Graham Hall on Saving Lives at Sea

When we were recruiting crew, we made a stipulation of within two miles of the Boathouse because, to be honest, if you lived further away than that you’d never make any of the shouts because the boat would be gone by the time you got there.

There were a few exceptions but not too many but that’s how it happened, you know. They all lived within two, about two miles of the Boathouse.

The big problem was, of course, people worked away from the village. You couldn’t expect everybody to work in the village. At one time we had most of the village businesses tied up. We had several people who used to work for Weaver Brothers, the builders, who were crew members. Hodge and Childs, the Garage here … there were cases known when cars were left on the lifts when the crew were called out and they were left there and there was a long shout and the customer would come to collect his car and it’s still stuck on a lift without any wheels on.

They used to get round that but that’s where we used to recruit a lot of our people from, but it was a big … you know, that was a problem that you couldn’t always guarantee people could work in the village because in Bembridge there’s sort of three strands of people. All the lads, when they left school who lived in Bembridge and they’ve got three choices.

They could either become retained Firemen, they could be Cliff Rescue Team for the Coastguard and be Coastguards or they could join the Lifeboat so there was a lot of demand on the folk round here and, you know, any lad there with anything about him usually wanted to join … in fact we’ve got people who have been in all three at one time or another.