Qualla: Pwllheli Lifeboat Station

Pwllheli Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lewis Clarke, CC BY-SA 2.0. The story of how Pwllheli got its lifeboat station begins with a man whose invention nobody really wanted. Henry Thomas Richardson, a Pwllheli resident in the 1870s, had patented with his father a peculiar craft called the Tubular lifeboat: a flat deck mounted between two buoyant tubes, essentially a catamaran or raft with the deck only eleven inches above the water. When he died in 1878 he left the Royal National Lifeboat Institution ten thousand pounds, a vast sum at the time, on the condition that two of his Tubular lifeboats be built and that a station be opened in his home town. The RNLI took the money, built the boats, opened the station, and almost immediately discovered that the Tubular was unworkable.

Image: Lewis Clarke | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pwllheli Lifeboat Station: The Tubular Disaster

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. It took years of correspondence with the Pwllheli town clerk before the RNLI agreed in August 1886 to open the station Richardson's bequest had paid for. The boathouse went up at Gimblet Rock to designs by RNLI architect W. T. Douglas, built by the contractor E. Williams for the ...

Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pwllheli Lifeboat Station: Margaret Platt to Smith Brothers

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Tubular's replacement, the Margaret Platt of Stalybridge, arrived in November 1892. She was a 38-foot 12-oared self-righting pulling-and-sailing lifeboat built by McAlister and Sons for £423. In her six years at Pwllheli she was launched eight times and rescued twenty-eight p...

Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pwllheli Lifeboat Station: The Coxswain Remembered in a Boat's Name

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Harrison, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 20 September 2015, Pwllheli lifeboat was called out to a grounded yacht. Long-serving coxswain Robert Wright collapsed at the moment the lifeboat reached the casualty and died shortly afterwards of a suspected heart attack. Wright had served the station for decades; the loss w...

Image: Bill Harrison | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pwllheli Lifeboat Station: Two Ferraris and a New Boathouse

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Merrett from Daventry, England, CC BY 2.0. In 2015 the RNLI received what remains the most valuable bequest in its history. The businessman Richard Colton left his estate to the institution, including two extraordinary Ferraris: a silver 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 and a red 1960 Ferrari 250 GT SWB. Both were sent to auction. ...

Image: David Merrett from Daventry, England | CC BY 2.0