The first official RNLI takeover came in 1860. The Coutts had been renamed Angela and Hannah by then, but local boatmen had lost faith in her after rough-weather trials went badly. At a meeting of the RNLI committee on 2 February 1860, management of the Margate boat was transferred to the institution. The Angela and Hannah was sent to Forrestt of Limehouse for a complete refit at a cost of around £250, then carried home free of charge by the South Eastern Railway. Trials under oar and sail on 10 October 1860 finally won over the local crew. In 1866 she was replaced by a new 34-foot lifeboat funded by the Quiver Lifeboat Fund - a donation of £1,878 from subscribers to The Quiver magazine, channelled through the editor, the Rev. Thomas Teignmouth Shore. Fifteen thousand people watched the new boat named Quiver No. 1 on 7 August 1866 by Mrs Bateman, wife of the vicar of Margate. Between 1866 and 1883 the Quiver No. 1 was launched 34 times and saved 70 lives.

Launching a Victorian lifeboat was its own ordeal. Margate's boat sat on a carriage at the stone pier, and horses had to drag it down to the sea before the crew could even start rowing. On more than one occasion the horses refused to face the waves; on 4 February 1898 a heavy sea picked eight launching horses off their feet, throwing them around, with some pulled under the launching carriage. Four of the horses died. The system was eventually phased out. Construction of a new boathouse and slipway was completed on 21 March 1925 to accommodate a 45-foot Watson motor lifeboat - the Lord Southborough, which had just come from exhibition at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. On her way to Margate she collided with a shrimping boat at Gravesend that ultimately sank; her first official service was rescuing that boat's two crewmen.

During the Second World War, Coxswain Edward Drake Parker took the Lord Southborough to the Dunkirk beaches in May 1940. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his work there. The Thanks of the Institution Inscribed on Vellum went to ten members of his crew, names worth recording for what they did: Thomas D. Harman, Second Coxswain; Henry Parker, Bowman; Edward J. Jordan, Motor Mechanic; William B. Mackie, Assistant Motor Mechanic; Dennis Price, Signalman; John Letley, Alfred Morris, Arthur Ladd, Edward E. Parker, and William Hopper, crew. After Dunkirk the Margate station became one of the busiest lifeboat stations of the Battle of Britain, pulling downed aircrew out of the Channel. In 1951 the Lord Southborough was retired; a new 46-foot 9-inch Watson named North Foreland (Civil Service No. 11) arrived on 17 May. She now sits preserved at Chatham Historic Dockyard.

On 11 January 1978 the same storm that destroyed Herne Bay Pier washed away most of Margate's iron jetty, leaving the boathouse and slipway cut off from shore. The North Foreland was trapped inside. Royal Air Force helicopters airlifted crew members onto the marooned boathouse so they could launch her - a rescue operation conducted in order to mount future rescue operations. The North Foreland was taken into Margate Harbour and eventually transferred to Ramsgate. Work on a new lifeboat station began that March and was complete by August. The Silver Jubilee arrived in November 1978; her naming ceremony on 21 November 1979 was performed by Princess Margaret, deputising for Princess Alexandra, who could not make the journey. In 1991 the Leonard Kent replaced her; Princess Alexandra finally got to name the boat she had missed twelve years earlier. The Leonard Kent served until December 2025, when she was retired as the last Mersey-class all-weather lifeboat in service. Today Margate operates two inshore lifeboats - the Colonel Stock and the Alfred Alexander Staden - launched from the same shoreline where eight horses once died trying to drag a wooden boat into the sea.