Above image reproduced by kind permission of Newhaven maritime museum.
The 'Cecil & Lilian Philpott' was stationed at Newhaven between 1930 and 1959. At Dunkirk she was manned by a Royal Navy crew. She only made one trip to Dunkirk and that nearly ended in disaster when the lifeboat ran aground and was left high and dry for four hours. However, she returned to England on the 3rd June 1940, with 51 soldiers on board. In November 1940, she survived being rammed and almost cut in two by the Admiralty Trawler HMT Avanturine.