Qualla: Torbay Lifeboat Station

Torbay Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matthew Hartley, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the night of 10 January 1866, the wind in Tor Bay turned and rose. Seventy-four vessels had run for shelter into the harbours at Brixham and Torquay. By morning, at least thirty of them had been smashed to pieces against the breakwaters or hurled onto the beaches, and seventy people were dead. The lifeboat China was dragged overland from Teignmouth to Torquay in time to save eleven men from two ships, but the toll of that single night made an argument the Royal National Lifeboat Institution could not ignore. Brixham needed its own boat. The station opened later that year. Since then, the Torbay crew, renamed in 1924, have launched into every kind of weather the Channel can put together. Coxswains have been killed, knocked overboard, awarded medals by foreign governments, lost in the rolling and brought back from it. Twenty-six RNLI medals for gallantry now hang in the station record: one gold, six silver, nineteen bronze. The most recent silver was awarded in 2008. The men and women who earned them are people who choose, when the bell sounds, to go where everyone else is trying to come back from.

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Image: Matthew Hartley | CC BY-SA 2.0

Torbay Lifeboat Station: The First Boat at Bolton Cross

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geof Sheppard, CC BY-SA 4.0. There was nowhere obvious to put a boathouse in Brixham. The first lifeboat, the City of Exeter, was kept under a tarpaulin at Bolton Cross and carried down to the harbour on a wheeled carriage when a launch was needed. It was a clumsy arrangement, but the boat went out anyway. I...

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Image: Geof Sheppard | CC BY-SA 4.0

Torbay Lifeboat Station: Mogridge of the English Trader

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TempyIncursion at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the morning of 23 January 1937, the SS English Trader ran aground on Checkstone Ledge at the mouth of the River Dart. Coxswain William Mogridge took the Torbay lifeboat out at 5:25 a.m. and stood by while tugs tried to pull her off. They could not. By 6 a.m. on the 24th, a str...

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Image: TempyIncursion at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Torbay Lifeboat Station: Hands Two Short

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MilborneOne, CC BY-SA 3.0. By December 1944 the Second World War had stripped the fishing towns of crew. On the morning of 17 December, after two vessels were reported aground between Paignton and Torquay, the lifeboat George Shee put to sea two hands short. The tug Empire Alfred was just fifty yards from ...

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Image: MilborneOne | CC BY-SA 3.0

Torbay Lifeboat Station: Force 9 and Fifty Approaches

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geof Sheppard, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 13 January 2008, the bulk carrier MV Ice Prince was foundering in the Channel in Force 9 winds. She was listing at 25 degrees and rolling badly. The Torbay all-weather lifeboat went out, and Coxswain Mark Criddle took her in. The lifeboat approached the heeling hull roughly fi...

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Image: Geof Sheppard | CC BY-SA 4.0