Qualla: St Agnes Lifeboat Station, Isles of Scilly

St Agnes Lifeboat Station, Isles of Scilly: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrewrabbott, CC BY-SA 4.0. On the night of 13 December 1907, the seven-masted American schooner Thomas W. Lawson was in trouble off Annet. She was the only such ship ever built, a 475-foot iron-hulled cargo vessel with seven steel masts, and she was struggling in a westerly gale off the most dangerous water in southern England. The St Agnes Lifeboat went out and put a man aboard her - William Thomas Hicks, a local pilot - to try to guide her into shelter. He didn't make it. The Lawson foundered at Minmanueth Rock and sank, taking Hicks and sixteen of her own crew down with her. The next morning, William's son Frederick Charles Hicks, twenty-two years old, put off in the local pilot gig Slippen with seven other men. They rowed an open boat through the wreckage of the gale and pulled the schooner's captain and engineer alive off Hellweather Rock. The British awarded Frederick Hicks the RNLI Silver Medal for Bravery. The American government sent him a gold watch and gave gold medals to all eight men in the Slippen. He had buried his father the same week.

Image: Andrewrabbott | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Agnes Lifeboat Station, Isles of Scilly: The Station and the Slipway

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrewrabbott, CC BY-SA 4.0. St Agnes Lifeboat Station opened in 1891 - one of the small, all-volunteer outposts that the Royal National Lifeboat Institution maintained around the most dangerous coasts of Britain. The first station had a single slipway. In 1904 the RNLI rebuilt it to a much more ambitious sp...

Image: Andrewrabbott | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Agnes Lifeboat Station, Isles of Scilly: The Lawson, the Father, the Son

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrewrabbott, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Thomas W. Lawson was a one-of-a-kind ship. Built in 1902 in Quincy, Massachusetts, she was the only seven-masted schooner ever launched, an attempt to compete with steam by using massive sail area and a tiny crew on a steel hull. She had a difficult sailing reputation - she r...

Image: Andrewrabbott | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Agnes Lifeboat Station, Isles of Scilly: The Gold Watch and the Closing

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrewrabbott, CC BY-SA 4.0. The British recognition came quickly. Frederick Charles Hicks received the RNLI Silver Medal for Bravery. The American recognition was more extravagant. The United States government, whose ship had been lost, struck gold medals for every one of the eight men in the Slippen and pr...

Image: Andrewrabbott | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Agnes Lifeboat Station, Isles of Scilly: What the Slipway Still Says

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Knell, CC BY-SA 2.0. Walk down the lane in Lower Town today and you will find the slipway and the boathouse still standing, the Jarrah wood weathered silver but solid, the rails gone, the trolley gone, the lifeboat gone. The structure is part of the conservation area now, protected for what it repres...

Image: Mike Knell | CC BY-SA 2.0