How to help the surviving small craft from Dunkirk keep ship-shape
sir – Recognising the “little ships” of Dunkirk by bestowing on them some kind of status like that of listed building protection (Letters, May 28) sounds laudable but comes with no advantage to their owners.
The listing of buildings is a kind of “nationalisation without compensation”. Any modification, inside or outside, of a property requires listed building consent. So boat owners would similarly have to apply to a government body for approval to make any change to their boat, however small.
What would be very useful for owners, to encourage them to keep their vessels ship-shape, would be to allow the necessary materials and labour needed to be zero-rated for VAT.
R A Collings
Presteign, Radnorshire
sir – I strongly support giving the Dunkirk “little ships” some sort of protected status. Their involvement in a moment of crisis 80 years ago epitomised the Dunkirk Spirit.
The vast majority of personnel, though, were rescued by Royal Navy destroyers and merchant shipping organised by Vice Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay. Operation Dynamo (the evacuation) was a masterpiece of emergency planning made possible by a hugely powerful Navy.
Only one of the larger ships involved remains in existence. The Medway Queen, a former Thames pleasure paddle steamer, now sits in the river Medway being preserved by dedicated volunteers.
She earned the title the Heroine of Dunkirk having made seven of the hazardous journeys across the Channel rescuing over 7,000 men and shooting down three enemy aircraft. Admiral Lord West of Spithead London SW1 sir – If Dunkirk were to happen tomorrow, not one boat would sail to rescue our troops, because no health and safety assessment had taken place.
People would just stand outside their property clapping, and all our soldiers would die.
Ernie Mcnally
Southsea, Hampshire
sir – In addition to the “little ships”, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution was asked to send lifeboats to Dover.
Ramsgate and Margate lifeboats, the only ones manned by RNLI crews, headed for France straightaway, a 50-mile passage. The crews had steel helmets, gas masks and cans of fresh water for the soldiers.
The Ramsgate boat towed eight flat-bottomed wherries across the English Channel, which proved invaluable in ferrying men from the beaches to waiting bigger boats. Altogether the Ramsgate boat, in three days of magnificent effort, rescued 2,800 men.
The Margate boat rescued 600 men and on the way home took in tow a near-foundering whaler manned by 17 exhausted seamen, sole survivors from a ship’s company of 150 men.
The commander of the destroyer Icarus wrote: “The magnificent behaviour of the crew of the Margate lifeboat, who with no thought of rest, brought off load after load of soldiers under continuous shelling, bombing and aerial machine-gun fire, will be an inspiration to us all as long as we live.”
The coxswains of both lifeboats, Howard Knight and Edward Parker, were awarded the DSM.
Raymond Hirst
Morecambe Lifeboat Station, Lancashire