The committee minutes for 6 October 1881 record the decision plainly: a lifeboat was 'thought desirable' in St Bride's Bay, the broad open bite of coast that arcs between St David's Head in the north and Skomer Island in the south. The boat itself, a 33-foot self-righting craft with sails and ten oars, came from another station and was named Friend, in accordance with the wishes of a Mr C. J. Corker of Ramsgate, who had left the RNLI a legacy specifically for the purchase. Corker never saw the Pembrokeshire coast. His money got Little Haven its first boat, and the village its first formal connection to the national rescue network. The boat was transported on the Great Western Railway as far as Milford Haven and rowed the rest of the way along the coast by its first crew.

By 1903 the original Friend was due for replacement. A 40-foot pulling-and-sailing lifeboat called William Roberts (ON 505) was sent down and a proper boathouse with a slipway was built at Goultrop for £1,600. The new arrangement lasted only 18 years. On 18 March 1921 the RNLI committee in London resolved to close Little Haven Lifeboat Station. The reasons given were the reduced volume of distress calls and the fact that adequate cover for St Bride's Bay was now available from St Davids to the north and Angle to the south, both of whose stations had motor-powered lifeboats by then. William Roberts was withdrawn to the relief fleet. The 1903 boathouse at Goultrop has since been completely demolished, leaving no trace of where the boat once launched.

In 1964 the RNLI made a decision that would eventually revive Little Haven. As more people took to the water for leisure, the institution placed 25 small fast inshore lifeboats around the British coast, designed to be launched by just two or three crew, and capable of getting to a casualty quickly inside enclosed bays. The economics that had closed Little Haven in 1921 were reversed: where a full-size lifeboat needed a slipway, a boathouse, and a large permanent crew, an inshore boat needed only a trailer, a tractor, and a handful of volunteers. In May 1967 Little Haven reopened under its present name, Little and Broad Haven Lifeboat Station. The new boathouse was built by the Rural District Council. Inshore lifeboat D-124 was placed on service. The current boat, the D-class Swaine-Legane (D-899), came on station in February 2025.

The 2017 New Year Honours list included a name from this small Welsh cove: Vivienne Grey, crew member at Little and Broad Haven for 17 years, awarded the MBE for services to the RNLI and Maritime Safety. The citation noted that during those 17 years she had been involved in 120 callouts and was directly responsible for saving eight lives. The number is worth pausing over. Eight lives is not a statistical abstraction. It is eight specific people, mostly summer visitors who got into trouble in surf or current and would have drowned without an inshore lifeboat showing up minutes later. The station today exists in a dedicated boathouse built in 1992 with crew facilities, a kit drying room, and a small souvenir outlet attached, because the volunteers who run a lifeboat have to also raise the money that keeps it floating. The pager still goes off. The volunteers still come.