Qualla: Criccieth Lifeboat Station

Criccieth Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Hughes, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 3 September 1951, a school master and four boys watched the Pwllheli lifeboat sit at its mooring while their dinghy capsized half a mile offshore. The lifeboat could not leave. Silt had closed the harbour entrance at dead low water, and by the time the tide rose the men in the dinghy - the Dorothy - were dead. Five people drowned within a few minutes' run of a rescue craft that was physically trapped. The RNLI's response was to reopen Criccieth, a small carriage-launched boat that could be pushed straight off the beach without a harbour at all. The station had been closed for twenty-two years. The five deaths brought it back.

Image: Alan Hughes | CC BY-SA 2.0

Criccieth Lifeboat Station: Portmadoc, 1853

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Harrison, CC BY-SA 2.0. The station had a strange beginning. It opened in 1853 as Portmadoc Lifeboat Station, set up by the Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Royal Benevolent Society - a separate charity that handed over its lifeboats to the RNLI a year later. The original boathouse stood on Lôn Felin...

Image: Bill Harrison | CC BY-SA 2.0

Criccieth Lifeboat Station: Pulling and Sailing

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gareth James, CC BY-SA 2.0. The early Criccieth boats were 'pulling and sailing' - rowed when calm, sailed when wind allowed - and they took a brutal beating. The Phillip Woolley was wrecked on service in October 1910. The Reserve Fleet replacement was damaged on another call within a month, and a second re...

Image: Gareth James | CC BY-SA 2.0

Criccieth Lifeboat Station: Closed, 1931

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Fryer, CC BY-SA 2.0. By 1931 the RNLI's strategic logic argued that motor lifeboats based at Pwllheli could cover the whole bay including Criccieth. The station closed, the boathouse was repurposed, and for two decades there was no dedicated rescue craft at Criccieth. The 1951 Dorothy disaster proved...

Image: Alan Fryer | CC BY-SA 2.0

Criccieth Lifeboat Station: Inshore Lifeboats

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ken Bagnall, CC BY-SA 2.0. In the 1960s the RNLI began rolling out a new kind of craft: fast inshore lifeboats - rigid-hulled inflatables built for the close-in work where most coastal casualties actually happened. Criccieth got an evaluation boat in 1967 and the experiment was successful enough that the o...

Image: Ken Bagnall | CC BY-SA 2.0

Criccieth Lifeboat Station: Vellum for John Owen

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 1 September 1977 the Criccieth ILB went out into rough seas and a strong wind to a yacht aground on Portmadoc Bar. Helmsman John Owen and crew Robert Williams and Kenneth Roberts brought all four people off the yacht alive. The RNLI's response was to present each of them with ...

Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0