Launch Stories

20th September - B675 launched to search for a dog

High tide on the beach makes launching the D class that little more difficult for the crew. The depth of the water on the often steeply shelving top of the beach can leave the crew, in the space of 18 inches, chest deep in water or swimming along side the boat. We launched well and Nic rapidly warmed the engine whilst Colin and I stowed the oars. I called the Coastguard and we received more information about the nature of the incident. A dog had run through a gap in a hedge on the cliff top near to the café at the Dover Patrol Memorial above St Margaret’s bay, we where tasked with finding the dog.

Although the chances of this being a happy outcome where slim, dogs have been known to survive similar incidents in the past. With the monolith of the memorial just visible above the edge of the cliff we nosed in towards the shore but there was no definite position for us to look and the cliff so featureless and high and the extent of the area so large an initial look was not successful. We were then directed to the owners of the dog on the beach at St Margaret’s and soon after we arrived Tony arrived by car to help coordinate efforts from the shore .

The new plan was to watch for Tony on the cliff edge and he would communicate with us via a handheld VHF radio. We motored out of the bay towards the east around a huge rock fall and once we could see Tony clearly on the top of the cliff where the dog had disappeared, moved in towards the beach. At the foot of the cliff, due to the continual dissolving of the chalk cliffs into the sea, submerged rocks can only be spotted if they break the surface. So Nic raised the outboard motor and instructed Colin and I to row to the foot of the cliff between rock falls. The sea conditions were ideal posing no significant risk to crew or boat.

A survey of the first bay drew a blank and so did a check over the rock falls either side. It was unlikely that the dog would be elsewhere but we checked behind boulders and scree. The shear magnitude of the cliff above reminded me of walking underneath the dome of St Paul’s cathedral. The impression of size is there but a true sense of scale is impossible without some sort of known reference. Tony had been a tiny figure at the top of the cliff but now we were so close to the foot of the cliff and the walls so near to vertical that he was lost from sight. The power of the processes at work are slightly unnerving with hundreds of tonnes of relatively fresh rock at the foot of the cliff, rock fall happens on a fairly regular basis. Looking along the cliff from our unique vantage point, long fissures run vertically where parts of the cliff jut out from the rest of the cliff line. This can be a very dangerous place there is no doubt. There is a beauty to it with the tiny beaches made up of flint nodules and chalk boulders worn smooth by continued wave action and the shear walls of white rock.

Our search has come to nothing, we can only assume that the tide was so high that the dog entered the water and did not survive the experience. We rowed back out to sea and motored back to Walmer. Whilst we have been away the Donald Mclauchlan has been called out on an emergency call. 5 people are on a sinking boat heading for the beach at best possible speed, bailing for all they are worth to keep afloat as the boat's pump is failing to stem the flood.

Article by Dave Mitchell