Members and families of our Ashford Lions Club visited the RNLI Dungeness Lifeboat Station and were given a very interesting talk about the history of the station, followed by a tour of The Morrell – a Shannon Class Lifeboat with bow number RNLI 13-02.
Dungeness Lifeboat Station supports the Channel from Folkestone to Rye Bay and was the first to receive the RNLI Shannon class lifeboat. The Morrell was named on 31 May 2014 by HRH The Princess Royal.
There was an interesting description of the Lady Launchers, local women who helped haul the lifeboat down to the sea, and recover her as recently as the 1950s. Nowadays, and as part of the tour, we were shown the impressive tractor unit that takes the boat down to the waters edge to launch and recover it.
We concluded our visit to the Lifeboat station with a sunny ‘picnic on the beach’.
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