Qualla: Saint Peter Port Lifeboat Station

Saint Peter Port Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter__Brown, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1803 the twelve members of the St Peter Port Douzaine, the local parish council, sat down to do something about the bodies washing up on Guernsey's rocks. They put 170 pounds toward a lifeboat from the famous builder Henry Greathead in South Shields, parked it at St Sampson, and that was the beginning. The boat rotted away. The reasoning that built it did not. More than two centuries and 1,500 launches later, the same impulse, that someone out there in the Channel might be drowning and someone here ought to do something about it, is what gets the all-weather lifeboat Spirit of Guernsey out of her shed at Saint Peter Port.

Image: Peter__Brown | CC BY-SA 2.0

Saint Peter Port Lifeboat Station: The Wreck That Started a Movement

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Acad Ronin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Greathead's first lifeboat did not last. After it rotted, the wreck of the schooner Boadicea reopened the wound. A public subscription run by Mr Gustavus Carrington and Captain Richard Peake raised 115 pounds, 19 shillings, and 10 pence in seven days. A new 28-foot self-righting ...

Image: Acad Ronin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Saint Peter Port Lifeboat Station: Victor Hugo's Lifejacket

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pymouss, CC BY-SA 4.0. Victor Hugo, in exile on Guernsey, did what artists in exile do: he thought about everything. In 1870, as a gesture to the Harbour Master Captain Abraham Martin, he presented his own design of a lifejacket and belt. Whether sailors actually wore it is unrecorded. That an exiled n...

Image: Pymouss | CC BY-SA 4.0

Saint Peter Port Lifeboat Station: Two Gold Medals and One That Cost a Life

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Acad Ronin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two RNLI Gold Medals, fourteen Silvers, and fifteen Bronzes sit in the records of the St Peter Port station, more honors than most lifeboat stations in the country can claim. Coxswain Hubert Ernest Petit took home gold in 1963; Michael John Scales took the second in 1982. The Nor...

Image: Acad Ronin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Saint Peter Port Lifeboat Station: 1,500 Calls and Counting

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Ellywa assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY 2.5. In 2020 the RNLI logged its 1,500th call-out from Guernsey. By that point the station had saved over 600 lives and brought 2,000 people safely back to shore. The current all-weather boat, the 17-04 Spirit of Guernsey, has been on station since 1997 and ranges across the Channel I...

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Ellywa assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY 2.5