Qualla: St Davids Lifeboat Station

St Davids Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pauline Eccles, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the night of 13 October 1910 the lifeboat Gem launched from St David's into Ramsey Sound and never came home complete. She struck The Bitches reef during a rescue and broke up in the tidal race. Coxswain John Stephens drowned. So did lifeboatmen Henry Rowlands and James Price. The papers concerning their deaths sit today at the Pembrokeshire Record Office under reference DX/93/11, a thin folder for a heavy thing. The station they served still exists, a few hundred yards from where Gem launched, and a lifeboat still answers the same call on the same water.

Image: Pauline Eccles | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Davids Lifeboat Station: A Surgeon's Letter

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Manchester Warrior, CC BY-SA 2.0. It started with a doctor who watched too many bodies wash up. On 5 November 1868 the RNLI committee in London read a letter from H. Hicks, a surgeon at St David's, arguing for a lifeboat to cover St Brides Bay. The Inspector of Lifeboats was dispatched, came back convinced, and o...

Image: Manchester Warrior | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Davids Lifeboat Station: The Roll of Honour

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Philip Pankhurst, CC BY-SA 2.0. Every RNLI station accumulates a list, and St Davids has accumulated a long one. The Silver Medal for gallantry was awarded to Coxswains David Hicks in 1892, William Narbett in 1903, and fisherman Sidney Mortimer in 1910. Coxswain William Watts Williams won the Silver in 1955 for...

Image: Philip Pankhurst | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Davids Lifeboat Station: From Oars to Tamar

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hugh Venables, CC BY-SA 2.0. The boats themselves trace a century and a half of marine engineering. Augusta gave way in 1885 to Gem, the boat lost on The Bitches. Charlotte stood in for two years from Porthclais while a new station and slipway were built for the station's first motor-powered lifeboat, Genera...

Image: Hugh Venables | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Davids Lifeboat Station: Today's Crew

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Atkin, CC BY-SA 2.0. Two people work here full-time: the Coxswain and the Mechanic. Everyone else is a volunteer, and the rule is that they all live within about three miles of the station so that when the pager goes off they can reach St Justinian's quickly. The neighbouring stations are Fishguard t...

Image: Tony Atkin | CC BY-SA 2.0