The disappearance of several industries has raised concerns over whether there's enough volunteers to send a lifeboat out on rescues.

The RNLI says it is battling to recruit crew for its Sheerness Lifeboat station – something which has never been a problem before.

Coxswain and mechanic Paul Jarvis feels the number of likely candidates working nearby has now shrunk to crisis levels.

Over the years, the station was able to attract people from the Island's steel mill, potteries and glassworks.

But as they closed down they haven't been replaced with similar jobs where people can drop everything and be at the station within 12 minutes of being paged.

Appealing for potential new crew members to come forward, Mr Jarvis said: "We do struggle sometimes to get the numbers to launch the boat."

The 62-year-old Queenborough resident has been part of the Island's crew for 29 years.

He was a volunteer for most of that period until he took on the full-time role a year ago.

He said: "I originally got involved through a friend. We both worked for the same employer at the docks and he often spoke about it.

"I then got invited to come down and it just went from there really."

Each RNLI station is mostly manned by volunteers who give up their time to respond to emergencies ranging from recovering broken-down vessels to rescuing those in difficulty.

A pager system means when the alert goes off the crew must drop everything, no matter where they are or what they're doing, and get to the station as quickly as possible.

The Sheppey crew is desperate to rally volunteers to help with shoutouts between 9am and 5pm during the week.

Paul explained: "We've got about 19 crew members and that hasn't really changed over the years.

"But what has changed are the work patterns those crew are working.

"We're struggling more and more as a lot of the crew have to work off the Island, so they're unavailable during the day.

"For our pager system we need our volunteers to get here within 12 minutes of it going off, they can't do that if they're not in the nearby area.

"And that's when we're really struggling with the pages going of during the day.

"We do struggle sometimes to get the numbers to launch the boat so we need to bring in some new blood and train people up for the future."

He added: "I think there's a lot of industries which left the Island which employed a decent number of people who quite often were allowed to leave when the pager went off.

"Those industries, like the steel works, potteries and glass works just aren't there anymore.

"So when we lost a lot of work on the Island, a lot of people also had to leave to find employment elsewhere."

Over almost three decades Paul has seen many things change at the station.

He said: "I've seen three different classes of boat, we've had a lot of crew changes, the kits changed, the way we do training has changed.

"So yeah, pretty much everything has changed over the years apart from the job we do, the actual role we carry out is the same, saving lives at sea."

Nigel Budden has been a lifeboat operations manager at the station for the last five years.

Prior to that the 51-year-old was a volunteer for eight years.

He said: "Being a volunteer is a massive commitment. Ideally, we'd like people who are available during the day and for that they would have to work on the Island.

"However, if someone does shift work then that is something we could have a talk about."

The Sheerness crew is looking for volunteers between 17 and 46 who live and work within 12 minutes of Sheerness docks.

They must be physically fit and able to pass an eye test but it is not a requirement to have any sort of seafaring background.

Paul said: "We'd like to take on a few more trainee volunteers who are in a situation where they would stay on the crew for quite a few years.

"There's a lot of training involved and it takes probably a good year before they're going to be safe on the boat and respond to a pager on their own.

"It's quite an involved training process so you'd like to think when we take someone on they would like to stay with the crew, enjoy themselves and carry on with us for a number of years.

"On the face of it, a lot of people think it's quite exciting and it's a good thing to do, which it can be, but it's also quite onerous in terms of the amount of time you have to spend on pager, and also time involved in training.

"So there's two sides to it but just give us a shout, read about the position and come and have a chat about it."

To register your interest in becoming an RNLI volunteer at the Sheerness station call the boathouse on 01795 664868 or email sheerness@rnli.org.uk