THE LIFEBOAT AND LADY LAUNCHERS
This is an excerpt from the book "Life On Marsh" Available here
All images on this page are created by Andy Holyer
The Dungeness lifeboat has a long and distinguished history, being on one
of the busiest shipping routes in the world until the advent of shipping
lanes and modern navigational methods. It was one of the most used
lifeboats in Britain.
Most lifeboats in Britain have a slipway that allows them to be launched at
any stage of the tide. The constantly shifting shingle at Dungeness does not
allow this so, like the fishing fleet, the lifeboat had to be launched by being
pulled over lengths of hard wood placed at intervals on the shingle. These
‘woods’, as they are known, are 8 foot lengths of oak or ash, with ropes
attached so they can be pulled out after the boat has passed over them and be
quickly run round to the front of the boat to be reused in its journey to or back
from the sea.
This method of launching is still used by the local fishing boats today. In addition to this laborious task the lifeboat had to be pulled from and back into its shelter. The local tradition of women being responsible for the backbreaking and dangerous task of launching the lifeboat and the fishing boats is not, as it may seem, a misogynistic one. They traditionally did this job in order to make sure that the men stayed dry; to get wet before going out in an exposed boat in winter was hazardous in the extreme, and could even result in death. For that reason, not only were the boats launched by women but in rough seas women would carry their men to the boats to prevent them from getting wet. Women launched and retrieved the lifeboat until surplus American tractors found their way to the Marsh in the 1950s. The lifeboat is now launched and retrieved by a custom-built tracked vehicle.
This is an excerpt from the book "Life On Marsh" Available here
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