Qualla: Newport Lifeboat Station

Newport Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 27 May 1884 the streets of Newport in Pembrokeshire were draped in flags, and a large crowd had assembled. The town's brass band led a procession from the cross at the village centre. Members of the Foresters, the Ivorites, and the Odd Fellows marched in their society regalia. The mayor walked behind. The Reverend James Jenkins offered prayers. At the rear came the lifeboat crew in blue jerseys and red caps, and at the very rear, on a wheeled carriage drawn through the streets, was the reason for all of it: a brand-new 37-foot self-righting Pulling and Sailing lifeboat, twelve oars and two sails, freshly tested on the Limehouse canal in London and now arriving by road to its new home. They named her Clevedon. She would save lives at sea for exactly ten years, and then the RNLI would abolish her station with a single line in a minute book.

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Newport Lifeboat Station: Before the Station

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution was founded in 1824 as the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, renamed in 1854, and has awarded silver medals for gallantry at sea throughout its history. Newport had no lifeboat station before 1884, but ...

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Newport Lifeboat Station: The Procession and the Lifeboat

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The lifeboat house at Cwm Dewi, a cove in Parrog at the mouth of the River Nevern, cost £404 8s 6d to construct. On the morning of 27 May 1884 the procession set out first not for the cove but for Llwyngwair, the home of James B. Bowen, president of the Newport branch of the RNLI...

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Newport Lifeboat Station: The Reliance Rescue

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

At three in the morning on 8 October 1889, the Clevedon was launched into a strong west-northwest gale. The Wexford brigantine Reliance was in trouble. She had been bound for Newport in Monmouthshire - the larger Newport in south Wales, often confused with this one - but two days...

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Newport Lifeboat Station: The One-Line Abolition

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Clevedon and her crew did not see many more services. Newport's lifeboat station, as it turned out, had been built at a moment when steam was beginning to replace sail on the Welsh coast, and the type of small coastal trader that ran aground in Carmarthen Bay was disappearing...

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Newport Lifeboat Station: What Remains

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Pembrokeshire coast did not stop being dangerous. The nearest active lifeboat station today is at Fishguard, seven miles west, where a Tamar-class all-weather lifeboat now answers the calls that the Clevedon once would have. Newport's old boathouse at Parrog is a quiet inlet ...

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