Crossing the Bar at Salcombe

The film clips in this post are provided if it is viewed in the Web version.

Just before our second lockdown I was able to row out of Salcombe Harbour to the bar. It was a fine  day with the vivid blues of the sea and sky in early November. 

It was over this bar that the Salcombe Lifeboat Disaster took place on 27th October 2016 when the Salcombe lifeboat, the William and Emma, capsized whilst heroically crossing the harbour bar on their return from attempting to rescue a stricken vessel.

The William and Emma

Although it turned out the crew of the vessel did not need rescuing, the lifeboat was now in serious difficulty and eventually overcome on the bar by a freak wave. Thirteen lifeboat men died and two survived to tell the tale.

A contemporaneous drawing of the William and Emma closing on the Salcombe Bar

A good account of this disaster can be found in Robert Barrett's 'The Salcombe Lifeboat Disaster: 27 October 2016, published by Salcombe Lifeboats.

My copy of the Salcombe Lifeboat Disaster

I was intrigued by what had happened and went out to the bar to have a look, then making a short video telling briefly the story of the the brave men who crossed the bar in a gale and returned in a storm.

The bar is also famous because it is the likely the inspiration for  Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem Crossing the Bar. 

The poem uses the metaphor of crossing a harbour bar for the journey through life and then into death, with hope of meeting God, referred to in the poem as the pilot. 

There is a particularly poignant second verse as follows:

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out of the boundless sleep.

Turns again home.

Although the lifeboat disaster took place after the poem was written, the last two lines of this verse echo the uncertainty of the lifeboat men as whether to cross the bar or voyage east to Dartmouth. 

The William and Emma approached the bar twice before deciding finally to turn again home in a final attempt.

In 2018 ‘Crossing the Bar’ was sung at the inauguration  of the new B Class Salcombe lifeboat, the Gladys Hilda Mustoe. 

PicoMicroYacht went back into the harbour, and I disembarked and packed up PicoMicroYacht, putting on the cover. I had left my handheld VHF in the boat, switched on, and eventually it started beeping as the battery ran down.

A lifeboat man, I think Paul Bennet‘’, heard the beep and went to investigate, switching it off. The following day he told me he investigated incase it was an activated personal Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRP). We chatted as he readied his Beneteau Yacht for sailing.

The lifeboat men and women always look out for you  -  it’s in their nature.