Nineteen of the Institution’s life-boats helped to bring off men of the British Expeditionary Force and the French Army from the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940. Two of these life-boats, Ramsgate and Margate, were manned by their own crews. They brought off 3,400 men. These lives are not included in the total of 6,376 lives rescued from shipwreck by life-boats. The other seventeen life-boats were manned by naval men. There is no record of the numbers of the men whom they brought off..