Sussex fundraiser Joan, 105, celebrates Lifeboat centenary

WATCH: Tom Saviddes reports on the centenary ceremony. He spoke to Dee Day White and fundraiser Joan Willett.

105 year-old Joan Willett, who found fame and raised a fortune last year for the British Heart Foundation, was a guest of honour at another 100th birthday in Sussex.

The South's first lifeboat with an engine, the Priscilla Mac Bean, was painstakingly restored by volunteers in Hastings, after she was found rotting in a field in 2013.

She now proudly greets visitors at the entrance to Old Town.

She was Eastbourne’s first ever motor lifeboat in the 1920s, and was sister boat to the Mary Stanford, the Rye lifeboat which was tragically lost with all hands on November 15, 1928. Seventeen crew members died.

A procession walked from Hastings Lifeboat station on the Stade and along the High Street to the lifeboat’s dry dock in Old London Road.