Defining Dunkirk: RNLI reporting from the war years

1. An unusual call for help

‘At 1.15 in the afternoon of Thursday, the 30th of May, 1940, the Ministry of Shipping called up the Institution on the telephone and asked it to send at once to Dover as many of its life-boats as possible. The Ministry was told that they would be sent.’

2.The swift response

‘As soon as the Institution received that call it telephoned to its eighteen stations from Gorleston in Norfolk, 110 miles north of Dover, to Shoreham Harbour, in Sussex, 80 miles to the west. Each station was asked to send its life-boat to Dover at once for special duty under the Admiralty. 

‘While this urgent message was being sent to the life-boats along those 190 miles of coast, two of them were already on their way to Dunkirk. That morning the naval officers-in-charge at Ramsgate and Margate had asked their life-boats if they would go, and both crews had said at once that they would.’

3. The terrifying conditions

‘Now the narrow channels of deeper water through which ships could pass were unlighted; German submarines and fast motor boats were moving in them; German aeroplanes were sowing them with mines; already they were studded with wrecks. The air above was even more dangerous. Every five minutes German bombers came over to attack Dunkirk or the beaches or the waters beyond, and by night if a motor-boat showed no more than a glimmer of light on her instrument panel it was enough to bring on her a salvo of bombs.’

4. First contact

‘Once, as they came ashore, a voice called to them, “I cannot see who you are. Are you a naval party? ” He was answered, “No, sir, we are men of the crew of the Ramsgate life-boat.” The voice called back, “Thank you, and thank God for such men as you have this night proved yourselves to be. There is a party of fifty Highlanders coming next.”’

5. Dunkirk spirit

‘One small soldier waded out holding high his rifle - and a banjo. As he stood beside the boat, with little more than his head above water, the coxswain told him to drop them and come aboard. He dropped the rifle. He held the banjo. Two minutes later he had squatted on the deck and was strumming and humming to himself.’

6. Fragments of tales

‘Nineteen life-boats took part in the Dunkirk evacuation and brought off thousands of men … The full story of what they did there, how they did it, how many men they brought off, and what lives were lost aboard them, will never be known, but from time to time, during the next five days, they returned bringing with them fragments of the tales of their adventures and scars more speaking than any tale.’