Just before ringing the doorbell on Kt and Martin Bruce’s house in Rye Harbour, there’s an unusual sound coming from inside. Martin is a well-known shanty singer around Rye with many years performing under his belt, so hearing a shanty isn’t entirely unexpected. This, though, is a bit different.
Kt opened the door and explained: “He’s practising a Japanese sea shanty to accompany Tim Anderson’s show for the scallop festival. Getting the Japanese right has proved to be an interesting task and it sounds terrific.”
The talk will reflect Tim’s love of Japanese cooking, hence the sea shanty. Martin says the Japanese version is a bit different from a typical English song. “Ours tend to be moaning about life at sea, booze and women. Theirs are a bit more deep: once you’ve heard the seagull cry, you can never leave the sea, etc.”
Our meeting is to mark a big change in Kt’s and Martin’s lives. They’ve just retired from seven years volunteering for RNLI Rye Harbour, with Kt as press officer and Martin as the local chairman and press officer.
For Martin, being involved with RNLI has been a direct link to his father’s life. “He was a merchant seaman and a wireless operator during the war. He always loved the sea, which is partly why we wanted to live next to it. Being part of the RNLI has been a way of connecting with his life.”
He says the charity is an incredible organisation. “I can’t think of many others that are so effective two hundred years after they were founded, yet still rely over 90 percent on volunteers. What it does is of real importance. When you are part of the RNLI, even if you are not in the boat itself, you know you are part of a team contributing to saving lives. And what could be more important than that?”
Being an independent organisation also has huge benefits. “The RNLI can do things in a way in which it wants to, with a pragmatic experience of knowing what works and what doesn’t. When you’re dealing with life and death stuff, and you’re not getting paid for it, it’s an interesting challenge.”
The couple, who have been together 39 years this year, had had no previous involvement with the charity when they arrived in the harbour but admired the courage shown by the crew members around the country.
Kt explained, “We couldn’t unpack as we had workmen in the house and were living in one room upstairs with a little kitchen, a mattress on the floor and no heating. We spent our time walking around the village and countryside for hours and hours. We bumped into local people and made friends and they told us about the lifeboat station and how it was so important to the community.”
A role as the local press officer came next. “It was an interesting challenge as we did not have too many shouts each year. So it meant thinking outside the box and finding stories to highlight the courage, the training, the fundraising and the day jobs of the crew, men and women, who make up the team at Rye Harbour. Their work was soon noticed at RNLI HQ in Poole and RNLI Rye Harbour was often used as a model for the training of other press officers; Rye Harbour was known as ‘The biggest littlest station’
For Martin, being the local chairman has meant being actively involved in what happens at RNLI Rye Harbour. “When the pager goes off and there’s a shout , we both go down to the station – even when it goes off in the middle of the night. We grab something over our PJs and head out to support the crew. We watch them go out and we make sure they come back safely. The crew setting out never knows quite what it is going to encounter.”
While they won’t miss the early morning alarms in all weathers Kt says they will miss being part of the charity locally and nationally. “Whenever we’ve been around the country we’ve been made to feel most welcome at RNLI stations. Straight away we have something in common with all those people. There’s the most wonderful camaraderie.”
Both Kt and Martin may have ended their formal involvement in RNLI Rye Harbour, but that doesn’t mean an end to taking an active part in local life. Martin has been singing shanties with the Rye Harbour Herrings all week – not just in Japanese. Kt continues to photograph and write stories for Rye News and social media, building an incredible archive of events and people in Rye. They’ve both videoing events too, with Martin using a drone to capture footage from above. They have a channel on YouTube called Showcasing Rye.
Among the highlights of their years in the RNLI are being part of the celebrations marking the institution’s 200th anniversary. Martin wrote the official shanty and performed it from Port Isaac to Port Talbot. Attending the Westminster Abbey service two hundred years to the day after Sir William Hillary had founded the RNL, and helping to organise and taking part in the Mary Berry Christmas special 2024, getting coverage for Rye Harbour station on national television.
2028 marks the 100th anniversary of the Mary Stanford lifeboat disaster which claimed the life of 17 crew off the coast in Rye Bay. For Kt and Martin it’s a chance to give the story and the lifeboat house international prominence. “If you talk to anybody around the country about an RNLI disaster, they would probably all say Penlee. We’re at the research stage which plays to Martin’s strength as a history expert and we will be visiting the archives in Poole. It’s more than just awareness raising, it’s getting the bravery and tragedy of the night recognised.”
Image Credits: Trish Sargent , Kt bruce , Martin Bruce , Dover RNLI , BBC .
Lovely article about KT and Martin