Seamen of the Downs

In this excellent book Mr. Bayley has continued the heroic story of the Lifeboatmen whose duty lies about the I dreaded Goodwin Sands, which was told by the late Rev. T. Stanley Treanor in ” The Heroes of the Goodwin Sands,” published just a quarter of a century ago. ” Seamen of the Downs ” is a worthy successor to that book, both in the story to be told and in the way in which Mr. Bayley tells it.

It begins with an admirable historical sketch of the Downs, from the day when Julius Csesar landed on the coast of Kent up to the days of the Dover Patrol in the Great War. There follows a chapter on the boatmen of the Downs, and the Life-boat Service, and then Mr. Bayley comes to the main subject of the book, the famous rescues carried out by the Lifeboats round the Goodwins during the past twenty years. With these rescues, readers of The Lifeboat and the Institutions’ Annual Report are already familiar, but they will find the stories very graphically retold.

Mr. Bayley has had the help of the late Coxswain William Adams, of Deal, who died in 1926. He had served as Coxswain for thirteen years when he retired in 1920, had won the Institution’s Silver Medal three times, and had been four times specially thanked by foreign governments. His name appears with Mr. Bayley’s on the title page, and the last chapter of the book is a record of talks with him. Coxswain Adams pays to the Charles Dibdin the finest tribute that any Coxswain could pay to his Life-boat: ” She has never once failed us.” He did not want to see her replaced by a Motor Life-boat, and Mr.