DAMAGED AT SEA

Stanley Winter was awarded the Bronze medal for his outstanding service on this night. 

The Winter family has 100 years service on Newhaven lifeboats. 

Stanley Winter was one of 7 crewmen awarded the RNLI's bronze medal for this outstanding service, including Benjamin 'Deafy' Clark who was lost overboard and drowned during the service. Coxswain Leonard Peddleston received the RNLI silver medal on this occasion. The HMT (Her Majesty's Trawler) Avanturine was subsequently torpedoed and sunk off Beachy Head on December 1st 1943 whilst in convoy, under tow by another HMT.

I was 11 years of age and I remember this dreadful night very well.

And I can recall being told, in the morning, that my father had been injured.

I remember an elderly lady by the name of Mrs Winter telling me about this. She lived in Brighton Road. Sadly I was quite young and didn't listen as intently as I would now. She told me that the wooden post holding up her washing line was the mast from the lifeboat. I assume it may have been from this particular lifeboat.

I recently went to a function at the lifeboat station, with my parents, and saw the plaque on the entrance wall relating the death of Deafy Clark. Mum, Frances Beale, is the daughter of Dick Lower engineer of the lifeboat Cecil Lilian Philpot , her middle name is Lilian after the boat. She told me that Grandad had to take the boat to the Isle of White for repairs and the whole family went there for two weeks holiday, the whole process taking six weeks . Mum related that for several weeks after the tragic events, Grandad was very quiet he had lost his friend Deafy Clark.