Broadstairs the 1930s by A.H. Simison (the photographic chemist) entitled "Ramsgate (The Kent Coast at its best) Pictorially Presented", describes Broadstairs town as having approached modernisation and urban development "always with a consistent policy of retaining those characteristics for which it has for so long been renowned". The town has retained many aspects of historical interest, besides its maritime history. Amongst these is its notable religious history, evoked by places such as the Shrine of Our Lady, Bradstowe. Lifeboats arrived in Broadstairs in 1851. News of the loss of the Irish packet with 250 lives, on the sands off Margate on
Broadstairs 6 April 1850, may have been the prompt that led old Thomas White to present one of his lifeboats to his home town of Broadstairs that summer. The lifeboat saw its first use on 6 March 1851, when the brig "Mary White" became trapped on the Goodwin Sands during a severe gale blowing from the north. A ballad was written to celebrate the occasion, "Song of the Mary White". Solomon Holbourn of Broadstairs, coxswain of the "Mary White", had an aunt, Sophia, who married William Stevenson at Folkestone in 1813. Their eldest son, also William, became a mariner and boatman