Qualla: Yealm River Lifeboat Station

Yealm River Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 27 April 1878, the Reverend Duke Yonge stood at the mouth of the River Yealm and blessed a new lifeboat. She was 35 feet long, self-righting, powered by ten oars and a pair of sails. An anonymous donor signing themselves only A. B. S. had given the £800 that built her, and at their request the boat was named Bowman. The crowd watched her launch into smooth water for a demonstration, and for the next 49 years the Yealm River Lifeboat Station kept watch over Bigbury Bay's south-westerly gales, with the Hockaday family on the oars and the Mewstone always waiting in the dark.

Yealm River Lifeboat Station: Why the Yealm Needed a Lifeboat

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution decided in March 1877 that Newton Ferrers was a good place for a station. The reasoning, recorded in the meeting minutes, was crisp: "There are plenty of fishermen to man the Life-boat, which can be readily launched in smooth water at all t...

Yealm River Lifeboat Station: Three Boats, Many Stories

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Bowman served until 1887, when a new boat called Darling arrived, funded by a legacy from Mrs Thomas of Nunney in Somerset. Darling was 34 feet long with two masts, lug sails, a jib, and ten oars. She launched five times in seventeen years but never recorded a saved life, a s...

Yealm River Lifeboat Station: The Wellington and the Mewstone

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the night of 28 January 1885, in a south-westerly gale, the Yealm and Plymouth lifeboats were called to the barque Wellington from Windsor, Nova Scotia. She had drifted ashore after a tragedy at sea: her captain, who according to surviving newspaper accounts had been drinking ...

Yealm River Lifeboat Station: The End of the Pulling Boats

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 20 January 1927 the RNLI committee voted to close Yealm River. Plymouth had just received a 60-foot Barnett-class motor lifeboat, twin-screw and self-propelled, capable of covering the same waters faster and more reliably than oared boats could ever manage. The Hockadays had r...