over sand or shingle.

In calm conditions, the cradle tilts the boat down a 7° slope to launch – a bit like a mobile slipway – but in rougher seas the whole assembly drives into the water, where it can safely launch its lifeboat while submerged in depths of up to 2.4m. But the system can cope with deeper water than that after a launch – it can sit 9m below the waves before being retrieved.

John Deas is a Principal Engineer at the RNLI and a key member of the Shannon trials team, as well as a volunteer crew member at Swanage Lifeboat Station. He says: ‘Feedback from volunteers involved in the launch and recovery trials showed that they especially liked the vehicle’s four-track drive, which allows access to remote or difficult beach sites much closer to rescues than ever before. It’s also pretty user-friendly to operate, which is important for people giving up their spare time to help out.

‘It’s an incredibly versatile bit of kit, and it’s designed and built solely for the unique challenge the RNLI’s lifeboat and shore crews ask of it.’

AN ALL-TERRAIN LIFESAVER
RNLI Dungeness Lifeboat Station welcomed its Shannon The Morrell in Spring 2014 (pictured below) – the first to receive the new class of lifeboat. As Dungeness’s Station Mechanic, Trevor Bunney was involved in the initial launch and recovery system trials.

Trevor says: ‘The very steep, shingly incline on our beach was a sort of benchmark for the designers – it was a case of “if the launch system can cope with this, it can cope with anything”. When they came to trial the first model, we saw it disappear over that huge mound of pebbles, and were pretty sure we wouldn’t see it come back up. It proved us wrong, reappearing effortlessly. That sold it to us!

‘It takes a fair bit of training to learn how to do the routine services and repairs because it’s a sophisticated machine – lots of hydraulic pipes. But it’s also incredibly effective at its job.

The big deal for us is that it can reverse quickly and nimbly. If you come over that slope and are faced with massive waves and a really tough launch, you just trundle backwards and wait a moment for a safer opportunity.

The old tractor launch vehicle couldn’t do that – you had to just go for it.’

THE SLIPWAY WAY
Many of our all-weather lifeboat stations sit high above the water, on cliff tops or piers. So the quickest way to get to sea is via a slipway. The crew at The Mumbles, Swansea, is one such station (pictured above) – the new boathouse and launch facility for their Tamar class lifeboat were officially opened in March.

Tamar class lifeboats are launched either from a tipping cradle – resting the boat flat until it’s needed – or, on the shallower slipways, by releasing the ‘sea catch’ restraint to let gravity slide the vessel down the slipway, into the water. Some Tamar slipways are as shallow as a 1 in 12 gradient, but most are 1 in 5 and the lifeboats may reach speeds of up to 30mph as they hit the water.

At least four volunteer crew are required for the job, including a head launcher, winch operator and two shore crew. They’re also needed to return (or wait at the station) to haul the boat back up when it returns after a shout. Throughout the process, the team use radio headsets to make communications clear and audible over the noise of waves, weather and engines.

The Mumbles Shore Crew Member Brian Jeffery and Coxswain Martin Double have volunteered for more than 70 years between them, and have seen many changes in launch and recovery during that time.

Says Martin: ‘We’ve got more automated, updated and everything – a lot easier than it was years ago. In those days, you had eight shore crew to get all the big ropes down, and these days you can just do it with five. The guys used to have to pull all the heavy ropes down by hand, and they used to have to balance on concrete beams, so if you had a good gale of wind blowing, rain whatever – down you go.’

Brian, whose father, son, cousin and brother-in-law have all volunteered for the RNLI too, agrees. ‘In our day, we had an open boat, and you got wet as soon as you went down the slipway,’ he recalls. ‘It seems to have improved so much through the years.’

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LADIES THAT LAUNCHED
For more than a century, the lifeboats of Dungeness were launched by a team of women known as the Lady Launchers, usually the wives and daughters of crew.

The Lady Launchers had to drag heavy wooden ‘skids’ across the beach and position them under the keel of the lifeboat. In the very early years, wearing no more protective or thermal kit than their own coats and scarves, the launchers then had to piggy-back crew onto the boat.

In 1979, a carriagelaunched lifeboat came into service and the Lady Launchers were stood down. Dungeness Lifeboat Committee member Betty Paine (pictured below, meeting HRH Princess Anne) was on the team in the 1960s and 70s, as was the station’s current Press Officer, Judith Richardson.

Betty remembers: ‘It certainly kept us all fit! But it was rewarding. I remember one particular rescue in the 1970s, where two tankers crashed at sea. One was stranded on the sand for days, and the captain used my house as a base to make phone calls and so on – no mobile phones back then. The freezers on his boat started failing while he was waiting on repairs, so he let us have the contents rather than waste them – there were sacks of meat sitting on the beach for us!’