LOCAL HERO

It seems astonishing to think of three generations of one family serving as coxswains at one lifeboat station for 71 consecutive years. However, Jim, ‘Father’ Matthew and ‘Boy’ Matthew (or Matt Jnr) Lethbridge did exactly that at St Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly from 1914 to 1985. Both Matthews were awarded Silver Medals and Matt Jnr was also awarded a Bronze Medal; and between them they received eight other RNLI awards. During the Second World War, Matt Jnr served in the RAF in air-sea rescue boats, which may, to some extent, have prepared him for the RNLI rescue operations that followed. Among the higher profile of those were the Torrey Canyon oil spill disaster in 1967; the rescue of an ITN television crew who were planning to film Francis Chichester at the end of his round the world voyage the same year; the 1979 Fastnet Race; and the crash of the helicopter on its way from Penzance to the Scillies in 1983. The following year, and just a year before he retired as coxswain, Matt appeared on television programme This Is Your Life, after presenter Eamonn Andrews sprung the customary surprise at the London Boat Show.

But there was another strong nautical connection between these three men and that was a small sailing boat that, between them, they owned and sailed for well over was built as a gaffcutter in 1897 by Paynters of St Ives for Jim Lethbridge, and is thought to have been named after a member of his family. She was taken straight to the Scillies as soon as she was completed. This was at a time when Scillonian maritime life had recently undergone a fundamental change. For a century of so up until about 1880, sailing ships arriving in the UK from all over the world would make the Scillies their first port of call and this provided lucrative work for the Scillonian pilots and their pilot cutters. But as sail gave way to steam, ships soon began to bypass the Scillies and make for mainland ports such as Falmouth and those in the Bristol Channel, where they would be guided by local pilots. “That was when boats in the Scillies became generally smaller and the seafaring became less global,” said Diccon Rogers, ’s current owner.