The crew board is a screen in the boathouse showing who is available, who is on their way, and who is on the boat, fed by the crew's phones. It shows one name the station does not have. It is always available. On every launch it goes to on boat with the others. The slipway load cells, which weigh the boat and carriage before launch, read one man heavy, and the seat count on the boat is full, and there is a seat empty.
I am the lifeboat operations manager at a station with a crew of twenty two, and the board says twenty three.
The board.
A screen in the crew room. The crew's phones tell it whether they are in the town and available, and when the pagers go their phones tell it they are coming, and when they board the boat a tag tells it they are aboard. It is how I know who I am sending to sea.
There is a name on it that is not one of mine.
The name.
A man's. It is always available. It never shows as away or off. When the pagers go, it goes to responding with the first of them, before anybody could have got out of bed. When the crew board the boat, it goes to on boat, with a seat number, and the seat number is seat seven, which is the seat by the port door, and on every launch seat seven is empty.
I have put a man in seat seven. The board showed nine on a boat that seats eight, and the man in seven said the seat was cold, and would not sit in it again.
The weight.
The carriage sits on load cells before launch and the system checks the boat's weight against the crew aboard, because a boat that is heavier than it should be has water in it. With seven crew aboard the cells read eight. Every launch. One man, about ninety kilos, in oilskins, by the weight, aboard and not visible, in a seat that is empty and cold.
And the boat, on the slip, on the camera, when the crew are aboard and the doors are open and the boat is about to go, has, at the port door, for a second, the shape of a man stepping in. Every launch. A shoulder, an arm, the yellow of a jacket, and gone, and the cells read eight.
What has been checked.
The board, reinstalled. The name is on it.
The cells, recalibrated. Eight.
Seat seven, by me, in it, in the house, with the boat on the carriage and nobody else aboard. I sat. The board showed two on boat. Me and him. And the seat was cold, the way a seat is that has had the sea on it, and I sat in the cold and the board showed us both, and the cells read two men, and I said, all right, mate, because it is a boat and you say something, and the cold moved, the way a man shifts to make room, and I had room.
Who.
The name is in the station's book. Not as crew. In the list at the back, which is the list of those lost on service, and there are eleven names on it going back to the eighteen hundreds, and his is the most recent, and it is 1981, and there are two from that night, and he is one.
He was in seat seven. The old hands say that was his seat on the old boat, by the door, because he was the one who went over the side when somebody had to, and the night he was lost he had gone over the side. The new boat has a seat seven by the door. He has taken it.
He is available. He responds before the pagers have finished. He boards. He goes out with every crew, and he sits by the door, and nobody has gone over the side on this station since 1981.
What is done about it.
The crew board has a name on it that the national database does not, and the database is reconciled quarterly, and the reconciliation throws him out every quarter, and the board has him back on by the morning, and the station's inspector has seen the board and read the name and gone to the book at the back and read it there too, and has written, in his report, crew board functioning, which is true.
What I do.
I manage operations.
A crew member is counted. Aboard, ashore, every launch, a head count, by the cox, and the cox says the number into the radio and the number is written in the log. Our cox has said seven for years with eight aboard, because you count the ones you can see.
I have asked him to say eight. He looked at me for a while. Then he said he had been wanting to, and had not known if he was allowed.
He says eight. On the slip, before launch, he counts, and he says, eight aboard, and the board agrees, and the cells agree, and the log has eight, and on the camera, at the port door, the shape of a man stepping in is a little slower, since the count changed, and the yellow of the jacket stays a second longer, and I have had the old hands look at it, and one of them, who was on the boat in 1981, said that it was him, and that he was making sure he was seen boarding, because a man who is counted should be seen to get on, and that he had never once in his life been late for a shout, and was not going to start.