Qualla: Alderney Lifeboat Station

Alderney Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 19 October 1865, four years before Alderney had a lifeboat at all, a French ship called the Carioca - bound from Le Havre for Rio de Janeiro - struck the rocks at Point d'Else. Gunner James Moore of the Royal Artillery's Coast Brigade went out anyway, with two colleagues, and pulled all seventeen of the crew off the wreck. The RNLI gave him its Silver Medal. It also took notice. Four years later, the institution dispatched a 33-foot self-righting boat by rail to Weymouth and then by tow behind HMS Seamew to a small island in the middle of one of the most dangerous tidal corridors in northern Europe. Alderney has had a lifeboat ever since - with one long, awkward gap in the middle.

Alderney Lifeboat Station: A Boat Through the Streets of Saint Anne

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When the original lifeboat arrived in October 1869, Alderney treated it as the civic event it was. The day after she landed, the boat was hauled in formal procession through the streets of Saint Anne to the pier - followed by the lifeboat committee, the Independent Order of Odd F...

Alderney Lifeboat Station: A Hundred Years Later

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It took exactly a century to bring the station back. In 1984, the RNLI re-established Alderney station at Braye Harbour, where the 3,000-foot Victorian breakwater still gave at least partial shelter against the swells driven through the Swinge. From 1986 the station ran the 44-fo...

Alderney Lifeboat Station: Fort Clonque, August 2002

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 9 August 2002, a thirteen-year-old girl was swept off the causeway to Fort Clonque. Her sixteen-year-old friend went in after her. A passer-by went in after them both. By the time the inshore lifeboat reached the scene, three people were in the water in a stretch of the coast ...

Alderney Lifeboat Station: What the Station Runs Now

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Roy Barker I served Alderney for nearly thirty years before retiring in September 2024. Her replacement, the 14-29 Inner Wheel II, is a slightly newer Trent-class boat built in 2000 - she had previously worked out of a station in South Wales. The inshore lifeboat was withdrawn in...