Caresana
Caresana has been donated to the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships
Due to a change in personal circumstances, Caresana is now in the hands of
the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships - I am going to keep this archive in
any case!
Some history
The Caresana was originally the Dungeness lifeboat, launched on the
9th of September, 1933, and then called the "Charles Cooper Henderson".
She was the first of the 'beach motor lifeboats' which took over from the
pulling and sailing ones and served for 43 years, making her Britain's
longest serving lifeboat. She took part in 171 rescues and saved
63 lives and also served in Dunkirk, making three journeys to France
and back before being found damaged herself on the 1st of June,
1940 drifting off Margate with her four naval ratings aboard.
When she left service in 1977, she was renamed to the Caresana and had a very good conversion to a motor yacht with the addition of a 20ft wheel-house and deck saloon with fore and aft cabins and in theory, enough space for eight people. Her petrol engines were replaced with two 47hp Parsons Porbeagle diesels. She later moved to Guernsey where Ron Wylie converted her into a floating language school and then she became a houseboat for Ron until Michael Lawrie took her over in August 2006.
She is basically a good sound boat but Ron has been ill for quite a few years which is why he sold her. In that time she has been a little neglected and she will need quite a lot of work to restore her to how she should be. Hopefully this will happen in the next year or so. We intend to create a restoration fund which should help enormously and of course, should you want to donate anything (money, equipment, advice...) there is a link at the bottom!
The "Charles Cooper Henderson" days.
Scanned Archive Collections
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I found the launch reports from The Times (Monday Sept 11th, 1933) recently:
Article and
Photo.
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Various old pictures and press clippings from
Caresana's past.
The 1933 book Modern Motor Lifeboats has lots of interesting information.
It took me a while but I managed to clean up a batch of Ron Wylie's old photos.
I found this report of (the then unnamed) Caresana's action in Dunkirk written by Robert Hector, one of the crew.
Some links
- Caresana's Entry at the
Association of Dunkirk Little Ships.
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Caresana's entry in the
National Register of Historic Vessels.
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Until I get a better gallery setup, there are some more pictures at
20060929-caresana-sos and
20060930-caresana-leigh.
Caresana in the 80's after her lifeboat conversion.
