Beaumaris lifeboat station, The Green, Beaumaris

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Old photo of Beaumaris lifeboat crew at seaThe Royal National Lifeboat Institution established a station in Beaumaris in 1891, initially keeping the lifeboat moored off Beaumaris pier. In 1911 a boathouse and slipway were built at Tre-Castell Point.

In 1959 the crew received a Framed Letter of Thanks for help given to the crew of the tanker Essar I in stormy conditions. Moelfre lifeboat station was closer to the tanker’s position near Point Lynas but was already rescuing crew from MV Hindlea, which was dashed to pieces at Moelfre. The Beaumaris crew sailed 31 gruelling kilometres (19 miles) through the night to reach Essar I.

In 1967 the Beaumaris inshore lifeboat station was established, with a boathouse near the Promenade. An appeal on the BBC children’s television programme Blue Peter raised funds for the new D Class lifeboat. Another Blue Peter appeal funded a new B Class Atlantic 21 lifeboat in 1976.

The present boathouse was opened in May 2000, equipped with a new B-Class Atlantic 75 lifeboat called Blue Peter, again funded by the programme’s viewers. The current boat is an Atlantic 85, the RNLI’s most advanced inshore boat ever. It is capable of 35 knots. The station is one of the busiest in Wales, with 74 rescues in 2009, 83 in 2010 and 75 in 2011.

Beaumaris crews have received 12 awards, including six silver medals (see Footnotes). On 29 May 2012 the Beaumaris lifeboat Annette Mary Liddington carried the London Olympic torch from Beaumaris to Menai Bridge, the only occasion that the torch was taken on board a RNLI vessel during its journey around the UK.

Photo of the old Beaumaris lifeboat stationIn 2016 Lucy Zalot, a Beaumaris lifeboat volunteer, married Coastguard helicopter winchman Alec Aspden. The couple had met while rescuing a child who was drifting offshore on a dinghy.

The photos, courtesy of the RNLI, show the Beaumaris lifeboat crew at sea and the old lifeboat station with its slipway.

The lifeboat service in the UK is provided not by government but by the RNLI, a charity which relies on donations from the public. Since it was established in 1824, the RNLI is estimated to have saved c.140,000  lives. It employs some crew members but most, 40,000 in total, are volunteers who leave their work, families or beds whenever their lifeboat is needed.

Postcode: LL58 8BS     View Location Map

RNLI on HistoryPoints.org

RNLI website

FOOTNOTES: More Beaumaris rescues

  • 1830 - Silver Medal for David Griffiths for rescuing more than 40 people from a ship carrying emigrants which was wrecked off the Llŷn Peninsula.
  • 1831 - Silver Medals and Silver Boats for William Lewis Walker and Ralph Williamson for rescuing 22 from the passenger steamer Rothsay Castle, wrecked at Penmon with the loss of more than 120 lives.
  • 1854 – Silver Medal for Thomas Price for rescuing three men from the smack Two Brothers. He and his crew battled almost four hours to reach the wreck, just 1.5km from the shore.
  • 1976 –  The Thanks of the Institution Inscribed on Vellum to helmsman John Charles Askew for rescuring two people from the yacht Tantivy.
  • 1978 – The Thanks of the Institution Inscribed on Vellum to helmsman David Jones for saving the yacht Rosskop.
  • 1982 - Bronze Medal for coxswain David Gallichan for rescuing two men from the fishing boat Wygyr in gales and a blizzard.
  • 1998 - Framed Letter of Thanks to crew member Martin Broughton for aiding the grounded yacht Moon Storm in winds gusting to force 12.
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