Qualla: Falmouth Lifeboat Station

Falmouth Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 14 February 1838, Lieutenant William Field of the Royal Navy rowed into a Cornish gale and rescued two people from a barge. He did this before there was a lifeboat station in Falmouth, before the Royal National Lifeboat Institution had become what it is now, when saving lives at sea was a matter of who happened to be willing to put a boat in the water. He was awarded a medal. Two more gold medals had already been earned in Falmouth waters: William Broad in January 1828 for saving eleven from a vessel aground in a gale, and Lieutenant William James in 1830 for swimming through surf with a rope to rescue ten. The pattern of Falmouth and its lifeboat was set thirty years before the station opened.

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Falmouth Lifeboat Station: City of Gloucester, 1867

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DS Pugh, CC BY-SA 2.0. A committee was formed in 1865 to ask the RNLI for a Falmouth lifeboat. The institution agreed. A wooden boathouse went up near the new commercial docks at a cost of £158, and a 10-oared pulling lifeboat was built in London for £280. It was funded entirely by donations raised in ...

Image: DS Pugh | CC BY-SA 2.0

Falmouth Lifeboat Station: The Storm That Never Ended

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geof Sheppard, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 19 January 1940, six days after she was officially christened, the lifeboat Crawford and Constance Conybeare went to sea in a gale. The SS Kirkpool, a West Hartlepool steamer, was dragging her anchors and being driven onto the coast. The lifeboat managed to get a line between ...

Image: Geof Sheppard | CC BY-SA 4.0

Falmouth Lifeboat Station: Fastnet, 1979

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geof Sheppard, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 13 August 1979 an unforecast depression deepened explosively over the Western Approaches. The wind gusted to hurricane force 12. There were 303 yachts competing in the Fastnet Race when the storm hit. Fifteen sailors died. The rescue operation became the largest peacetime mari...

Image: Geof Sheppard | CC BY-SA 4.0

Falmouth Lifeboat Station: Boats Through the Decades

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photo by Scott Snowling, CC BY-SA 3.0. The station's fleet history reads like a tour of British lifeboat design. The first motor lifeboat was the Watson-class The Brothers, transferred from Penlee in 1931. The B.A.S.P. arrived in 1934 from Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight; she is now preserved at the RNLI historic collec...

Image: Photo by Scott Snowling | CC BY-SA 3.0

Falmouth Lifeboat Station: Two Boats, One Pontoon

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geof Sheppard, CC BY-SA 4.0. The current station, built in 1993, sits in Tinners Walk close to Falmouth Docks. It is shared with HM Coastguard, an arrangement that gives the rescue services covered storage, a fundraising shop and direct access to the water. The all-weather lifeboat moors at a pontoon alongsi...

Image: Geof Sheppard | CC BY-SA 4.0