Percy Henry Patmore survived the trenches. He won the Military Medal in the First World War, was awarded an MBE between the wars, and was then killed as a civilian in the Second. His widow, Florence, eventually left a legacy to the RNLI - and on 18 May 1996, a new Atlantic 75 lifeboat at St Bees was christened in his name. In its fourteen years on station, the Percy Henry Patmore launched 158 times and rescued 125 people. Some lives, it turns out, finish their service to others long after the body has gone.
St Bees Head is the most westerly point on the coast of Cumbria, where red sandstone cliffs drop suddenly into the Irish Sea. Three miles south, on the modest promenade of the village of St Bees, sits one of the RNLI's small inshore stations. It opened in May 1970, part of a wave of new stations the institution rolled out after 1964 to meet the boom in sailing, kayaking and recreational swimming. The first boat was a simple D-class inflatable - no name, just the designation D-180. It could be launched by a handful of crew within minutes. That speed has always been the point of stations like this: while bigger all-weather boats race from distant ports, the local inshore is already on the water.
The station grew in steps. In 1980 a 26-foot concrete boathouse went up to house the boat. In 1985 a larger, faster twin-engined model arrived, requiring an extension. Then in 1995, St Bees received its first Atlantic-class lifeboat - the first generation of rigid inflatable boats developed at Atlantic College in partnership with the RNLI. The new boat needed yet another boathouse, this one on three levels with workshop, storage, a small shop and proper crew facilities. It cost £300,000 and was opened by Katharine, the Duchess of Kent, on 10 October 1995. The launch tractor - a Talus MB-764 County, later upgraded to an MB-4H - rolls the boat down across the shingle into the sea.
Lifeboat stations measure themselves in shouts and saves, but the names on the honours board are what make a station real. In 1993, Senior Helm Ian McDowell received the RNLI Bronze Medal for a rescue off these cliffs; the same callout brought Vellum Letters of Thanks to helm Alastair Graham and crew members Marcus Clarkson and Paul McDowell. In 2004, the Chief Constable of Cumbria commended Ian McDowell, Paul McDowell, Dave Barker and Dick Beddows. These are mostly fishermen, builders, shopkeepers - people who put down whatever they were holding when a pager goes off, and head for the boathouse.
The boat on station today is Joy Morris (B-831), an Atlantic 85 placed in service on 7 April 2009. She was funded by the RNLI's North Regional Appeal together with the legacies of Mrs Violet Cissie Mayberry and Mrs Joan Margaret Boorman - three more names, mostly unknown, that quietly keep the rescue work going. Standing on the promenade above the boathouse, you can usually see her stern through the wide doors, ready to go. When the maroon used to sound, half the village would turn to watch the launch. The maroons are gone now, replaced by pagers, but the village still notices when the tractor starts to roll.
The waters off St Bees Head are not particularly forgiving. Swimmers misjudge the rip currents, kayakers get pushed offshore in a freshening wind, walkers on the Wainwright Coast-to-Coast - which starts here - underestimate the tide along the cliff base. The lifeboat goes out to all of it. Most rescues are quiet ones the public never hears about: a swimmer plucked out of a chop, a small boat with a dead engine towed home, a teenager dragged off a cliff ledge. The station is small - one boat, a tractor, a handful of volunteers. But for the people it has pulled out of the Irish Sea over half a century, it is the difference between the coast and the obituaries.
St Bees Lifeboat Station sits at 54.491°N, 3.607°W on the Cumbrian coast. St Bees Head, three miles north, is the only true sea cliff on England's northwest coast - unmistakable from the air as a red sandstone wall jutting into the Irish Sea. Best viewed at 1,500-3,000 feet for the cliffs and the small village tucked behind them. Carlisle Lake District (EGNC) lies 30nm north-northeast; the disused RAF Silloth airfield sits across the Solway Firth. The Isle of Man (EGNS Ronaldsway) is about 35nm west across open water. Sellafield's chimneys 6nm south are a useful landmark.