Qualla: The Lizard Lifeboat Station

The Lizard Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Gunns, CC BY-SA 2.0. Up to 400 ships pass the Lizard every day. It is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and from the deck of a coaster running west in a January gale, the cliffs at the southern tip of Cornwall are the last hard edge before the open Atlantic. They have always taken their share. A Mrs Agar of Lanhydrock, watching the wrecks pile up off Bass Point and Polpeor Cove in 1859, paid for the first lifeboat herself and named it Anna Maria. The RNLI's Lizard stations have been launching boats into that gauntlet ever since.

Image: Chris Gunns | CC BY-SA 2.0

The Lizard Lifeboat Station: Polpeor Cove, and the Cost of a Bad Site

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr Neil Clifton, CC BY-SA 2.0. The first Lizard station opened in 1859, perched atop the cliffs above Polpeor Cove about a kilometre south of Lizard village. The boathouse cost £120 to build. The location, magnificent in calm weather, was lethal in a gale: every launch meant manhandling a heavy self-righting b...

Image: Dr Neil Clifton | CC BY-SA 2.0

The Lizard Lifeboat Station: Coxswain Edwin Matthews, 1888

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Downer, CC BY-SA 2.0. Awards from the Lizard's stations read like a roll-call of nineteenth- and twentieth-century courage. Edwin Matthews, coxswain at Polpeor, won the RNLI Silver Medal in 1888. Captain David G. Ball, master of the Gustav Bitter, won one in 1893. The grandest entries cluster around 1...

Image: Chris Downer | CC BY-SA 2.0

The Lizard Lifeboat Station: Kilcobben Cove, 1985

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Heaton, CC BY-SA 2.0. The current station, built into the cliff at Kilcobben Cove half a mile east of Lizard village, opened to replace Polpeor in 1961. Its great innovation is a funicular railway that runs straight down the cliff, hauling crews from the clifftop car park to the boathouse at the base ...

Image: Tim Heaton | CC BY-SA 2.0

The Lizard Lifeboat Station: The Watch Continues

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Johnson [1], CC BY-SA 3.0. The Lizard's coastline has not become safer with time. Modern ships are bigger, faster, and better equipped, but the cliffs and rocks have not moved, and the same shipping lane that fed the Mitchells' work in 1907 funnels more traffic past it now. The current crew operate a Tamar...

Image: David Johnson [1] | CC BY-SA 3.0