Qualla: Tenby Lifeboat Station

Tenby Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Haydn Miller was a Northamptonshire farmer who left three million pounds to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in his will. He had no children. No one knows quite why he chose the RNLI; he farmed outside Kettering, far from any coast, and left no explanation. When the RNLI commissioned a new all-weather Tamar-class lifeboat for Tenby in 2006, they named it after him - and the people who launch it most weeks, year-round, do so with his name painted across the bow. The Tenby station has been pulling men and women out of the sea since 1852. The boats have changed; the work has not.

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tenby Lifeboat Station: The Boatman and the Sloop

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaggery, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before there was a lifeboat station, there was John Ray. On 22 October 1834, the boatman watched a man fall overboard from the sloop Mary in Tenby harbour and made more than a dozen attempts to reach him. The man drowned. Ray got back to shore. The Royal National Institution for ...

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Image: Jaggery | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tenby Lifeboat Station: Grace Darling and the Pivot

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brassknocker, CC BY-SA 4.0. Tenby Lifeboat Station was founded in 1852 by the Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Royal Benevolent Society - a separate charity from the RNLI. The first boat, a 28-foot self-righting design by James Beeching of Great Yarmouth, cost £125 and was named Grace Darling after the N...

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Image: Brassknocker | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tenby Lifeboat Station: Castle Beach

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. The station moved to Castle Beach in 1862, where a new boathouse cost £190 and a new self-righting Pulling and Sailing lifeboat - sails and ten oars together - cost £260. The 1862 boathouse was demolished in 1894 and replaced on the same site with a limestone-and-ashlar boathouse...

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

Tenby Lifeboat Station: The Farmer's Bequest

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Vosper, CC BY-SA 2.0. When the Haydn Miller arrived in March 2006, the crew were still training. The boat made its first successful rescue in April. Channel 4's Grand Designs filmed the next chapter: planning permission to demolish the old Grade II-listed station was refused, so the building was caref...

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Image: Colin Vosper | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tenby Lifeboat Station: Explore Station

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. The RNLI categorises Tenby as an 'Explore' station - their highest visitor-access rating. When the boats are home, the doors are open. Children can sit in the cox seat of the Haydn Miller. The shop sells RNLI keyrings and a small book listing every medal awarded at the station si...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0