Episode 3

Dungeness is an extraordinary spur of land jutting out from the Kent coast, made up of billions of sea worn flint shards rounded into pebbles, extending 12 square miles and in some places, 20 metres deep. It is home to a nature reserve, a nuclear power station, and two lighthouses. As well as to Derek Jarman’s famous ‘Prospect Cottage’ with its flotsam garden and the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway. It is also the location of the Dungeness lifeboat station.

When he moved to Dungeness, Dominic Gregory decided to volunteer with the lifeboat. After some hesitation, he rang the number he’d been given by a neighbour and spoke to the coxswain, Stuart Adams. And so began ‘the volunteer’s story’, the first published account of what it is to be part of a lifeboat crew.

From the meticulous, repetitive training to the first experience of a call out, Dominic Gregory charts the experience of being part of this rare community of people. The lifeboat family is full of ordinary men and women who drop everything at the sound of the pager, day or night to do something which is quite simply, remarkable.

Call outs may be to a trawler or a tanker in distress, a yacht with engine difficulties, a day tripper blown out to sea or a swimmer caught by the current. But it is when inflatable dinghies – overloaded with desperate people – begin arriving on the shores of Dungeness that the lifeboat crew must face perhaps their greatest test.

‘Dominic Gregory hasn’t just delivered a survey of courage and determination – Lifeboat at the End of the World is a hymn to human decency, and that makes it a very timely book indeed’ Tim Winton

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is a public fundraising charity that provides a full-time lifeboat service for the coastlines of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The charity remains independent of government, and over 95 per cent of its shore and boat crews are volunteers. There are 238 lifeboat stations around the coast of the UK and the Republic of Ireland, each providing life-saving search and rescue coverage 24 hrs, 7 days a week. The Dungeness lifeboat was first established on the Romney coast exactly two hundred years ago.

Written by Dominic Gregrory

Abridged and Produced by Jill Waters and The Waters Company

Read by James Lailey

Location sounds recorded on Dungeness by the author.