Perhaps, in part, it’s the collective civilian effort at the heart of Operation Dynamo that ensures the WWII mission continues to speak to Ramsgate’s sense of community 86 years on from the feat.
“It’s that feeling of what we can achieve if we all come together,” says Rebekah Smith, Ramsgate Town Promoter, and member of the Operation Dynamo commemoration organising team.
The wartime David and Goliath story saw around 850 private vessels - leisure cruisers, steamers, barges, fishing boats - commandeered as part of a mission to rescue Allied troops from the shores of Dunkirk. Using Ramsgate as their base, this fleet of Little Ships, as they were called, were pulled into the war effort for their ability to navigate shallow waters and get close to shore to taxi troops from the beach to larger ships waiting further out.
Although a retreat, Operation Dynamo marked a turning point in the war. More than 338,000 troops (and the bulk of Britain's army) were rescued in nine days. Around 43,000 troops landed in Ramsgate, with more soldiers disembarking at Dover, Operation Dynamo’s Navy command centre.
“It is a magical story,” Rebekah continues. “Even the government and the Navy commanding officers thought they might just be able to rescue a thousand or two. To achieve what they did, it’s pretty impressive. There’s something romantic about it.”
Since around 1965, the Little Ships have returned to Ramsgate to mark Operation Dynamo’s anniversary, making the pilgrimage to Dunkirk every five years. Last year, to mark the 85th anniversary, 65 Little Ships returned to Ramsgate to make the journey to Dunkirk and back, with the town putting on a commemorative cultural programme alongside this.
Bucking the trend of having a quiet post-Dunkik pilgrimage anniversary, Ramsgate Town Council is putting on a four-day festival to mark the 86th anniversary, taking place this Bank Holiday.
Explaining why the council has decided to go big once again, Rebekah says: “[It’s] because of the success of last year, and how welcome [the Little Ships] felt. We ended up having a record amount [of Little Ships] last year and we’ve got a record amount returning.”
She goes on to say: “It's always an emotional feeling when we've got the Little Ships here. And of course, now that there are no surviving veterans, it's the boats that are the living history.”
This year, 25 Little Ships will return to Ramsgate. While there won’t be a waving the boats off or into the harbour, there will be a “party atmosphere” for the four days, with a fair, children’s activities, a handmade market, the opportunity to board the boats, live music every night and a parade on the Sunday. The parade - a silent procession led by the Queen’s Regiment and illuminated batons - is designed to evoke the idea of weary, marching soldiers.
“We like to remind people of why we're doing this; it's these civilians and skippers that actually sailed them over [to Dunkirk] and took their lives in their hands,” says Rebekah.
In addition to the festivities, for six weeks the harbour will be surrounded by 338 silhouettes, made from recycled road signs, to represent the troops saved from Dunkirk in 1940.
Created by Standing with Giants, a charity that creates large-scale outdoor remembrance art, it’s the charity’s largest installation outside of Portsmouth.
A handful of permanent silhouettes will also dot the harbour, telling Ramsgate’s wider Operation Dynamo story. This includes the evacuation of more than 3,000 children, who were sent away as the war loomed closer Ramsgate, as the thousands of rescued soldiers were making their onward journey.
“It was all going off in those 10 days,” says Rebekah.
Photojournalist Mike Goldwater says Ramsgate’s relationship to Operation Dynamo is a profound one. The Broadstairs-based photographer documented the 85th anniversary activities in his latest book, Dunkirk Little Ships 2025.
“There is a strong connection between the town and Operation Dynamo,” he explains. “Many of those boats left Ramsgate and many of them returned to Ramsgate, and many of the rescued troops did the Tommy Trail, from the harbour to the train station.”
Along with photographers David Babian and Mark Stanford, Mike captured last year’s commemorations in his book, documenting every returning boat.
“Every boat that went has got a story,” Mike says. “And what I tried to do in [the book] was to represent the gathering of the Little Ships and the crossing the channel and being received by the French, and to bring in a few of the stories of some of the boats that took part and the people who took part in the rescue.”
Initially, Mike planned to take a portrait of every boat owner and skipper with their boat, but soon recognised that wouldn’t be possible with the time he had while realising he wanted to do more than document the anniversary.
“The more you get into it, the more profound the whole thing becomes. The achievement of rescuing so many people off the beaches…” he says, trailing off.
“A lot of people died, it was a free-for-all, getting to the beaches. When you read the accounts of some of the soldiers… so many of their friends didn't, for completely random reasons.”
Mike travelled to Dunkirk as part of the flotilla, forced to turn back two days later - or risk more than two weeks stuck in France - due to bad weather. He says that it wasn’t the retracing the soldiers’ route that made him reflect on their original journey, rather it was reading accounts of the mariners, the rescued and the ones that didn’t make it, some of which have been included in the book.
More than a documentation of anniversary celebrations, Dunkirk Little Ships 2025 pulls together stories of individual boats and soldiers and accounts of unsung heroism that Operation Dynamo is littered with.
“I didn’t want to do something lightweight, it didn’t seem appropriate.” Mike says of the book. “But to put something together that had some history, and recognised some of the stories and reproduced some of those stories, meant it was more of a historical record than just a collection of snaps.”
The stories include that of Ron Tomlinson, a young ship’s engineer, who along with his brother Alan stole leisure cruiser Tom Tit to make 16 trips between Dunkirk Pier and ships waiting further out, rescuing up to 50 soldiers at a time.
Robert Hanna Bailie, a member of the 51st Highland Regiment, is remembered in the book. At just 21, the young soldier escaped from a German POW camp and headed for Dunkirk, only to have his two regiment mates he escaped with killed by German air raids on the beaches. He developed a shell shock that stayed with him for the rest of his life, and was evacuated to England suffering amnesia which didn’t lift for a further nine months.
There’s also the account of how pleasure cruiser HMT Watchful narrowly escaped obliteration from a German Stuka dive bomber (a plane), when skipper Alexander Harper Turner made the bold move to swing the ship directly into the Stuka’s path, resulting in the bomb exploding on the starboard side. HMT Watchful made three trips from Dunkirk and Ramsgate, rescuing 900 soldiers, and spent around four days ferrying soldiers from the beaches to warships, saving thousands more lives.
“Putting stuff like this in [the book] meant quite a lot,” Mike says. “I felt like the whole thing took on a life of its own; like I was the conduit and all these elements had to get in.”
Howard Brookes, Commodore of the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships, will return to Ramsgate on his Medina Class Motor Yacht, Maimonde, for this year’s anniversary. He made his first return to Dunkirk last year, a journey which he says was emotional.
“The emotions were somewhat overwhelming, really,” he recalls. “To be in the middle of a fleet of 90-year-old boats of all shapes and sizes, crossing the channel for Dunkirk - it was quite intense.”
At Dunkirk, the contingent attended commemorative services at the Allied war graves and on the beach. “It’s very moving,” Howard says. “It’s quite an emotional thing to be involved with.”
The retired engineer and banker from Sussex tells me his road into the Little Ships “happened by accident”.
Growing up with boats and sailing, with a keen yachtsman for a dad and a Navy Officer grandfather, Howard decided to buy a boat on retirement in 2018. While searching, he stumbled across the term gentleman’s motor yacht - “old wooden boats basically” - and “went down that rabbit hole” eventually coming across the boat Maimonde. Built in 1937 from teak, it was a high end luxury yacht for its time.
“[The 1930s] was a golden age for so many things - houses, cars, airplanes, trains - they were all beautiful,” Howard says.
Only vaguely aware of what the Dunkirk Little Ships were at the time, Howard found a postcard in a huge pile of “mostly useless” paperwork that came with the boat. Dated 1987, it was from a retired naval officer, saying he had served on the Maimonde in the Thames estuary in 1940.
“That was the first little seed that made me think, ‘perhaps I ought to start digging around and see if I can find anything else.’”
Further research connected Maimonde to Dunkirk, with the Association later confirming the boat was a Little Ship. The exact details of Maimonde’s role in Operation Dynamo are unknown. However, the navy retained the boat following the mission, in order to maintain the barrage balloons (tethered balloons used as ground defence) in the Thames Estuary.
Howard estimates there are around 110 boats in the association, and at least four times more people - “all sorts of different people”, he says. “I think that's one of the nice things. It's an incredibly broad cross section of society.
“A lot of people have been involved through their parents all through their adult life. In a number of cases, the vessel has passed from father to son or father to daughter.”
With the oldest Little Ship believed to be Thames sailing barge Greta, built in 1892, and many Little Ships built in the 1930s, Howard likens the upkeep of such a boat to the maintenance of a classic car.
“Thankfully, there are people who are prepared to fund the restoration because otherwise they'd be lost,” he says.
With the last Dunkirk survivors now gone, Howard has noticed that the focus of Dunkirk has turned to the boats “as the remaining link we have with what happened back in 1940”.
“We certainly feel a responsibility to keep the memory alive and commemorate what happened.”
Howard goes on to say that there are two sides of being part of the Operation Dynamo legacy.
“In some ways, we're just people who like boats and use our boats like any boat club. But, then there's this other side where there is the history and the connection with the Royal Navy, which is something we treasure.
“Also, as we get further away from WWII, I think fewer and fewer things get remembered and commemorated. We just want to keep the memory alive.”
Little Ships celebrations take place around Ramsgate harbour this weekend. For event details visit visitramsgate.co.uk. To book for a free tour of the Little Ships, visit ramsgatetunnels. Mike Goldwater’s Dunkirk Little Ships, visit mikegoldwater.com.
