Qualla: Beaumaris Lifeboat Station

Beaumaris Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The first proper rescue from Beaumaris ended with the lifeboat upside down. On 7 November 1890, in a Force-something gale and a confused sea on the Lavan Sands, the lifeboat Christopher Brown took the crew of five off the dismasted schooner Undaunted of Plymouth. A wave then caught the boat broadside and capsized it. The self-righting design did what it was meant to do, the boat came up the right way again, the crew and the rescued men climbed back aboard, and the whole party was beached at Aber on the mainland. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution founded the Beaumaris station on the strength of that performance the following year. The lifeboats have not stopped working the strait since.

Beaumaris Lifeboat Station: The Menai Strait

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Beaumaris sits at the eastern entrance to the Menai Strait, the narrow water that separates Anglesey from the Welsh mainland. The strait looks tidy on a chart and behaves like nothing of the sort on the water. The tides run hard. The Lavan Sands, just east of Penmon, dry to vast ...

Beaumaris Lifeboat Station: Blue Peter Lifeboats

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Children of a certain generation will remember the moment. In 1966 the BBC television programme Blue Peter, presented for children every Thursday afternoon, launched an appeal asking viewers to collect paperback books for sale. The response was so enormous that the appeal funded ...

Beaumaris Lifeboat Station: Frederick Kitchen and King George

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The first motor lifeboat at Beaumaris had an unusual delivery. Completed in August 1913 by Thames Ironworks with a 60-horsepower Tylor petrol engine, the 43-foot boat was first taken to Cowes Regatta on the Isle of Wight, where King George V went out on her for a short trip. She ...

Beaumaris Lifeboat Station: The Boathouse and the Modern Station

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The new Beaumaris boathouse, pier, and deep-water roller slipway near Tre-Castell Point cost £4,500 in 1913 money. Frederick Kitchen and her successors launched from there for most of the twentieth century. By 1991, with larger and more capable boats stationed elsewhere along the...

Beaumaris Lifeboat Station: Volunteers, Mostly

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The crews are volunteers. They have been volunteers since 1891. They are pagers ringing in the middle of family meals, drills on dark Tuesday evenings, training courses in Poole, and the long quiet days when no call comes. The Menai Strait still produces casualties, more often th...