Episode 4: Colin Varrall
Colin Varrall works for South East Coast Ambulance Service and is an RNLI volunteer and local historian from Deal who has studied the many lifeboat stations along the south-east corner of Kent, many of which have now closed. The Walmer lifeboat station, of which Colin has been a member for 20 years, was established by the RNLI in 1856 after hundreds of years of local fishermen and boatmen independently coming to the aid of stranded sailors caught in bad weather or running aground on the Goodwin Sands.
In this interview Colin discusses his own personal career path and how he came to volunteer with the RNLI, the kinds of emergencies the Walmer lifeboat is called to attend, and some of the history surrounding the endeavour of saving lives off the Kent coast. He also talks about the work of the notable James Hall OBE, a Deal GP who took it upon himself to treat unwell soldiers and sailors moored off the coast in the natural anchorage of the Downs during the Second World War, visiting 280 ships and attending to over 700 patients in the course of his work there.
This is an interview conducted as part of the Goodwin Sands Oral History Project, a podcast series which speaks with those who have grown up within sight of the Sands, who make their living upon or around them, or who have been creatively inspired by the air of uncanny mystery they invoke. The Goodwin Sands are a pair of large sandbanks of the south-east Kent coast which offer both shelter and a dangerous hazard to unwary shipping or those caught in storms, and are the site of great historical importance and maritime archaeology.
This podcast project was undertaken as a response to an application to dredge the Goodwin Sands for aggregates and building materials to expand Dover Harbour, a proposition vehemently opposed by local residents and the Goodwin Sands Conservation Trust, who have created this podcast series. It is hoped that through hearing the voices of the people connected with the Sands their cultural status might be raised and further industrial interference might be avoided in the future.
Credits:
Presented and interview conducted by Joanna Thomson, co-founder of the Goodwin Sands Conservation Trust.
Production, editing, sound design and music by Ben Horner.
Additional music, "Through the Fog" by Maserpan, used under Creative Commons licence.
For more about the Goodwin Sands Conservation Trust please see https://goodwinsands.org.uk/, and please see https://theaudiosphere.com for more on our producer.
