Qualla: Hope Cove Lifeboat Station

Hope Cove Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Dibb, CC BY-SA 2.0. Eight horses pulled the Alexandra through Kingsbridge on her first day, a thirty-five-foot pulling and sailing lifeboat draped in flags, with the streets given over to a general holiday in her honour. It was 13 June 1878. The Freemasons of England had paid for her - four thousand pounds split between Hope Cove and Clacton - to thank the Prince of Wales for coming home safely from India. The villagers of Hope Cove waited on the beach for their gift. Over the next fifty-two years their four lifeboats, all named Alexandra after the Princess of Wales, would launch just ten times. They would save sixty-four lives.

Image: Michael Dibb | CC BY-SA 2.0

Hope Cove Lifeboat Station: A Gift from the Brotherhood

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. It started with a visit from the RNLI Inspector of Lifeboats in early 1877. Local residents in this little fishing hamlet a few miles west of Salcombe had asked for a station, and on 1 March the committee in London agreed. The funding came that September, in a way the RNLI had no...

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hope Cove Lifeboat Station: Ten Launches in Fifty Years

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Lew747, CC BY-SA 3.0. The work was sparing but heavy. In fifty-two years the four successive Alexandras launched on service only ten times. Each replacement bore the same name - the Freemasons had asked it. The first Alexandra was condemned as unfit in 1887 and replaced with a slightly smaller boat, O...

Image: en:User:Lew747 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hope Cove Lifeboat Station: The Blesk

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MichaelMaggs, CC BY-SA 3.0. The one rescue that everyone remembers came on the night of 1 December 1896. The Russian steamship Blesk - among the first vessels in the world built specifically to carry crude oil - was running from Odessa to Hamburg with 3,180 tons of petroleum in her tanks. Her captain mistoo...

Image: MichaelMaggs | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hope Cove Lifeboat Station: Albert Medals

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger Cornfoot, CC BY-SA 2.0. Eleven years later two Hope Cove men received the Albert Medal for Lifesaving - Isaac Jarvis and Jack Argent, in 1907, for actions during the rescue of the Elder Dempster steamer Jebba, which had run ashore at Bolt Tail. The Jebba carried more than 150 people. The Hope Cove and S...

Image: Roger Cornfoot | CC BY-SA 2.0

Hope Cove Lifeboat Station: Independent and Still There

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger A Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. Hope Cove went sixty-two years without a lifeboat after the 1930 closure. In 1992 the villagers - tired of waiting for the Salcombe boat to make the long pull around Bolt Tail every time - re-established their own independent service, outside the RNLI but answering the same emerg...

Image: Roger A Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0