Into the storm
On 15 November 1928 at 6.45am, the Mary Stanford lifeboat with her crew of 17 was launched from Rye Harbour into a fierce southwesterly gale to save a stricken vessel. Not one of these brave men ever returned, and the lifeboat house was never used again. Now, moves are afoot to restore it to its original state, and to create a coastal classroom for children who have never seen the sea, along with a permanent display in memory of the crew.
The Mary Stanford lifeboat house stands on a striking spot. Look to the west and you can see Cliff End, where the undulating coastline stretching from Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters suddenly stops, giving way to the Norfolk-like flatlands of Romney Marsh. To the east, just across the River Rother, is the broad sandy beach of Camber and, beyond that, the wilds of Dungeness, the massive structures of its power stations forming a dramatic full stop to this sweeping bay. Behind and all around is a nature reserve, full of marshy ponds and dotted with hides for watching the rich birdlife. It’s a moody, atmospheric and starkly beautiful place, especially now in autumn, when the marshland turns a russet red.
Only the lifeboat house stands here on the shore. The surroundings are so flat and empty that you see it from pretty much anywhere in the reserve, its pitched roof breaking the skyline. There’s scarcely a scrap of protection from the wind here. It’s all too easy to imagine what the conditions must have been like on 15 November 1928 at 6.45am, just before dawn, when the 17-strong crew finally managed to launch the Mary Stanford lifeboat into the fierce gale blowing from the southwest. Here’s the account of what happened that day from the Mary Stanford Lifeboat House website:
At 5am, the maroons were fired to rescue the crew from the Alice of Riga, a Latvian vessel which had been involved in a collision with the Smyrna, a large German Ship, suffering the loss of her rudder and a hole torn in her side, eight miles southwest of Dungeness.
The crewmen and launchers, both male and female, battled against the wind to the lifeboat house almost 1.25 miles from Rye Harbour. The weather was so bad that it took three exhausting attempts to finally launch the Mary Stanford off the beach at 6.45am. The 17 RNLI crewmen rowed this non-self-righting, 14-oar pulling and sailing Liverpool Class Surf Boat away from the beach with great effort and no motor power to aid them.
At 6.50am, Rye Coastguard received a message saying that the crew from the Alice of Riga had been rescued by the Smyrna and frantic efforts were made by the signalman to recall the lifeboat, all to no avail. With the blinding spray and driving rain, coupled with all of the action going on in the lifeboat, keeping her head to sea with the oars while the mast and sails were raised, the crew did not see the recall signal.
