Never Turn Back Poem by Martin Ward

Never turn back

No Moon that night as the North Sea swelled,
Sending blinding rain in a North-East gale.
From Barber's Sands on that awful night,
The dreaded flair could barely illuminate.
The Maroons went up and were hardly seen
By former Coxswain Haylett and Assistant Coxswain Green.
The watchful pair with iron resolve
Had alarm bells rung and children told:
‘Wake the men; summon the crew;
There are lives at risk; they need the few'
Whose bravery is without peer,
And whose duty is done without question or fear.

The perilous launch could not overcome
Breakers of the mountainous storm.
For three long hours the exhausted men
Fought waves to launch Beauchamp again.
Some younger men took the place of those
Sent home to change their drenched clothes.
Each crewman pulled on the warp
And Beauchamp cleared the breaches thwart.
The crew began to row until
The sails were hoisted and the oars were stowed.
Thrown back by the heaving sea,
The boat missed stayed and the Coxswain plead:
‘Down with the Mizzen, we must make for the shore.'
But the great mast broke and the sails tore.
When a swell wave struck the starboard quarter,
The lifeboat capsized in a wall of water.

Haylett, at the age of seventy-eight,
Went in the waves to extricate
His grandson and his son-in-law:
The other nine would breathe no more.
Now each hero sleeps in his fateful station,
Next to a monument donated by a grateful nation.
Buried in a sea of flowers from the families of the deceased,
Who through their tears sang ‘Peace, perfect peace.'

Every man shall have his day
And at the inquest old Jimmy Haylett would say
The words that entered folk law: To the Coroner, his bluntest censure:
‘CAISTER MEN NEVER TURN BACK, SIR.'