On the 29th of April 1770 the renowned mariner Captain James
Cook, landed HMS Endeavour in the tranquil waters of Australia’s Botany Bay,
nine years before he met a sticky end at the hands of locals in Hawaii. In
early June 2013 I found myself in life-threatening difficulties, by a very
different Botany Bay, under chalk cliffs near Broadstairs, in north-east Kent,
England. Like Cook, my thirst for adventure was nearly the end of me.
I've rowed the Atlantic twice, but my latest effort to row around
the entire British coast was floundering in poor weather, just a few days out
of London. I was aboard a small wooden rowing boat with another woman and we
were attempting a record breaking first. Unfortunately our situation led to a
night-time call to the coastguard who instigated a rapid rescue by a crew from
the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
Our journey until that point had been slow but uneventful,
in fact we were still reeling from an up close and personal encounter with a
seal in the Thames Estuary. But a stiffening wind swept us off course and
towards the shore, as we made our way into the English Channel. Our rowing boat
was drifting dangerously close to the rocks and breaking waves poured frigid
water over the bow, and subsequently over us, as we struggled to make headway
just metres from the coast.
We’d put down an anchor, but it had slipped, as had the
second one we’d tossed over the side. Strong winds and counter currents
scuppered any attempt to row away from land and into the safer, deeper waters.
You can imagine our relief, in the pitch black of night, when the lights of a
rescue boat bobbed towards us. The team towed us to the historic port of
Ramsgate. A brief, unanticipated 'holiday' ensued. I was left feeling rather
foolish, but incredibly grateful to our RNLI saviours, who I thought I'd not
see again.
Yet almost a year later, I'm back. I've heard that a small
group of Ramsgate RNLI men have received an award for an incredible combined
150 years of volunteering.
“You don’t look as stressed as the last time
I saw you!” jokes Lance Oram, who crewed the Inshore Rescue Boat that night in
June 2013. According to their record the team received the emergency call at
1.16am and were ready and in the IRB by 1.27am. That’s eleven minutes from bed
to boat.
“We leave our socks in our boots", says Eric Burton,
one recipient of the long service award. “And we aim to be at every incident
within 30mins.We used to set off loud rocket flares, or maroons, so everyone in
town could hear them, and they’d get out of the way to let crew pass. Now
people don’t know when we get the call outs.” Despite this the community connectedness remains key, with
many of the current volunteers representing a long line of family members who
have joined the service. Since
the RNLI took charge in the mid-19th century, the volunteers of Ramsgate have
saved the lives of more than 2400 in local waters, from major shipwrecks to
those floundered on the shifting Goodwin Sands.
I feel all the more humble, looking back on my somewhat
foolish rowing incident. But Lance is gracious. "I support daft
adventurers all the time! I run the pilot boat for cross channel swimmers. We're
here to help everyone."
As Lance shows me around the complex equipment in RNLB Esme
Anderson – that’s the Ramsgate offshore lifeboat- I think of the Ramsgate men -
and more recently women - who have passed down the duty of saving lives at sea
from generation to generation. We may sometimes forget it, but we all still
need each other. Without the volunteers of Ramsgate, total strangers to me, I
would probably not be speaking to you, now.
