Old fishing boats and a huge, rusted anchor dating to the Napoleonic Wars are among the maritime attractions on the Stade, in Hastings, England. (Doug English/QMI Agency)

ENGLAND - There's something about the sea that puts the wind in my sails.

Start with the sight of lobster pots stacked beside doughty little fishing boats drawn up on the shingle beach until the next tide. Add the sound of seabirds squabbling over scraps, the smell of salt and seaweed.

Throw in towering black net sheds, a lifeboat station, and a gripping video of a rescue and you'll understand why I was so taken with the Stade, in the southeast England city of Hastings.

"Stade'' is Anglo-Saxon for landing place. There's no natural harbour, so the 24 boats based there are launched from the stony beach.

Beatrice Rapley, Stade education officer, told me some of the fishers can trace their families back to having fished from there 900 years ago.

The centrepiece is the Fishermen's Museum, once a church and still possessing a stained glass window.

Its interior is dominated by the Enterprise, one of the last sailing luggers built in Hastings.

But it's the things so easily overlooked that tug at your heart, such as a book of local fishers lost at sea. Each gets a page, often with photos.

Don't leave without watching a video with the deceptively simple title, A Fisherman's Tale.

Shot by a local photographer just a few hundred metres from the museum, it's of a fishing boat trying to reach the beach during a storm.

The wave-battered vessel took on water and its engine cut out. The crew of another boat attached a line to it, but it broke. Volunteers from the lifeboat station arrived.

A second line was attached. This one held and the crippled boat landed safely. It's an incredible piece of footage.

Beside the museum are boats no longer in service, tall, narrow tar-coated net sheds now housing shops, a huge, rusted anchor dating to the Napoleonic Wars, and a stand made from the bow of a fishing boat where fish rolls are sold in summer.

The lifeboat station, open to the public, houses a powerful, all-weather vessel that works the English Channel, and an inflatable for inshore work like the rescue depicted in that video.

Free guided walks of the Stade are offered from spring through October. For details, visit www.hastings.gov.uk/stade_education/walks.aspx.

Fishmongers do a brisk business around the Stade. Fish 'n chip shops are plentiful. I was told Maggie's is the best. It opens at 5 a.m. and is usually packed for lunch.

Other maritime attractions include the Shipwreck & Coastal Heritage Centre, Smugglers Adventure and the Blue Reef Aquarium.

Across from the museum is the East Hill Railway lift, the steepest funicular in the U.K. It goes to the top of the sandstone cliffs and Hastings Country Park, where the coastal views are said to be grand and where there's a nature reserve with guided ranger walks. The lift, built in 1902, has new carriages with the original Edwardian design.

The Stade is in Hastings' Old Town, where the TV series Foyle's War, shown on TVO, is filmed.

Tip: Park in the municipal lot behind the museum and you can walk to almost everything.

Hastings also proved to be a good base for exploring southeast England. Visit www.visitengland.org for suggestions.

My wife and I reached it from London on one of the commuter-type trains that run dozens of times a day, then used a rental car.

Hastings was a fashionable seaside resort from Victorian times until the Second World War, and still has lots of hotels and B&Bs. We rented a comfortable, one-bedroom apartment owned by two retired Canadian teachers. It was an easy walk to downtown pubs, restaurants, supermarkets, the visitor information centre, and the sea. For details, visit www.simplyspoken.com.

For more tourism information, www.visit1066country.com

Doug English can be reached at denglishtravel@gmail.com or c/o London Free Press, P.O. Box 2280, London, Ont. N6A 4G1.