Jewish teenagers who were trapped by the tide have today donated £5,000 to the lifeboat team that rescued them.

And they are continuing to collect more money for their saviours.

The 34 strictly-Orthodox teenagers and their families raised the funds just hours after they were taken to safety from the beach at Dover by a helicopter and lifeboats on Monday.

The 14 to 17-year-old boys, who were trapped with two adults, are from the Avhvas Yisrael Community Centre in Stamford Hill in north London.

Simon Cohen, from the centre, wrote to Dover station operations manage Simon Moore saying: “The centre, together with our entire community, would like to extend their warmest gratitude and appreciation to you and your colleagues for the swift action and heroism of the Dover RNLI station, which ensured the safety of our boys.

“Following the incident you referred to the boys being in high spirits. I can assure you that this is in no small measure due to the care that the boys received from your team at the scene.”

The letter, written today, enclosed a cheque of £5,000.

It added: “Immediately after the incident the boys’ parents began fundraisng in our community in gratitude to your heroism and they have already raised £5,000.

“The boys will be organising more fundraising events throughout the summer and I look forward to presenting you with additional funds in due course.”

A Dover RNLI spokesman said: “We obviously greatly appreciate this. The RNLI solely relies on fundraising and donations to operate.”

The party had been trapped when they had walked along the base of the cliffs from St Margaret’s back to Dover, instead of climbing the path to the cliff top.

They found themselves trapped by the rising tide at Langdon Bay and raised the alarm at 9pm that evening.

A massive sea and air search was launched with the Dover RNLI boat, two Walmer RNLI vessels, the Coastguard search and rescue helicopter from Lydd, Langdon Coastguard Rescue Team and round 40 volunteers.

The party, after raising the alarm, guided the rescuers to them by using the lights from their mobile phones.

Thirty-one of the group were taken to safety by lifeboat. The last five were at first unaccounted for but were found on rocks and picked up by helicopter.

The donation is a major boost to the Dover RNLI as the charity constantly needs funds to keep its service running.

The average yearly cost to run Dover’s 24/7 all-weather station, at Crosswall Quay, Union Street, is £210,000.

The annual average sum needed to run the 24/7 inshore Walmer base is £90,000.

The RNLI has more than 230 lifeboat stations nationwide and it costs around £410,000 a day to keep up the service but it rescues on average 24 people a day.

Costs mount up by the maintenance of the fleet, crew training and lifeguard services on more than 200 beaches as well as campaigning for water safety.

The Dover lifeboat, the Severn class City of London II, costs £3 million and its engines alone are valued t £900,000.

To donate to the charity visit the link that shows how your can support the RNLI.