Selsey Lifeboat

Harry Mellon's film captures a significant day for Selsey's Lifeboat Service - crowds and the local press, are assembled around a boat shed while the crew get into waterproofs. The local priest conducts a service over the new inshore lifeboat - which is still under wraps. The crew drags the boat to the water's edge and they then speed away. After several demonstration runs the boat works in tandem with an air-sea rescue helicopter to lift two men from the sea.

The lifeboat featured in this film is a D class inshore lifeboat, numbered D164. It was the first boat to operate from Selsey's newly established Inshore Lifeboat Station and was gifted by the Croydon Round Table organisation. D164 operated from 1968 to 1970 and was replaced by D138. Selsey's Lifeboat Station, first established in 1861, operates two types of rescue craft, the inshore boats which operate from an onshore boatshed and an 'all-weather' lifeboat which operates from the slipway seen in the film. Harry Mellon's film also captured the latter type of craft, called Canadian Pacific, whilst he was filming inside the slipway boathouse. During WW2, Canadian Pacific was launched for service 50 times.